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'When I was leaving for Basic Training, my sister was dating an old friend of mine named George. After basic and tech school, I came back to find out that George had married my mom while I was away.'
I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020. Recently, we wrote about real-life plot twists, and now we're back for more.
Here are 49 IRL stories with massive twists and turns, shocking endings, and wild coincidences.
"My sister's husband is an army veteran, and has two ex-wives and kids with both. His first ex had an affair with his dad while he was deployed in Afghanistan. So he divorced her, and his parents broke up. The ex-wife had a baby not long after the divorce, and you know what's up: it was his dad's baby.
So my two oldest nieces have a half-sister who is also their aunt.
" "When I was around eight, I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and some severe heart issues. Everyone kinda just assumed I would die any day after that. Well, eight years later, I was still here, and my doctors pretty much gave up on figuring out what was wrong with me, so my parents decided to get a second opinion.
We went to Mayo Clinic, and I was easily diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, something that is easily treated through exercise , which is the opposite of what my doctors told me to do. After that, I was just like shit, now I have to plan my future.
""I dated a girl. She told me she had cancer of the ovaries and was doing chemo. She was always sick. There were many long nights.
Eight months into the relationship, I learned she did NOT have cancer... She was PREGNANT.
" "Her stomach became roundish, but it never became nearly as big as any pregnancy. She kept smoking and had me buy her tampons once in a while. She gave me a legit doctor's name. And no, chemo doesn't ALWAYS destroy your hair.
She was very pale already. She is a pathological liar. Certain facts were twisted.
"A kid from my high school was a star football player — popular, and whatnot. One day, he was in a random, horrible car accident with a friend. He was seriously injured and passed away a few weeks later. It was shocking, and the whole school felt the terrible event.
During graduation, we celebrated him and created a scholarship in his name. One year later, his friend, who was also in the car accident, was arrested on his way to school. Turns out, minutes before the car accident, these boys had raped a 15-year-old girl. It was very creepy, and no one really knew how to respond.
It still creeps into my mind three years later.
" "I joined the military in the '80s. When I was leaving for Basic Training, my sister was dating an old friend of mine named George. After basic and tech school, I came back to find out that George had married my mom while I was away. The marriage lasted less than a year, but they still live together 30 years later.
" "My whole childhood, I remember a locket that my mom had on her dresser in her bedroom with a picture of a baby girl in it. I asked her who the girl was, and she always told me her name was Sarah, and that it was someone she used to know who meant a lot to her. My parents broke up when I was six or seven; my mom moved out and got a new place.
A year passed without my dad taking care of the HUGE backyard on our old house, and the place kind of looked like a dump, so my mom decided to hire a landscaper. She was making $12,000 a year, so most people were a no-go.
Finally, she found a company owned by two young girls who had just graduated from high school. They called themselves 'Chicks with Sticks.
' My mom found this hilarious and hired them. They charged us next to nothing to come work on our yard for 10 hours every weekend. This went on for about a month before the wildest thing I have ever witnessed happened.
" "On June 27th, the young blonde girl of the two 'Chicks with Sticks' showed up in her Jeep at our doorstep alone. She asked to talk to my mom and handed her an 18-year-old newspaper with a picture of a baby in a locket on the front page. It's the locket from my mom's dresser. She said, in a sort of sublime haze, 'I think you're my mother.
' Turns out my mom had a child when she was 17. This girl, now called Jenn, not Sarah, was given this piece of newspaper as an 18th birthday present by her Aunt. Still can't believe this shit to this day. It's been 12 years, and she's probably the coolest sister in the universe.
It's unbelievable how much she's like my mother and me. It really makes me question that nature/nurture thing.
""A year and a half ago, my sister's ex was stalking her. He knew everything: where she went, who she was with, what people said in conversation while with her, what people were wearing — things he couldn't have possibly known unless he was there. We couldn't figure out how he knew so much.
We searched her car for a secret camera and GPS, checked her purses for bugs; everything we'd seen on TV and in movies, we looked for it. We thought he'd hired a PI, except he was unemployed and lived with his parents, so he could in no way afford that, and even a PI wouldn't have explained how he knew what was said INSIDE a friend's house.
She finally let me involve the police, and that's when we found out the twist: My mother confessed that she had been feeding the stalker all the info because they were fucking. My mom was fucking my sister's stalker.
" "The piece of shit who made my sister's life hell for two years, who I had to call the police on numerous times...my mother was fucking him in his car at her place of work in the parking lot on her lunch breaks. Further twist: When all this came out, my dad kicked my sister out because she said she couldn't live in the same house as our mother.
