Finding horrible things when elderly people die. ***Edited by MNHQ to add: TW: contains details some may find upsetting including details of CSA***

[Dappy777]

Has anyone else cleaned out a loved one’s home and found horrible stuff?

Last year my father in law died. He was 78, had lived alone for several years and died suddenly. After his death, we went through the house and found a hidden stash of pornography. It wasn’t illegal, but the magazines were called things like ‘Babyface’ and ‘Just 18’. In other words, the models were as childlike as it was legally possible to photo. We also found several pornographic books and stuff he’d printed off the Internet. Again, it was all young and underage girls. My partner was very upset. His dad had an old laptop but my partner smashed and burned it (he was venting his anger). He said he didn’t want to know what was on there and that it was best if his father took any secrets to the grave.

Anyway, a neighbour recently told me a similar story, only in her case it was even darker. After her partner’s dad died, they found photos he had taken of young girls playing in a nearby park. She said it looked as if he’d taken them from his car. There were a lot, apparently, and she and her partner burnt everything.

I wonder how common this is? When my own father died, I found a bit of pornography, but it was all pretty tame and adult. Even that upset me though. In all three cases the men died suddenly. I suppose people with a terminal diagnosis have time to destroy such things.

I cleared out my friend's father's house for her for similar reasons. Thankfully and despite her justified fears there was nothing there that could have upset her. I really hope it's the same for you.

When my father died, me and my sister found all the love letters my parents had written to each other when my dad was in the army during WW2.
We threw them away unread as we were too upset to look at them, nearly 40 years on I wish we had saved them as it would be lovely to read them now.

Yes, he will. He keeps her at arms length as much as possible.

That is so sad.
I stopped buying a parent gifts because they made a tiny hole in the wrapping paper, wouldl take a guess at what it was and declare they didnt need it! One year, I bought something I thought would be used and appreciated. I was told to take it away with me when I was leaving. After that I bought nothing more than a box of chocs.

Hmm.
Long story short.
We lived abroad, my mam, dad, brother sister. Brother died as a baby, dad was killed. Sister died. Just me and mam, but on return to this country, I was a latch key kid, looking after myself every day until she got home from work and farmed out every weekend to grandparents or aunties.
She remarried, had my step brother and I was never part of their family, always felt like an outsider.
Thought we grew closer as adults, but I think I was kidding myself 🙂

I have a suspicion that it's not naivete or self righteousness.

I’m reminded of a widowed friend of my elderly student landlady, who told me that that unlike my also elderly landlady, she’d never get married again, because, ‘I never did take to the upstairs work.’ 😂

Ilikesundays · Today 16:15
On a completely different level, my friend was cleaning out a dead aunt’s house and found a hoard of valuable jewellery in an empty Kleenex box at the back of a cupboard

That is worth bearing in mind when clearing out a house. When we cleared out my mil’s house we couldn’t find her jewellery anywhere. We asked her godchildren and grandchildren if she’d given it to them but she hadn’t. We went through everything and she’d buried them in jars of coffee and rice and so on.

I cleared out my father's stuff and father in law's stuff and found nothing at all of any "unsavioury" nature, not even any "top shelf" mainstream magazines. Both died unexpectedly at a relatively young age (neither had even retired) so it's not as if either expected to die and "sanitised" their stuff. The "worst" thing we found was an old polaroid picture of a random young woman stuffed inside an old wallet sat on a bench at a railway station! Mother didn't recognise her at all, so we have to assume it was an old girlfriend - the type of train and what others were dressed in in the photo background dated it to around the time he met mother!

My ex was like this. I discovered an order form for videos from Rotterdam (pre-internet) when looking for a bank statement. I was stunned at the nature of the ones he had ordered. I left the following week and slept on a trampoline at work until the end of my contract : (

Sounds like things were really up and down for a while there.

You beat me to it.
We need to keep saying this.

You may be unaware of recent news.

62 million men visited a site where men could learn how to drug and rape their wives.

