I have so many memories I can't seem to expunge and I hate it. I can't tell what is worse, my abusive ex stepfather, the bullies or the times I almost died. I have such a plethora to chose from. It's a wealth of darkness. But my childhood was still happy, just flawed.
The Wall
ouch wall GIFGiphyI remember a day at summer camp where we were on a portage trip through crown land in Northern Canada and it was a super windy day.
We came to a section of the woods and for some reason the trees and foliage were completely still. For a few hundred feet there was just silence it was so weird. Almost like an invisible wall was hit. What made it creepier is how I could see how white our guide was getting. It was very creepy.
Aunt Liz
When I was younger (no idea how old) I had a dream that my aunt came to visit me. I was named after her husband who died a few months before I was born so she always loved me. So after the dream I went into my parents room and told them that Aunt Liz came to see me and she told me to say goodbye. A few hours later they got a call that she had passed away.
A few years later my grandfathers friend Mary got brain cancer and she lost her ability to speak and her face was paralyzed. The last time I saw her I told my mom I just wanted to see her smile one more time. A few nights later I had a dream where she was smiling at me. Few hours later, parents got a call that she had passed.
When I was 11-12 I had a dream my dad died. He was sh*tting bricks for weeks. 14 years later he's still alive though.
The Guy
A guy in a car asked me once if I wanted some candy. He was younger, possibly teenager, possibly in his 20s. I was about 10.
I was walking alone back from a friend's. I just stared at him for a few seconds and said no, he asked if I was sure, I think I just stood there. He drove off.
I've gone back and forth throughout my life about whether he was crazy or just a dude messing with me. Still not sure.
Change the Channel
My brother and I were watching TV one time late at night in the mid-90's. Suddenly the audio to the show we were watching cut out— we changed to various channels, and only the show we had been watching had lost audio. We flipped back to see if the audio had returned, and it was literally the audio of people having a phone call.
Not scripted, not associated with the show— like a LIVE phone call— like the way you can sometimes hear other people's chatter on a walkie-talkie. It was a man and a woman talking and they were trying to find their friend "Howard." Just this panic back-and-forth dialogue about where he could be— it was clear Howard wasn't their child, because they kept referring to him as "that motherf*cker" and almost sounded like they wanted to harm him.
I even wrote down some of the things they had said and Google searched them many years later to see it they were lines from a script or a show or something— nope. Not a result. The Howard conversation continued for about five minutes and my brother and I listened to the whole thing. Then the conversation ended. Click.
The audio for the channel didn't return until morning.
Haunted
The Conjuring Halloween GIF by ALTER – The Best Horror FilmsGiphyI was laying in bed one night probably about 6 and I swear on my life that my Ariel doll started floating and slowly floated through the wall.
I couldn't find it in the morning. I had a couple of weird experiences in that house. Another night I remember the feeling of someone laying their hand on my leg while I was laying under the covers. I grew up religious so when I was a kid I always thought it was God coming down and blessing me.
Yeah, I definitely would be seeking therapy for all of those moments. This is why I always hated dolls. I prefer stuffed animals. And don't get started on creepy neighbors and noises that go bump in the night. And they say "A Nightmare on Elm Street" wasn't autobiographical. Wanna hear more?
Silhouettes
soccer smoke GIF by Nike FootballGiphyWhen I was young, probably around six years old, I woke up in the middle of the night to see a dark figure just standing at the corner of my bed.
Rather than resembling a person, it looked exactly like the silhouette of one. Just pitch black, which was odd considering I had a night-light in my room. Never had experienced anything like that since, and honestly question whether or not it was simply a dream.
The Nanny
It was my nanny's youngest sons birthday, I was 4 years old. I didn't fully understand why but I hadn't seen my nanny in roughly 6 months, and had just returned to her that week. She mentioned the birthday and I asked if I'd get to play with youngest son, which she cried at.
I moved on to the next thing and hung out around the kitchen when the neighbors popped in, as well as my nanny's husband, and the youngest son. He was now 3 years old, and still didn't talk much but he smiled, and let a balloon go from his hand and it flew to the ceiling. My nanny later asked where the balloon came from, and I said it was "youngest sons's" and that he let it go up there.
She started crying again
As an adult I understand that youngest son died at 2, he and my nanny were hit by a distracted driver. Nanny survived but had serious injuries, her son died the day after the collision. I know what I saw in the kitchen, and I have no rational way of explaining it.