I paid to rent her an apartment because she had just finished college and had only been working for a week before this all came out. Obviously, my sister and I no longer consider these people 'parents' and do not associate with them.
" "I never met my biological uncle because he was very abusive to my mother during their childhood. When my mom was pregnant with me, he apparently threatened to kill me. My grandparents still loved him and saw him, though he lived a few states away. He died when I was in elementary school.
His best friend and his best friend's kids came up for the funeral and stayed at my grandparents' house for a while. They considered him an uncle and my grandparents' family. This was the first time I even knew they existed. I became good friends with one of the daughters.
We lived states away but remained in contact for years. Fast forward to our very early 30s, and she took one of those ancestry test kits, which I had taken years prior. I got an email that we had matched.
" "We kinda looked alike and were only a couple of months apart in age. Turns out my biological uncle slept with his best friend's wife, and my friend, whom I had considered my cousin for most of my life, was actually my biological first cousin. It was a total mind fuck for everyone, especially for her. She is the best thing that came out of my biological uncle's life.
""My girlfriend and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate her graduating from law school. We're standing in a buffet line at the Luxor, and I looked to my left and saw her uncle standing right beside me in the line...with another woman. I looked at him, he looked at me, and you could see the 'Holy Shit!!
' in his eyes. I didn't say anything; just kind of looked like I didn't recognize him and nonchalantly walked over to my gf and told her, 'Hey, look, it's Uncle xyz.
' And he and she locked eyes — and he immediately grabbed the woman he was with and bolted. " "My girlfriend called her mom and asked her mom to call 'Aunt xyz' and ask where 'xyz' is. Her mom said okay, hung up, and called back a few minutes later to tell us that 'xyz' is in Los Angeles on a TV shoot .
At that point, my girlfriend spilled the beans and told her. So wild — we live in Charleston, SC, and he lives/lived in Chicago, and we ran into him cheating on his wife in a casino in Las Vegas. It turned out to be completely true; he had a whole separate life that he was living in California. They are now divorced.
" "Started dating a girl. Her single mom meets my single dad. They mingle. Hard.
Girl sleeps with my best friend. Messy breakup. Now my ex-girlfriend is my stepsister. Life is a sick bitch.
""When I was a kid, my dad 'kidnapped' my sister and me and took us with him and his wife and some of her kids to California. The entire time, he was afraid he'd be arrested. Well, we got pulled over by the police...who ended up arresting his wife for kidnapping her daughter.
" "What is weird about it is that the daughter's father had decided he didn't want her, and let her go into foster care, so her mom was able to get her back. At no point did she actually kidnap her daughter. The cops didn't even run my dad's name, so he was never arrested. His wife was released the same day, when the police figured out she was telling the truth.
" "When I was in high school, two girls from my high school, with similar names, had dated the same two guys and switched. This was already scandalous in our small high school. Here comes the twist. Come to find out, the two guys, football players, were in a relationship behind their backs.
So in both relationships, the girls were being cheated on by their boyfriends with their ex-boyfriends.
" "When I was in the seventh grade, I had my first crush on another boy. He was a year older than me and the half-brother of my best friend at school. We played around a few times with each other, but we were just kids and didn't really know what we were doing. I went to another school the next year and lost track of him and his brother.
Twenty years later, I was at work, talking to another guy who had grown up in the same area. I had mentioned what school I'd gone to, and he asked me if I knew this guy, who happened to be my crush. Turns out they went to high school together and were best friends.
" "I learned that my crush was arrested in his twenties for molesting his girlfriend's one-year-old baby and was still in jail for it. Really ruined the nice memories of first love!
" "I met a girl while on tour with my band, had some fun in the back of the bus. Got home from the tour and went to visit my girlfriend at her college. Her roommate answered the door, and I was surprised to see it was the same girl from that night on the road.
""I have a half-brother that is about 16 years older than me. Growing up, he lived with his mom, so I was pretty much raised as an only child. My parents were very, very protective about me leaving the house. Sometimes they would decide I had to lock myself in my room and stay there.
Every once in a while, the police would come to my house. They would talk to my parents, and another cop would take me to his car and let me play with the lights. It was all very confusing for me. After I got older, they told me the truth: my brother had threatened to kill me from the time I was born.
He has a really bad drug problem and a severe mental illness. The locking me in and the police were all trying to protect me from him. It really changes your life when you know a person wants to kill you. I had been in danger from birth.
