Real-Life Plot Twists That Changed The Way We Looked At People
A lot of the movies that leave the biggest impacts on us do so through stunning and shocking plot twists, especially close to the end. M. Night Shyamalan was certainly famous for them but arguably overused them to the point where it's hard not for sudden plot twists to seem silly or unrealistic at times.
Well, it's worth knowing that while they're a lot rarer than they are in the movies, plot twists can happen in real life, too. And people are more than happy to share their stories about the plot twists that shook up their lives.
A Sad Situation All Around
For a while, one man thought that his wife had a falling out with his friends over a failed business venture they went through together. So when she refused to see them, he figured she hadn't gotten over that. Since his friends clearly did and even asked why they hadn't seen her lately, he became frustrated with what he thought was a lack of effort to move past it. However, when he confronted her, she revealed that it wasn't what he thought.
In truth, the real issue was the fact that when this man wasn't around, his friends would badmouth seemingly everything about him, from his personality to his sense of humor. They apparently thought she would join in but they were wrong. Although the wife was non-confrontational enough to keep quiet, she decided that she wanted nothing further to do with them. Since she knew how upset he would be to hear the way they spoke about it, she kept her feelings from him until there was no other choice.
Grandma Had A Surprising Past
We can sometimes find that our grandparents weren't always so wholesome and innocent, and that was definitely true in the case of one family. Growing up, one member of it was told that their great-grandmother had run a hotel in Oklahoma during the late 19th Century, which was situated near a railroad depot and an Army base.
As it turned out, her clientele was interested in far more than simple lodging, as the great-grandchild eventually learned that it was a "house of ill repute." As they noted, their great-grandmother may have been a madame but she was apparently pretty successful at it because she left their grandma a sizable inheritance.
Nobody Wants To Live In A Heist Movie
Although it can certainly be exciting to see the methodical planning and the web of intrigue that gets hatched in a good heist movie, it's a lot harder to appreciate a master criminal's genius when you're their victim. And that was what one wealthy family learned when their cleaning staff was compromised.
As they told it, these women had gotten involved with a The Bling Ring-like smuggling ring and set their employers up for a breaking and entering job that left the house cleaned out of all its valuables. It's hard not to wonder how much the thieves were offering to make that betrayal seem worth it.
A Tale From A Divorce Lawyer
Although the cases divorce lawyers help sort out are often sadder than they are peculiar, one said that every now and then, something about one will make them ask, "wait, what?" As they mentioned, they tend to pop up in the worst cases they see and this one definitely fits the bill.
As they explained, one couple had separated for about a decade but only officially filed for divorce in recent years. It's unclear which party the lawyer represented but they said it was clear that the former wife was likely going to be entitled to the home she shared with her ex-husband. Incensed by this, this man apparently decided to burn the house down and send her the ownership papers to add insult to injury. As you can imagine, this strategy wasn't so brilliant and resulted in criminal charges for arson.
Her Interruption Honestly Sounds Like It's Out Of A Movie
During weddings, it's always part of the ceremony for the officiant to say something to the effect of, "If anybody today knows why this couple should not be married, let them speak now or forever hold their peace." Well, whether this person had gotten to that part yet or not, one woman had a great reason to object when she suddenly burst into the chapel.
As a friend of the couple's relayed, she then proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs, saying, "I'm the real wife, stop the wedding!" Someone got a hard lesson about what happens when you try to have more than one wife, especially when one doesn't know about the other.
The Injury Is Horrifying But The Details Make It Worse
It's pretty hard to shock an ER nurse after a while, but one shared a story that even a 20-year veteran in the field would be stunned by. After a man experienced a severe car accident, the medical team need a brain scan and discovered a three-inch nail embedded in there.
Naturally, they were concerned that this was the result of the accident but the puzzling truth was that the man had already had the nail in his brain with no idea how it happened. The only culprit he could recall was that he was once hit with a nail gun. Not only did that nailer somehow lodge a nail in his brain without him realizing but he had apparently been that way for a staggering four years!
