“Haunting Deathbed Confessions”: 40 People Share Their Personal Stories

In movies, one of the most dramatic scenes that occurs is the one where someone is confessing on their deathbed. While it may seem like it’s only a fictional event, the truth is that somewhere out there, a real-life deathbed confession has happened. 

#1 My wife is a CNA in a nursing home. She had a resident who was formally a delivery (OB) nurse in the 70s and 80s.

Image source: odoyle321, Solen Feyissa

When she was on her last few breaths, my wife was leaning in to her face to clean it, and she whispered in my wife’s ear, “When I was a nurse, I switched babies around”

I’m not sure what’s worse, knowing that one child may not be your child, or that this woman could have done it MANY times.

#2 There was a couple where the wife got some mental illness where she wouldn’t go outside the house. This went on for years. Eventually after counseling she made a little progress and agreed to go to the drugstore one night. She went in while her husband stayed in the car. While she was in the drugstore, someone walked in, shot her in the back of the head and walked out. She died immediatly and the shooter was never caught.

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For years everyone thought it was some insane paranormal thing, like she somehow knew that being out in public would lead to her death etc…

Many decades later, the husband admitted on his deathbed that he had hired someone to kill her because he could not take her mental illness anymore.

#3 When I was in hospital, the guy in the bed next to me just asked to stop taking his meds as he was ready to die. Last thing I heard him say was “There’s no one waiting for me at home, so I’m going where they are.” Wasn’t really a shocking confession, just a lonely and heartbreaking one.

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#4 My grandfather on his deathbed leaned over, and with all his remaining energy told me that he was in fact the person that let the dogs out.

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#5 A girl I know had her grandma confess to poisoning her first husband because he had hit her. Fair enough.

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#6 My grandpa whispered something cryptic right before he passed. He said, “The garden gnome… it was always him,” and then just closed his eyes forever. It’s been ten years, and I still get chills thinking about it. I mean, what garden gnome? Why him? I never even got to ask.

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#7 My grandmother confessed to me that I’m adopted.

Image source: WatchingInSilence, Arina Krasnikova

What haunts me is that her dementia was so bad that she legitimately believed I didn’t know. For context, I’m Korean, my sister’s Mexican, and our parents are white. I spent the last few hours with her letting her act as if she were breaking it to me gently and promising I wouldn’t be upset with my parents for not telling me (even though they had and it was kinda hard to miss).

#8 A family friend that I knew when I was a child confessed as he was dying that he had used an assumed identity of a dead friend for his entire adult life.

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He was a Jewish child in Germany and there was a program in the UK to accept 10k Jewish refugee children from Europe. He was slightly over the age to qualify, but a younger friend of his was murdered by the Nazis and he took the opportunity to steal the identity of this other boy. He escaped to the UK and eventually moved to North America, started a family and lived out his life. He never told anyone, including his wife who passed away long before he did, because he was afraid he would be deported back to Germany, even many decades later. As he was dying he finally told his children.

#9 My stepfather requested to see the two other families he had that nobody knew about on his deathbed. Boy was that fun.

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#10 My wife’s grandmother called her husband over to her and said something along the lines of. ” I’ve hated you for decades. You are a racist controlling bastard.” She died a few minutes later. He went down to the cafeteria and got lunch.

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#11 My grandfather revealed that my mother was not his only child. In the 1950s, when his longtime best friend was unable to impregnate his wife, my grandfather spent a week (A WEEK) in a remote cabin in the Ozarks having sex with this guy’s wife in order to give them a child. He said they had sex over 20 times.

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His friend even walked in on them once having sex on the kitchen counter after he drove down for the day to check on them – no phone at the cabin. Well, the week of sex worked and she got pregnant. The couple then moved out of state to start a new life as a family – to this day it is their only child and she’s not aware of her biological dad. The only communication my grandfather received from them afterward was a letter giving confirmation the child was born a healthy little girl. He never saw his friend again, but stated he often thought about that cabin in the woods.

#12 In the 70s there was an unsolved murder of a teenage girl in my hometown and some beloved guy from the community allegedly confessed to the murder on his death bed. It’s just spooky to think that even the nicest people may be monsters.