" "A young relative of mine showed all the signs of being molested. She denied it, and nothing was proven, but everybody always suspected one creepy relative because of the way he acted and hung around her. Now an adult, she recently admitted to me that she was molested, but not by Creepy Guy. It was a seemingly nice, harmless relative everybody likes.
Creepy Guy was just trying to protect her.
" "A girl I went to high school with had a boyfriend. After like two years, she found out that her boyfriend was being paid by a lesbian to go out with the girl so that the lesbian could pretend to be him online and talk to her. I guess it was to make the girl fall in love with her or something.
" "The friend in the group, whom everyone assumed was in the closet, kept talking about his 'Jamaican Girlfriend', but we could never actually get good information about her. He said they met online in a Christian dating website/chatroom and that she was perfect. Never got much out of him other than weird comments like 'She's perfect' or 'Her eyes shine'...so not much to go on.
Three years later, he moved to Jamaica, got engaged, and is now married to an evangelical female pastor of a fairly large congregation. He sent us all the wedding pictures, and every now and then, we get an email or text. I don't think he realizes how completely shocked we all are that it was all actually true.
" "A friend of mine went hunting with his brothers and uncles one day. There was this old farmer that had a lot of land, and it had a ton of deer, so they asked him if it was ok to hunt on his land. He said, 'Yeah, you can hunt on my land, but if you see a fox, shoot it because they're killing my chickens. If I see one, I'll surely shoot it.
' They were out all day and didn't get anything. They headed back to the house and heard about four gunshots. His uncle was like, 'Oh, he must have seen some foxes.
' They arrived at his house, and it turned out he had killed himself and his entire family. " "Right after high school graduation, I met a girl in a pool hall who had the exact same name as my mother. We were both born and raised in the same mid-sized city. I didn't think much of it beyond the obvious 'Oh, that's a completely coincidental happenstance!
'. Fast forward two or three months, and she and I were dating hot and heavy. I met her parents, and her dad swore he'd met me before. A couple of weeks later, I went to visit my girlfriend at work, and was greeted with the following: 'So, I know why my dad thinks you look familiar.
Turns out, he dated your mom in high school, then named his daughter after her.
' :/" "My girlfriend of three years in high school and I decided we should break up right before college started . We wanted to give being single a shot for the first semester, just to see if we'd still want to be together by the end of it.
Then, during winter break, we would meet and have a 'state of the union' address of sorts to check in. Bam. She got a new boyfriend after like three weeks. This was a bit devastating for me at the time, but I marched onward.
I ended up meeting a new girl at a party right before the end of the semester, and we really hit it off.
" "Fast forward to winter break, my ex and I met in person to discuss what had happened and to see if a friendship could be salvaged between us. At the end of it, she asked me if I had met anyone new, and our conversation went something like this:. We went to schools across the country from each other, and of all the people to meet, we wound up dating the partners of another ex-couple.
After debating for a bit if I should tell the girl I was seeing about this news, I went for it. She was not amused, and it created a serious rift between us that led to our demise. Whatever, her loss. I'm awesome.
" "My best friend in high school was a lesbian. She told everyone and had multiple girlfriends, and everyone accepted it. Nbd. I got a boyfriend in my senior year.
After I graduated, I went on a two-week vacation with my family, and I had a suspicion he was cheating. I told my best friend, crying to her. She would tell me, 'Oh, I'm sure he isn't, you're just being overdramatic, you are going to ruin your relationship if you keep accusing him of cheating on you.
' Three months later, I found out he was sleeping with my 'lesbian' best friend. ""My father-in-law used to have a rental property, and the people living there were alright. No major issues, paid on time. One day, the cops got called for a welfare check, and when there was no response, they got him to open the place up.
As they entered, they saw the door had been blocked, the windows were covered, and they smelled gasoline. Three bodies were on the floor, and the father in the kitchen had an infant and a pistol on the table. The guy put up no fight, and my FIL grabbed the kid and ran out.
The father killed the mother and her two daughters, had poured gas around the whole house, and was going to torch the place, then shoot himself and the baby. He was 'really nice, just a little... different.
'" "My parents split when I was little. I came out to my mum and stepdad when I was 13. I phoned my dad up when I was 16 because it was time I had to let him know.
'Dad, I've got something to tell you. ' 'Whatever it is, I love you. ' 'I'm gay. ' 'So am I.' 'What?
