Let's face it we all lie. But what happens when you've got a secret that's too big to contain? These people share stories about the biggest lie they've ever seen unravel.
1/13. My friend was with her boyfriend when his dad discovered he had cancer. He was distraught and went home often. It put a pretty big strain on their relationship. Finally, his father succumbed and passed away. He broke up with her shortly after. Five days later she got a call FROM HIS DEAD FATHER asking if everything was okay between the two of them. The father never even had cancer. He made the whole thing up.
2/13. I used to work with this girl at a hotel. She was front desk, I worked in banquets. Anyway, turns out she had a crush on me. We bumped into each other at a bar, and had a drink together. About a month later I start getting questioned from fellow employees and friends as to whether or not her and I were dating. We were not. I spoke to her about it, she denied it... and I kind of figured things got straightened out.
Fast forward to six months later... she no longer works at the hotel.
I get a text from my good friend, asking why I hadn't told her about my engagement. Naturally I was a little confused... so I ask a few more questions. Turns out this girl has been telling her friends that this 'relationship' was still going on. The whole time. I proposed, it was beautiful, I gave her earrings (I'm assuming she bought herself the earrings) blah blah blah.
The only way I ever found out about this, was as this girl was telling my good friend about her fiance, and showing off her earrings at work.
|Girl: Don't you love the earrings my fiance gave me!! |Friend: They're gorgeous, whats his name?
|Girl: Carbsv2!
|Friend: Oh, thats nice, I have to make a text.
A week later one of her friends that I went to college with stopped me in the hall to ask if it was true... that I was not, nor had ever, dated her.
3/13. A girl I knew in high school had a reputation for being a bit needy. One night she called a good friend of mine up sobbing because one of her best friends from college, someone my friend had never met, committed suicide. My friend went to comfort her, but she was inconsolable the whole night, couldnt be left alone. My friend stuck with her for almost a whole week, calling to check in, offering to hang out, whatever she needed.
Two or three years later, my friend sees the dearly departed has an active Facebook page. Awfully sociable behavior for a dead guy. My friend was not amused.
Hey Derpina, she posts on the fibbers wall. How is it that Dead Guy is posting on Facebook when hes supposed to be dead?
The post is deleted an hour later, no explanation.
Hey Derpina, she posts again. Im not going to stop posting until you tell me how a guy who supposedly died two years ago, a guy whose loss devastated you so much that it required my immediate presence, is able to reach out from beyond and post status updates on Facebook.
Again the post is deleted, this time with a private message: Please dont say anything else, I promise I can explain.
My friend tells her not to even bother. Shed been feeding my friend and a lot of others little white lies for a long time, but making up a story about another persons death solely for the purpose of attention was going too far. Shes never spoken to her since.
More!
4/13. My sister is very absolute in her hatred of cigarettes, so when she started dating former smoker, she made it very clear that if he started smoking again he'd have to choose between her and the cigarettes.
Well, three of four years later, after they were living together and engaged, she discovered some cigarettes in his car. She was pretty pissed, figuring he'd smoked a few while out at the bars with his friends. They got into a big fight about it and then he somehow lets it slip that he'd been smoking without her knowledge for years.
Whenever an errand needed to be run, he'd go... just so he could smoke. He'd carry mouth wash and a spare shirt so she wouldn't notice the smell. She seriously thought he was just the cleanest, most helpful guy ever.
5/13. My friend made his parents believe he was colorblind up until he was 13. He used it as an excuse for his bad grades, and used it to try and get sympathy. I was with him and his family when we were driving to a mall and he said: "woah look and that sh*t-colored car!" His whole life pretty much went downhill after that, his parents lost all respect for him. They stopped buying him all this nice things, and they were a wealthy family too. It bit him in the a** pretty good.
6/13. My coworker had been attending graduate school and my work threw him a party shortly after his graduation. He shows up to the party with his diploma - which of course is a huge red flag to everyone there (my company was full of alumni that attended the same school, and knew that you wouldn't receive a diploma for at least several weeks/months after graduation).
