I’m Addicted To Reading People’s Worst Secrets On Reddit’s ‘Confession’ Page
I live a rather normal and uneventful life, so I find myself drawn to stories about people who have lived through truly wild experiences.
This is where is Reddit comes in, as it’s an absolute treasure trove of personal anecdotes, with people often sharing stories from their lives to gauge whether they’re good or bad people, which is generally decided by the masses. This is why subreddits like r/AmITheAsshole gained such momentum, simply because people love to judge others on their bad behaviour. Similarly, another addictive Reddit page has recently been trending called r/Confession — and I am absolutely hooked on it.
It’s not a new subreddit, but it has skyrocketed in popularity this year. The page instructs its users to, “Admit your wrongdoings, acknowledge your guilt, and alleviate your conscience.” People submit their worst secrets, as a means to finally break their silence on something shameful they’ve generally never told another soul about.
The stories told on this subreddit are truly bonkers, ranging from Redditors sharing that they caused physical harm to friends when they were kids, to people admitting to setting a whole damn town on fire. While reading the posts are entertaining and shocking, it’s also nice to be a part of a cathartic process, as most of these people have been harbouring guilt all of their lives by protecting their secret.
This is the kind of Reddit page that you find yourself scrolling for hours, because it’s just so fascinating reading about the disturbing mistakes people have made and how, in some cases, their choices affected their whole life. The accounts on r/Confession make me feel a lot better about the guilt I’ve carried for burning my sister’s jeans with a hair straightener in 2005 and then blaming my dad.
Here are 10 of the most hectic stories from Reddit’s r/Confession page:
Please note some of these responses have been edited for length and clarity.
1. ‘When I was 9, I started the biggest fire my town had seen in 150 years.’
“When I was nine, my older cousin (14) stayed with me and my family for a couple of weeks. My cousin was a troublemaker and her parents had hoped that sending her to ours would keep her out of trouble for a little while. One day while she was over, I asked if we could go to one of our local forest areas and make a fire to roast marshmallows. When we got down there, we made a little makeshift campfire out of newspaper and sticks all on top of a rock.
“Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I started chucking different things into the fire. Leaves, sticks, pinecones, anything I could find in the little area we were in. Then I wondered what a leaf on a tree would do if we set fire to it. My cousin got her lighter and lit a small leaf on a nearby tree. I stared at the reaction in awe and my cousin set a group of leaves on fire. We laughed as we watched the fire slowly engulf the branch. Once the fire burnt itself out, we carried on setting fire to bushes and branches and then we realised that the fire wasn’t dying out. In fact it [was] spreading.
“My cousin started to freak out as she realised the fire wasn’t stopping. The summer heatwave had made everything so dry that it was catching fire extremely quickly. She grabbed my hand and we ran to the dirt road that was on the outskirts of the forest. But instead of calling 999, we just stood there. Watching it as it spread and spread and spread. My cousin almost called them multiple times but I kept telling her I didn’t want to get into trouble, so she never did. It had eventually spread so much that the fire department had trouble controlling it and had to order an evacuation of a nearby village. It was said to be the biggest fire the town had seen in 150 years. No one was hurt but it did take 10 hours to get under control.
“It wouldn’t have been as bad if [I] hadn’t stopped my cousin calling 999 when we first lost control. Both I and my cousin had promised not to tell a soul but 12 years on and my guilt is still here, I still feel terrible about it.”
Read the full post here.
2. ‘In 4th grade, I told my friend about my mom’s affair and then accused her of lying and making it up.’
“When I was in 4th grade, I saw my mom (who was married to my dad) kiss a family friend (also married with kids who went to my school) passionately on the lips at a small house party. I wasn’t too phased by it at the time. I already knew there was something going on between them and as a 4th grader I didn’t really understand what cheating was, or that it was a really big deal in marriages. I ended up telling my group of friends about it on the playground and I named names. They knew the man as well. They were a very well known, well-loved family.
“That night my one friend tells her mom what I said and the next day my mom gets a call asking if it was true. When my mom came into my bedroom to ask me what I had said on the playground, and if I had used the word ‘affair’ (I had) I totally panicked. I could tell from the tone of her voice, the seriousness of it, that I had done something really, really bad.
“I vividly remember the dread I felt about this. I was already afraid of my mother’s anger and rages over small things and this was the worst thing I had ever done. So I lied and said that I hadn’t said anything. That night I remember the massive knot in my stomach from fear and I thought to myself that I wish I didn’t have to wake up the next morning. I was a wreck for weeks. My mom asked me three times if I was sure I was telling the truth, and I said yes all three times.
“I learned, after confessing the truth to my mom over five years later, that apparently everyone had believed my story and thought that my friend, the other girl, was just making up stories. I feel so bad to this day when I think of it.”