'" "When I was 10, we got a call that my Uncle Alan was in the hospital. He'd gotten the shit beat out of him and was on life support. No one knew the details. My Aunt Joan just came home one day from work, and he was lying in a pool of blood on the front porch.
The police went wild investigating. The neighbors never saw anyone go in and out of the house all day. They didn't find any fingerprints at the house that were out of the ordinary. They were hoping Uncle Alan would wake up so they could find out who did it.
He didn't have any enemies or anything like that. Afterward, people stayed with my Aunt Joan, since she was scared the attacker would come back for her. We also had a cop doing rounds here and there. My Uncle Jeffery stayed with her a few nights after the incident, and he had gone out to get some groceries for her.
And guess what? When he came back, there was Aunt Joan, horribly beaten.
"Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan were both in the hospital on life support, with severe head trauma and all kinds of scrapes and bruises. Our family was a wreck. Once again, the cops investigated. Neighbors didn't see anyone out of the ordinary.
Nothing was out of place. I'll never forget this night. The PS2 had just come out, and I'd gotten my hands on one. While I was playing Madden, there was frantic knocking at my door.
It was my cousin Andrew, Uncle Jeffrey's son, crying his eyes out. I remember it being weird because I never saw him show any emotion. He told us the whole story. Uncle Jeffery told him point-blank that he did it.
He assaulted both Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan. Turns out, when Andrew was a little kid, my Uncle Alan molested him a few times. Not only that, but Aunt Joan knew about it. Apparently, Andrew had just revealed it to Uncle Jeffery, and Jeffery snapped.
He stormed over to Uncle Alan's house and confronted him. Uncle Alan broke down and admitted everything, including that Aunt Joan knew about it and 'didn't think it was a big deal.
' So Uncle Jeffery lost his shit and beat Uncle Alan within an inch of his life. Now, keep in mind they're not blood related; Jeffrey's wife is Uncle Alan's sister. A few days later, Uncle Jeffery volunteered to take care of Aunt Joan and then confronted her, too. He said she was acting coldly about it at first, reiterating that it wasn't a big deal, but then got really scared when she realized what this was all about.
Jeffery beat her, too. He was in such a cold state that it didn't faze him, and it allowed him to calmly explain everything to Andrew. Andrew ran away from home and told us everything. My parents immediately called the cops.
Jeffery was taken in and had no problem admitting everything. My aunt and uncle died a day apart in the hospital, so he got two life sentences for two counts of first-degree murder. Uncle Jeffery is now rotting away in prison. Uncle Alan and Aunt Joan are dead.
Thankfully, Andrew is fine. He had a lot of therapy, but he just got married last year and has a kid on the way, and also just opened a bakery.
" "I have one that is straight out of a fucking soap opera, and I am fully ready to accept people calling bullshit on it, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. I was very good friends with a guy in high school named John, who was dating a lovely guy named Janni and was madly in love with him. He carried Janni's picture around in his wallet. Really adorable couple.
Then, one day, Janni started acting really strange and distant, and wouldn't answer John's phone calls. He flat-out broke up with John and broke the poor guy's heart. I brought a spare t-shirt for a few days because his crying would soak it. And then it got even worse.
John called me one afternoon after school and begged me to come over because he needed a friend. When I got there, he told me that Janni had been killed in a car accident.
" "He was absolutely devastated all over again. I went with him to the funeral a few days later for moral support, and he was just broken. He spent a couple of weeks just moping and being depressed. And here comes the plot twist.
He had a twin brother we never knew about, who was apparently a big troublemaker and had been sent off to boarding school. When he'd been home to visit last, they'd swapped places for some reason. Either simply for a laugh or for some other reason I never knew, but they did.
His twin was the one that had been avoiding John and 'broke up' with him, and he had been drinking and doing drugs before he got into the accident that killed him. Janni had been off at boarding school so he wasn't able to make it back for the funeral, and when he did get home he had to work up his nerve for a few days to tell his parents what they had done, which led to them realizing that the child they thought was dead is actually alive and vice versa, which led to somefamily complications, not the least of which being obituary retractions, headstone replacement and lots of screaming, apparently.
Meanwhile, he and John had a whirlwind romance afterward in a giddy fit of reunited bliss, but it fizzled out after a month or so because John was furious after the reality sank in at what Janni had done without telling him and letting him be so miserable all that time, not to mention letting him think that he'dI was the third-party observer in all this, but to this day, it's probably the most unbelievable thing that's ever happened in my life.