He Tried To Warn Them
At first, a guest at their cousin's wedding reported that everything had been going well and exactly what the couple had planned. However, that quickly changed during the vows, when the groom's son from a previous marriage stood and interrupted everything. His reason? He accused the bride of cheating on his father with their narcotics dealer, which meant he couldn't stand idly by and let his father marry her.
It was unclear whether the couple were both this dealer's customers or whether the bride and the son were, but regardless, the immediate result was disbelief. Another cousin told this son to either sit down or leave, to which he chose the second option and the wedding continued as normal. Sure enough, however, after five years and the disputed parentage of another child, it was clear that the son had been right all along and the couple divorced.
Bizarre Behavior With A Revealing Explanation
Growing up, one young woman had always heard her grandfather refer to her as his grandson. Since she was confidently a girl and comfortably dressed in a feminine fashion, this was understandably confusing for her. But since her parents told her to ignore it, that's what she did until she learned the truth while she was in middle school.
As she discovered, her grandfather had sold her father and uncle's secret sister Barbara to someone and that was purely because he didn't want a girl in the family. Fortunately, her father was able to gain access to some records and eventually reunite with Barbara, who is now the young woman's favorite aunt. As she put it, "No one liked grandpa."
A Bad Idea Explored In An Even Worse Way
Since the narrator of this story has a friend whose father is an orthopedic surgeon, they were privy to a story that would horrify any medical professional regardless of how they feel about the hot-button topic at hand. In other words, a young couple once came into his office and informed him that they had attempted to terminate a pregnancy on their own.
This is a fundamentally dangerous idea due to the fatal risk of infection or blood loss when such a procedure isn't administered by a medical professional, but it's worse than it sounds. Apparently, their method involved running over the young woman's pelvis with a car. It was somehow successful, but only by the most freakish of luck. It's a method that should never be repeated by anyone.
A Harrowing Tale That Expresses How Much Hotel Employees See
While most hotel guests are blissfully unaware of what else could be going on where they're staying, hotel employees don't quite have that luxury and many have seen more sordid and grisly situations than they ever wanted to. However, one hotel manager's story is chilling even by those standards.
As the manager relayed, a nude lady of the night race to the front desk, screaming in panic to call 911. As she explained, she had woken in the room she and her client had booked, but she was strapped to the bed and the room was covered in plastic, just like in the pictured scene from Dexter. Fortunately, the client was showering when she had awoken, allowing her to escape. Unfortunately, he was adept at ensuring the hotel's security cameras didn't get a view of any identifying features and left the hotel before the police arrived. As far as the manager knew, he was never caught.
Nobody Would Have Suspected A Thing
When a loving family has a strong, healthy marriage at its foundation, it's easy to assume that the story of how the couple met will be heartwarmingly romantic and wholesome. However, life isn't always so simple and a lot can happen in the years before that family starts.
As one person shared, their aunt and uncle are wonderful, responsible parents to their kids, but nobody would have expected that for them when they met. That was because he was using various illegal substances heavily and she was a lady of the night. However, they turned their lives around so dramatically over the years that neither seem affected by their difficult pasts now.
The Most Despicable Of Crocodile Tears
It's unclear what connection the narrator had to the bereaved family (even if they're a funeral director and it's purely professional) but they shared a story where the mother of the deceased arrived extremely intoxicated. Throughout the proceedings, she wailed and screamed, professing her brokenhearted love for her daughter. While it would normally be harsh to judge her for any of this, the truth makes it clear that this was a monstrous performance.
That's because it was later revealed that she was convicted of having her daughter murdered. As the narrator put it, "Her performance didn't fool anybody, and I hope she rots behind bars for the rest of her life."
A Nightmare That Changed His Life
When a young man turned 18, his father suddenly wrote him out of the will shortly before passing away. Not long after, his father's wife kicked him out of their home despite him not having any money to his name. This bewildered him, as he and his father had always gotten along and the wife's enthusiasm to see him go sounded suspicious. However, he wouldn't learn just how suspicious until he returned that Christmas Eve to grab some photos.
