If the last thing on someone's mind, while they're dying, is not their happy moments but an urge to share a secret, imagine the burden it must have been for the person to live with it the entire life. And the peace they must've felt while finally spilling it - maybe even worth dying for.
Below is a list of deathbed confessions that shook everyone.
See You Never.
My grandpa told my grandma at his deathbed that he hadn’t loved her for almost 30 years, and he was close to divorcing her many times, but could never go through with it.
Father, Who’s My Father?
All his life my dad grew up thinking he was adopted from a woman who went to my grandparent’s church and got pregnant out of a broken marriage. He was told his father died before he was even born. My grandpa confessed on his deathbed that he actually had an affair with that church woman and he was actually my dad’s real father, which was why he suggested adopting him in the first place.
My dad was in tears regretting every time he had taken up grudge against my grandpa and ended on “You’re not even my real father.”
All This While? Always.
Something really surprising and more sad than anything.
I was really close to my granny but I never had the heart to tell her I’m gay as I had only heard her say negative things about homosexuality. I didn’t want to upset her or cause family problems.
When she was on her deathbed, she confessed to me she always knew I am gay, but she didn’t care and would always love me. I regret not having enough courage to confront to her myself, while she has healthy. There’s so much I had to hide from her for no reason at all.
Watch Your Confession Man!
One of my uncle had been in a car accident. It was bad.
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital he said, “tell my wife that Wendy (name changed) is my daughter and I love her.” He died a few minutes later because of internal bleeding.
Wendy was the neighbours’ then 5 year old child.
Neighbours got divorced and several years of court on child custody followed. I sometime wonder how different things would have been if my uncle hadn’t got a chance to confess.
God. God Who?
My Grand mother was super religious her whole life. Always going to church and doing right by her community.
In her LAST HOURS she said she really did not believe in god and wished she had not wasted all that time of her life doing what she thought others wanted her to do. I was okay, but my dad and my aunt were in complete shock. My grandpa was deeply moved and was really sorry – he said he had no clue.
No Mexican For Me.
Me and all of my cousins were gathered around my grandfathers hospice bed as he laid there dying. Each and every one of my cousins, there’s a lot of us, gave him a kiss, tried to talk to him and said they loved him. But he wouldn’t respond to any of them, just stared back. Until I came up.
I sat on the edge of his bed, holding his hand. Everyone was watching us. He looked me in the eye, and said, “I don’t like Mexican food.” with a lot of pain.
Everyone was in shocked, including me. I knew he didn’t like tacos in particular.
No. No one laughed. And we’re not Mexicans.
Little Secret.
I have a great aunt that passed away when I was 17. Just before she did my older brother confessed to her that I was gay and that no one in the family knows about it.
She called me in and explained how our family has been through so much and that she was willing to totally accept me for who I am. I think that is great of her to be that open minded. Only one problem-I’m not gay. She never believed me because my brother had “confessed” it, and she died thinking I am gay, happy that I shared my secret with her.
My father cheated on my mom with her aunt.
My mom’s aunt, when she was dying, revealed she had the hots for my dad for years. She told she had an affair with him too. My mother and father have been divorced for a long time, but this was when they were still together. My mother’s hatred for the man grew 10 times.
Anonymous
Words of Wisdom. NOT!
My mom told me about the death of her father, my grandfather, and his last words to her. She said he was on his deathbed and it was obvious that he was nearing the end.
He motioned her over to tell her something. She went over, leaned in close, expecting some declaration of his love for her or some deeply insightful words of wisdom. He said “The good family silverware is hidden in the ventilation system about 15 feet out from the furnace.”
She looked at him like he was crazy. He said “What!! We travel a lot and that’s where I hid it. That thing’s expensive!” He died the next morning.
Deathbed Confession Frees Man Who Spent 12 Years In Jail.
Back in 1975, Wayman Cammile Jr., a black construction worker, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the rape of Alice Mock, who told police he had raped her after he was found drunk in her bed. He had already served 11 of those years. When Alice Mock finally revealed the truth while on her deathbed; she admitted to a former neighbor that she had lied about the rape.