""I found my adoption papers in the family strong box when I was 19, despite having been told my whole life that my parents were my biological parents. " "Turns out my parents planted it for me to find. Specifically, I found the certificate stating that my Dad was my adoptive legal guardian.
My mom was my real mum, which is why I had pictures of her with me at the hospital when I was born, which is also why I never suspected a thing. They had me via a sperm donor. I always wondered why I didn't look at ALL like my Dad, but I looked like a carbon copy of my mom.
Apparently, this was a huge relief to her as I grew up because the ENTIRE FAMILY knew except me, and the fear of having a huge, loud, Irish family letting something like that slip was pretty serious. I'm honestly shocked they managed. They were never going to tell me, but they decided that for an accurate medical history, I should know that I don't have my Dad's predisposition to heart disease.
My Dad cried when he told me because he was so worried that I suddenly wouldn't love him anymore...as if my entire childhood was a lie or something. I laughed and told him that, of course, he was my Dad and always would be. It brought us closer.
" "I was a little goth girl in high school and secretly had a mad crush on an upperclassman who was a wrestler and did cross country. My cousin, who was Miss Socialite, also had a crush on him and hit on him constantly. He and I were complete opposites. We rode the same bus, and I was pretty sure I was invisible to him.
One day, his friends started picking on me. He got up from the front of the bus, moved to where his buddies and I were, sat down next to me, threw his arm around me, and they stopped. This pissed off my cousin, as he and I became friends, and he constantly ignored her advances. She later on had me expelled by saying I had a bomb and was going to blow up the school.
" "This ruined every friendship I had, except the one with my/her crush. He and I remained friends even after he moved away, and then closer friends when he moved back. Today, he and I are going on four years together. We bought a house and car, had a daughter, and are working on plans to build our next and probably permanent home.
Ten years later, my cousin is still greener than a Granny Smith apple.
" "My brother had a girlfriend . Laura came to live with us. At first, she and I got along fine. But just as we were beginning to get to know each other, she turned cold on me.
Wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me. I heard her say rude things about me when she didn't know I was listening. Laura and I got into many verbal fights. On a few occasions, she slapped me.
My brother usually had to go into their bedroom and cool her down. Then the two of them moved out. Months later, over dinner, my mother asked me, 'Did you know that Joe told Laura you raped a girl in high school and spent time in juvenile hall?
' It turns out that Joe didn't like that Laura and I got along. She'd been comparing him to me, telling him he ought to act more like I do. So I guess he did the only thing he could do?
" "I was sleeping over at a friend's house. My mom picked me up early to tell me Dad was dead. We went to his rental home that was next door to my principal's house. It was filled with drugs and guns.
" "My dad was a genius. He worked for Lockheed Martin on the Blackbird SR-71 fleet as the head engineer in the '90s. He mostly worked on making that fucker invisible. He then took all that brain and focused it on making a drug operation.
A wing of a plane had fallen on him in 1999; he was on disability, but could see that it wouldn't pay for my college expenses. He was able to make a HIGHLY potent strain of marijuana. The cops had never seen such good bud. There was also a meth operation, but it didn't look like.
It was like a bunch of water heaters with fans taped to the top. I only knew it was meth because I found the crystal. The cops only saw what my dad had in my Grandma's basement . So we disposed of all the drugs in black trash bags.
We dropped them in like 20 apartment complex dumpsters all over town. Now that I understand more about marijuana , I really wish we had kept it to sell because that grow-op wasn't free, and Discover Card and Chase wanted their money. There was probably 50 pounds of marijuana, thinking back. I guess the guns were there because he could trade.
Some of the bullets we found were an inch in diameter and seven inches long. There was also a closet with a few tuxedos and a bunch of printers and TVs. I wore one of those tuxedos to prom. He had all this set up, and Dad died of natural causes at age 47.
Massive fucking heart attack. Like 100 people I didn't know showed up to his funeral. He was a staunch atheist, so we just had a party to remember him, no service. It was actually one of the best parties I've ever been to.
We had an open bar and food for days. Everyone was drunk as fuck and telling stories about what a cool guy he was.
""My grandfather left my grandmother for another man after 35 years of marriage . It messed my grandmother up pretty bad. Fast forward 16 years. My mom died from liver failure.
My kid sister and I were young and broke. My grandmother was old and broke. My grandfather paid for EVERYTHING. Nobody said anything to him.
No thanks, no condolences, nothing. I wanted to go see him and talk to him, thank him, and see how he was doing. I asked my grandmother where he lived, on the grounds that 'he told me he had something important he needed to tell me.