Since he knew where she kept her spare key, he quietly let himself in and avoided detection. While on his way to his old room, she spotted his stepmother's phone right as she got a text message that read, "I'm so happy we got away with it and we can finally be together. He didn’t deserve it anyway." Not only was it clear to him that she engineered his strife but that convinced him she was also responsible for his father's death. At last report, he was a law student with the goal of going into estate law to prevent what happened to him from happening to others.
They Couldn't Do Worse Than The Manager
When our narrator showed up for a job interview, they found that the hiring manager who arranged it wasn't present. The management told this person he was out sick but they were able to interview with another employee. While nothing about that part was out of the ordinary, frantic discussion erupted outside of the room about halfway through it.
As the narrator relayed, those involved were talking softly but they involved the word "emergency" and the hiring manager's name. That crisis was also likely what led the interview to finish early. However, when the candidate got home and searched the internet they learned that the manager wasn't sick, at least not in the physical sense. As it turned out, he had surrendered to police after firing a weapon at the mother of his child and grazing the baby. The only silver linings to the situation were that the baby was not seriously injured and the narrator got the job.
Surely, There Was A Better Time For This
During a wedding, the father of the groom apparently decided to propose a toast when the couple was still at the altar. That wouldn't be a time when anyone had drinks to toast with and this obviously a big disruption, but those details didn't exactly stand out once he shared what he had to say.
In his words, "I'm glad I made it out here today. I just want you guys to know that I have cancer and I'm going to pass very soon. Congrats to my son and his beautiful bride. Enjoy your time." Naturally, this made everyone speechless and completely changed the atmosphere of the wedding. In the time since, it also became clear that the wedding turned dour for nothing, as the father was still alive when this story was told 17 years later.
What Can We Call This But A Miracle?
While a doctor was on call in a hospital one night, he was monitoring a patient with a severe cardiac condition, only to be alerted by this patient arresting in the middle of the night. Although resuscitation was attempted, the doctor saw no choice but to pronounce the patient dead after he was without vital signs for an hour. So when he received a page from a patient, he figured it had to be anyone but that man.
And yet, that's precisely who was sitting upright and fully lucid in bed when he had arrived. The patient took the fact that he was pronounced dead earlier that night in stride, but the doctor was understandably baffled. The only theory he has for how this could have happened involves the possibility was the gradual shunting of the pulmonary artery caused by the patient's condition. The theory is that over the course of months (if not years), the patient's body had adapted so much to low oxygen environments that he was able to survive going without some of his body's most fundamental functions for an hour.
The Bride Was No Dummy And No Coward Either
Although she bided her time throughout her wedding and let everyone else think everything was normal, one bride saw her chance when the pastor asked if there were any objections. To everyone's surprise, she said, "Yes, I'd like to say something."
With that, she turned to her guests and said, "I'd like to thank my maid of honor for sleeping with my fiancé last night." Although she didn't have a microphone to drop, she decided the bouquet would suffice for that purpose and stormed out of the ceremony.
A Recipe For The Messiest Family Reunions
While one person mentioned having nine siblings, it turned out that two of them were a surprise revelation after their father passed away. Moreover, while their brother was known to them all their life and shares their exact parentage, they didn't know that their sister from fathered during a previous relationship until their mother's passing. Five of the other half-siblings apparently don't have origins shrouded in mystery.
However, what they discovered about their sister doesn't even scratch the surface of surprise revelations when compared to their other siblings. That's because two of this person's alleged cousins were actually their brother and sister, as their father had cheated on their mother with her sister to have them. Although these siblings get along fine, most of them aren't really close.
That Sounded Like An Uncomfortable Visit
As one young woman shared, a girl from her school invited her and her friend to her pool over the summer. It's worth noting that every girl in this story was about 13 years old at the time. That's a big factor for the discomfort the friend felt while they were changing, which she expressed with a wholesome "What the heck?"
