From stealing money from a rich friend, to replacing his girlfriend’s dead pet fish with another, people share the one secret they’ve kept from loved ones that they’ll take to their graves.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
We had an old cat growing up named Tuna. He was 16 or 17 and had a long and happy life but was really deteriorating. My mom did not want him put down as he was her cat and she seemed to be in denial about how near death Tuna was.
One day, she comes home from the store and my dad calmly tells her that he found Tuna dead under a tree in the sun. She was happy he died peacefully and on his own terms. What she doesn’t know is that she actually ran him over as she was leaving for the store. She obviously didn’t feel him under the tire but my mom killed her cat and we all lied about him dying in his sleep.
misssnizzle
During junior year of high school, my class was registering for next year’s classes, so they brought us down to the computer lab. But, there werent enough computers for everyone. Knowing one of the councilors very well, she let me use the instructor computer at the front of the room.
Well, just so happened, that another councillor was logged into that computer, so I had full permissions.
In addition to registering for next year’s classes, a couple of my Bs turned to As from past classes.
A few months later, I barely beat out a good friend for a scholarship because my GPA was slightly higher.
AllPintsNorth
In Dutch, when you boil an egg and then place it into cold water to make it easier to peel an egg, it’s called “to scare” the eggs.
One day when I was about 6 or 7, my mom asked me to “scare” the eggs. So, little joker I was, lifted the lid of the pan and yelled “BOOO!”
My mom cracked up and has been telling this story ever since, for over 20 years. She’s come to love the story and still truly thinks that I wanted to really “scare” the eggs. Truth is I knew what “scaring an egg” meant and only wanted to make her laugh because she was in a sad place and time back then.
It’s made her laugh for over 20 years. That means it’s the best joke I’ve ever pulled off and I’d die before I’d let her find out I was just kidding.
Alwin_
When our family cat of many years died, dad insisted on putting it in the trash with everything else to be hauled away, whereas mom and I pleaded – to no avail – to bury it in our back yard. As I’ve noted here once before, he remained adamant and wouldn’t allow it.
At night, I went out and removed our dead cat from the trash and gave it a proper burial in a remote area of the back yard and placed a small grave marker over the spot where it’s interred.
Dad will never know.
Back2Bach
Riding in the car with one of my best friends. He suddenly has a very distressed look on his face and frantically starts stuttering about needing to find a restroom. I will never forget the sound not 10 seconds later of him pooping himself in the driver seat. I laughed my head off all the way back to his house. I promised I’d never tell anyone.
Frustrated_Pyro
One of my deceased friends constantly cheated on another. He was her first partner, they were together for a while, she loved him, and part of her still does. He cheated on her non-stop. They broke up after a while and he later passed away in an accident. Her and I got close and I never told her because it wouldn’t do any good.
jmperez920
The wife of a close friend knows that the friend was closeted and was gay before they got married. She believes that she is the only reason he decided to be straight instead. She admitted this to me on a 12-hour road trip once and then realized she’d said too much and swore me to secrecy. I didn’t tell her that, before getting married, the close friend admitted to me that he wanted to be gay but that he never dared to out of fear of judgment of his rural, conservative family. He almost didn’t get married because he didn’t think he could pull it off, but it seemed like he did to save face with his family. They have been married over 20 years now.
very_large_ears
My sister was an extremely stuck up girl in high school. She was obsessed with her purity and purity culture in general. My junior year of college my phone broke and I had had to use her old flip phone from high school until I got a new one. I found her nudes that she was sending to older men and what they sent back. I also found texts of when and where they planned to hook up as well as her prices. No joke, I threw up in my mouth, then took the phone outside where I smashed it with a sledgehammer and threw all the pieces I could find in the local river.
Dr_Henry_Armitage
Everyone in my family, including my siblings and my dad’s mom, believe my dad died of cancer. He really died because he got Hep C from IV drug use and later developed cirrhosis of the liver. When my dad got sick, my parents both told everyone it was cancer. It wasn’t until 7 years after he passed that my mom told me the truth.
angel-acid
Over the summer I took care of my girlfriends familys house and pets while they were on vacation. They had 2 French bulldogs and her little brother had a pet fish. I was fine taking care of the dog since I had some myself but the fish… I ended up over feeding it and the water became unhealthy. Next thing I knew it passed away. I gave it a proper funeral flush, and went to the nearest PetCo and bought a similar looking fish (blue veil-tail betta) and cleaned the water before putting him in the aquarium. When they came back from vacation they noticed he seemed a little bigger, I just told them that he probably eats more, and they believed me. Im taking this with me to the grave, and I never told my girlfriend about it either.
