What's the most ridiculous of astonishing lie you've ever heard?

[SingleSidedShoulderShrug]

Just genuinely interested! Mine is that a colleague of mine told us her dad had died. So good she go home early? Of course we said he's who wouldn't say yes to that.. shame she didn't tell her dad he was meant to be dead or that she'd left early to grieve him as he picked her up as usual. Came in to ask where she was... we were like umm.. she's grieving you ? 😱

@BoomBoomsCousin that is way too much maths for my brain, clearly 😂 though I still doubt her family were that into their family tree in 1978.

Lived with an utter psychopath at university and she used to tell us all sorts.

Told us her dad had bought her a house and she collected the rent from it but her mother wasn't to know... she didn't agree with it though so didn't touch the rent money. I had to lend her 50p once to get out of her overdraft.. she would be 'on the phone' to builders/plumbers, angrily bossing them about regarding this house. It was all BS and hysterical that she thought we believed her.

She was mental though, genuinely scary behaviour from her.

An ex friend was always lying. Usually about terrible things which had happened to her. She told us she'd fallen and chipped a bone in her arm. Surprisingly, it healed in about 10 days. She wasn't happy when I told her my mum had thev same injury at same time and was in agony for a couple of months.

She told us she had cancer and was due surgery, then when that didn't happen, said the hospital had mixed up the results with someone with the same name who lived at the same house number in the street behind her.

There were countless similar stories, but the end came when there was 4 of us gone for a pizza. Another friend was talking about her young son and T said 'of course I can't have kids, what with the dancer and the ectopic pregnancy. ' By then, we'd had enough so decided to call her out. I said 'oh T we've heard of the cancer, tell us about the ectopic' as she'd not said that before. She told us she'd had an ectopic but didn't go into hospital for 3 weeks as there was no bed. When I suggested that an ectopic was a medical emergency and a bed would be found, she stormed off, slamming a tenner down for her pizza.

She actually had a baby within a year. Her mum refused to believe she was pregnant until the scan.....not b because of the "ectopic " but because of the lies generally. Her parents were lovely people who were well aware of the lies. Another friend's paren t's used to drink with them, and her parents would often talk down the pub of the current lies T was coming out with.

Cancer not dancer.

A girl I used to work with used to fake seizures quite regularly - she had no diagnosis for the “cause”. The company, taking no chances, would ring an ambulance each time, but the paramedics of course knew it was bullshit and once demonstrated by lifting and dropping her arm - she carefully avoided it hitting her face or the floor - if she was truly fitting it would have flopped down.

In the end we stopped bothering to call an ambulance and would call her boyfriend to come and pick her up. She was managed out in the end.

Used to work with a compulsive liar.

Her best one was that she was related to our boss

Boss was just, WTF???

"Life will get better for you, just stick with it."

It's no wonder those of us with genuinely shitty and unlucky lives get short shrift when there are people making up this kind of shit.

I once knew someone who told everyone she was in a relationship, and later engaged to, a very well known WWE wrestler. Despite there being no evidence they had ever met and the fact he was in a public long term relationship with someone else.

She would take annual leave and disappear for days or weeks to go visit him or stay with him when he was in the uk, but often the city or country she claimed to be in wasnt where he was, and she seemingly travelled to America with no passport.

People started calling her out on it and she just casually stopped mentioning him and started telling us about the parade of (non existent) ex boyfriends who were declaring their love for her, interspersed with SM suicide threats that always appear to end with her asking people to send her gifts.

I had a friend at uni (X) who would always end up with a similar affliction. I broke my ankle and X turned up days later with her arm in plaster. Someone mentioned a friend of theirs was a twin but their twin passed away before birth - X said she was a triplet but born a singleton. Etc. Anything that happened she would relate to. It carried on years later. Like, friend said her husband had cheated on her and X said she was also having an affair and was worried her fiancé would leave her.

Half of the time the lies were just embarrassingly attention grabbing eg someone had keyhole surgery on their knee and she claimed she had a knee replacement (I’ve known her since 18 - she hasn’t).

The worse and most worrying lies X tells are ones that suggest self harm. I could never prove it but I’m sure she intentionally broke her arm because I broke my ankle. She changed the story of how she broke her arm several times and it was literally the day after I turned up at uni on crutches. I could be wrong but I was always wary after that.

@crispysausagerolls

I had that too, it was usually when she has agreed to do something but couldn’t afford it, she would disappear off the face of the planet for a week or three and then make up a ridiculous lie about why she had ditched me at the last minute and been uncontainable.

I think for her and probably most people like her it starts as a defence mechanism, I know she struggled at primary school and had no friends, to the point where she was allowed to go in for lunch with another year group so that she could eat with her sister.
I don’t think she was bullied, I think it was worse and she was just completely ignored by everyone, she once told me that she went a whole week without anyone speaking to her, the other children and even the teachers would just look through her as if she wasn’t even there and she didn’t have a single friend in the world, even her sister didn’t like her, she just tolerated her because she had too.
I think the lying started after she had an accident in year 6, she broke her arm quite dramatically at a fairground and it required a helicopter airlift to a big hospital.
She got a lot of attention at school because people were really interested to find out what happened, I think it sparked a lightbulb and she realised if she had an interesting story to tell people would want to hear it.... and that’s how the lying started.

wtf were paramedics saying turning up to somebody faking a seizure?

