Scare You To Sleep

422. Dark Reddit: Deathbed Confessions

55 min
Jan 30, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

This episode of Scare You to Sleep features a curated collection of deathbed confessions sourced from Reddit, ranging from heartwarming final moments to shocking criminal revelations. Host Shelby Novak explores confessions from multiple Reddit threads, including stories of hidden family members, war crimes, infidelity, and spiritual experiences at the moment of death.

Insights
  • Deathbed confessions reveal a pattern of long-held secrets being disclosed only when mortality becomes imminent, suggesting psychological barriers dissolve near death
  • Medical professionals working in palliative and hospice care frequently witness unexplained phenomena and lucid moments in dementia patients, challenging conventional understanding of consciousness
  • Confabulation in dementia patients can create false confessions that mimic real crimes, requiring careful verification before accepting deathbed revelations as factual
  • Intergenerational trauma and family secrets (adoption, infidelity, abuse) frequently emerge as deathbed confessions, indicating emotional burdens carried throughout lifespans
  • Spiritual or paranormal experiences reported by dying patients are common enough to be documented by healthcare workers, though scientific explanations remain debated
Trends
Increased documentation and sharing of deathbed experiences on social media platforms like Reddit, creating crowdsourced databases of end-of-life phenomenaGrowing recognition in palliative care of unexplained lucidity in advanced dementia patients, challenging medical assumptions about cognitive declineNormalization of discussing previously taboo topics (adoption, infidelity, abuse) through anonymous online forums, reducing stigma around family secretsRising interest in spiritual and paranormal interpretations of death experiences among secular audiences, blurring lines between medical and metaphysical explanationsIncreased awareness of wrongful convictions through deathbed confessions, highlighting systemic failures in criminal justice systems
Topics
Deathbed confessions and end-of-life disclosure patternsPalliative and hospice care experiencesDementia and confabulation in terminal patientsCriminal confessions and wrongful convictionsFamily secrets and intergenerational traumaSpiritual and paranormal experiences during dyingWar crimes and historical atrocitiesChild abuse and protection failuresAdoption and family identityInfidelity and relationship deceptionMedical ethics in end-of-life careReddit as source for personal narrativesGrief and emotional processingLucidity in advanced dementiaForgiveness and reconciliation at death
Companies
Reddit
Primary source platform where all deathbed confession stories were sourced from AskReddit subreddits
Patreon
Mentioned as platform for ad-free episode access at patreon.com/scareyoutosleep
Spotify
Referenced in host's personal anecdote about Bluetooth connection during postpartum depression crisis
Amazon
Mentioned as unavailable source for butane canisters due to California regulations
Walmart
Referenced as potential retailer for butane canisters, though host had difficulty locating items
REI
Retail location where host purchased butane canister for kitchen torch
Ontario Convention Center
Venue where host will appear January 30-February 1, 2026 for Creep Eye Econ event
People
Shelby Novak
Host of Scare You to Sleep podcast, narrator and curator of deathbed confession stories
Fritz Moen
Norwegian man wrongfully convicted of two murders, served 18 years before exoneration via deathbed confession
Tor Hepso
Actual perpetrator who made deathbed confession to murders Fritz Moen was wrongly convicted for
Geraldine Kelly
Woman who confessed to murdering and freezing her husband's body for 13 years on her deathbed
John Kelly
Victim whose remains were discovered in freezer after wife's deathbed confession
David Cronenberg
Actor mentioned in Ready or Not 2 film advertisement at episode opening
Elijah Wood
Actor mentioned in Ready or Not 2 film advertisement at episode opening
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Actress mentioned in Ready or Not 2 film advertisement at episode opening
Samara Weaving
Lead actress in Ready or Not 2 film mentioned in episode opening advertisement
Quotes
"The good family silverware is hidden in the ventilation system, about 15 feet from the furnace. We travel a lot and that's where I hid it. That shit's expensive."
Grandfather (deathbed confession)Mid-episode
"That was too cruel. She was an old woman. I should have just shot her."
WWII soldier grandfather (deathbed confession about war crime)Mid-episode
"Mom, you came back for me"
Dying patient (final words before death)Late-episode
"I'm sorry I killed you son"
Palliative care patient (deathbed statement)Late-episode
"My dad said he's sorry I'm in so much pain and that you got to see it, but I'm coming home to England soon. We're going to run on the field together with mama and bow."