ReezusPuffs
In 2008 I joined Canadian Nurses Association with hopes and dreams of becoming a registered nurse. However, after four years, I left the profession. The story I tell everyone is that my multiple sclerosis made the job too difficult to perform. That is not the case.
The real reason is that I developed a morphine addiction after a bad accident, and had started to steal the meds from the residents instead of disposing of them after they passed away. I left to get treatment, and didn’t go back because I didn’t want to fall into that trap again. I am now 5 years clean.
RockPrincess01
I work at an investment bank, however to get the job I had to do a variety of assessments which among others included an Excel modelling test.
Now I’m quite experienced with Excel, have built lots of complex financial models, but what this task involved was to make some corrections to a very poorly built financial model (not intentionally bad, just whoever did it didn’t know their stuff well).
They leave me in a room with a laptop to complete this task. I open up the spreadsheet and have very little idea where to start, this is just making no sense. As I’m scanning through the tabs desperately trying to find things I’m able to do, I notice something saved on the desktop: some previous candidate’s attempt was saved there!
Well I opened it up and started copying what that guy had done and added a few tweaks of my own.
I ended up getting the job.
RightHandSolo
In my teens I was playing some online game and had chosen a female avatar (I am not female.) This guy started flirting with me and I just rolled with it. I don’t know why I did it, I’m most certainly not gay but even though I was literally cat-fishing this (assuredly also) poor teen guy, I enjoyed the time I roll-played a girl. I leave out the last bit when telling the story to my friends. I still feel a little guilty I just randomly stopped playing one day and never even said bye. Hope he went and found a nice (and real) girl. He was a gentleman.
—TheFierceDeity—
I took the boat out with my wife and her parents. We took a tube and a car charger air pump to inflate it. My father-in-law (who grew up on the gulf of Mexico) and I backed the boat in while my wife and mother in law took the boat out as we put the truck and trailer back in the lot. As we were walking down to the dock I asked if he had a “plug” to plug the air pump into. He thought I said “did you get the plug?” like to the back of the boat. He freaked out realized he left the plug out and we sprinted to the dock. We ended up having to swim about 60 yards out to the boat as it stalled before my wife got it back to the dock. We had to be towed back in to the boat ramp. It completely ruined the family lake trip and my father-in-law beat himself up over it for a couple of days. He thought I was a hero for remembering the boat plug and my pride just can’t come to terms with telling him that isn’t actually what I asked.
TMB8962
I was helping my aunt move some boxes when she got a new house and I found a letter from her to my grandparents in Ireland. They wanted to wait to come to America when their first grandchild was born which was my older sister.
However, the letter she wrote stated that my mom had cheated on my dad and the child she was carrying wasnt actually their grandchild and to wait to come to America when her son, my oldest cousin, was born 6 months later. Im not sure if any of it is true but I took the letter and never told anyone about it, Im a little worried to find out the truth.
OGboulds
My father bought me a beautiful Fender Stratocaster for my 15th Birthday. It was unique, and gorgeous. I sold it to a guitar shop when I was 20 because I needed the cash. I never had the heart to tell him. I even found one exactly like it almost 10 years later, after I had become financially stable. I bought it in an instant. He still thinks I have the guitar he got me for my birthday. I still don’t have the heart to tell him.
cobhc83
My granny blames my brother for my dad’s accident. He wasn’t there, he was 11 at the time but my granny said it was all his fault for changing his mind on what he wanted to do that day which then led to my dad’s accident. It wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of the woman not paying any attention and hitting my dad’s motorbike with her car. My brother doesn’t know and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever let him find out.
cantfindtheacidhouse
My story started with my bike getting stolen but it was not too much of a hassle since my mom had good insurance to cover it. I got a new bike that was way better than the old one, and not even 3 days later I find my stolen bike the next street over. I took my old bike, slashed the tyres and threw the bike into the harbor only for me to see it every time I got there, seeing the rusting corpse of what was once my bike.