Read the full post here.
3. ‘I posted fake jobs on the internet so I could build my own resume.’
“When I was 19-20 years old, I was looking for jobs and could not find any and people would tell me to build a nice resume. The problem was, I did not know how to do it so I posted fake jobs on [the] internet and would get resumes. I used those resumes to build my own, using the skills that I liked on their resumes. I could also tell who was competing with me for those jobs that I posted. I feel bad for those people that thought it was genuine and applied.
“I am 33 now and have a nice job. Those resumes truly did help me build my career.”
Read the full post here.
4. ‘I threw eggs from my apartment to maintain peace and quiet.’
“I used to live on the 16th floor of an apartment building. There was a pub on the ground floor and people would often congregate late at night in the street in front of the pub entrance. This was a hindrance to residents because we would wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning to drunk people talking outside.
“My apartment had two balconies on two sides of the building, so I often looked down on people grouping together on both sides of the building. I got fed up with it and decided to drop an egg where a group of people were chatting. They immediately dispersed and I could enjoy my sleep again, I did this on another occasion and again, it worked.
“I started buying more eggs and it became a habit that I practiced for about six months. No one had a clue it was me and I even went to the pub and overheard people chatting about eggs being dropped from balconies in the building.”
Read the full post here.
5. ‘As a child, I copied a poem from a book and won first place in a poetry contest.’
“When I was in the third grade, I was very into reading/writing and often stayed up far past my bedtime reading anything within my comprehension level that I could get my hands on. We had a stack of children’s encyclopaedias I loved on all sorts of topics (dinosaurs, the planets, world history, etc) including one of stories/poems. One poem stood out in particular, it was about solitude in nature and really struck a chord with me. Because I loved the poem so much, I copied it down into a journal I had of my own writing and passages/poems I found inspiration in. Because I was so young (talking single digits here) it never occurred to me to write down the author or anything, especially not in my own journal.
“A few weeks went by and my mom had stumbled upon [my] journal while cleaning my room. She read the poem and assumed it was original writing. She approached me about it that night and was so proud of it. Like any eight-year-old, I wanted my mom’s approval and pride, so I didn’t tell her I had actually found the poem in a book. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, and she was so proud.
“Fast forward a month or two, my mom is reading the Sunday paper and sees a poetry contest for young people. She immediately thinks of ‘my’ poem and insists I enter it. That afternoon, she had my dad drive us to his office so she could type it up (before home computers.) She sends a copy into the newspaper and, of course, because it’s an eight-year-old’s name on an adult’s published poem, it wins the first prize in my age group. My parents are so happy with me and I feel so incredibly guilty.
“Within the next month, the poem and my picture are ran on the front page of the art’s section in the paper. I am invited to read the poem as part of an award ceremony for all the contest’s participants. Of course, I go because my mom wants us to, and why wouldn’t I? I get a small award, a ribbon and maybe a gift card? I don’t remember. What I do remember is feeling so incredibly guilty.
“I have spent more sleepless hours over this poem than I can count. A few years later, we learn about plagiarism in school and I feel as though I’m being personally called out. I remember tearing out the book’s page with the poem, ripping it up, and throwing it away wrapped in an unused sanitary napkin because I was so afraid anyone would find out. It’s been 20 years since that award ceremony and even though I realise it was a childhood mistake that isn’t even that large, I still can’t quite shake the guilt.”
For those interested (me!), here’s the poem that was copied:
“This Is My Rock by David McCord
This is my rock / And here I run / To steal the secret of the sun;
This is my rock / And here come I / Before the night has swept the sky;
This is my rock, / This is the place / I meet the evening face to face.”
Read the full post here.
6. ‘I volunteered to do my aunt/uncle’s laundry so I could steal money out of their pockets.’
“So I lived with my aunt and uncle when I was about 17 years old and in high school. I had no money and I was absolutely terrified to ask them for anything. They wouldn’t let me get a job because they wanted me to focus on school. I was hungry most of the time and only ate food at school (school lunch was free in the state of GA).
“Anyway, I would do their laundry as much as possible because 99% of the time, my uncle would forget to take his cash out of his pockets. I’d usually score about $20 per load of laundry lol.”
Read the full post here.
7. ‘I lied about seeing a bear to get into the newspaper.’
“This happened four years ago and my memory isn’t the best. So for some background, I’m 14m [14 and male] and live in a small village (around 2k ppl) and from when we started to around 12 years old, we would go to this forest near us to play. There was a main ‘camp’ with a wind shelter and a fireplace where the teachers were.
“When I was around 10, we went there with our class and we went in to play. After around an hour, a group of kids came running from a more remote part of the forest saying they saw a bear. (Note: Brown bears live in our region but I’ve never heard of one this close to the main village.)