Advanced dementia patient (final lucid statement)Final segment
Full Transcript
The game has only just begun. Radio Silence directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette are back for round two with their new horror comedy film, Ready or Not 2, Here I Come. Samara Weaving returns as Grace, the battle-worn and bloody bride, and is joined by stars Catherine Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sean Haddesey, Nestor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, and Elijah Wood. After Grace marries into a mysterious family and is forced to play a life-or-death game of hide-and-seek. She emerges victorious, but what she didn't know is that by winning, she triggered a whole new twisted battle. This time with her estranged sister Faith at her side. The duo faces a shadowy group of rival devil-worshipping families who control the world, and they must fight to the bloody death for the ultimate prize. Two times the kills, two times the satanic rituals, and two times the human combustion. Don't miss the full tilt insanity. Ready or not to, here I come when it hits theaters March 20th. Hello, and welcome to Scare You to Sleep. I'm your host, Shelby Novak, and I'm going to tell you all about some deathbed confessions I found on Reddit. By the way, please let me know if you've been enjoying this way of doing the dark Reddit episodes. I've been having fun theming each episode, but I didn't even stop to ask you how you felt about it. So let me know in the comments or on social media whether you prefer these themed episodes, or if you like the old, more eclectic ones better. I'm happy to oblige either way. This episode, the theme actually started out a little different, but as I wormed my way through the recesses of Reddit and the different topics and posts, I found an absolute treasure trove of fascination. Deathbed confessions. They can be shocking, funny, horrific, and sometimes all three. I will ask you to check out the trigger warnings of this episode. Some of these confessions are disturbing in very particular ways, and I don't want to ruin your evening. Did you go check, or did you decide not to? Either way, let's begin. This first is from the AskReddit subreddit. Actually, all of these are from the AskReddit subreddit. It was posted 8 years ago on my birthday, September 21st, 2017, by user IDon'tLikeYouAnyway, who asked, What is the most shocking thing someone confessed while on their deathbed? This answer is the first that really caught my eye by user MartTJNCVB or MartineCVB. Sorry, these usernames are hard to parse sometimes. I have a good and bad story for this thread. I'll start with the good. It's not exactly on the deathbed, but as close as she was able to at the time. My aunt had cancer. She knew she was going to die, and she knew it would probably be in less than a week. She couldn't eat, and drinking was hard. She wanted to be sedated heavily, kept asleep permanently, essentially, for the last few days, because, quote unquote, this whole dying thing sucks and I've had more than enough. So, fair enough. A doctor is called up, a plan is made, and carried out. The last thing my aunt said before going under for the rest of her life was, ah, I see the stars. They're sweet and run carefree. gather them up. And that's when she went under. She died three days later. Nobody knows what she meant, but somehow those last words fit her. So my uncle, her husband, got them tattooed on his chest, over his heart. The bad. My other uncle had been in a car accident. It was bad. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he said, tell my wife that Wendy is my daughter and I love her. Name changed for privacy. He died a few minutes later because of internal bleeding. Wendy was the neighbor's then five-year-old child. That caused a huge shitstorm, I can tell you. User Texas Texas Texas 1 replied, how did that story end? OP said, the neighbors divorced, otherwise mostly arguing, Wendy lives with her mother and the mother's ex-husband is legally her father. This next post is by John Babe. My mother died when I was 11 of stage 4 cancer. While she was on hospice at home, my grandmother, on my dad's side, was standing by the bed. She woke up, heavily medicated, pointed and said, What are you doing here? I never liked you. Not especially shocking, but hilarious. It sounds heartless, but my grandmother gave my mom hell when she was alive. My other grandmother, mom's mom, tried to hold in laughter. as she told her she taught her better than that. This next one is from Picks and Chooses. My mom told me about the death of her father, my grandfather, and his last words to her. She said he was on his deathbed, and it was obvious he was nearing the end. He motioned her over to tell her something. She went over, leaned in close, expecting some declaration of his love for her or something deeply insightful. He said, The good family silverware is hidden in the ventilation system, about 15 feet from the furnace. She looked at him like he was crazy. He said, What? We travel a lot and that's where I hid it. That shit's expensive. He died the next morning. Ignoré Mesaurus. I met a lady on a train to Edinburgh who was really nervous because she was on the way to meet her brother for the first time in 70 years. Her parents had told her he died when he was one, but they'd given him away because they couldn't afford so many kids. She didn't find out he was still alive until her mother confessed it on her deathbed. I can't imagine I will say it's interesting some of the deathbed confessions that come from the older days probably anything pre like 2000s, 1990s and some of the more modern ones it's easier to keep secrets in the old days that's for sure this next is from Cat Maniac. I had a hospice patient who asked everybody, is it December 13th? Since mid-November, she had been asking this. We'd heard this question multiple times every day and just assumed it was a family member's birthday or something. December 13th finally rolls around and that's the day she dies. So this particular post that I'm reading from