One of the HR ladies called up admissions to the school to verify that he was previously registered there. He was not, and was never a student. He was confronted about this and pretty much had a melt down, telling her he had issues "at home" and was currently trying to deal with them through the employee assistance program at the company. So the HR lady calls up the EAP to verify he was a client - at that very minute the guy runs into the EAP office and has another melt down. He was immediately escorted off the premises, never to return.
To put this in perspective, his employer had adjusted his work schedule for 2 years so that he could attend classes. The company he worked for is a well known engineering firm, and he worked on a government contract that required a high level of security clearance. Also, the company had an educational reimbursement program that allowed (during his time-frame) an allowance of around $10k tax free to the employee for schooling expenses, I am hazy as to if he was enrolled in this program or not. Being fired for pretty much embezzlement and lying to your employer is not a good thing.
7/13. My uncle used to have this job where he was away on business trips every other week. His girlfriend and 2 kids didn't get to see him too often, and treated him like a king when he was in town. Later we found out he was only working at Wal-Mart making minimum wage, and had another girlfriend on the side. Girlfriend #2 also treated my uncle like a king and let him live at her place for free. Girlfriend #1 found out because she had some vacation time and wanted to accompany him on his "business trip". I have no idea how he managed to hide this for so long.
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More!
8/13. My brother got accepted into an Ivy League school, dropped out after having a mental break down, and later enlisted in the Marines. We found out the truth while he was in basic training. My brother was always an overachiever in high school, but he was under an enormous amount of pressure from my parents. I'm surprised that he didn't crack sooner. My parents have pretty much disowned him now. They're really pissed off that they now have two failures for sons! I did poorly in high school, had a difficult time focusing due to a learning disability, but I managed to get into a good university. F*ck our parents, honestly. They're awful people and I'm glad they can't piggyback off my brother's achievements and brag to their friends anymore. I ain't even mad at my brother for lying.
9/13. Yesterday I learned that my favorite cousin has been a drug addict for the last two years. He was recently caught because lots of my family's belongings went missing. All of my aunt's jewelry was gone, and he hacked her Sprint account to buy two iPhones then sell them. He stole all of my grandfathers collections. He had multiple rare coin collections and stole all his class rings. My grandfather worked for Hughes Aircraft for 30 years, and my cousin stole commemorative pens given to my grandfather from Hughes for his years of loyal employment. They weren't worth much money, but Howard Hughes himself gave them to him, they have astronomical value to my grandfather. My cousin stole all these things for drug money, and for awhile nobody knew.
10/13. In college, a friend of mine cheated on her boyfriend (also, a friend of mine) with, wait for it, another friend of mine. The boyfriend and the guy she cheated on with had never met. The boyfriend I met in college, Zach, and the guy she, Melissa, fooled around with I had known since elementary school, James. The three of us, James, Melissa, and myself went out one night with a group of about 4 other people, and Zach invited the three of us over. James was very reserved the entire evening, I asked him if something was up, and he told me that he had sex with Melissa last night. I was not happy with him. We awkwardly cruised through the rest of the evening, got home, and I told Melissa I won't say anything, but she needs to come clean.
CUT TO 2 MONTHS LATER.
Zach calls me while I'm walking to a class. "Dude, Adam, she cheated on me... I can't believe this". Thinking he was talking about my friend James, I respond with the utmost remorse. I felt terrible, I knew this whole time but didn't say anything.
"Zach, man, I'm so sorry. I knew for months and wanted to say something but it just didn't seem right. I told her to come clean but I thought she would have done it sooner."
This is where it gets interesting. He comes back with "What the f*ck are you talking about? She slept with some random guy at the house last night."
Apparently, she was at our frat house the night before and slept with some random bro. One of our brothers saw it, and told Zach. Zach called me looking for a sympathetic ear, and I accidentally told him about the other guy she had cheated on him with from months earlier. He goes ballistic, she calls me up yelling and screaming about how I betrayed her (that gave me a laugh), tried to get my friend James to do the same but he didn't bite, and when it was all said and done, she transferred to a different school because nobody wanted her around.