She was worried she would be evicted if her landlord discovered she had willingly had a relationship with a black man. Mock revealed to the shocked neighbor that she had invited Cammile, a known alcoholic, into her apartment and had stolen money from him when he had passed out drunk, then in a panic had made the false claim to the police. She fell into a coma the day after making the confession and died five days later.
One year later a newspaper headline read – Deathbed Confession Frees Man Who Spent 12 Years In Jail.
And He Could Finally Love In Peace
My grandfather was in the hospital in a pretty nasty state. He barely could speak, but he made it clear to us he had something to say. He had my mother get him a piece of paper and a pen. Thinking he has some important words to leave us with in case he doesn’t have a chance later, my mom does gets a paper and a pen. There’s silence in the room as he scribbles something onto the paper, with my mother and her two siblings waiting in anticipation.
My grandfather finishes, and with a big smile turns the paper for us to see.
“I’ve got a girlfriend.” It read, as he pointed to Anna, a neighbour and friend of his.
The goofball ended up pulling through and living for several more years.
Who are you son?
Within my family, my great uncle or something similar that I never met died in the early 70s. He was on his deathbed when my grandpa asked him “So….who are you really? I know you’re not from our family.”
Turned out the real uncle had gotten his Italian citizenship and within the first year of that realized that he could live there forever.
So when he went home, US, one of his friends asked if he could just take the uncle’s ID since the friend always wanted to live in the US. My uncle said sure.
This was in the 30’s, so it’s not that surprising this worked.
I killed your father kids. To save all of us.
In 1991, after years of domestic violence, Geraldine Kelly shot and killed her husband and stored his body in a freezer at their home in Ventura, California. She told her young children that their father died in a car accident. Seven years later when she decided to move back home to Somerville Massachusetts she had the moving company move the freezer with the body inside and drive it across the country to a local storage facility in Somerville. In 2004, 13 years after the murder Kelly was gravely ill with breast cancer and confessed to her daughter that she had killed her father claiming he abused her for years and then told her where to find his body. Authorities investigated and found human remains in a locked, unplugged freezer in the storage room. The body was mummified but identified as John Kelly based on distinctive tattoos he was known to have including a panther, a Kewpie doll and a skull. The cause of death was a gunshot to the back of the head.
The District Attorney of Somerville said it wasn’t clear if Kelly wanted to unburden herself or if she wanted her children to know so if they found the body they wouldn’t be blamed for it.
I killed my first wife.
My great uncle admitted that he had killed his first wife by beating her to death with a bowling ball because he found her molesting their neighbour’s son when he was 5 years old. This was when he lived in Ireland and a few years later he moved to America met another woman and lived his life happily had a number of kids and gran-kids.
It put most of the family into shock as my great uncle was one of the most non-violent people you would ever meet. No explanation on how he got away with it, or any more than that. He died about 3 minutes after his confession. This deeply shook my family up for a long while.
But You Are Our Princess And Nothing Can Change That.
My mum was from China though we now happily reside in a European country. We went back to China for my grandmother’s last few weeks, she was dying from terminal cancer.
On one of her last days, grandma requested that mum stay with her alone, and it was then when she revealed that my mum wasn’t her biological kid. My grandma confessed that she bought my mum from a child trafficking ring (which was common in China), because she had tried conceiving for many years but still couldn’t get pregnant.
My mother cried a lot, not only from the unimaginable pain that her biological parents likely went through in losing a baby, but also from the fact that my grandparents had always gone beyond their limits to treat her as their little princess. They were never abusive and only gave her the very best of everything. They even send her to the US for university education even though they weren’t that rich.
Heaven And Hell Are Both Here.
My grandma’s brother was in his final moments and he confessed to his wife that he was cheating her a lot, with 3 women.
He confessed because he was afraid of go to hell, but looks like God has other plans to him. Unfortunately for him, in a blink of an eye he got better and better, and 1 week later was released by the doctors.