did say what are the most shocking deathbed confessions. It didn't specify that it had to be ones that you heard. So the next two are actually things that were in the news. And these were commented on this post, but they also have some news things. So there are some additional information for each of them. But again, you're welcome to go research more on your own if you'd so like. So this is from Ahoy There Fancy Pants and he said, in Norway in 2005, a man asked his nurses to invite the police over to his room and then he confessed to raping and killing two girls almost 30 years earlier. Not only that, but another man had been convicted of both crimes and spent 18 years in prison. And then they linked the article, the Wikipedia article about the innocent man, whose name was Fritz Moen. I apologize to my Norwegian listeners, I don't think I pronounced that last name correctly. So Fritz was a Norwegian man wrongfully convicted of two distinct murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison. After the convictions were quashed, an official inquiry was instigated to establish what had gone wrong in the authorities' handling of the case. And on June 25, 2007, the commission delivered harsh criticism to the police, the prosecution, and the courts in what was immediately termed Norway's worst miscarriage of justice of all time. so that was all as i said june 25th 2007 fritz had already died on march 28th 2005 he was deaf and had a severe speech impediment he was also partially paralyzed but had normal intelligence and good memory again you can go research this a little further on your own i know you're here for deathbed confessions not a singular case so just quickly some a little more information um the court found that the forensic evidence exonerated moen um and that was in 2004 among other things he had an alibi for the most likely time of the crime the forensic evidence indicated that the perpetrator had pursued the victim across a field knocked her down and then tied her with her own clothes while Fritz was partially paralyzed and physically incapable of these actions. Fritz died on the 28th of March 2005 of natural causes, but it was known that he wanted the case to continue on his behalf. And so he was posthumously acquitted after Tor Hepso. Again, I'm so sorry, Norway. That was the convicted criminal with a long history of violence who made a deathbed confession to killing both of the victims. And this next comment from Random Guy TF. Geraldine Kelly, who confessed to having murdered her husband and stuffed his body in a freezer for 13 years to her children as she lay dying of cancer. And for this one, I have the LA Times article from November 20th, 2004 about this case. Deathbed confession leads to slain husband. So this was by Catherine Salant. Again, Not going to read the entire thing, but Geraldine in the article is described as tough by one of the owners of the Victoria Motel in Ventura. Jerry, as she was known, sported tattoos, kept attack dogs as pets, and sometimes draped a six-foot boa constrictor around her neck. During the seven years she managed their 36-room motel next to Highway 101. On November 12th, as she lay dying of cancer, the 54-year-old mother confessed to her daughter that she had killed their father in California several years ago. She had previously told her children that he had been fatally struck by a car. The couple grown children told Massachusetts State Police earlier this week where to find the freezer containing their father remains and Massachusetts authorities confirmed that the remains found in a storage locker in Middlesex County were those of John Kelly. Based on an autopsy, authorities believe Geraldine shot her husband in the head in 1991 or 1992 and hid his body in a freezer. The freezer remained in a Ventura storage facility until 1998, when Kelly moved back to her childhood home of Somerville, Massachusetts, shipping her husband's remains with her. The remains stayed in Massachusetts storage until Thursday, when medical examiners used a physical description and several tattoos to tentatively identify John Kelly. the two adult children requested privacy for healing and to comprehend it all until her confession their mother had stuck to the accident story refusing to reveal where their father was buried apparently both the adult children were estranged from their parents since their teens and they had never questioned the tale a close friend of john's said that they were seen arguing a lot the couple was and seen there's a whole it there's this this article has the entire story of kind of how this all came to be but uh yeah that's shocking deathbed confession to say the least interesting that she had his remains moved with her instead of just i don't i don't know i mean the the entire ocean's right there but i i don't know oh boy I will have that article also linked in the show notes by the way all right this next one is from battlefield insanity shortly after he was diagnosed as suffering from the final stages of heart failure a few weeks before he died my grandfather told me several stories about world war ii that changed my view of him and of war in general now before I start, I should tell you that my grandfather was one of the kindest men you'd ever meet. Always friendly, never drank, the kind of guy who gave the shirt off his back to those who needed it and handed out the biggest candy bars in town on Halloween. Everyone loved him. Shortly after D-Day, my grandfather was a part of a 12-man rifle squad fighting in northern France. As his unit entered a seemingly abandoned village, they were ambushed by a squad of Germans and the unit was torn apart. They won, but by the end of the fight, only three of the Americans were still alive, and one of them was badly wounded. The squad leader and his assistant were dead. The two unwounded soldiers swept the battle scene and hauled three badly wounded German Wehrmacht, soldiers into the middle of the street. My grandfather looked at the other American soldier, said, no prisoners, and cut the throat of one of the