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11/13. My cousin did not graduate college, which came as a huge shock. The university even let her walk across the stage without getting a diploma. Her parents watched her "graduate". We didn't find out until this year (she is now in her 30's so almost 10 years of lying). Not too sure how, but it involved something like her wanting money to go to nursing school and getting it from my Grandmother.
12/13. My sister went to Atlanta to go to college. My parents mortgaged their house to pay for it. Rented her an apartment in Atlanta, got her enrolled in school, buy her a cheap car, and off she goes. About a year and a half later, after bumming money for "school expenses" for the last 18 months, the parental units get curious and go to visit her at school. Up until this point, she always had an excuse for them not to visit, too busy studying, tests, etc....
Only to find several junkies living in her apartment, used condoms everywhere, drugs, the works. One of them tells my parents where to find my sister. She works at a club. She told my parents that she had gotten a part-time job as a waitress a few months before.
Well as it turns out, she was stripping. My parents got to see part of her show when they went to find her at her "waitress" job. After all is said and done, she had gone to school for about 1 month, got bored with it and dropped out. She got a bunch of "roommates" to help her party away my parents money. Somehow, my sis had gotten the school to change the address on all the paperwork to her apartment address. So my parents never got the several notifications from the school about her dropping classes. Of course, the school kept the tuition money.
13/13. One time, mom asked me to vacuum the house. I didn't want to, so I just rolled the vacuum cleaner all over the carpet to make the little lines. After I did this, I realized that if I would have just turned the vacuum cleaner on, it would have been the same amount of work.
I was not a bright child.
Real life contains the scariest horrors you could ask for. So aren't we all living in a horror movie, in a way? At least, these people sure freakin' were.
MisterSnowman69 asked: What was a moment in your life that felt like a horror movie scene?
In the words of the legendary Mary Vivian Pierce in the film Pink Flamingos, “Murder merely relieves tension”. I’m sure the following Redditors felt differently.
Nothing scarier than the woods at night.
Went into a real deep woods hike for only the second time in my life.
My gps broke and had to rely on my compass. Got turned around a few times because I couldn't remember the direction I came from, and it was getting dark. Lost the trail way.
But the woods are weirdly silent in the dark and alone.
It was around 2am by the time I found the trailhead.
Darn foxes.
the simpsons react GIFGiphyMy friend and I got lost late on one foggy night in the Italian countryside. There were rats all over and every once in a while we heard someone scream.
I've never been more sure I was about to get murdered than I was that night.
It was probably a red fox that was screaming.
Could've also been a lynx, but they are much rarer in Italy.
At least she wasn’t speaking in tongues.
My mom is quite the sleep talker, but it's usually pretty short and incoherent when it happens. One night as a teenager, I woke up to her scream-yelling the Hail Mary prayer (my bedroom was across the house and upstairs).
Difficult to get back to sleep after that one.
Sometimes scary sh*t ends up just being funny coincidences. Super funny. Right?
Don’t give them any ideas.
I was exploring an abandoned mental asylum and then got the scare of my life when a scary looking person inside one of the rooms was just staring at me without moving. Turns out some joker had left a cardboard cutout there.
And now I have plans this weekend... Just need to find a couple of cardboard cutouts and to break into the local abandoned asylum.
Don’t you hate when that happens?
Evil Dead Horror GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphyI was driving home on backcountry roads at midnight in heavy fog. Like can't see 10 feet in front of you thick. Suddenly I see an all-white silhouette running in front of the car. Every hair on my body stood up. I immediately think "oh god, oh f*ck, it's a f*cking woman in white, I'm gonna f*cking die"
Nope just a drunk who dove into the ditch.
Gotta love paranoia.
When I was about 12, my parents went out for dinner leaving me home alone. We lived out in the country, on a private road with only three other houses, surrounded by cow fields and wooded areas.
I went into the the kitchen and glanced out the window towards the trees and there in the fading light I could see a person walking slowly through the woods. They were wearing all black, moving slowly and appeared to pause behind trees. My heart started pounding so hard in my ears I couldn't hear anything else and I was weak and shaky from fear. I froze and just watched them. Would they come to the house? Where were they going?