I have read that is not an unusual situation for paramedics.
I played a team game with a group of women and we used to have regular coaching sessions. One of the women "collapsed" and an ambulance was called. When the paramedics got there and assessed her, they started telling her she was okay and to stand up. She didn't. They ended up taking her away in the ambulance. I asked later what was the matter and she said low blood sugar.

Year 7, many years ago.
My best friend told everybody she had been to France for the summer holidays and could now speak french. This was bad enough (bonjour je mappelle "friend")
But by lunchtime she was claiming that me and our 3 rd member of our little group had been there all the time.
Neither me nor 3 could utter a word of french. All 3 of us had a fairly relaxed summer, riding bikes and hanging around shops in our home town.

Used to work with someone who claimed they taught Sean Connery how to do roly polys

A bloke I briefly dated used to lie all the time. Always really over the top stories of his bravery and him being super humanly strong. They didn't need a car jack at the mechanics as he could just hold the car up himself. If any of the beautiful, slim, dainty, petite, helpless women who lived in his apartment building had car troubles they would go to him and he'd not only pull their cars back to their parking spots with his bare hands, he would fix them and never charge them. He wasn't even a mechanic, he worked in interior design. He also helped them with any heavy lifting or furniture assembling as their boyfriends were too unmanly and weak to do it. The boyfriends would then hate him of course

He'd always tell me these stories extremely loudly in public and I would want to die.

FourDecades the first circumcision was given as an explanation after a week's unexplained absence. The little chap seemed his usual chirpy self on return, with no signs of discomfort. The second time this reason was given, the school was dubious, and as I say he was too young to refrain from regaling his friends when he returned from the West Indies. Leave from school was at the Head's discretion in those days; I know keeping in touch with extended family is important, and off-peak airfares are lower, but which would you prefer, sunny Jamaica or wintry sarf London?
Again, there was no trace of post operative discomfort, just a yawning gap in his school attendance, but I completely take your point that genuine circumcisions can go horribly wrong, like any operation.

This sort of false assertion does a great disservice to people with genuine, painful medical conditions, or those suffering from truly traumatic life events.
Giggorata, I think you're on to it; "Bill" was blessed with a vivid imagination, but was not one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. Why not a real Viking ship, complete with warriors? Like may young children, I think he could actually believe some of his own stories, as if "wishing would make it so". The Viking ship was one of many tall tales, most of which were more easily disproved by those who knew him.

Guy I used to talk to on twitter said he was dead. Pretended to be his brother announcing he had taken his own life. Said we didn't know he had this account but he seems to have made some friends. Sadly we found him dead on Monday he had taken his own life. Speak up, he leaves behind a loving wife and 4 children. I knew it was bollocks. He kept saying he was separated from his wife. Instead of just telling me he had got in over his head he killed himself off. Came back 10 days later, apologised said he had tried to take his life in the past but was much better now so said he was very sorry for saying that. Said I would understand if you didn't want to talk anymore. He stayed for another week then deactivated his account. I found out after he had also used a fake name in the past and a picture of some random bloke he found online. Proper weirdo!

Used to work with someone who claimed they taught Sean Connery how to do roly polys

I mean... points for imagination? Fairly difficult to disprove unless you know Sean?

She also said she knew a number of people who worked in children's TV and could get herself and her friends on a particular children's program
My sister and I actually were on children's telly. They came to film Five O'clock Club on Brighton pier, and all our primary school class got free admission and rides to fill out the background.

Girl i went to school with was whiter than white, freckles and copper hair. The man that raised her was Asian and she tried to tell us he was in fact her biologic dad and shed had her skin bleached..

@codenameduchess it would be if he wasn't about 40 years younger than him and had nothing to do with the film business. Or went to Scotland. Ever. 😂

He used to work in our postroom and said that he invented Family Guy.

I used to have a compulsive liar boss,she said she had a long term relationship with a millionaire when really she lived with her mum in a normal terraced house.Batshit.

@JollyAndBright

Also very interesting comparison here because my friend too used to lie a lot revolving around money! Once she “lost her purse“ and we spent a day in the village we were visiting searching for it and it was all because she had just run out of money and didn’t want to say. Ditto lies re visiting. So many times we were out and the “ATM was broken” etc.

I wonder if she had a similar issue being ignored as a child - she suffered from an eating disorder at some stage and perhaps that’s somehow related. The saddest thing is I tried to discuss it all with her mother to get her some help and her mother just refused to see the issue.

she had had a miscarriage over the weekend but was back in work Monday morning running round with kids, lifting heavy stuff and looked in good health she acted as if nothing had happened

I have had 4 miscarriages. If I had mc on a Friday or Saturday, I could have easily been back at work on Monday, and if I didn't want to talk to you about it, could have acted as if nothing had happened.

My Sil had a reputation for telling some proper whoppers ,she sadly passed away very suddenly ,her friend did an obituary for her in the local paper and remembered her as talented swimmer in her youth who had successfully swum the English channel ,God know,s when she had told her friend this but none of it was true the only true bit was that she could swim ,she had never swum competitively ,and she had never swimming open waters ,the furthest and got was the local swimming pool .