' Pulled out of my ass, obviously, but Grandmother"She had a whirlwind romance with some traveling jackass con artist who left her as soon as he could. My grandfather offered to marry Grandmother and raise my mom as his own. Mom never knew. I was stunned.
My grandmother was always really judgmental of other people and looked down on anyone else in this exact situation. She was sobbing at this point, and I snapped at her to stop because blood never really played all that heavily into what my sister and I considered family, and that she shouldn't consider it, either.
"I met a girl over the summer and really liked her. Told her. Turns out she liked me, too. We both decided to go out sometime , but then she texts me the next day, and we find out that we were FUCKING COUSINS.
" "My parents got married really young; it was essentially a shotgun wedding, as my mom had literally just turned 17 and she was a couple of months pregnant with me. At their wedding reception, their extended families started conversing with one another, and it was revealed that they were actually distant cousins, about fourth or fifth cousins.
Just a couple of years ago, I started doing Ancestry.com, and I was able to find where the split happened, and it actually wasn't as far down the line as I'd originally thought.
" "It's one of my favorite fun facts to share about myself, though, it's always great watching people's facial expressions when I tell them my parents are related. Oh, and they're still together, too.
""I was setting up for a gig for some dudes from out of town, and one guy is flipping out about how the drummer was being flaky , and how he did some ketamine at a music festival and went out of his mind. Nobody had heard from him for a few weeks, and then he hadn't really been right since it all happened. I was like damn, wow, that's wild.
Then I asked when it happened. And where. And the drummer's name... As it turned out, I HAD GIVEN THIS DUDE THE KETAMINE.
" "He was the drummer in our band for a music festival, and we were all partying after the gig. I just gave him some and told him to be careful, and laughed at him when he did a big line. Turns out it wasn't really funny, and the dude sold off all his shit and went a little silly for a while there. I won't do that again.
""I met my ex on WoW . He told me he was depressed and was going to commit himself to a psych hospital and give his WoW account to his friend. I was sad; he was such a cool guy, and I wanted to be there for him. The next day, his friend logged on, and I chatted with him for a few days. I had given my ex my phone number, and he would tell me he'd step out from the hospital, go to a payphone, and call me. Eventually, he was discharged, went back home, and we talked a lot more, then started dating. I ended up moving so I could live with him.
One night, he got a call from his ex, and he disappeared for a few hours. I went outside to call him and saw him sitting in her car with a woman. She turned out to be his wife. He never told me he was married, or separated, or anything.
She had no idea he was living with me.
" "He had left his wife for me...then left me for his wife. Before he kicked me out of our apartment, I suddenly remembered that 'friend' from when he was in the hospital. I guess he was pretending to be the friend. And he never went to the hospital.
He would walk to a payphone to call me so his wife wouldn't find out or see it on his phone.
" "I found out that my Dad was my Mom's uncle. They met at a family reunion and hit it off. Got to talking. Writing to each other and so on.
Eventually fell for each other and took the plunge.
" "I could never figure out why my bio dad hated my stepmom's sister. Finally, my bio mom told me that my stepmom's sister dated — and cheated on — my dad. She introduced my stepmom to my dad as a consolation prize. And I must keep this all top secret from my stepmom.
" "I became my husband's affair partner. I walked out on him suddenly a few months ago. We split, but didn't get divorced; just separated. He moved in with a woman; I moved in with my son and moved on.
Then bam...we got back in touch, and for a month, while he was still living with her, he couldn't move in with me yet. Then he moved in and left her to live with me, his wife. And now for the happily ever after... We have an apartment and are starting again with much better communication and openness about what we need and want.
""I found out that I had terminal cancer two days before moving to my apartment and starting my last year of college. Later found out that I actually have a very treatable cancer. Best plot twist of my life.
" "I recently finished a treatment, and the doctor told me it went well! The original diagnosis was actually given by the pathologist after taking a biopsy sample. They wrote in their report 'undifferentiated,' which was the cause for alarm.
After having a specialist look at my samples before, during, and after surgery, he determined it to be an easier-to-deal-with cancer.
" "Two best friends leave Japan in search of a better life in America. They get here, life starts happening, and they go their separate ways. One to Oregon, the other to Idaho. Fast forward twenty years: one of them is going to a wedding to meet his new son-in-law.
Turns out his new son-in-law was the son of his best friend. My grandparents met in Montana after my grandfather took a random job near where my grandma was staying. Their parents didn't meet until the wedding.