As our narrator discovered, she was commenting on a long line of used sanitary pads on the girl who extended the invitation's desk. And they didn't feel any more comfortable when the friend bluntly asked about them, as the girl said, "They're for my dad so he can check that I'm not pregnant." Again, she's 13 years old.
A New Nightmare Unlocked
As one aircraft technician described, a coworker was once working on an ejector seat that didn't have its drogue piece (which deploys the parachute) disarmed properly. Unfortunately, he found this out while going through timer checks that left his head hovering above a large piece of steel that gets launched out of this mechanism before the parachute.
The nightmarish scene that followed saw this steel piece punch through his chin and out through the top of his head, closely followed by about 20 feet of cord and the unopened parachute. While it sounds like it would be fatal for the chute to then get stuck in his head, it actually did so tightly enough to stop the bleeding. Miraculously, this seemed to help enough that after he was freed and rushed to the hospital for surgery, he was back to work two weeks later.
Someone Learned A lot About Their Neighbors That Day
When our narrator was about nine years old, their parents had them and their siblings stay with a family from their church once. They commented on how nice this house was but also mentioned that the family only had one rule. The kids could play wherever they wanted except for the basement.
However, this little one wasn't much for rules, so they snuck off to a peek at the basement the first chance they got. Although they were disappointed to see that there wasn't some forbidden delight down there, they would later figure out why the family didn't want them to see rows and rows of plants growing under lights. Once they were old enough to know what a grow op is, it wasn't such a mystery how the family afforded such a nice house.
That Home Inspector Earned Their Fee That Day
As one home inspector explained, they've had many opportunities to see some strange things, since they look through thousands of homes each year. However, one incident was more chilling both for them and for one house's new owners than any other.
Frighteningly, the inspector found a series of hidden cameras in the attic, all of which peered into the home's bedrooms and bathrooms. Worse yet, that attic also featured a fully furnished secret room. One can only hope the new owners changed the locks after that discovery.
A Warrior Even Before Her Service
As one person explained, their great-grandmother entered the armed forces (of an unspecified country) after committing a crime. When she confessed that crime to a judge, she was ordered to stay in the armed forces for longer than intended, which drew her into an (again, unspecified) conflict.
However, while it was unclear what she had done until after her death much later, it's unlikely she had many regrets even considering what she went through afterwards. That's because it turned out that her crime was severely battering a man in her neighborhood who had been preying on children. Apparently, he was trying to take two young boys away with him when she intervened.
The Betrayal Of A Budding Family
While one woman was pregnant with her eldest child, the associated pain came through particularly strongly one dad, leading her to leave work early. When she arrived, she saw that two purses she didn't recognize were prominently displayed in her house. She went to her room with the intention of getting an explanation from her boyfriend, but sadly got one before he even knew she was there.
That's because she heard noises coming from the bed room and when she peeked in, she spotted him engaging in a threesome. To further underscore the betrayal, the doctor had recommended bed rest for this stage of her pregnancy, but she was the only one working and going to school while her boyfriend lazed around all day. However, what seems a little scary to her now is how calm she remained when she sat waiting for them and told both her boyfriend and his new companions that they had to get out of her apartment.
A Disturbing Revelation About An Elderly Neighbor
As one person who lived in Germany described, a neighbor had long developed a reputation for being strange that led others to keep their distance. When he passed away in his 70s, a young couple was able to buy his house as-is, since his family had no interest in going through his possessions.
This turned out to be a wise decision on the family's part, as the couple was stunned to find surveillance cameras watching the whole street, which is illegal in Germany. Worse yet, they found a hidden room full of whatever documents he cobbled from his surveillance recordings and a deeply concerning amount of propaganda for the Reichsbürger movement. Basically, it's a far-right extremist group with plans to overthrow the government and restore the monarchy. To express how serious this man's involvement with them was, their methods draw comparison to neo-Nazis.
This Managed To Be A New Low For Ruined Weddings
One bridesmaid shared an incredibly uncomfortable story from the wedding she assisted, which started with her and the others being unable to locate the groom at the reception. Finding him was indeed urgent because it was time for the wedded couple's first dance.