Mutants
Had an incredibly vivid reoccurring nightmare where I was constantly hunted down by a black dog with yellow eyes when I was around 5-7 years old. Always started and ended the same way. I eventually stopped getting them for a while and kinda forgot about it. Probably a year after I stopped getting them, I was sitting in my living room watching the new episode of monster quest and it literally had the exact same dog that I had been seeing in my nightmares. Was thoroughly spooked from that for a while. And for those who are curious, it was the mutant canines episode.
Not So Cheery
When I was younger, about 10 years old, my room was covered in posters.. posters of celebrities (you know the ones you tear out of the magazines) and I had a giant NFL cheerleading team poster. When I was in bed at night, my posters would move and the cheerleads would do backflips and cartwheels across the page... this scared me so much I gave my cheerleading posted to my older brother (which he didn't mind) and I kind of had forgotten about it for a while until now.
I also used to see visual hallucinations floating around my room at night when I was going to bed. They would never make any noise but they would be really scary and sometimes even interact with me. They were there when my eyes were open and closed.
Snap...
excited pokemon GIFGiphyWhen I was about 4, playing Pokémon Snap, I was on the main menu where you talk to Prof Oak.
One time, I remember the text box turning orange instead of green, and he had this frown on his face, and the game froze. That was years ago, and I've never been able to make it happen again, nor have I heard about anyone else having the same experience, so I conclude it was likely a false memory, though it seems real.
Ok, I've heard enough. I already have enough issues falling asleep at night. This is why we drink. I guess the key is to try and fill up the rest of our lives with happier memories and adventures. Post Covid of course. Sweet Dreams.
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"I need an Amen."
I've seen it all... thieveing, lying, fornicating in every possible corner of space. And sometimes I was all of the above. I'm just an expert at not getting caught. For some reason though, so many other people feel the need to include me in the drama as a confidant or a witness. "I need an Amen." Many of the people here know of which I speak.
Call HR
braxton family values traci GIF by WE tvGiphyWalking past my colleagues door, middle of the afternoon and looked in his office door window.
Saw him absolutely shagging with an intern. At the same time another colleague also stopped, saw the same thing. He called our boss, who came and a small group watched them have to leave the office and go down to HR.
"Warpath"
A divorced couple worked at my company in separate departments. The ex-husband went to the ex-wife's house to pick up their kids one night and got into an argument with the ex-wife's boyfriend, who was a cop. The cop shot him. The ex-husband died. The ex-wife was not exactly contrite about it.
For weeks or even months after that, the ex-husband's coworkers were on a warpath against the ex-wife and her supportive coworkers. This is in HQ for a big company and there were regular outbursts if those people saw each other in the lobby, elevators, cafeteria, etc. It was wild.
"That" Room
I used to work for a large insurance company in Colorado Springs, CO - When I worked there they had nap rooms which were used for other nefarious means. My favorite workplace scandal is when one coworker stopped cheating on his wife with another coworker because he found a new workplace hookup. Work hookup #1 anonymously called the man's wife to rat him out AND security to bust in on him and his new hookup.
Jabs
Years ago I worked at a company that hired a sales guy who was pretty hard-working and definitely put out a, 'I am trying to come back from a dark time in my life' kind of vibe. We all really liked him as a first impression, but we didn't get a chance to know him very well. One day he went out to his car at lunch, drank himself to a point of insensibility, then came back into the office like nothing was wrong. When his boss called him on it, he took a swing at him and missed by a mile, spinning himself around and almost falling over.
He was immediately fired —I don't even think there was paperwork involved. He was only a few weeks into the job— and escorted out of the building. By unspoken rule, no one talked about the incident. Enough time has passed now, I don't even remember the guy's name or really any more about it than I've said.
"Bad Combos"
Now why is it people feel the need to get X-Rated at the office. There seems to be an over abundance of that. That's the usual scandals though, isn't it? Sex and money. That combination will often lead you down the wrong path. Of course just when you think you've heard it all...
The Pooper
poop GIFGiphyA lady pooped in the men's urinal and tried to frame a guy who turned down her advances at the Christmas party.
She informed a manager that she saw the guy go in to the bathroom around the time the poop was laid. However CCTV showed otherwise. She wasn't fired or faced any serious repercussions.
