[Serious] What crazy family story happened before you were born?

Ok so call me crazy if you want but my dad and I both have prophetic dreams. He even saved a baby’s life.

He had a dream one night where he saw a baby crawl out of a laundromat and into the road where it got smashed by a car. A month later, he had the dream again. Two weeks later, yet again. Then a week later. Finally, he had the dream two nights in a row.

The next morning, he was walking through his neighborhood and saw a baby crawling out of a laundromat and into the street. He scooped it up just in time, went into the laundromat, handed it to the mother, and left without saying a word.

None of mine have been that interesting but I do sometimes know what’s about to happen.

My mother was stalked by a man in a yellow raincoat when she was a child in Connecticut. She was staying over at her sister's place (there is a huge age gap between my mother and my aunt and her husband).

She was once playing in a friend's pool and saw him moving through the woods, coming towards the house, and other times she saw the man looking through her window as she tried to drift off to sleep (and she tells me it was a huge window, and she was in a bunk bed so she was almost face-to-face with the guy).

She also told me that one day, when she shouted about the man walking past her yard, her sister's husband checked the house and saw that the basement door had been opened. He said it was done by the wind, but my mother recalls that it was a heavy door, and it was a still night.

My mother told me that she overheard her sister and her husband talking with the neighbors and their friends about a homeless guy that lives in the woods near them. I've seen the google map of the area, and there is absolutely a deep woods that the guy could have been living in. Nevertheless, my aunt and her husband didn't take the situation nearly as seriously as they should have. It's sort of forgivable since this was the late 70s and people tended to trust strangers more back then without serial killers and child molesters getting the big media attention that they get nowadays.

My aunt and uncle would get angry when my mother would keep screaming in the night after she saw the man in the yellow raincoat, but for some reason, she wouldn't be believed.

Once, my mother was invited to go over to a weird girl's house that was in the neighborhood, but far from my aunt and uncle's, deeper into the woods. They played with dolls for a few minutes until the weird girl said that she had to do go get something in the house. My mother waited for a long while in the house, and this was a scary house, according to her, with dark 1970s wood paneling, a musky smell/unsettling atmosphere, and the house was hard to navigate as it was very large. My mother, for some reason, believed that something was wrong, so she desperately tried to find her way out of the quiet house, and found he exit and ran all the way back to her sister's place.

I suggested to my mother that the weird little girl could have been related to the man in the yellow raincoat to try and coax children to go someplace where he could prey on them, and she said it was entirely possible.

My mother was very upset when she retold this story to me, and I believe every word she said.

My grandmother ran away from home in the 50s and train hopped and hitchhiked her way across the US to California. While there, she met my grandfather, and they married shortly after she fell pregnant from “heavy petting,”

They moved to Florida, where my mother was born. One day, when my mother was only a few weeks old, my grandfather left the house to get car repairs done and never came back. After a couple days, a letter from him arrives, explaining that he was a secret soldier in the Bay of Pigs, and he had to go into hiding to protect her and their baby.

Unbeknownst to my grandmother, he also sent a letter to her parents, my great grandparents, that she was alone with an infant and they needed to go get her. After a few days time, they arrived and took her back to their home in Michigan.

The story he told to my great grandparents was different than the one in the letter to my grandmother though, and suspicions were high. After years of calling people with the same last name, my great grandmother learned that he was not in fact a secret spy, but a married man with five existing children living in New Jersey. He had also abandoned them, and was no where to be found.

My mom searched for him as an adult, but technology wasn’t what is it now, so it was a slow go of things. She eventually found him in Alaska, approximately 6 months after his passing. Thankfully, she was able to locate her half siblings at the same time, so despite being disappointed, she had new family to meet and love. They’re all dead now too, but I’m so glad she got the time with them that she did. There was a hole in her heart the whole time I was growing up, and watching it get filled in with love and acceptance was amazing.

My dad's a lawyer, in his early career he mainly did divorce/child custody cases, but this was very short lived. He's done more, like, business law for most of his life.