When the bridesmaids split up to find him, however, our narrator ended up coming across him. Unfortunately, he was not only cheating on his bride with someone else, but that someone was his second cousin. He claimed this was due to intoxication and mistaking her for the bride, but nobody bought that explanation because his distant relative was wearing a bright red dress. Needless to say, that marriage didn't last very long.
True Love Ruined In A Truly Disgusting Way
As one man told it, his friend got married about 15 years ago. Leading up to the wedding, his bride was everything he could have wanted in a partner and she wasn't shy about making it clear that was as true in terms of physical intimacy as it was for her kindness. Unfortunately, that fact would eventually disturb both of them in a way they never could have imagined.
When the wedding's officiant asked if anyone had any objections, the groom's father stepped forward, admitting that he had cheated on his wife with the bride's mother many years ago. As a DNA test later confirmed, the groom was indeed about to marry his half-sister. Understandably, he's spent a lot of time in therapy since then.
A Scary Situation That Only Gets Worse With The Details
As one person explained, their mother is an in-home physical therapist and the small city she lived in had some rough areas she periodically had to visit. One of her clients was a man who severely mistrusted the neighbors in his complex and the woman quick learned how much when she sat down on his couch.
To her horror, she discovered that she had almost sat on a concealed weapon, which was specifically a stick with a large blade taped to the end of it. As she would later discover, this was only one of several makeshift spears and knives the man had. However, what made her stop working with him entirely was the syringe-based weapon among his arsenal. He was HIV positive.
A Joyous Wedding Dashed By Sudden Tragedy
For the first day of the planned three-day wedding, everything went perfectly. Nobody got so intoxicated that they made fools of themselves, the food was excellent, the servers were endlessly charming, and the music was perfect for the atmosphere. At first, the next day didn't seem so disastrous either. That was the day of the ceremony, and the only hiccup appeared to be that the groom was 45 minutes late due to a traffic jam caused by an accident. He was otherwise ready, so this wasn't ruining anything.
Indeed, the bride felt the same way and happily continued the ceremony, which proceeded through the vows and kiss without a hitch. Tragically, everything would fall apart immediately after, as the groom suddenly collapsed once they started walking back down the aisle. Apparently, he had experienced an extremely severe aneurysm that killed him instantly. Worse yet, the bride would later discover that the accident that delayed her deceased husband had claimed the lives of her grandparents.
That Must Have Been An Awkward Trip Home
A young man went on vacation with his father during a winter break from college. As it turned out, it didn't take him long before very attractive blonde woman caught his eye in the hotel lobby. Eventually, he proved charming enough that she invited him to her room. While that was a great development in the young man's trip, things quickly went wrong when the father-son duo heard a knock on their room's door.
When the father answered it, he was immediately punched in the face by another man who turned out to be the blonde woman's husband. Guilty and mortified that his actions led to harm coming to his father, he sincerely apologized, only to be met with confusion as to why this was his fault. Once he revealed what he had done with the woman, a long, uncomfortable silence before his dad confirmed which room she was in. The son went pale, realizing that the husband knew exactly who he was punching and that both he and his father had slept with this woman.
It Doesn't Get More Awkward Than This
Although there's usually a sudden, dramatic betrayal behind a person's decision to object to a wedding, this didn't appear to be the case when one groom suddenly objected to his own ceremony. As he tearfully explained, he had fallen out of love with the bride long ago but didn't have the courage to break up with her. However, after the couple stepped away for about ten minutes, they returned and finished the wedding like nothing had happened.
Apparently, she revealed that she was pregnant, and he decided to go through with it. They've remained married with three kids since, but the narrator knows for a fact that the wife is having an affair and suspects the husband may be as well. As they put it, "Neither of them are happy, but she has a comfortable life, and he doesn't have the spine to leave."
A Life-Saving Intuition
As one mother once expressed, she had taken her two infant children to a daycare run out of a very warm and loving woman's house. However, she had only been leaving her children there for about nine days when she encountered the woman's teenage son. Since there was something overwhelmingly creepy about him, the mother felt compelled to seek daycare elsewhere.