Germans right there. He said he almost puked because there was way more blood than he was expecting. His partner lifted his rifle to shoot the other two, but my grandfather stopped them. He said that there may have been other German soldiers nearby and didn't want the gunfire attracting them. So, they dragged the other two into the shallow ditch on the side of the road, with about six inches of water in it, and stood on the German soldiers' heads until they drowned. After that, he said he hated Germans. He confessed to a number of war crimes, including shooting German civilians and killing German soldiers who were trying to surrender, apparently a not uncommon occurrence. But the worst? He told me that he only felt guilty about one thing he'd done. In early 1945, his new squad was going through a small German village when he and a couple of other guys kicked in the door to a small house. Inside was a small old German woman in a wheelchair who immediately started screaming and cursing at them in perfect English. My grandfather kicked her wheelchair over, rolled it out the door, and then knocked an oil lamp over as he left the house with his partners. She burned to death. He looked at me with cold eyes and said, That was too cruel. She was an old woman. I should have just shot her. Damn. OP ended it with damn, not me. There were actually quite a few very disturbing war crimes that I came across in these comments. I didn't include all of them. For one, this is only one episode, and two, it may just be me. We all have different sensibilities, but they were just very disturbing. and I didn't want to spend a majority of the episode on war crimes. But if you would like, again, they're there. You can click on those posts and go see them. I think there may be one other in here somewhere. But again, they were just, it was a lot. I actually texted my dad because he's very into World War II and I was like, oh my goodness. the things people talk about on their deathbeds. There was a, I follow an account on Instagram about cemeteries and tombstones. And there was one I saw pretty recently and I had told him about it. And we discussed it a little bit. And it was a man who had been a soldier in Vietnam, an American soldier in Vietnam. And his tombstone says something to the degree of, I'm so sorry to the old woman I murdered. Something like that in Vietnam. But I don't recall it even having his own name on the stone. So war is not the glory we see in a lot of movies. Anyway, let's move on. Let's see. This is from Say My Name Bastion. Oh, and this is a pleasant one. I did this on purpose. Let's follow it up with something nice. My grandpa's brother died of Parkinson's a couple of years ago. He was on hospice, and all his loved ones were there to comfort him before he passed. He was incoherent his last couple of days, but just before he died, he sat up, looked at an empty corner, and said, Mom, you came back for me laid back down and died with a smile on his face My great grandma was definitely someone who would come back to help her child transition to the next world if there is one She was a great lady So sweet This next one is from the Micaroni. Not necessarily a confession, but I used to work in an assisted living home, and on his deathbed, a resident apologized profusely for molesting his daughter's son just minutes before he took his last breath. Someone replied, a now-deleted user replied, Damn, that fucking sucks. The Micaroni replied, Right? The daughter was there and started bawling, saying, I forgive you, I forgive you. Very emotionally charged moment. She explained later that he had sought help with his family and was reformed, but could never let go of the guilt. Assisted living homes are wild, man. And if you're thinking this, yes, several people did point out that it wasn't really the place of the mother to forgive him. it's her son's um this next one is from ninja dk my mother worked as a nurse in the biggest hospital in copenhagen a dude is terminally ill with cancer has his wife children and entire family next to him he decides before he dies that he was gonna phone the girl he was cheating with on his wife to meet up at the hospital when the entire family was there. My mother had to move the entire family into another room when she showed up because of massive shouting and hysteria. What a selfish prick he was. We're like halfway through and I'm just wondering what would your deathbed confession be at this moment? Do you have something that you'd like to get off your chest? You don't have to tell me. You don't even have to leave it in a comment or anything. I mean, if you want to. I love Goss. But this really makes you think, huh? There were a lot that I saw that I didn't necessarily include. I might have included maybe one or two examples, but a lot of, there was one in particular, I should have just included it. Now I don't know where I saw it, but it was someone who had been asking their whole life if they were adopted. They just had the feeling they were adopted. They'd ask their parents, their family members. Everyone said, no, you're not. Mom dies. Mom is the last of the parents in the older parts of the family to die. And in the will, their mom had left them a letter that said, yes, you were adopted. And that person said, if you have an adopted child, tell them. Or at least if they ask about it, don't lie to them. And there were a few, there were, I mean, there's a lot of, I'm not your biological mother. There were a lot of like, again, these are, some of these are from the older days where I think it was, I don't know, I guess less normal, normalized to have adopted children. I don't, I don't know. I've never had to deal with that. And I'm not from the older days. Well, depending on who you ask, I guess, but not from those particular older days. there were quite a few that were like, I don't know why my parents didn't just tell me I was adopted. So if, I don't know, maybe that'll give you something. If you have an adopted child, I guess if they ask, just tell them according to all these deathbed confessions