KingJosh_
When I was young, my class held a bake sale in which every child had to bring in some baked goods to be sold, the money raised for some school project or another.
Well, we’d never done this before. My mother didn’t have a lot of close friends at the time, so she winged it: she made rum balls. I’m not sure if you’ve ever eaten rum balls, but they’re not sweet and they have a peculiar rum taste – not what you’d normally sell at elementary school bake sales.
All afternoon, kids will be kids … those rum balls were thrown, tossed and squashed into the gymnasium floor. Parents bought them and gave them to their kids, who had one bite and …. ugh! off they went on their journey. I didn’t have the heart to tell my mother that people hated her rum balls; I told her that they were all sold early because – rum! But in truth, everyone hated them and they ended up everywhere but in people’s mouths.
horses_for_courses
That my cousin isnt really my uncle’s son. My aunt went to a sperm bank. When she married my uncle he was fixed and she insisted she didnt want a kid… until mom got pregnant with me (only granddaughter). Then all the sudden she needed a baby, so they went to a sperm bank and had my cousin. He is loved and my uncle loves him, but the kid doesnt know. Hoping he doesnt have any mystery illnesses pop up because it might kill him to know the truth. I wasnt even supposed to know but dad gets gossipy when hes drunk.
kabibblekitsch
Before I met my fianc, I was the other woman for someone who was cheating on his girlfriend. The guy I was with told me he still loved me and so I sacrificed everything – morals, happiness, time – for him, and he threw me away like a used condom. That was the absolute lowest point of my life and I came dangerously close to killing myself due to several other factors.
My fianc knows that it was a bad situation, he knows I was very close to ending my life, but he will never know the details of it. Even though it was before I met him, I know it would crush him to know I was in such a messed up situation.
skelecano
When I was about 13 I was visiting my aunt and seeing my baby cousin for the first time. While I was holding my baby cousin my aunt and mother left the room and I was alone holding the baby. So of course I dropped her. Probably about 4 feet to the ground on carpet. No one saw, I picked her back up and said she just started crying for no reason. almost 20 years later and she seems alright.
lucky2u
I slept with my friend’s boyfriend while they were still together. She and I weren’t friends at the time, in fact, I did not like her all that much when I slept with him. When I broke up with the boyfriend I stole from her we bonded over how much of an idiot the guy is. 3 years later she came out as gay, but I could still never tell her because she would feel so betrayed.
bittytits
When I was 8 years old I stole money from my best friend. My friend was from a rich family and she was very, very spoiled. She would brag about her saved money that she had in a little safe in her room. Meanwhile my family had lots of financial issues, my mother was a single mom with three kids and things were tough. I could see how stressed my mom was from not being able to make ends meet.
So one day I was at my friend’s house, she had to go to the dentist but didn’t want me to come with so I was told to wait there. And I took it. Not all of it, maybe a third of it, I think it was about 500 dollars. Then I put it in my mom’s wallet, a little at a time.
I don’t think she ever noticed. I never told anyone. I feel terrible about it.
Bellarala
I was mad at my sister in 7th grade (she was in 5th) and I happened to invite my best friend over and let her play on my computer. Then after everyone went to sleep, I logged into my sister’s Neopets account and sold her baby paintbrush for super cheap and transferred something like a million Neopoints to my account. This was before there was a transaction log. I thought she would be a little bit mad. She was so devastated. Her password was like ‘happy123’ and she thought she got hacked. She was crying, barely eating, so distraught, I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. A couple weeks later that friend kissed my crush so I told my sister my friend had hacked her Neopets account. Sorry kiddo!
coffeeandcolor
I slept with my boss. We had an office function where drinks were involved. Not many but enough to loosen the mood. My boss and a few others were talking in the parking lot and everyone left but her and I. I could feel there was tension there but I didnt act, we said goodnight and I left. She called me a few minutes later and asked me to stop by her house because she had some paperwork she wanted me to drop off, when I got in we had another beer and what happened happened.
I havent told anyone for a couple really obvious reasons, she would definitely lose her job and she soon after got into a serious relationship. I honestly dont trust telling anyone and strangely enough it hasnt affected our work life.
TheOneTheOnlyC
(Source)