Yahoo Lifestyle People Are Sharing Their Small-Town Scandals, Tragedies, And Incidents, And They're Seriously Unsettling
Redditor u/grailknight1632 recently posed this question to the r/AskReddit community: "People who grew up in a small town, what is that incident everyone knows about, but no one talks about?" The replies quickly filled with wild accounts of tragedies, scandals, and shocking incidents. Here's what was shared:
1."In the early '80s, a local pastor and the church secretary had an affair. Their spouses both ended up murdered a few months apart. The pastor and secretary have done over 20 years of jail time for the murders. She runs a nonprofit, and the pastor is a marriage counselor."
2."A guy was hired to burn down a bakery for the insurance money, realized he burned the wrong one down, then went and burned the right one the same night."
3."Our local physical therapist was committing insurance fraud by doing things like billing patients for multiple visits when they only came once per week. Well, the police got involved and interviewed him. He stopped paying his employees and just vanished. Turns out he fled to his house in Florida and murdered his entire family and the dog. Very shocking for our small town in Connecticut. He’s serving life in prison in Florida now."
4."There's this married guy who's also had several girlfriends on the side, and all have ended up dead of mysterious causes — house fires, 'suicides,' etc. He is always the primary beneficiary of their assets when they die. Three women have died this way now. He hasn't been arrested, and people just sort of accept it. It’s very odd."
5."There was a pretty big natural disaster, and many people were left homeless with no clothes or possessions. When the donations started pouring in, some locals who were volunteering to sort out the donations kept some of the best items themselves. Clothes, blankets, food. A lot of them were unaffected by said disaster."
6."The college football coach's wife blew through a red light and slammed into an older couple. They both had major injuries and surgeries and were hospitalized for months. The husband ended up dying in a rehab center a few months later from his injuries. The rumor is that the coach's wife had been day-drinking at lunch. However, she wasn't arrested. Supposedly, they didn't have a breathalyzer done at the scene, and she was only ticketed months later for running a red light. They didn't end up charging her for anything because the death was more than 30 days after the accident. This coach is now a US senator."
7."It didn't happen to me, but a buddy of mine grew up in a small farming community in rural Montana. This all happened about 15 years ago. There was a man in his neighborhood who was known as a really friendly guy. He'd wave to people while sitting on his porch and would hand out the big-size candy bars to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. He was just a 'friendly old man.' He had to have been in his late 80s or early 90s; nothing seemed off about him. From the way my friend tells it, one day, out of nowhere, a bunch of police cars, including an FBI van, pulled up to this old man's house. They went inside, and a few minutes later, this 'harmless' old man was being taken away in handcuffs. It drew a pretty big crowd because, remember, this is a small farming community in Montana, and news travels fast."
"It turns out this old man everyone loved had a really dark secret. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, specifically the infamous Mississippi White Knights, and he was connected to over a dozen unsolved murders of civil rights activists. It shocked everyone. And no one has really spoken of it since."
8."My best friend's brother turned out to be a serial killer."
9."A high school history teacher exposed himself in the park and was arrested. He was 'on leave' for six months and then came back and taught like nothing happened. For the senior slideshow, students put up a picture of him and played the Police song 'Don’t Stand So Close to Me.'"
10."My congressman was caught with a sex worker, so his wife divorced him. He keeps getting elected. Oh, and he’s one of those 'family values' politicians."
11."The wife of the sheriff's deputy was cheating on him with some guy. The guy ends up dead of a shotgun wound to the head. The sheriff's deputy is somehow first on the scene. The sheriff's department rules it as self-inflicted. The shotgun that the guy supposedly shot himself with was never found."
12."A kid in my grade was the son of the circuit court judge. Throughout the duration of my high school years, there were several suicides in this small town amongst the student population — enough to really be atypical of such a small community. Then they mysteriously stopped, and there haven't been any in the last 30 years. Rumor is that the judge's kid was a murderer and knew he could get away with pretty much anything. Details were always sketchy. I'm glad I was on his good side."
13."Back in in the '80s, there were two married couples who played cards together every week. Suddenly, both couples got divorced, then remarried the other's partner. They kept playing cards every week. Source: I knew their kids."