This was before cell phones but I suddenly remembered my mom had left the number of the restaurant by the living room phone. Slowly, I made my way towards the living room, trying to watch this stranger in the woods.
Just as I entered the living room, all the lights in the entire house went out. By this time it was nearly dark outside. I started openly sobbing and in the dark I heard a weird boom like noise. That was it, I ran to my parents room, hid under their bed and sobbed. That's where my mom found me hours later (it felt like).
Well, turns out the stranger in the woods was a stupid cow that had busted through a fence, the lights going out was from an accident a few miles away (hit the power line) and the boom was the pilot light in the gas stove. Man, I have never been that scared in my life though!
I have a lot of questions.
A naked man who was covered in blood chased me across a park at 2 in the morning. I was totally alone. He just wanted money for a bus (????) and luckily nothing bad happened but I thought I was going to die.
But of course, the genuine horrors do exist. And they aren’t scary in a fun horror movie way, they’re actually terrifying because they can happen to anyone.
A scary few seconds.
car chase GIF by Mayans M.C.GiphyI am a "baby" in a car seat in between cousins in backseat. Dad is driving. This is in the 80s and it is my aunt's insistence that I am in this seat even though I am like 5.
A sleeping semi driver is coming over into our lane and there is a cliff on other side. Basically my dad did some amazing driving but semi blew us up. I am uninjured sitting in the seat swinging my legs while everyone is unconscious. They all wake groaning. Dad doesnt wake up.
Long story short just minor scrapes and dad has broken leg. But the crunch of metal and those few seconds/minute of being the only "alive" person was quite fear inducing.
Glad they’re all ok now.
Two days after my now boyfriend told me he liked me he fell from a zip line and broke his back. Almost died. 6 months later he got into a car wreck from a drunk driver - almost died. 6 months after that, he passed out and had to have emergency brain surgery, again, almost died. I now have severe anxiety/separation anxiety/and ptsd. That whole year was a f*cking nightmare
Edit: we're both okay now, the brain injury was almost a year ago. But TBIs take a while to heal so he still has side effects. Thankfully our relationship is still strong; he's physically getting better and I'm healing emotionally too. Lucky for him, the trauma of the injuries has caused him to forget the majority of the pain and memories of those incidents.
ALWAYS wear a helmet.
Driving home from work at 23, listening to my favorite song.
I pull up to a red light, and see this guy on a motorcycle coming up next to me in the other lane. I rolled down my window to compliment his bike when he stops. He doesn't, and runs the red light. He hits a car going at least 55mph. His motorcycle shatters apart, he goes flying, hits the hood of another car, and lands on the ground and rolls into the curb (no helmet). The car he hit with his motorcycle was totaled. I had to step over his body to talk to the police. He was still alive when they got there. I regret not holding his hand. It was just a normal day, and all of a sudden it felt like the rug was pulled from out beneath me. He was only 18.
Edit: The song was Sunny by Boney M., for those curious
What did we learn today, kids? Foxes scream like humans, shadowy figures are usually cows or drunken rednecks, and once again, PLEASE WEAR A HELMET WHEN YOU RIDE ANY KIND OF BIKE.
Scary sh*t surrounds us. But where there is horror, there are heroes. So next time you think you see a scary figure in the woods, know that Bruce Campbell is probably right around the corner
Hypocrisy is everywhere; it's like a disease. And sadly everyone does it. Some of us indulge in smaller doses than others. But some people live their life by it. Like how can you support civil servants, like police, firefighters, etc... yet try to find ways to hide money in order to not pay taxes? Tell me... I'll wait.
Manga...
Hungry Night Court GIF by LaffGiphyItalian moms that say you're too fat then say I'm making grandma cry by not finishing my pasta.
Asian moms too! Not only that if you try to not eat, they make to go containers for you. Oh, sorry I have to leave, RUNS AT LEAST HAVE SOME FRUIT.
Phonies...
Celebrities positioning themselves as champions for social justice while launching a clothing line with no comment on the labor conditions their garments are made in.
