Alex Buscemi
Small towns might seem quiet on the surface, but anyone who’s lived in one knows they have their fair share of dark secrets, bizarre incidents, and unspoken rules.
People on Reddit have shared some of the wildest, most unsettling, and downright strange stories from their hometowns—stories that locals refuse to discuss, even years later.
From mysterious disappearances and shady insurance schemes to unsettling crimes that were swept under the rug, these tales paint a picture of the eerie underbelly of small-town life.
Some stories are strange twists of fate, like married couples swapping partners and continuing their weekly card games as if nothing had changed.
Others are more disturbing, involving unsolved cases, secret affairs, and shocking acts that were simply ignored by the community.
These stories have resurfaced on reddit, where people are finally talking about the things that were once only whispered about.
Whether it’s small-town corruption, chilling tragedies, or jaw-dropping twists of fate, these Redditors are sharing the stories their communities tried to erase.
1.
Back in the 80s. Had 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.
2.
The high school history teacher who exposed himself in the park and was arrested. Was “on leave“ for six months and then came back and taught like nothing happened.
For senior slideshow, students put up a picture of him and played the Police song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”
3.
There was a very large mentally disabled man who would spend all day every day sitting on the steps in front of a store. I asked about him once as a kid and my father told me he was waiting for his mother to be done. She ran the store. I was surprised because they looked very similar in age. Turns out the woman was impregnated by her father when she was 12. It was one of those things we weren’t supposed to talk about. Just pretend it’s all normal.
4.
Fatal hunting accident with a school kid in a village with a population of ~5000.
A dad and his son took the boat out to hunt birds with a two-round rifle. Dad sitting in the back, kid in front. Dad fires the first shot and just before firing the second round, the kid jumps up to see if the bird got hit. Hit right in the back of the head. Was instant. Couldn’t stop thinking about what the father experienced while rowing back for a while. This was before cellphones as well.
I was his classmate, not close, but we hung out sometimes. A skater kid with punk hair. The school and community came together and held talks with us kids, so that was a light during that time.
5.
There was a secret gay population in our small town. The dentist had a secret apartment near his office. His wife and my mother were great friends. Not a word was spoken about it.
6.
A guy unalived his son for the insurance money. Put a truck up on a jack and then dropped it on his kid and went to a party while he died. After that happened, it came out that he had unalived his wife for insurance money out in California. He boarded up some windows “to do work on the house,” locked her in the bathroom, and set fire to the house.
7.
The high school health teacher kept getting students pregnant. All brushed under the rug.
8.
There was a girl and her boyfriend who went for a night on the town. They 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. The girl was found a couple of days later in another location. No one was ever arrested, and the main suspect was her married chief of police ex.
Forty years later, they dug the guy up 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.
9.
A minor teen girl had a much older adult boyfriend, and he convinced her to unalive her whole family. It was big news when it happened, and now it’s just a quirky history fact.
10.
Ten-year-old boy gets out of the house and runs to a neighbor for help. He and his siblings were being severely neglected and abused. Four children were rescued; the house was in squalor. Garbage and feces everywhere. The kids were emaciated.
Upon further police investigation, three dead infants were found in the house as well. One, still attached to the placenta, was found stuffed in a backpack. The other two were skeletons and still had diapers and clothes on. The family’s pet dog was found dead as well, presumably from starvation.
11.
In Wayne, Nebraska in the 80s, two football jocks beat a suspected gay kid and broke both of his legs. They run banks there now. Everyone knows they did it. They were never arrested.
12.
A chiropractor from the next town over used to dress like Elvis. He unalived a 15-year-old girl from our town in 1978 and burned down a barn with her body in it. Everyone knows he did it. For ten years after, he used to sit outside the city pool and watch teenage girls in their swimsuits. Nobody said anything to him. Her murder is a cold case that got very little attention in our small town.
13.
Guy shot his wife in his neighbor’s driveway, then shot himself while his teenage granddaughter was on a 911 call. News played that call on TV, and I was so pissed and sad for her. Grandma was a nice lady. Grandpa had some psychiatric issues, and I didn’t really know him.
14.
There was a thrift shop that opened and closed very suddenly, maybe open six months. We later found out 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 came to the school and is now the Chief of Police. I think they even said he was selling old seized drugs.
15.