Bonnie & Clyde
From my first workplace as a college intern: The Director of Engineering was working on a special project and required the PM's admin to assist, every day in his office from noon to 1pm. One Thursday they forgot to close the door completely and as it turned out their special project was shagging each other stupid. They were sent home and told not to come back until the following Monday, by which time management would know how to address the incident.
Monday rolls around and they don't show up. After calling both of their spouses, it turns out that each came home Thursday, made up an excuse to their families, packed a bag and left. Within a few weeks it turns out that their special project also included embezzling $870,000 in company funds and absconding to the Caribbean.
Staffing Concerns
When I was in high school, I got a job in a local chain drug store. After I was there about a month, I showed up for work and was greeted by corporate security. Apparently, the entire management staff, as well as the bulk of the store's employees, were fired and arrested as part of a mass theft ring. Apparently they were issuing fake merchandise refunds to their credit cards, as well as voiding cash transactions and pocketing the cash.
They managed to re-staff the store temporarily with employees from other locations, but I went from being the new kid to the senior associate pretty quickly lol. I ended up being there for 4-5 years, and it was great because most of the new part time employees were kids my age. We had a lot of fun.
Tragedy...
A few years back I was working for a national non-profit, one of the ones that's trying to cure a disease.
We all got called into a mandatory meeting first thing one morning, and that meant folks calling in from all over the country, probably 2,000 of us total. We were told that our CEO's wife had been murdered and set on fire. It was tragic.
Couple hours later, they called a second meeting to tell us it was one of our coworkers that did it. That was a mind screw of a meeting.
Turns out the dude was stealing from the charity in a big way, got caught, and the CEO gave him a chance to turn himself in. Instead, he drove to the CEO's house, killed his wife, set her on fire and sped away, crashing into a tree and killing himself.
It was never quite the same at work, CEO left and never set foot in the office or his house again.
A Royal Schemer
Woman in the finance department fell for a Nigerian prince scheme disguised as our CEO and corporate lawyers. Transferred 2 million Euros to the scammers. Police found nothing. Holding that has the most shares of our company was not amused and almost sacked our CEO who is a great guy in general. Investments in new tech was denied and everyone lost their bonus for that year.
Responsible person for the transfer was not fired but lost procurement responsibility. Many in our company said that she was into the scheme.
And these are the Days of Our Lives...
Days Of Our Lives GIFGiphyI used to work at a place where two employees who were both married had an affair then divorced their spouses and married each other. Two years later the guy has an affair with a client then he divorces and marries client. Everyone is somehow shocked.
Of course thanks to Covid work scandals seem down a bit. A ZOOM scandal just doesn't seem as appetizing. Heaven knows the amount of homebound craziness we'll all have to share about in 2022! Should be interesting.
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It's Me!
Alexa Bliss Reaction GIF by WWEGiphyI am the family secret, family discovered their brother/cousin/son and his wife had 3 children and gave them all up for adoption - after matching with me through a DNA test.
They were shocked to say the least, but we're all pretty close now.
That Type of Guy
My aunt discovered that her mother cheated on her father and she was a product of that affair, meaning she was actually only half-siblings with her 4 siblings.
The rub was that my aunt's husband was married before he married her. The woman he was married to is the daughter of the man involved in the affair. So no one knew this, but my uncle got divorced and then married his ex-wife's half-sister. I guess he has a type.
Zulu Forever
I was adopted and always knew I was adopted. My parents told me that I came from a family that had already had all of their kids. They lived several towns over. I was a surprise.
Three years ago my wife decided to take some DNA tests. I figured what the heck? Maybe I'm part Zulu warrior. That'd be cool.
When the tests came back, I found out I had a first cousin. They had listed a public email. I emailed them, started comparing notes, and wham! I was in for quite a surprise.
First, I was not born into a traditional family. Instead, my bio mom was single. Second, I was not a late addition. I had four sisters and one brother. I was the baby, but only by a couple of years. Third, most all of them lived nearby. Finally, nobody knew I was alive!
My biological mom had passed. She had kept the pregnancy secret from everybody else. Before she died, she had confided in one of my bio sisters that she had a baby a long time ago, and she had put the baby up for adoption. She told nobody else.
When my sister told the rest of the family? They didn't believe her! So when I finally looked them up, she was like "See! All those years! I told you so! We have a baby brother!"