According to the stories, both men shared a drink and laughed about the coincidence.
" "TL;DR: My great-grandfathers were good friends who sailed to America together. Their kids married by sheer coincidence, and no one had any idea until they met at the wedding.
" "Doctors thought I had Mono, then cat scratch fever, and then meningitis. They were wrong, and my mum ended up asking the doctors to check for Leukemia. It ended up being Leukemia AND cat scratch fever.
" "I finished treatment in January 2011. The chemo destroyed my hips, but they were replaced. I'll be going to culinary school in September without pain! There is always something to look forward to.
" "When I was five, we rented a really old three-bedroom house from a nice older lady. We had only been there about a month when my grandma got sick. We had to leave the next day at the crack of dawn and travel three states away to see her. The second night we were at my grandma's, my mom got a phone call from her husband's friend.
Our rental house had just burned to the ground. My mom and her husband were forced to leave the next day, and leave me with my relatives to get everything straightened out. They came back a week later to get my brother and me. My mom was livid and never spoke about what happened, so I never really asked until recently.
" "When I asked her what actually happened, she got quiet and then said that the lady we were renting the house from rented other houses as well. Her husband was a real estate guy and left them to her. When he died, she rented three houses out and kept the other two to sell, though she planned on selling them all eventually because she was getting older.
After the house burned to the ground, my mom managed to get a job in another state, and we moved with the help of the Red Cross. The police officers from the fire case kept in touch to ask questions. One day, she got a phone call, and the police finally explained what happened to our rental house.
Turns out the landlady's son was mad because she wasn't leaving the houses to him, so he was going to each house every other month to burn them down. The only reason he got caught was that he stole his mom's rental keys because he couldn't get through the windows of our house. So he went to jail for arson and attempted murder because one of the houses he burned down had people inside, and they barely got out.
He liked to use the stove to start fires , so it would seem like an accident.
""In 1993, I took a tour of a place that I was thinking of transferring to for work. The supervisor was a nice, older guy. He showed me around and answered all of my questions. He then suggested that I should stay at my current job, because my ultimate plan was to take a totally different job.
He said to maintain continuity in one job on my resume. He was right. And I did get the ultimate job two years later! But just before I started that job, I found my birth mother.
When I met my half-siblings, and also my birth mother’s siblings, it turned out that the nice supervisor who gave me the tour was my birth uncle! We are still in contact to this day!
" "I was talking with my wife. We knew we grew up in the same city of more than three million, and that we both grew up playing violin. The subject came up. Turns out our first violin teachers were sisters.
We asked her photograph-obsessed father to dig up photos from the recitals 25 years ago, since we both recall that the sisters had joint student recitals. There we are, sitting next to each other, ages four and six, 15 years before we 'met' and started dating.
" "My grandmother raised five kids and was proud of four of them. My uncle, the middle child, was very secretive, elusive, and a class A douchebag. He and my aunt would pop up at events every once in a while, but mainly kept to themselves. No one would ever speak of them, especially my grandmother.
Fast forward a few more years, and the relationship was completely severed when Uncle tried to sue his siblings for 'custody' of my grandmother as she slipped into dementia. It was this selfish act that led to his demise: in one of my grandmother's more lucid moments, she blurted out the truth — just to me. Turns out my uncle was a brilliant engineer. He invented a very famous feminine hygiene product used by millions.
My church-going Catholic grandmother was horrified and made him promise never to divulge the true nature of his work to anyone, especially the grandkids, to save her blushes. I promised to never say a word until she was gone.
" "He took her original request as a personal insult and spent the rest of his life trying to make everyone miserable. His most douchy moment came when the millionaire tied up my grandmother's assets for a year before she died and had his siblings investigated for fraud. As the oldest grandchild, I was tasked with providing a joint eulogy from us cousins at her wake.
We decided it was the proper time to let the 300 mourners, including two bishops and a cardinal, know exactly who my uncle was. At the end of my fawning account of her legacy, I informed the church that, on her deathbed, my uncle had agreed to personally finance the new church roof and a memorial chapel that would bear her name. FAFO!
""My 19-year-old brother had been dating this girl who was a year younger than him. She had been to numerous family outings, and he had done the same with her family. She would talk to my whole family and was a nice girl; we asked her about what she was going to school for in the fall, and she went in-depth about how she was going to a major school for neuroscience.
Fast-forward a little bit to a night when they were driving back to her place. He got pulled over for a taillight that was out, and since she was driving, she got asked for her ID and whatnot. Well, she didn't have an ID on her, so she got taken away and asked some questions about who she was.