My high school ROTC teacher, who was a senior master sergeant in the Air Force and well-loved by everyone, got caught sleeping with an underage student. Nothing happened outside of him just not being allowed back to teach. No charges against him, nada. He was extremely wealthy, even for a teacher, because of his family’s generational wealth, so everyone knows he paid it off.
The girl never showed back up to school either and apparently moved away.
16.
Nobody in Blue Ridge, Georgia talks about how many people go missing up here, never to be seen again. We’re right next to the Cohutta Wilderness, a massive plot of federal land that is very wild and undeveloped. It is creepy camping up there.
17.
Our local physical therapist was committing insurance fraud—things like billing patients for multiple visits, but they only came once per week. 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 unalived his entire family and the dog. Very shocking for our small town in Connecticut. He’s serving life in prison in Florida now.
18.
Pleasant Grove, Utah, 2014: A man cleaning out his garage found the tiny, decaying body of an infant. Police searched and found six more dead infants, all in boxes, stashed away.
The mother admitted to unaliving them over a decade because she couldn’t afford to raise them. The case traumatized the town, but now nobody talks about it. It became the town’s shame.
19.
There was a cop who was babysitting his girlfriend’s baby and shook it to death when it wouldn’t stop crying.
There were a couple of best friends who were kind of rivals, and one “accidentally” shot the other one while showing him his gun.
20.
The person that almost unalived his grandchild with an axe while being in an alcohol-induced delirium. When this failed (the grandchild hid behind a wardrobe and he couldn’t get him out), he opened all the valves on the stove, poisoning himself to death as a result. His grandchild escaped and survived.
21.
The man who unalived his wife. Threw her out of the second-floor window. Put her body in the family van. Took his kids to daycare. Told the daycare his wife was missing. Went to the car wash. Washed the blood out of the van. Dumped the body. Then called the cops and said his wife was missing.
22.
I was born in a town that had a story of a dude climbing up into the water tower and drowning to commit self-harm. He was up there for quite some time until the townsfolk complained about the water. By the time they located him, it was partially decomposed and bones. The joke is we got good water—it has a lot of body in it.
23.
My junior high school science teacher (from over 25 years ago) was involved with a student in my mother’s class (20 years earlier, while this girl was still very much underage), then married her, before he came out as gay and split from her.
He was still a teacher until he retired sometime in the mid-2000s. Everyone knew about it. My mother said the other girls were jealous because they all thought he was cute and nice.
24.
A guy who is married has also had several girlfriends on the side that have all ended up dead of mysterious causes. House fires, staged self-harm incidents, etc. He is always the primary beneficiary of their assets when they pass. Three women have died this way now. He hasn’t been arrested, and people just sort of accept it. It’s very strange.
25.
There was a house in town that was “FOR SALE” for nearly two decades before it mysteriously caught fire. A lot of people suspect insurance fraud, but nothing was ever proven.
26.
There was a drink machine in college that was $.75 for a juice. If you put a dollar in, it gave you five quarters in change. I got a juice every day for months before they finally fixed it.
27.
A local woman had enough of her husband’s abuse and was going to leave him for California. He picked up his two kids, ages 7 and 9, and had them wait for her. Then he unalived both kids in front of her, then her, then called 911 and told them what he did before committing self-harm on the phone.
28.
The elderly couple in town who made a self-harm pact. The husband asphyxiated his wife while watching the sunset in the local state park but lost his nerve when it was his turn to go. He was pulled over by a park ranger for erratic driving on his way back home, five miles away, with his wife still buckled in the front seat.
29.
A kid in my grade was the son of the circuit court judge. Throughout high school, there were several mysterious self-harm cases among the student population—enough to be very atypical for such a small community. Then they suddenly stopped, and in the last 30 years, there haven’t been any.
Rumor is that the judge’s kid was responsible and knew he could get away with it. Details were always sketchy. I’m glad I was on his good side.
30.
A former coworker of mine spiraled out of control after the restaurant we worked at closed. He became a manufacturer of illegal substances and ended up on the FBI most wanted list.
One day, he and a couple of guys went around breaking into over 15 houses, stealing money and weapons, until they broke into a house where there was a 16-year-old girl. They kidnapped her and held her hostage. Police from three surrounding towns, sheriffs, highway patrol, and SWAT engaged in a multi-hour standoff with them.
It was a huge news story for months, then it slowly got quiet. Nobody talks about it, but everyone remembers.