It was an amazing experience. I had no idea what I was getting into when I sent that DNA test off.
The Line
ramsay bolton creepy smile GIF by Game of ThronesGiphyFound out I have a different father. My dad also took a DNA test at the same time and found out his father, of 52 years, was not his biological father either.
As it turns out, I come from a line of bastards.
Bad Mom
I was given up for adoption by my bio mom and none of her family knew about me. However, i was not her first or last child. I was her second of 4 kids. My older half brother (we all have different dads. I don't know who mine is and i don't think bio mom does either) was adopted by my bio moms parents. Her whole family found out about me when i found her when i was 19 and went to visit.
It was pretty weird. I feel like the lucky one who got out. I don't talk to my bio mom. She is not a good parent to my 2 younger brothers and i hate that she pretends to know me or be my parent.
That one time....
Not me, but a friend never knew who his father was (mom had a weekend fling in college and never contacted the guy after) and his wife helped him use ancestry.com to try and track him down. My friend reached out and the guy was obviously surprised, but flew across the country to meet him. They have a great relationship now, the dad attended his wedding, and they try to get their families together a couple times a year or so.
What a Man....
My FIL was married to at least 2 women at a time. Nice guy but a man wh*re, and I think he just didn't want to let each woman down when she got pregnant and/or started bringing up marriage. My MIL says that he was already married when they got married, but we also know that he has a child 3 months younger than my husband and the woman and child both go by FIL's last name (and that's NOT the woman MIL claims he was married to when he married her). So he might possibly have had 3 wives at the same time. My husband has upwards of 10 half siblings from his dad.
You're Fired....
howie mandel omg GIF by America's Got TalentGiphyMy wife is adopted (but found her bio mom) and did one of the genetic tests. Someone matched with her and asked if she knew such and such a name. She found out her bio dad wasn't married to the bio mom.... it was her boss. oops.
A Favor
My male cousin did one and found a female cousin we did not know about. He reached out to her and apparently our deceased uncle was good friends with her mother. Mom wanted a baby so uncle got her pregnant simply as a sperm donor.
Female cousin lived a few blocks away from my grandmother. She had met her a few times going around selling Girl Scout cookies or something. My grandmother had no idea that she was buying cookies from her granddaughter.
The 3
Angry Siblings GIF by Party of FiveGiphyOn the flip side - my dad used to say my mom slept around and none of the 3 of us were his kids. Welp, thanks to the test, we know all 3 of us are!
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"When in Vienna"
GiphyIt's becoming more well known but Mozart wrote a chorale literally called "Lick my Butt" to piss off the bishop who employed him in Salzburg, hoping to get fired so he could go to Vienna.
After Alois....
After Alois Alzheimer gave the first ever speech describing the symptoms of what would later become known as Alzheimer's Disease, no one in the audience asked him any questions or made any follow-up comments, despite the fact that this was quite literally one of the most important presentations ever given in the field of medicine.
(For real: Alzheimer's Disease affects about 6% of people aged 65 and older. It's a big deal.)
So why did no one pay it much attention? Turns out they were all much more focused on the next guy on the docket, who (allegedly) was there to talk about about compulsive masturbation.
Hey Grover.....
President Grover Cleveland, 49, married Francis Folsom, 21, in the White House. He was basically her godfather and even bought her a baby bed when she was an infant. She knew him as Uncle Grover as a child and told him she wanted to marry him in the White House one day. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/27/8120283/house-of-cards-marriage
Ben is Strung.
GiphyIn school I was taught that Ben Franklin had a string of pearls that was several feet long. He would add a pearl to it each time he slept with a new woman.
"Dear Elizabeth"
Little late but worth a shot.
Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (the poets) had a 30 year letter exchange where Robert, while married, swooned over Elizabeth after he initially met her, declaring his love and want to propose for her all while being married and her blatant denial and uncomfortable lesbian anguish at this fact.
He threatens suicide and lots of self harm while she's just like "haha let's read this book together and not think about romance".
He was a manic cocaine freak and she was a CRAZY alcoholic lesbian with a toucan. She drank rubbing alcohol when denied conventional drinks. There's a great play highlighting these events called "Dear Elizabeth".
being gay...
After Alan Turing cracked the enigma code, essentially ending WW2 years earlier than expected and saving countless lives, he was thanked by the British government in the form of chemical castration. All because he was a gay man.