Sexy Times...
The Porn Industry
Why is prostitution considered a crime, but it becomes perfectly legal once a camera is put beside them?
I think the first amendment helps with that one. There's been many a supreme-court case about whether porn is protected speech.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
You can get away with WAY more crap, in general, when you're attractive.
But we all kind of aspire to attractiveness and it's not like it's attractive people's fault, exactly. So what is there to be done?
So true. Money and beauty are treated like virtues and they aren't. They're luck of the draw. It probably helps you to be a better person if people assume that you are gentle and clever just by looking at your face or wallet.
KIDS
GIF by MOODMANGiphyPeople screaming at you if you don't want Kids and Kids are the greatest thing in the World and then turn around and whine how expensive they are and how annoying yadda yadda.
Yeah see... humans are a mess. And too often then not, personal conviction and dignity are just a myth, or a punchline. Double standards have always been a way of life. And many of us have begrudgingly learned to navigate.
Fashion
Fashion Model GIF by NYFW: The ShowsGiphyIf a skinny person wears something out of the ordinary, it's a fashion statement and awesome. It can even just be something like a crop top or overalls.
But God forbid a fat person wear the same thing.
Distractions
The hypocrisy hypocrisy. People love to call it out but rarely notice it on themselves and if they notice it then it's something completely different or a distraction.
That's the worst. I hate that I have to hate that. But if I don't hate it, then the hate will just continue. So, really, my hate comes from my love of an end to hate. So anyone who hates my hate hates love. And we must hate anyone who hates love!
My Morality
My own personal hypocrisy; When I was a lot less well off financially, delivering pizzas trying to get through college, I kept a cup of coins in my car. When a homeless person would approach me for spare change, I gave them the cup. Most of the time it was nearly full, so there was probably 20-30 dollars in there.
Now that I have a good salaried job, even if I've got a few bucks in my wallet, I tend to not even make eye contact anymore. I know it's awful, I know it makes me crappy, but the last 4-5 years have made me a jaded craphead towards people in general. I used to be so hopeful and I wanted to help everyone, and tried to live a life that reflected that.
Now, while my general and political morality is pretty much the same, my personal morality has gotten more grey. I'd jaded, I hate people, I assume the worst of people I used to assume the best of. I don't really care about the strangers around me like I used to, but I still expect everyone else to.
Placing Blame
Victim mentality.
It's so freaking frustrating when it becomes entrenched. "You did this, it's your fault" "you should've known to do x, its your fault" Yeah bro your problems aren't my problems and if all you do is make excuses and blame me for them, it's not going to be my fault when you don't develop as a person and accomplish your dreams. I'm sure they'll find someone to blame though.
In D.C.
Donald Trump Reaction GIF by Election 2016GiphyPoliticians work part time, are given free housing, education, and health care, and exempt from the everyday violence we experience, but refuse to lift a finger to help us.
At this points most people running for a position in the government are only in it for the benefits of being a politician and the amount of money they can embezzle. Well in my country at least.
Just speak a truth and live it. Yes, it maybe hard. But what part of life isn't? Hypocrisy is just lying. Plain and simple. And it's a sin to lie.
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One of my dreams is to learn sign language and when I do I want to authentically ask a deaf person about their thoughts. In my mind I sound sexy. On a recorder I sound like I sniff helium. It's weird. I wonder if they all hear themselves in sexy?
Good Vibrations
Fail Very Funny GIF by America's Funniest Home VideosGiphyI asked my niece this. She said she had an inner voice but it was more a feeling than a voice. She described it as feeling the vibrations from loud music. When she had her surgery, and she heard voices for the first time, her inner voice adapted.
Me and Myself...
Not deaf, but my brother is. I remember when we were in our teens on a family vacation and I caught him signing to himself when he was bored. The first time I saw it I thought he was telling me something but I noticed he wasn't making eye contact and it made no sense, that is when I realized he was thinking to himself. After that, my family and I wouldn't watch when we noticed him doing it since we figured it wasn't fair to know what he was thinking at times when the same couldn't be said for him.
silence...