Ten years later, the mother had the most chilling confirmation that she had made the right decision. As it turned out, this teen had gone on to murder two people before enacting a similar plan against his own mother.
A Disappointing Revelation That Explained So Much
One person told a story of their sweet friend, who had fallen deeply in love with a truck driver and was ecstatic to finally be marrying him after his job had put such frequent distance between them. However, that bliss was soon dashed during the fateful part of the wedding ceremony that leaves space for objections.
Suddenly, a woman nobody recognized stood up and objected to the marriage. As it turned out, the groom wasn't a truck driver at all. Instead, he was a married man with two children living in Florida who pretended to have that job to deflect any suspicions the bride would have had.
A Dark And Completely Avoidable Family History
When our narrator's mother was young, she lived with her mother and stepfather, who had apparently crossed some unspeakable lines with her when she was a child. While she pined for her biological father in these moments, she believed there was no way he could intervene because he had died when she was 11. However, she discovered 45 years later, during her daughter's genealogical curiosity, that this had been a lie all along.
While the mother believed her father had passed away in 1961, he had really done so in 2005. Judging by the fact that he named one of his five additional daughters after his long-lost one, it was abundantly clear that they could have had a relationship all along if she hadn't moved and hidden herself from this man while lying to her daughter. This led the family to confront her with the lies she had kept going for 50 years. As the narrator said, "She then had the nerve to act offended. My dad told her to shut up."
A Run Of Incredible Luck
As a paramedic once shared, they were responding to a report of an accident involving a man being ejected from a Ford Mustang from the late 1980s. When the paramedic arrived, the man told them that the car had rolled twice before he was thrown out of the driver's side window. He said he landed on his head and had a seven-inch wound to his scalp to back that claim up. Meanwhile, the car had been completely crushed and overturned in the accident.
Amazingly, this man not only remained conscious throughout the entire ordeal but also attempted to refuse treatment or transport to the hospital. Although the paramedic had to admit the man seemed stable, they didn't feel they could let him do that in good conscience. The man just texted his friend and called his girlfriend throughout the trip, and when the paramedic told him he was insanely lucky to be alive, he simply said, "Yeah, I got a hard nugget."
Someone Found Out More Than They Wanted To
As one person told it, their neighbor asked them to feed his cat while he was out of town. They described him as a nice, single man in his mid 30s who ran his own landscaping company and sometimes cut their grass as an unspoken courtesy. Naturally, they felt his request was the least they could do.
However, when they actually did this, they made a discovery about the inside of his house. While it's not so unusual for home decor to feature Bible verses, it's a different matter entirely when that decor consists of an unusual number of full-length mirrors with those verses densely scrawled on every inch of them in red marker. As they said, "I never really looked at him the same after that."
A Sad And Eerie Revelation
As one person told it, their sister had spent some time with their pregnant aunt when she was about three years old. She wanted this aunt to pick her up, only for her mom to tell her, "She can't pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy." To her mother's mortified horror, the child's response was to exclaim, "That baby is gone!"
However, neither the aunt nor the child's grandmother took this personally, assuring her mom that she was just a toddler who didn't know what she was saying. However, it turned out she was frighteningly correct because when the aunt went to her doctor the following day, she was told her baby's heart had stopped beating.
A Bizarrely Elaborate Squatting Situation
As our narrator told it, they were in dire financial straits about two-and-a-half years ago. As they saw it, the only thing they could do to support their struggling business was to sell their house. However, what the new owners didn't know is that this didn't mean this person was actually going to leave the property.
By that, this person explained that they had neglected to mention building an 800-square foot bunker on the property with a hidden entrance five years prior to the sale. That's precisely where they live now and they secretly enter and exit it either very early in the morning or late at night. Nowadays, it's apparently not even out of financial necessity that they still live there.