Snowing....
GiphyFreud loooved cocaine. He had a friend with a morphine addiction, and he thought giving the guy cocaine would cure him.
It did not.
Oh Goddess....
Gaius Julius Caesar was a huge player. He slept with at least one women in every town he visited according to his soldiers. He slept with the queen of Egypt. He slept with his rival's (Cato the Younger's) sister. He also slept with a mother and her daughter (not at the same time). This was fitting as he claimed descent from Venus, the goddess of love and lust.
Harry Cheeks....
GiphyThe great magician Houdini once escaped a prison cell while fully nude as to not hide anything to escape. However what the guards failed to check was that he hid a skeleton key in his butt checks.
The Goth Way.
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein (who also popularized gothic literature), used to meet up with her future husband, poet Percy Shelley, at the cemetery where her mother was buried. They would meet up and have angsty sex on her mother's grave bc she was goth as hell.
Moreover, Frankenstein was inspired by her fascination with reanimation, the idea of bringing something dead back to life. When she learned about this idea, she was obsessed with the idea of bringing back her baby who died days later after being born, thus sparking the idea of the monster of Frankenstein.
A way out....
GiphyA bit late to the party, but....
During WW1, sex workers in Britain were more expensive if they had STD's. This was because if a soldier hired them and got infected, the soldier could be honorably discharged, and not have to fight in war.
The River Flow
Ancient Egyptians believed the god Atum created the universe by masturbating, and that the ebb and flow of the Nile corresponded to how much he came. To honor this, the pharaohs ceremonially masturbated into the river.
Kinky Victor.
Probably said here elsewhere, but Victor Hugo (author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, among other tales) was a notorious philanderer who had affairs on top of affairs with sex workers throughout his life.
When he died, ALL of the brothels in Paris had to close because so many of them attended his funeral.
Heard he also would write naked, and ask someone to keep his clothes outside the door so he'd continue writing.
And this kinky granddad was visiting brothels waaaaaay into his old age. Heard that he had a mark in his diary for each sort of visit?
Liberty for Who?
Patrick Henry (the American founding father better known for his quote, "give me liberty or give me death") kept his wife imprisoned in a cellar because of her frequent outbursts due to postpartum depression. His wife had eventually died in that cellar, and he had buried her in an unmarked grave. 10/10 quote but the wife killing part always seems to get left out of history texts.
Bottoms Up....
GiphyPyotr Tchaikovsky was a submissive bottom.
In one note, never before published in Russian or English, Tchaikovsky wrote of a young servant "with whom I am more in love than ever", adding: "My God, what an angelic creature and how I long to be his slave, his plaything, his property!"
In French....
I'm sorry but my source is in French, I can translate the beginning : King Louis XIV anal fistula
"The anal fistula of king Louis XIV is one of the many illness that king Louis XIV had suffered. It was his surgeon Charles-François Félix which carried the surgery successfully in 1686 after the development of a particular tool and a training on a dozen of indigents. The recovery of the king had a considerable impact in France and in Europe, and gave place to numerous civil and religious ceremonies in the kingdom."
Sessions.
Not hidden in his home country, but not known by the rest of the world though, is the fact that H.C. Andersen left a mark in his diary, every time he choked the chicken. Sometimes with a little note on the side, with his thoughts about the "session".
Dirty Diana....
Princess Diana and her "Le Gadget" - a sex toy that she carried around with her when she went on diplomatic trips. She had even shown a table of foreign officials her toy as a prank on numerous occasions. She also believed it brought her good luck, one time she forgot to bring it with her and actually asked a body guard to go back to the hotel to fetch it for her.
Edit: Ok just checked and she apparently left it all the way back in the UK while on a trip to Nepal (not just at a hotel), and ordered it to be dispatched to the capital Kathmandu.
"Father of Microbiology"
The first thing the "Father of Microbiology," Anton van Leeuwenhoek, put under a microscope was semen. They understood that semen was integral to the creation of life but didn't yet understand the concept of single-cell organisms. He fully expected to see tiny little humans in his specimen.
So yeah, the first thing he did was fondled himself on a slide and look at it.
Forget the Apples....
GiphyGeorge Washington had severe hemorrhoids, to the extent that he couldn't even ride a horse into battle sometimes, and had to be pulled on a cart.
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