His wife’s brother was a lawyer, they sued him and took away almost everything from him. He lived for more 7 years, without any money. All women and their children abandoned him, so he died alone at home.
Karma.
Look At The Stars, Look How They Shine.
It’s not exactly on the death bed, but is close as it gets. My aunt had cancer. She knew she was going to die and she knew it would probably be in less than a week. She couldn’t eat and drinking was panful. She wanted to be sedated heavily (kept asleep permanently, essentially) for the last few days because this whole dying thing was getting on her nerves. She said she has had more than enough of it.
So fair enough, a doctor was called up, a plan is made and carried out. The last thing my aunt said before going under for the rest of her life was,
“Ah, I see the stars, they’re sweet and run carefree. Gather them up…” and that’s when she went under. She died 3 days later.
Nobody knows what she meant. But somehow, those last words fit her. My uncle (her husband) got them tattooed on his chest, over his heart, and now says there’s something magical about those words, they take him to her.
I killed a 3 year old.
My mother-in-law worked at a nursing home so she had seen many deaths, and heard a no. of deathbed confessions, but one has always stuck with her.
A patient knew he was nearing his death and called out for someone -anyone- to listen. She went to him.
Then, patient said that when he was young, his father had been out drinking with some friends and on the way home then he (the patient) had hit a little girl, by accident, and she died. He gave very specific details about where and when it happened. The girl was maybe 3 years old. Then the father and his friends buried the little girl under the porch steps and never spoke of it again.
The person had lived with the guilt of keeping it a secret and felt horrible that the little girl’s family would never know what had happened. He just had to let someone else know so he could die with a little less burden.
My Grandpa Was A Killing Machine.
My grandpa’s whole career was in the military. He had joined it just when he turned 18, shortly after World War II. Him and his 6 brothers all joined at the same time but none get put into the same squad. Their first time seeing combat was in Korea.
My grandpa was a paratrooper and one of his brothers was a field medic. He said that during a really intense fire fight, his squad crossed paths with his brother’s squad. His brother was trying to help an injured squad member and died in the process.
We only knew the part above. What follows is something he couldn’t share until very recently, when he fell terminally ill. I have never heard someone confess to something this horrifying ever in my life.
He said his brother was shot 3 times – twice in the back and once in the chest. And my grandpa ran to drag him out of the way. He held his brother in his arm behind cover and comforted him as he died. He knew his brother wasn’t making it out of this serious injury. His brother died a few minutes after and this made something in my grandpas head just snap.
For the rest of the war, he used the Koreans as his way of dealing with the anger of his brother dying. He went from being a terrified, inexperienced combat troop to a killing machine. He said during the rest of the war, he felt no fear, only hatred. He would fight with incredible zeal and ferocity. He didn’t specify how many people he actually killed. All he said was “The day my brother died was the day I became a killer”. He didn’t say how many he actually killed because “If I told you, you would see me as a much different man. I wasn’t a man at that point. I was a cold hearted murderer out to watch them suffer”. He claimed that when the opportunity came, he would actively try to inflict as much agony on enemy troops as possible. When they were injured and on the ground, he would beat them, kick them, cut off their fingers, knock their teeth out, stomp on their legs to break them etc. He only did this when there was no other allies around. He literally started acting like a serial killer torturing his victims and didn’t want any of his fellow troops to see him do this. It was dishonorable and inhumane but he didn’t care. He was just filled with rage.
My grandpa received a purple heart and multiple prestigious military honors once the war was over. He said that if anyone found out about the horrors and inhumane actions he committed during the war, the awards would probably have been taken away. He said his time in Korea was the only time he felt like something other than human. He said it made him feel like a truly evil force, and he liked it. This shocked us since he was the kindest, most gentle man I had ever known. He never swore, never got angry and was incredibly tame and loving. His marriage was fantastic and he made sure to show my dad and my aunt nothing but love when they were growing up. You would never take him as the type of guy to excitedly kill people in battle. My grandpa died with a lot of secrets that we will now never know. He only confessed to his horribly dirty fighting tactics in war because he wanted to die with some of his conscience clear. He never even told my grandma about what he did during the war until this point.