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#13 An electrician I apprenticed for told me about the time he was pulling cable in an attic and found a revolver under the insulation…. with five loaded cylinders and one spent casing. He called the cops, they were able to close a 40 year old cold case, but the perp was in a nursing home on O2 so they just let him run out the clock.

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#14 My great-great uncle admitted on his deathbed that he wasn’t actually related to our family, he’d spent the last 40 years in the US using one of our distant relatives citizenship papers since they looked close enough and in the 1920’s that was really all you needed.

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He didn’t kill the real uncle or anything, the guy had just decided America wasn’t for him and went home. This dude was like “Hey, since you aren’t wanting to go back, can I have your papers?” and that was that.

Not haunting at all, but my family doesn’t have very many death bed confessions, so it’s still technically the most haunting.

#15 My school teacher told the class abpit the time his father in law was on his deathbed. He told the family to “check the walls”. Nobody knew what he meant until they did some renovations years later and found gold ingots in the walls. Not really haunting, but still crazy.

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#16 A friend told me that his mother’s last words was that she never cared about him and was sorry she had him.

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#17 My grandpa disowned my aunt just 24 hours short of kicking the bucket. He cried and you could see how bad it felt, but as he called it, a last act of justice he should have done many decades ago.

One of my aunts outed another one of my aunt as a lesbian in the 80s, gay aunt lost her job, lost her friends, was banned from many places and pratically had to move town to rebuild her life (it was a 40k people town back then and she moved to a larger urban center).

If that was not enough, she done a miriad of other evil deeds along the years. I’ve never seen my grandpa cry, but he wanted to do it himself, not trough a will, as his last deed as a parent.

The whole speech of a dying man delievering justice is something that haunts the whole family to this day, 10 years later.

It was heavy.

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#18 Not really this but my mom was raised in KY where all the miners and coal operators were in conflict in the 1930s and on and she told about some older man who had worked for the coal company and had presumably done some bad stuff on their behalf. Car bombs, shootings, I don’t know. As he lay dying in the hospital years later the coal co. had someone sit in his room 24 hours to be sure he did not do any deathbed confessions. Creepy as hell I always thought.

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#19 My sister works in a skilled nursing facility and she had a retired cop tell her about the child rapist he and other officers beat to death after they arrested him. He told her they brought him in for questioning and he “wasn’t an issue anymore after that”.

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#20 Wasnt really shocking just sad. They were relieved to have an excuse to die. He said he should have killed himself when he was in high school and it would have saved him from “all of this”.. Hoping that was just the meds/pain brain talking. But not everyone has a happy life.

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#21 One of my uncles confessed to having two other children with another woman. He thought he was going to die from COVID and I guess he felt he needed to come clean. He didn’t die. That was back in 2020 and there’s still a ridiculous amount of drama happening over potential inheritances and whatnot.

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EDIT: Yes, it absolutely *is* hysterical he got a second chance to live after admitting to having a second family.

No, my uncle is not a bad person as far as I know. We never interacted much because his English is bad and my Mandarin is atrocious.

#22 My uncle, who was the oldest, admitted he passed on going to University so my other uncle and mother could. Only my father and me were told, and we keep it a secret still as we just don’t want them to feel bad (he passed away a couple years ago, but it was very sudden and unpleasant).

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#23 Dad died when I was twelve. Grandpa died in my twenties. Nothing too crazy. My grandpa did however look up in the corner of the room and said my dad was there to get him. Passed away 40 minutes later in his sleep. Thank god for hospice, and F**k cancer.

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#24 Reading these is crazy. all my grandpa said on his death bed was “can someone turn off that smell” after i opened my breakfast burrito.

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#25 My great aunt was a spinster until late in life. She started a preschool in the 1930s in Beverly Hills, and upon retirement sold the property for a great amount of money. She met and married an older fellow, an elder in the Christian Science church. He became terminally ill but since he had no health insurance and didn’t believe in Medicare, my great aunt went out of pocket for his care. Drained her assets. Fine, her choice. On his deathbed he confessed to her that he had been sleeping with his church secretary for years. Hey, Uncle Herman: F**K YOU.

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