I'm seeing. There is a sort of wisdom that comes from reading all these, I think. So this next one is from a deleted user. not really a confession but my grandfather's dying breath was i can see it it's beautiful as he opened his eyes and smiled in awe i'm a religious person and i can see how that was probably just random neurons firing but it took us all by surprise in a spiritual way regardless This next one is, uh, I mean, it's funny from the outside. I guess if it was in it, it wouldn't be that funny. This is from Bus Lane. Way late to the game here, but my grandpa's uncle confessed to actually being his dad on his deathbed. Or what he thought was his deathbed. turned out he made a full recovery and was alive 10 more years with his wife knowing he impregnated her sister don't you hate it when that happens so those were all from one post and that wasn't even the half of it as usual links to all these posts are in the show notes for you to peruse on your own they're seriously like it's just endless amounts of deathbed things but we're going to go on to a different post asking for deathbed confessions, because this one was too compelling to not jump over to. This was posted by Alyssa of the East, again in the Ask Reddit subreddit, and they posted four years ago on September 14th, 2021, asking, nurses of Reddit, what are some of the most memorable deathbed confessions you've had a patient give? We're starting out with another real dark one. This was posted by Careful Example. Had an elderly woman who had gone downhill and was on her deathbed for about a week. She kept asking me to read the Bible to her, and as soon as I would start, she would scream that he was coming to get her, that he was waiting right behind me. Very unnerving at 3am. Finally, I asked her who was coming to get her and she replied with the devil's coming for me because I let my husband rape our kids and did nothing from what I've gathered and you will see more in fact this next one is also one of those um yeah pedophiles really love to confess on their deathbed I don't know why and pedophile protectors like this that last lady I have no idea what it is if it's maybe this like religious feeling of if you confess you'll be forgiven. I don't know. It's disturbing though. This next one is call is from user daddy shirt. I been a nurse for six years a year or two before I started my floor housed a convicted child rapist and murderer sent to us from prison dying of cancer One of my co-workers told me about how this patient described his child victims hovering outside the windows, waiting for him to die so they could drag him to hell. we were on the 10th floor at that time i asked my co-worker if he thought the children were hallucinations he's one of the smartest most perceptive people i know he said he thought there was a good chance that what that patient saw was real someone replied someone named young discord replied and said they were real to him and that's all that matters and I agree young discord. Okay let's do a couple lighter ones in a row shall we? Woof let's take a little not break but let's do some lighter ones. So this is from Tang Cameo. My dad loves small town auctions and over the years he collected all those boxes of stuff that would go for the lowest bid. He amassed quite a collection filling the garage and a workshop out back. He always promised mom he'd sell it all someday in some big garage sale or auction of his own. Then one day, my mom's cancer returned and the doctors told us this time it wasn't a fair fight. Two weeks before she passed, I was sitting with her in the hospital. We'd run out of things to say. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the pain, and said, Thank God at least I won't have to deal with your dad's stuff. Me and my mom burst out laughing. Don't tell my dad. And this is from HeyNow111 Kind of similar, I suppose. I'm a scrub nurse. My job is to assist the surgeon during surgeries. I was preparing an elderly patient for a pretty high-risk surgery. There was a good chance he was going to be fine, but there was also a decent chance things were going to go south. He knew this. While the CRNA is doing her thing, getting the anesthesia ready, I'm standing next to him, going over his chart and signed releases, and he says to me, I need you to tell my wife I'm sorry for all the times I raised my voice at her. There weren't many times, but right now, I wish there weren't any. That was the first time I ever got choked up at the bedside. Thank goodness for masks because it helped hide my expression. I so badly wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay, but no one knew if it was going to be. I said back to him, I'll do anything you need me to, but right now let's think some happy memories before you go under. I asked him to tell me about he and his wife's first date. Once he was under, I excused myself before scrubbing in to stop myself from crying. He made it through surgery, and his wife was waiting for him after being transferred from the PACU. This is from Pagan Dreams. Nurse here. An old lady gave me some questionable advice. She was this 90-something Italian Nona, all dressed in black skirts and dripping with rosary beads and crucifixes. Very Catholic. She told me, To be happy in life, you need three men. One for the money, one for the love, one for the boom, boom, boom. Sex. Can't say I agree with her, but it's certainly memorable. I don't know, pagan dreams. Maybe she knew the secret to life. I don't know. This next one is from Rabid Bunny JD. I had a client, 90 year old male, confess to his wife and children that while he was away on business, he obtained another family. He lived another two years. Someone deleted replied, so like what happened after the confession? Rabid Bunny JD said, Wife and children kind of cast him off. He thought he was dying immediately of cancer. They were multi-millionaires. He tried to spend as much as he could out of spite so his children wouldn't inherit any of it. I learned a lot about what stocks to invest in while caring for him. Interesting. Oh, this