For the first 5 years of my life i was technically Deaf, i couldn't hear anything.
i remember thinking by closing my eyes and imagining the thing i wanted to think. so i would close my eyes and see my own imaginary world.
i can still do it but only in complete silence.
It's a trait i will forever hold but i'm not mad at it. it can be very helpful in some situations!
edit- a lot of people are wondering so i'll put it in the post, my eardrums collapsed during birth so when i was around 5 i had a surgery to "fix" them. not sure how they did it or if the doctors are still doing it on people but i'm grateful they did it to me.
Voices
A Neurologist named Oliver Sacks wrote a book called Seeing Voices. It was prescribed reading when I studied South African Sign Language. It might give some insights to your question.
In a related tangent, schizophrenia among deaf people is different than for hearing persons.
That's really interesting! Thank you. I remember reading about how auditory hallucinations with schizophrenia present differently depending on cultures. Some have negative critical voices, some have positive reassuring voices.
Hey Mom
talking sign language GIFGiphyMy mom is profoundly deaf and I asked her this same question (totally not a stupid question!) She said she thinks in ASL. I have caught her signing to herself just like I sometimes talk to myself.
Fascinating. It's always amazing to learn and connect to another person who's experience is vastly different from our own. Once we realize, that when we all close our eyes, we're all left to our own thoughts, and that sound is universal.
Hallucinations
Boomer Cant Hear GIF by MOST EXPENSIVESTGiphyNot deaf but have studied psychology. People born deaf who also suffer from "auditory" hallucinations tend to not hear voices, they rather see floating hands speaking to them in sign language
I just remembered this fact because of your post...
Which part of the World
When I was young I asked a relative if she thought in English or Spanish because she was Spanish but had lived in England for a very long time, she couldn't understand what I was asking her and ended up getting very upset with me thinking that I was saying she couldn't speak English. She had no idea that people had an inner voice and I had no idea that some people didn't!
Pay Attention
A deafie here - naturally we can't even describe what it sounds like as we don't really understand sound in the way you do. Maybe the basics like deep and high pitches but the difference between notes or octaves are something only understood through theory (i.e. reading about them).
We don't understand what makes a singer good but we for sure know how to tell if it's a good beat (provided it's loud enough to feel).
As such, speaking for myself here - my inner voice is more literally like thinking. A mixture of instinctual understanding and the words that describe the meaning I want to express.
I am a writer so words are quite colorful to me. They convey a myriad of imagination. I also am a philosopher so I admire and observe closely the metaphysics at play here.
Words can occasionally come out in English as it is best expressed through English. Some come out as sign language as there are sayings that only make sense in sign language. It's a blend of both as well as the raw emotional output that form my thoughts.
Also, there is the silence in between the thoughts. Depends on how much you pay attention I suppose.
be cool
Was born profoundly deaf. Wore hearing aids from 6 months old and replaced it with a cochlear implant at 15. I only have one, don't hear out of the other ear unless I opt to get another one for bilateral hearing. I was never taught how to sign. I was raised in a hearing world. People don't even realize I'm deaf most of the time until they see the implant.
I'm a bit of an outlier I guess. I'm not involved in the deaf community though I do have a couple of deaf friends who both talk and sign.
My voice sounds a lot cooler in my head than what it really is, probably the same for most people lol.
Deep Thought
tyra banks model GIF by Nyle DiMarcoGiphyI recently learned that deaf people (at least in my country) often speak sign language as their first language and do not appreciate the assumption that sign language is just "a signed form of the country's language". The two languages usually have different grammars and morphology.
I think your question is very interesting OP, I just wanted to add to it, maybe this helps understand that not everyone has an acoustic language as their inner voice. I think it's hard for a hearing person to grasp this concept because language is so bound to sound for us but as Steven Pinker said: we shouldn't make the mistake of mixing up thought and language, most of our thoughts are more diffuse than language.
As writers we have to find ways to learn about something we know nothing about. I can't imagine as a deaf person trying to wonder what sound sounds like. But clearly people find a way. Through vibration, through dreams, sound finds a way.
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