A Paranoia-Inducing Relationship
One man described being with a girlfriend for just under two years. During their relationship, she said she lived with her mother, who had terminal cancer. As the woman explained to him, that meant he couldn't ever meet her (and implicitly her family) because the mother couldn't stand to bring anyone else into her life while knowing she would soon leave them. As such, the girlfriend spent all her time at his home.
However, he received a message from a man one night that changed everything. The man demanded to know how he knew the girlfriend and when he told his story, the man revealed that the mother was in perfect health all along. As it turned out, she was actually engaged to the other man and was due to marry him in two weeks. It seems safe to say that she lost two relationships that night.
The Scariest Things Can't Be Explained
So many 911 dispatchers can recall the most eerie call they've ever received and for one, it concerned multiple calls from a landline that he received one night. The strange thing about these calls is that each of them consisted of nothing but static. Nonetheless, after getting three of them, he sent a squad out to the address he obtained through caller ID.
While it would initially seem to authorities that their response was too late when they arrived at the address to find a body, they soon discovered that they were far later than they thought. That body had been on the property for at least five months. Stranger still, the property it was discovered at hadn't had any electricity or any other utilities active at the time of their arrival. Those calls shouldn't have been possible.
The Saddest Regret There Is
As one person described, they noticed their stepfather appearing to get lazier and lazier over time. This specifically took the form of him falling asleep in the middle of the day and a tendency to sneak off for naps. Since our narrator and their mother were helping him renovate a house, neither of them was at all amused by this increasing behavior.
However, that suddenly stopped being their main concern when they learned that he was diagnosed with bladder and kidney cancer. Saddest of all, the cancer had already spread too far to be treatable. It wasn't until his death that they realized why he had been so tired so often. In the narrator's words, "I didn't always get along with him, and I regret a lot of things I said to him."
A Horrific Lifelong Manipulation
When our narrator's grandfather passed away, their great aunt told them he had been responsible for the death of their baby sister. As she told it, the grandpa had tried to pick the baby up when he was still too mall, resulting in her falling and fatally hitting her head. It was something she apparently wasn't shy about holding against him in life, too.
However, when the family went through their family's documents, they discovered that this sister had actually perished from whooping cough. Thus, the great aunt did something worse than holding a tragic childhood mistake against the grandfather for his whole life. She had invented it entirely for reasons nobody else can even begin to understand.
An Unconventional But Life-Saving Instinct
One nurse told a grisly story of a man living with throat cancer, who had the particularly harrowing misfortune of his tumor eroding his carotid artery to the point of leaving a hole in his neck (otherwise known as a fistula). Unfortunately, something about his condition once worsened while he was dozing off in his sunroof and his carotid artery was perforated.
As his wife discovered to her horror, he was covered with blood and had left bloody handprints on the glass door that he couldn't open when he tried to get help. As she quickly noticed, the blood was coming from his fistula. So despite being significantly smaller than her husband, the woman pulled the curtains from the window, pounced on his neck, and held as much pressure as she could on it after pushing her Life Alert button. This kept him from bleeding out and not only saved his life, but also ensured that there were minimal neurological effects from this episode once he could be fully treated.
He Wasn't Being Dramatic At All
As a wedding photographer shared in their story, they were puzzled and frustrated by how uncooperative the groom seemed when the big day arrived. Namely, he didn't want to be in any of the photos, claiming to be feeling ill. While the photographer didn't feel like this should have been his priority on such an important day, he was insistent enough for them to drop it. However, everyone around the groom because increasingly annoyed with how consistently he kept refusing photos, including after the ceremony.
Finally, the last straw came during the father of the bride's speech, when the groom left the reception early, once again claiming to feel sick. This led the bride to fly into such a rage that she ripped the bride and groom figures off the cake before stomping all over them and yelling that she shouldn't have married him. Her guests agreed, saying that he was being so dramatic and distasteful throughout the entire ceremony. However, the photographer learned that night that it was nowhere near that simple. Shortly after leaving the reception hall, the groom had passed away.