next one's very cute. From Hobie642. One of the most challenging moments I had with a patient that was passing was a woman in her 80s with advanced dementia and trying to recover from a severe bed sore that had gone septic from a nursing home with a bad reputation. She often confused me with her second husband. Her daughter told me I looked a lot like him. The patient would often talk about our sexual exploits, including swinging and partner swapping, as well as very wild adventures. I had given up on trying to tell her I was not her husband, because I just confused her and upset her, so I learned to just play along. She talked to me often about our children and other family, and many non-sexual adventures they had. it made her happy to talk about it and often left me with a smile and this next one is from demonic wombat i don't know how to feel about this one you'll see related to me by my mother before her passing my great uncle admitted that he had killed his first wife by beating her to death with a bowling ball because he found her molesting their neighbor's son when he was five years old. This was when he lived in Ireland, and a few years later he moved to America, met another woman, and lived his life happily, and had a number of kids and grandkids. It puts most of the family into shock, as my great-uncle was one of the most non-violent people you would ever meet. No explanation on how he got away with it, or any more than that. He died like three minutes later, shook my family up for a while. So I brought up this one. This might not necessarily be this, but a lot of nurses and medical people in the comments mentioned this thing called confabulation. And in dementia, it happens a lot where people will confess to things. I left most of those out that were definitively those. There's one that said their mother kept confessing to killing her friend as a teenager, and they realized it was like a storyline from a movie. Some people will say like they'll realize it's a storyline from a book later on when their parents or their loved ones are on their deathbed, especially with dementia. And they'll be like, I did this horrible thing or I did this and this. And they'll realize, again, it's from a book or a movie that they really loved. So this one, I don't know. I just kind of thought that because how did he never get caught? A lot of murderers don't get caught. I'm not saying I blame him for, you know, if she was molesting a child. I'm not, like, on her side. I'm just saying it seems like a pretty violent death to, like, just kind of walk away from. and on to this next one. This has been a fear of mine lately. I've been dwelling on, but this isn't about me. This is from Big O Detroit. Just the people who die alone. The next of kin is usually a distant niece or nephew. I hated those calls because I would inform them of the passing and they would just say, okay, thank you and hang up. now you've been feeling lonely lately don't look at me next one squirrel hits a car squirrel hits car is the name of the user just so happened to me my first death in the hospital as a tech this palliative care was circling the drain when i was q2 turning she woke up grabbed my arm and said i'm sorry i killed you son, then went. I still can't get that look of horror out of my head. And that was years ago. So let's move on over to a different thread of deathbed confessions. Our third and final, final of the evening, final, uh, overall post, not final. This isn't like the next one. It's not the final. You get what I'm saying. So this was posted eight months ago on June 7th, 2025 by user you're an ouch. They asked, what is the most disturbing deathbed confession you've ever heard? This one is from Germaine Kitty. Not quite a confession, but near the end of my mom's life, she asked, where are my boys? My twin and I thought, she meant girls, so we told her we were there. After she died, the day before the funeral, we got a call from a PI asking if they could speak to my mom. I told them she had passed away, and the PI shared that they represented a client looking for their biological mother. I was seriously thinking it was someone that somehow heard my mom had passed and tried to get money. At the time, I was grieving, so it seemed that plausible. I decided to hear her out, and she was absolutely describing my mother and parts of her life that no scammer would have known. Come to find out, our mother had two boys from two different men prior to marrying our father. One of them was from her hometown, the other was from Japan. So much of her life before our dad was an enigma suddenly Both her sisters had Alzheimer's, so no information was ever shared with us User Brooklyn Snow replied and said, wow, that's nuts, did you meet them? Jermaine Kitty said, yes, my immediate siblings and I met with both of them Our mother's first son didn't know he was adopted when the other half-brother's PI contacted him His mom had passed away and never told him, but apparently he had suspected. He looks so much like my older brother, it's uncanny. The other half-brother bears a similar resemblance to my mother when she was younger, but he's in his 60s now. We still stay in contact. It's crazy, as our immediate family shrank, we grew again. User AfroBaggin said, Y'all got the good ending. That's amazing. And Jermaine Kitty said, It was for us, although my dad never got to meet them before he died. He was really sick when my family got to meet them, and he wasn't able to travel to where they were. I think they both talked to him on the phone, so it was like he still had a piece of her. Dementia is awful, and my dad had to see the worst of it in my mom. This next is from Princess Foxglove. It's nowhere near the level of what some of these are, but growing up, my mother and grandmother had always been very estranged. They had an arm's length relationship, and the only times we visited were generally a disaster. But to her credit, my mom tried and wanted me to have a grandmother and the memories that came with it. She tried her best, but something was