“We believed them and kept playing. When we were gonna pack up, me and a friend remembered that we forgot our jackets at the ‘base’. We went back and got them and when we started walking back to the camp, we started talking about the bear. He proposed that we should scream and pretend we saw it. So we did.
“We screamed and ran back saying that we saw the bear. No one really questioned us and we just went back to school. When I got home, I told my mom what happened (the lie, not the truth) and she said I should call the local newspaper to tell them, and so I did. The reporter asked questions and I answered. When we were finished he talked to my mom and she said that I would never lie and that I was ‘the truth himself’.
“It got published with a pic of me and for one or two years after people would ask me if I was the one who saw that bear. The friend I was with hasn’t said anything but one of the kids who originally claimed they saw the bear said that they never saw it.”
Read the full post here.
8. ‘I stabbed my classmate in 4th grade and got away with it.’
“We were seatmates and good friends so it was normal for us back then to just go through each other’s stuff. But I forgot that I put my diary in my backpack the night before because I was hiding it from my brother. She finds it and proceeds to read it until she reaches the part where I wrote about my top three crushes with the whole ranking and writing the top one as the winner to my heart.
“I was busy taking notes from the chalkboard and she was only supposed to borrow a pen from me so I was oblivious. Until I heard it, the familiar writing being announced to the whole class. I was flushed with embarrassment and couldn’t contain my anger, so I tried to grab my diary but she wouldn’t let me reach it, so I just went and stabbed her near the elbow downwards.
“The wound was long because I dragged the pen, so there was a lot of blood. Our teacher was in another room so our classmates went to get her. I was staying by my seatmate’s side finally realising what I had done and panicking. The teacher came and immediately rushed her to the school clinic. I was so afraid of the repercussions of what I did, but I remember being really surprised that when our teacher came back, I wasn’t told to come to the principal’s office or even just taken aside for a little chat. Nothing. Not even my classmates told on me.
“After finishing my notes, I asked our teacher for permission to visit her in the clinic and she said OK. I went to the clinic to say I was really sorry but I stopped walking and hid behind the door when I saw that her mom was there. Her mom was asking her about what happened and I was shocked that she said she was just playing around with some of our classmates, then mentioned a classmate who tripped and accidentally stabbed her with a pen.
“I felt so guilty that I ran to the bathroom and just cried. When I came back, they were gone and so were her things in our classroom. Next day, our teacher announced that my seatmate was transferring to another school.
“Fast forward to many years after [and I] still see her on random occasions, just simple smiles and waves and hi and hellos. Still guilty about what happened but I just can’t find the right timing to apologise. I can’t just go and abruptly say my apology speech when I see her in the mall or someplace.”
Read the full post here.
9. ‘I used to write my mom’s phone number in a ton of textbooks.’
“I have never really got along with my mom. I don’t hate her, but I also don’t talk to her unless I have to. I went to public school and one way they were able to lower costs was to make classroom textbooks instead of individual ones. This meant every day we would grab a random textbook from each class and take it to our desk then put it back before we left.
“In middle school (about age 12-14), every time my mom pissed me off I would open it from the back and write, ‘For a good time call [mom’s phone number here]’. Her number had to have been put in at LEAST 50 textbooks in the two years I was in middle school. In high school, we received assigned textbooks that would get checked at the end of the year so I didn’t write in those.
“My freshman year of high school my brother was in middle school. One day my mom got several dozen text messages and pictures all from random numbers asking for a good time. She was PISSED and demanded to know who did it.
“When I wrote it, I was smart enough to use my non-dominant hand so it didn’t look like my handwriting. I ended up blaming it on my brother. He is the golden child so he didn’t get into trouble at all, but now that I am 21 I feel bad about it. Her number is probably still in a lot of textbooks. I don’t think I will ever tell her it was me though. I moved out the day I turned 18 and now I live over two hours away so it wouldn’t really hurt my life, but why bring up old actions? Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.”
Read the full post here.
10. ‘I paid rent in cash and then stole the money back from my landlady.’
“I have felt horrible about this for years. When I graduated from college, I rented a room in a lady’s house. Several other rooms were rented out to different people, but she also lived there. She always asked for cash so that’s how I paid. I had no idea how to budget and was horrible with money. Eventually, I couldn’t afford rent and other expenses.
“I realized she put my rent cash in her purse and she usually left the purse on the stairs leading into her room. I started sneaking the rent money back out of her purse when I needed cash. I tried to replace it if I could, but there were times I wasn’t able to. She never said anything or asked any of us if we had taken any money from her. I only ended up living there for a few months before moving again of my own choice. I’ve always felt bad and wondered if she ever knew I was doing that.”
Read the full post here.