I believe he had some underlying problems that led to him acting like he did in war. He said it was a blood lust that he had never felt before and the sight of enemy Koreans suffering in pain got him excited and bursting with happiness. My grandpa wasn’t a bad man. I believe the stress of the war and his brother dying in his arms was enough for him to go against everything he previously stood for. He went into the war with the intent to serve his country but ended up fighting for his own bloodlust and rage. I can’t ask him to tell me more since he’s been long dead, but I believe he did much worse than just torture injured enemies.
Guilyy Grandpa
I used to work in an assisted living home and on his deathbed a resident apologized profusely for molesting his daughter’s son just minutes before he took his last breath.
The daughter was there and started bawling saying ‘I forgive you, I forgive you.’ Very emotionally charged moment. She explained later that he had sought help with his family and was reformed, but could never let go of the guilt.
Assisted living homes can get wild.
My great grand mother fooled us all her life.
My mom and her dad both grew up believing and hearing stories from my great-grandmother about how she was the daughter of a Cherokee woman who ran off and joined the circus. It was a good tale. My great grandmother taught all of us rain dances and other cultural things. All her decor and style was Cherokee-inspired. She even physically looked Native American. My older cousin even got some college grant based on being 1/16th Native American.
On her deathbed my great grandmother tells my grandpa that she made all of it up, nothing was true. In fact, she wasn’t even native American. Her mother was a neighborhood whore of European descent and dumped her in an orphanage, the place where she actually grew up.
Murderer of Actor/Director William Desmond Taylor.
William Desmond Taylor was an actor and a top US film director of silent films in the early days of Hollywood. When Taylor was shot to death in 1922 it became one of Hollywood’s most famous scandals and mysteries.
In 1964, 42 years later, a reclusive old woman living in Hollywood had a heart attack when she summoned her neighbor. With her recent conversion to Catholicism she asked for a priest to confess but when no Priest was available she began to make her confession to the neighbor.
As she was dying on her kitchen floor she said she was a silent film actress by the name of Margaret Gibson and that she shot and killed the man named William Desmond Taylor. She is alleged to have been involved romantically with Taylor but a motive as to why she killed him was never mentioned.
Confessed to faking the famous Loch Ness Monster photo.
In 1934 a doctor named Robert Kenneth Wilson offered a picture to the Daily Mail newspaper. Wilson told the newspaper he noticed something moving in Loch Ness and stopped his car to take the photo. Wilson refused to have his name associated with it so the photo became known simply as “The Surgeon’s Photo.”
In the early 1930s, sightings of the Loch Ness Monster became commonplace, so Marmaduke Wetherall, a big game hunter, was hired by the Daily Mail newspaper to investigate. He found some huge tracks leading to the lake that he proudly displayed to the press. When the Natural History Museum investigated they quickly discovered that the footprints were a hoax. Wetherell was humiliated when the newspaper reported this. For revenge he asked his stepson Chris Spurling who was a professional model-maker to make something that would fool the public. Spurling started with a toy submarine and then added a long neck and small head. The finished product was about 45 cm long, and about 30 cm high. Wetherell then went down to the lake and took some pictures of the “monster”. To add respectability to the hoax he convinced Dr. Wilson whom he knew through a mutual friend to develop the photo and sell it to the Daily Mail.
For decades this photo was considered to be the best evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. In 1994 at the age of 93 and near death Christian Spurling confessed that the surgeon’s photo taken 60 years ago was a hoax and the mastermind behind it was his Stepfather Marmaduke Wetherell.
If Sorry Could Solve It.
I’m a medical student and I had a fairly young female patient who was new to our hospital and was HIV positive. I needed to ask her how she got the virus, i.e via sexual transmission or level IV drugs.
She tells me it was sexually transmitted, and the only reason she got tested was because her partner’s last words to her as he was dying in hospice were “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you; forgive me.”
I was instantly traumatized, and felt how gutsy was this lady.