very off. small details trickled out over the years but they were vague when it was time for my grandmother to die i remember on her deathbed i visited my mother did not and my grandmother told me right before she passed tell your mother i always really loved her despite everything that was a strange thing for her to say, because why would that have been something she needed to say? I didn't tell my mom right away, because after my grandmother died, she was oddly emotionless, and I felt like it was not something my mom needed to hear just then. A few years later, the truth came out when we were talking over the phone. My mom told me that when she was five, my grandmother tried to run her over with a car because she found out her affair partner was molesting my mother. She wanted to get rid of her. It didn't work because a neighbor saw and intervened, so my mom ended up getting sent overseas to her father's mother's home to be safe while that got dealt with and my grandparents got divorced. Times being what they were, however, when my mom returned, her mother got custody of her. It ended up with my mother running away, being homeless, getting pregnant very young by a much older man, a secret sister I never knew about, and I was pretty floored. When she told me, I figured that it made a little more sense why my grandmother had said that so I shared that with my mother finally She just said Well she had a strange way of showing it And that was that This is from MK Rune. When I was 10 or 11, my grandfather passed away from cirrhosis of the liver. He was a happy, functioning alcoholic. I was in his hospital room alone with him the day he passed, scared because of how different he looked from the man I'd always known. He'd lost like half of his body weight and looked skeletal. He held my hand and told me that his father, my great-grandfather, killed four men in their beds with an ice pick because they'd, quote-unquote, raped a colored girl, and the law wouldn't do anything about it. He went into gory detail that bordered on torture porn. I still have mental scars 35 years later. I didn't understand all of that at the time, and it wasn't until years later telling my mom about it that she confirmed and explained it in more gentle detail. Apparently, my great-grandfather and his brother may have also been professional or maybe serial killers and supposedly killed upwards of 25 KKK members across Alabama, Georgia, and Northern Florida. And yes, many of the replies to that said your grandfather and his brother were heroes. This next is from Hot Kaleidoscope 6804. I worked in palliative dementia care night shift for two and a half years. This is incredibly common, and I would say 95% of palliative cases experience this in some respect. Side note, this person, when they say this is incredibly common, they're referring to seeing a ghost of a family member when you pass. Once I cared for a lady that was completely bedridden and in the final stages of dementia. Her arms and legs were completely frozen up, and she only babbled incoherently sometimes. We had to rotate her every 30 minutes because her skin was so weak. I cared for her for over 9 months. One night, I walked in and she was sitting upright on the edge of the bed, completely lucid and talking animatedly to nothing next to her bed. she saw me walk in and goes mama this is my name she takes great care of me i sat next to her on the bed to make sure she didn't fall and hit the emergency button because i was freaked rn arrives and is absolutely shook we have no idea what to do or how she even got here this woman was completely bedbound for months. After a couple more minutes, she got tired and asked us to put her back in the bed. She said, my dad said he's sorry I'm in so much pain and that you got to see it, but I'm coming home to England soon. We're going to run on the field together with mama and bow. She died the next day. This irrevocably changed my beliefs around dying. I'm not religious, but I now understand that love is an emotion and a bond that stretches ethereal planes. Five years after this, I had a newborn baby and was suffering from postpartum depression. I got into my car to run away. My Bluetooth glitched as it connected, and my Spotify started playing all of my grandpa's old favorites. Back-to-back, perfectly curated to take me on an emotional journey. I listened to EDM and have never saved any old classics. By the time I finished listening, I had calmed down so much and didn't drive away. I don't know if I'd still be here if I had. He passed in 2019 and still has my back. Love you, Pa. And that is the last of our deathbed confessions for this evening. I wanted to leave off on a very sweet note, as you can see. After so much sour. So, please let me know if you enjoy these dark reddits where they're sort of themed. I have been enjoying them, but again, it's not about me. It's about what you'd like to listen to. I am here to serve you. So please, but please do let me know if you prefer this way to do it or the other way. And let me know if you'd like more of these deathbed confessions. Was this a little too dark? Makes you think. A lot of them make you think. As always, you can find me on social media at Scare You to Sleep for show updates, or you can finally find my personal account at Shelby B Novak and mostly on Instagram. If you'd like to submit a story to the show, you can send it to scary to sleep at gmail.com. Please put into the subject line, whether it is a fictional story or a true story and feel free to send in anything interesting you see on Reddit as well. I'm not trying to send you to do my work for me, but you know, I'm only one lady. So if you ever seen anything that you'd like me to cover or have a topic you'd like me to look into, I'm happy to, uh, you know, expand my mind and my rabbit holes I'd like to go down. So please let me know. Let's see. Oh, if you'd like ad free episodes, you can join the Patreon, patreon.com slash scare you to sleep. I apologize by the way, if you've noticed for the sound of my dishwasher, this whole episode. I