That's rather a lot of men.

My mother and her best friend travelled extensively in the 1950's - Marrakech by train anyone!

Both she and her friend had romances with foreign men but it was 'too difficult' to get married to a foreigner then.

Mums romance was with an Italian who used to send her a card every Christmas.

My brothers & I found a picture of him in her stuff after her death AKA The Swarthy Spaniard and they had great fun looking hard at me then the picture

Actually my ability to tan easily comes from an incident involving a house of ill repute in Marrakech but thats for another day

Found out boy clothes while clearing out my then partner’s office, they were inside his suitcase. They looked kinda old fashioned to me so I thought maybe they were his older son or something (he had a terminal illness so had been organising his things etc) but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it was odd they were in his luggage.

Last year DD (now an adult) told me that yeah he had another son while with me and his family knew. I was surprised at how upset I felt, considering he died 10+ years ago and him dying was my clean break to escape his abuse.

There were also jars our baby teeth and the brace I'd worn on my teeth when I was a kid.

DH has all our kids baby teeth - as he doesn't know what to do with them and says feels odd to throw them away.

No - and some relatives have gone a bit odd at end - great aunt was hiding money and odd things all over place.

My kindle could raise eyebrows though it's behind a password so you'd have to look- though it's a minor part of my reading library- had an download issue with a text book - man I spoke to at amazon was looking down my list of reading and seemed amused I have such eclectic reading tastes.

When I die my wife is putting by books on the patio, putting my corpse on top and soaking the whole lot in Diesel then setting fire to it.

Turbine Excursion Steamers of the British Isles is NOT her idea of fun

Just some legal porn that mum and dad both had. Nothing else. We don't have porn but we do have sex toys so hopefully don't die unexpectedly. I keep thinking I should put them in a box and label it "sex toys, don't open unless you wish to be scarred for life". I mean it's just vibrators but I don't think my kids will want to see them 😅

Nothing awful thankfully. When mum died we found a letter telling all of us how much she loved is and how grateful she was that we had taken care of her at home in her final years. It was a surprise as she was never the sentimental type at all. We also discovered that she kept all of our school reports, certificates, 21st party/wedding invitations etc. That might not sound remarkable but we were a huge family (15) living in a small house with very little storage space.

Is her FIL though. I don’t think many people expect their own relatives to be pervs.

So not even 2% of adult men in the world with internet access. Assuming they were all male. And not just repeated visits.

A friend of mine had an elderly relative-in-law in her late seventies who became unwell suddenly and needed to go into a care home. She was a very large and 'homely' looking lady who just looked exactly like you'd imagine your average 'granny' to look. Not glamorous in the least. The opposite, in fact.

She died quite soon after, and when her children went to sort her house out they found out that she had a whole secret life where she was having quite fetishy hook-up sex with much younger men who she barely knew. Her poor son was traumatised for life, I think. I really hope the grandkids never found out.

I remember when my son was 6 and I had visitors round, we were sitting chatting and having a lovely catch up and he came running into the room waving my big black vibrator like a light saber 😳😳😳. What a rid neck.

How dare you. My dad wasn't like that and dh wont be either.

@Dappy777
Not quite the same but possibly in the same room, I always remember reading on the problem page of a womens mag (do they still exist?) Quite some years ago a man had written about his elderly uncle who had dementia thus becoming loose lipped talking about 'business with his gangland chums' during the 60s and 70s
Which he regaled to his only ever visitor......
The writer said he believed the tales were true because he'd been completely shunned, never married and seen as dodgy when younger so now resided in a private nursing home whilst talking of known unsolved local cases
Some involving murders, arson, robberies......
It was suggested he just considered them "ramblings"

If it makes you feel better I inherited a box of letters from my parents’ early married life and our early childhood. My Dad worked away. The letters covered every day life, which was interesting. They also got amorous and uncomfortably specific about their plans for when he returned home. 😬 I sometimes wish I could unread them.