Back when my mom was still just his girlfriend, he had some ugly divorce case he was dealing with. He was representing the wife, the husband was a real piece of work. Wife beater, child abuser, drunkard, anger management, the works. Dad managed to get the restraining order put on him, revoke his custody as much as the courts would allow (bc unfortunately, the courts are very reluctant to completely strip someone of parental rights. Even when they've been beating their damn kids. But thats a rant for another day).

During the court break, my dad was out in the lobby area with his client. In comes red faced husband, looking for a fight. Dad sends his client off into a private room to keep her away from him. Dude comes up to my dad grunting about how much a bastard he is, Dad's just like "yeah yeah whatever." Nothing he hasn't dealt with before as a lawyer lol.

But then he suddenly drops my mom's full name. Dad's attention snaps to the guy. Again, at this point my parents weren't married yet, so there shouldn't have been any formal paper trail connecting my mom and dad together that the guy could have looked up. This was also the 80's, so way before social media/internet. There was no reason for this guy to know my dad's girlfriend's name.

Guy repeats my mom's name like "thats your girlfriend right? Yeah I know of her. I know where you live too" my dad, who was just kinda ignoring the guy/giving short statements until that point, knows the Bailiff is just around the corner. Dad raises his voice and firmly yells "Are you threatening me sir?"

Thankfully, that worked quite nicely in alerting the bailiff's attention who poked his head in the room. Red face husband just says "think about it" and stomps off.

After all was said and done, dad made sure to find a picture of the guy, show my mom and tell her if she ever sees him anywhere, whether she's at home or just out shopping, to immediately call the police and get somewhere safe. Wasn't taking any chances with the weirdo. Guess it was all just a bunch of steam though, never did see the guy again. But my dad always told me for a while there he would keep tabs on him, and to this day still thinks about him from time to time. Said he was the exact kind of crazy that would hold a grudge like that.

My great grandfather was a bootlegger in New England during prohibition

In 1985 my grandparents got divorced. In 1988 my grandfather got remarried. I was born shortly after.

My actual grandmother died when I was young, so growing up my grandfather's new wife, who we'll call Beth, was basically my grandmother. She was weird and goofy, frequently making odd comments and asking overly-personal questions, but she was family so whatever, no big deal.

Thing was, my mom and her siblings hated Beth. When I was younger it was mostly snide comments about her weird mannerisms, but as I got older the vitriol became more severe.

When I was in my late teens, my grandfather passed away. I was sitting with my dad going through some old photos of him when we got to a photo of Beth. My dad immediately made some snide, sarcastic comment.

I finally asked. "Dad, why does eveyrone hate Beth so much?"

My dad looked at me, confused, then his eyes widened in surprise. "Oh wow, we never told you!"

"Told me what?"

Back when I was just a few years old, my parents visited my Grandfather and Beth. My dad went to their places to drive them to dinner, but they were still getting ready so they had him wait in the living room. He was perusing their shelf when he came across a photograph of the two of them at what was clearly the opening of Disney World.

Which happened in 1971.

15 years before my grandparents divorced.

My family didn't hate Beth because she was weird, they hated her because she was a homewrecker.

My dad said he thought about not saying anything, but decided he had to tell my Mom, who then told her siblings, who then confronted my Grandfather and Beth, who came clean. It turns out they had met in the late 60s and had an on-again-off-again affair for nearly 20 years (both of them had been married at the time).

Made the past 10 years make a lot more sense.

When my great grandpa was in his 20s he was walking down the street. A car pulled over and two guys with guns got out and pushed him into the car. They started threatening him for the money he owed. He said he didn't know what they were talking about. They asked if his name was "Bob Smith" and he said no, "Bob Johnson".

They pulled over and kicked him out and drove away.

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Great great grandma was raped so great grandma was the only person in the family who was half black half indian.

My grandma had been having an affair, my grandpa caught on and followed her one day, had a gun and was threatening to murder both of them, pressing it to their heads and things like that. I believe what ended up happening was that my grandfather told them to never see eachother again or he’d kill the guy, and that was that.

Though my grandma shouldn’t have cheated, it was the 70s when this happened and he has always been an abusive prick.

my brother was in kindergarten and he was outside on a swing and he needed to go to the bathrom so he went for a few minutes and when he came back there was a little girl on the swing he was previously on and he got mad that she took it so he got a rock and threw it at her head and she went to a childrens hospital.

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