am leaving in the morning to go to Creep Eye Econ. If you are listening to this, there's still time. You can still come see me if it is between the dates of January 30th and February 1st of 2026. You might be listening to this in, let me just say a year, and if it's right, maybe it'll freak someone out. 2028. Maybe you're listening to this in 2028 and you can't come see me. But if it is not, you can see me at the Ontario Convention Center in California, Ontario, California. We have an Ontario too. Sorry, Canada. We also have one. I know. Maybe someday I'll make it up to Canada. I will be this fall, but that'll be for pleasure, not work. So, and I don't remember what part of Canada I'm going to. I don't know. We'll find out. I'm going on a trip with my sister in law. So, and she has the itinerary down to a tee. So what else? Oh, baking corner. I made a little personal or it's like a two person, um, Texas sheet cake this week. I was really craving Texas sheet cake. I also made a, Oh, I made tap. I did the thing. I made the tapioca and I put the creme brulee top on like I torched it and everything and it was just okay I mean it's not bad it's the flavors work it's just the textures I didn't I thought the textures would be transcendent the texture of tapioca pudding with the crunch I thought it would be like a whole thing that would be like wow but no there's a reason that people don't do that I found out it wasn't bad again, but it wasn't something I'd, I walked three miles to get the butane because like, it's so hard to find these stupid butane canisters in California. We can't like, I can't order them on Amazon. Um, I don't know why I, I guess we voted on it at some point, but you can't get like, it's the refillable butane things for the kitchen torches. They're like so hard to find and allegedly like Walmart has them, but they're not anywhere I can find them on the floor. And then when I ask people, the employees like, Hey, where do you keep these? Cause I assume they maybe keep them locked up somewhere. They have no idea what I'm talking about. I had to, I walked to REI to get this butane canister and I could only find a teeny tiny one that was like almost one use essentially. And I wanted a bigger one. So I wouldn't have to, I mean, I didn't have to walk three miles I chose to for my health and wellness, but, um, I asked the guy I was like hey I you IOC you only have these uh these kids like the torque the the butene things for like kid the uh what am I trying to say camping stoves and I was like do you have like the multi-fill ones and he was like oh no we don't carry anything like that I was like oh no you do it's just I was wondering if you had like a bigger size you have them right over there and he was like he was like backing away from me I told my friend about this exchange I was like I don't know if I was like coming on strong or maybe because I'd walked so far I was like I don't know red-faced and sweaty I didn't think I was that red-faced I'd showered that morning I didn't smell but like he was backing away from me like I was a crazy person and I was like and was like no I don't I've never I don't we don't have stuff like that I was like nobody and I was trying to be so polite and I don't ever like to bother people and so I was just like okay well I was like, okay. I was like, oh yeah, just the website said you did. But like, I know that the websites are sometimes wrong. And then he was like, can you show him? And it was just the weirdest exchange. He acted like I was crazy. And I was like, okay, anyway, the things I get myself into for the love of the culinary arts. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to go. I have so much to do. I have to fold all my laundry. I have to pack. I have to get all of Clara's stuff ready. I don't know why I'm telling you my whole regimen I need to do. It's been a busy week. It's been a very busy week, very good stuff, but, and I'm going to be on, in, on the convention circuit the next three days. I don't know how some celebrities, like not comparing myself to celebrities, but some celebrities do this type of thing, like every weekend, like this is how they make their money. I just can't imagine doing conventions like that often my co-workers and I were talking about how we did like four or five last year and we're like we're like still tired carried over into this year it's just a lot of heavy lift like literal heavy lifting getting doing all the setup and then you're sweaty and then you uh then you're doing interviews and you're talking to people all day I mean it's so fun but it's just very like just gotta really psych yourself up and I don't feel as ready this time. I don't know why I don't feel as ready, but please, if you are there, please come talk to me. Please, please come talk to me. I have the, we have bloody disgusting stickers and temporary tattoos. And I have scary to sleep stickers and lady killers. Oh yeah. Go check me out on the bloody disgusting podcast. Go check me out on the lady killers podcast. I'm, I'm everywhere. I'm all over talking about movies and just, and they're both such like all three of the shows I do now are so such different speeds to me. At least they all feel like different speeds and they all like, I don't know. They're, they're very fulfilling. So this one's still my baby though. I call it my baby on my other shows. This you're still my number one. You're still my number one gal. Don't worry. My favorite, uh, my main main lady, my main, uh, main, uh, I don't know. You're just my main man, whatever you want to call yourself, but you're my favorite. Basically, if you're listening to this on this side, you're my favorite, but go check me out on those other shows too. Again, both of those can be found on YouTube with video where you can see my face. So that's pretty cool. All right, I'm going to go get my life together. You do that too. Go get your life together. Drink water. I needed to take my own advice. I'm very dehydrated right now. Go get some sleep. Sweet dreams. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.