14."In the small town I grew up in, there was a story going around that a prominent local businessman had a rather unfortunate encounter with a carrot. As in, the carrot became stuck in a certain part of his body, and he had to seek medical attention. What made it particularly funny was that the guy had brightest tuft of orange hair atop his head. We called him carrot arse. Whenever you'd see him around town, there'd almost always been some muffled chuckles happening in the background."
15."A girl and her beau went for a night on the town and were seen arguing with a man at the end of the night. The next morning, the guy was found dead from gunshots in one location, and the girl was found a couple of days later in another location. No one was ever arrested, and the main suspect was the woman's married chief of police ex. They dug the man up 40 years later to try and run some tests as part of a cold-case investigation. When they opened his casket, his head had been removed and replaced with someone else's head. We in the town don't talk about it much, but that show The Dead Files did an episode about it."
16."The math teacher was having an affair with one of the high school football coaches. The only reason anyone knew about it was because she gossiped about him to her own students. She was using her maiden name when the new school year started."
17."The sweetest older front desk secretary at our high school and her husband were brutally murdered. Turns out they were drug dealers."
18."About eight years ago, the house I am renting was used as a place for growing weed (this is illegal in our country). They had every room filled with equipment and saplings. A couple of weeks before the saplings where ready, something in the house caught fire and they got busted If people ask where I live, I just say the weed house and everybody knows."
19."An heir to a huge fortune from a now 150-year-old major brewery ran his sports car off a notorious curve in my hometown, killing his girlfriend, and was arrested for DUI. He was never charged, as he and his insurance paid off the girl's family, and he threatened to sue the county for millions of dollars for knowing that the curve, called 'Deadman’s Curve,' was unsafe. He was never charged. He later took over his family’s company and was even featured in some of their commercials before selling it to a multinational more than a decade ago."
20."There was a thrift shop that opened and closed very suddenly (maybe open for six months), and we discovered it was a police sting operation to catch drug dealers. A police officer was caught/identified as a major dealer. He was the former D.A.R.E. officer who went to the schools and is now the police chief. I think they even said he was selling old seized drugs."
21."A boy I went to high school with brutally murdered another classmate (post-graduation) over a video game. The murderer cut off the victim's thumb before dumping the body in a river so he could unlock the phone and act like the person was still alive by texting the girlfriend and family."
22."The sheriff's sister got caught stealing meds from the nursing home where she worked. To my knowledge, she was fired, but I'm not sure if she was ever charged with anything."
23."The principal of my elementary school cheated on his wife with a teacher. We all saw them making out in a car in the parking lot. A year later he left his wife and married the teacher."
24."The owner of a private wetland (really wealthy) tried to kill his wife with blowfish poison in her food. She survived because he was a fool. He killed himself while waiting for trial. Now his name is off the wetlands, and no one asks why anymore."
25."There was a very old hotel in my town — old enough that I have a picture of my great uncle and Babe Ruth inside that hotel together. It was a local bar for years but wasn't doing well. As the owner attempted to sell, it was clear he was going to have issues finding a buyer. One night, it mysteriously all went up in flames. The owner sat across the street on a stoop, smoking a cigarette and watching it burn. They never found out how it burned to the ground, and no one's really talked about it since."
26."Two high school friends saved money for four years in a joint banking account for a backpacking trip through Europe. One of them cleaned out the account of $20k and disappeared after an older man in the neighborhood 'befriended' him and talked him into it. Everyone said he went to the nearest big city to blow the cash partying, but I don't think they ever saw or heard from him again. I always wondered if something else happened to him."
27."We had this ugly, ancient, dilapidated building two lots down from the town fire department that was somehow a historical monument. The town's bureaucracy stymied every attempt to do something about it. Suddenly, in the middle of the night. The town’s fire department, located two houses down, took hours to respond and put it out."
28.And: "A famous murderer grew up in our town and killed someone in the next town over. My town quietly pretends they didn't live here and lets the other town take the spotlight. Having worked in the town the murder happened, they also don't like to talk about it."
Every small town has secrets. What's yours? Tell us about the scandal, tragedy, or shocking incident that shook up your small town in the comments, or share it anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