The Suspicions Were More Correct Than He Thought
One private investigator, while keeping the appropriate professional vagueness, told a story that saw him follow a woman whose husband suspected of cheating on him. Although the investigator only followed the woman for a weekend, it turned out that this was more than enough time to gather the evidence their client wanted.
Apparently, the woman was offering some clandestine escort services on Craigslist and the former website Backpage. After the investigator caught 13 different men entering and exiting the motel room she booked for the weekend and found her ads, there was no denying what she was doing.
An Overwhelmingly Heartbreaking Situation
One woman had the truly unfortunate luck of having tragedy upon tragedy pile onto her life and it all had to do with her fiancé. She was 21 and he was 23, which led both of them to believe they had a whole life together ahead of them. However, their dreams were dashed when the fiancé passed suddenly from a heart attack caused by an underlying, undiagnosed condition.
However, the heartbroken woman's misery didn't end there. As she discovered, he had been cheating on her for the entirety of their three-year relationship. Some of the women were long-term and knew about her, while others were intermittent one-night stands. Torn between mourning the man she loved and discovering who he truly was, she had a mental breakdown. Yet, that wasn't where her story ended, as she found true and lasting love with one of his friends in the wake of this tragedy and betrayal.
A Life Spent Engaging In Sordid Manipulation
As our narrator tells it, their friend has reason to suspect that his mother killed his father. Indeed, the fact that she took out a $200,000 life insurance policy six months before his passing and the fact that he died from not taking his medication were particularly suspicious. The friend was away when it happened, but maintained his father was always diligent about his medication.
When she died, however, the extent of her malfeasance was apparently even worse than he thought. Not only did she apparently take out a similar policy on her son, but was found to have forged his father's signature to keep the $100,000 the father had intended on leaving the son from ever getting to him. He also kept him from inheriting anything from his grandmother using similar means and even faked multiple illnesses to sell off prescription pills, keeping records of her inventory and revenue from this all the while.
A Truly Terrifying Encounter With A Misogynist
In a story shared by a bar employee, she turned down a customer who attempted to get her phone number. At first, there didn't seem to be anything to be worried about, as he appeared to take the rejection in stride. Yet, when she started to leave out the back door at the end of her shift, she saw the sensor light was on back there, which meant someone was standing by the door.
Naturally, this made her feel extremely unsafe, so she went around to the front to ask one of the bouncers to walk her to her car. After he agreed, they rounded the building and caught the man from earlier standing by the back door with his belt held like a makeshift garrote. Upon being spotted, he screamed that the woman was a "hideous prude" and that she should "end herself" before running off. Fortunately, she never saw him again.
The Attention Wasn't As Positive As It Seemed
For most of the narrator's life, there was something that made their family uneasy about their grandmother. She shunned all the women in her family and treated them badly, but favored her sons and grandsons to the point that they seemed like gold to her. When she was dying, one uncle in particular was devastated. He was described as her favorite son and reciprocated in the way he stayed by her side and organized her funeral.
Once she did pass away, however, it was revealed that she had been abusing her sons and possibly her grandsons as well. Indeed, her "favorite son" also showed the disturbing reason why their bond was so close, as he would go to jail for doing the same to his two sons and daughter. It tore his family apart.
The Closet Call For A Subtle Reason
As an ER nurse shared, she once knew a patient who came in with some minor dizziness, some minor nausea, and a swollen stomach. Since she seemed lucid and able to talk OK, nothing seemed outwardly untoward, and the nurse would have been reasonable to deprioritize her and leave her to wait for about two hours. However, the nurse couldn't ignore that she was turning a grim gray shade and breathing rapidly. Thus, they got the attention of the most senior physician on site and told him to see her urgently.
This decision saved the woman's life. Within five minutes, she was barely responsive. Within ten minutes, her blood pressure dropped to an alarming level. Within 20 minutes, the nurse was giving her a blood transfusion, and within an hour, she was barely alive and on an operating table. Apparently, the woman experienced an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which meant that a massive blood vessel in her abdomen had ruptured and caused severe internal bleeding in minutes.
Mason Zimmer