It turned out she was not the person she said she was, her name wasn't the one she told my brother and my family, she wasn't 18, and she wasn't going away to college.
" "Long story short, it turns out she made up the story about college because she was really moving away to start HIGH SCHOOL! She was 15 and didn't even have a license. She deceived my brother and both of our families because she lied to hers as well about my brother's age. Most fucked-up situation ever!
""I injected heroin for years, but never shared needles. After I had quit, a woman I was with took an STI panel and gave me the worst news: that she had Hep B. My heart was broken for her and me. For two months, I was sure this was the case and that I'd be dealing with this for the foreseeable future.
It then turned out that, while she was a brilliant person, with English as her third language, she didn't realize that 'negative' meant she was in the clear. When she told me, I almost had a breakdown.
" "My wife and I met online about 10 years ago. I've lived in Oregon my entire life, and she had moved up from California a few years before we met. The first time she met my parents, shortly before we started dating, she and my mom were talking since my mom had grown up in Southern California, where my now wife was originally from.
Turns out my wife's mom was friends with two of my mom's older sisters growing up. With pictures to prove it!
" "Shortly before we got married, we were at her aunt's house, and there were quite a few things from a famous Western painter around. I said, 'That's cool! My great-grandparents were friends with him!
' Her aunt said, 'Oh wow, so were great grandparents! ' Me: 'Honey! We need to get a DNA test before we have kids! There are way too many times our families have crossed paths over the generations!
'" Finally, we'll end on a long one that's worth a read. "One night in high school, I was nearly arrested for the attempted murder of my best friend's father. It was towards the end of senior year, and a few friends and I were enjoying the first night of a long weekend, drinking in a park. My best friend for many years, whose name in this story is Wallace, and I ended up being pretty intoxicated.
Suddenly, Wallace checked a voicemail from his mom on his phone, and the color drained entirely from his face as he listened.
'Wallace! John is dead! John killed John! There's blood and a knife and broken glass, and they're both on their way to the hospital!
Where the **** are you?!
' I should mention at this point that Wallace's father and I have the same first name, John. " "So Wallace and I walked the two blocks over to the hospital, by now three full sheets to the wind and wondering what the hell was happening. When we reached the hospital, several police cars had pulled up with lights flashing, having just finished escorting an ambulance into the emergency room. Several officers noticed us and asked us who we were.
As soon as I gave my name, one attempted to arrest me on the spot, while another got a very puzzled look on his face and disappeared. Only at the urging of Wallace, a friend of ours, and that friend's mother did the officer postpone my detainment. A few minutes later, the other officer returned.
I learned that the ambulance, police, hospital, and really everybody involved had been operating with the understanding that I was dead or dying in the hospital, having broken into Wallace's house and attempted to kill his father when he prevented me from killing myself with his own set of kitchen knives. After knifing the other John , I allegedly mutilated myself in a bid to kill myself.
Turns out another guy who I'd gone to high school with, and who I had never thought looked much like me, had been drinking and doing drugs with his friends that evening when he decided to kill himself. After returning home and making every preparation to go to bed, including stripping down to his boxers, he grabbed his car keys and set off, planning to drive off a cliff.
Somewhere near Wallace's house, he drunkenly rolled his car onto the lawn of another friend of mine . Confused but undeterred, he sprinted away from the wreckage and decided to break into a house and secure a means of finishing the job. When he came across Wallace's house, he noticed a sliding glass door opening onto the patio, and dove through the glass to get into the kitchen.
Hearing the noise, Wallace's father came downstairs. Because I had stayed at Wallace's house so many times, and was in the habit of sleeping in my boxers, the elder John saw this guy's brown hair, dress, and general body shape, and asked what the hell 'I' was doing.
Startled, my look-alike whirled and stabbed without thinking, embedding the blade of a knife deep into the upper rib cage of John Sr., maybe four or five inches above his heart. John Sr. managed to restrain David for a period of time while his wife phoned the police, but soon David escaped his grasp and started really doing damage to himself.
The police and ambulance arrived to find both John Sr. and David both bloody and somewhere between unconscious and dead. With all the blood, David was still mistaken for me. Both John Sr. and David survived the night, so there is some good in the world. Wallace's family didn't press charges under the condition that David get help, which he did.
I hope he's doing much better now than he was before. I'd had classes with him, and he never seemed troubled, but they say that's how these things always go. Wallace's family and I joke about the story now, and it's brought us closer together. "
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