The "dish." The "scoop." The "4-1-1." Small towns are full of gossip, thanks to all the people knowing literally everyone else. It's hard not to be in each other's business, like walking down a hallway full of cobwebs. Sometimes, though, that gossip turns out true and we've got a full blown scandal on our hands.
Reddit user, u/SY81, wanted the juiciest bits when they asked:
Redditors from small towns, what was your town's big scandal/dirty secret?
Because, Why Not?
A girl I went to school with got knocked up by a fellow student at the age of fourteen.
Because fourteen year olds are known for making exceptionally good decisions (see the previous sentence), she decided to name it... Harley Davidson.
Because why not.
Something So Bad It Became A Law
The little town in Oregon I used to live in we had a state rep and state senator who were married and been in their office for 10-15 years (lifers) so it was rare anyone ran against them. Their last election they registered to run and then 15 minutes before the deadline they announced they were dropping out and their friends announced they were running.....effectively ensuring that no one else had a chance to get on the ballot.
The reps "claimed" they had no idea....but that state passed the law named after them called the "Whitsett Law" that if a sitting official stepped down it extended the period others could enter to prevent this.
Not Kept To Just One Small Town
Heroin is a bigger problem here than a lot of people realize.
It's hitting small towns in the north east bad.
A Teacher Switch-Up
GiphyMy school promised our science teacher a certain amount of money but when pay day came they didn't pay her the amount that was promised so she left our school and we had no science teacher, just other teachers with science degrees. So an English teacher was put to science, a History teacher was put to English, a Spanish teacher was put to History, and Spanish was now being taught online which must've been HELL for that class
"Ice" Knowing Ya'
Several dozen tourists parked their cars on the frozen lake when it wasnt adequately thick ice. Their cars went for an unexpected dip in the lake.
The whole town was talking about it but everyone was split between sympathy for the people and those who thought it was funny that the tourists hadn't thought their parking choice through or bothered to ask a local about the ice.
It actually made the town a little tense for a while with half the people thinking It was sh-tty that some locals thought it was funny, which is fair, and the other group thinking it's okay to laugh at the city folk being a bit naive, which is kinda fair too.
Nothing Positive
5 students and a teacher committed suicide all within a week of each other. The youngest was 8 years old. All cases were unrelated and murders and suicides are very common in my town so our 5,000+ population keeps dropping
Super. Serious.
Some dude didn't pay his grazing fees for like 30 years and had a standoff with the BLM and the FBI.
What is a grazing fee?
I believe it's a fee for animals to graze on public land. Im not 100% on this tho.
A Confession To Never Forget
An ex- friend of mine from high school beat his nonverbal autistic 5 year old son to death and hid the body. It will be a year next month and they still haven't found his body.
Whaaaaat? If they didn't find the body how do they know? Did he admit to it? What about the child's mother?
How utterly dreadful.
He confessed during an interrogation. He recanted his statement later, but he still hasn't been to trial. The mother was there and she might have done it, but he was the one who confessed so he was charged with murder. She was charged with felony neglect and child endangerment.
Such A Poor Boy...?
I remember that one of my old primary schoolmates came out as gay and everybody was shocked- the way my grandma told me that was literally like: "oh poor x he was such a good boy with such a bright future..."
I was like: "Wait did he die and I didn't know? Did I miss the funeral what?" and she goes: "He chose to be with a boy instead of a girl when there are so many lovely single young ladies out and about in this town."
Class Was Always Full
We had a Zumba studio that ended up being a front for a prostitution ring
People Still Live There?
I live about 10 minutes from Berchtesgaden, where Hitler spent the majority of his time and lived during WW2 in his compound Eagles Nest.
Beautiful town but obviously a horribly dark past.
Benefiting Off Of Drug Money
So about a decade ago my town was booming with business. Tourism was/is the main driver down here but for a hot while we had more stuff going on, you know? Anyways, apparently all of the stability and business opportunities were credited to the major doing an awesome job and whatever but as it turns out the dude was actually lending a close-by port to a drug cartel and all of the money and a LOT of the businesses were cartel-related fronts and stuff like that.
So yeah, for a bit there we were running on cartel money lol
Not The Homecoming He Wanted
A high school basketball star from my hometown went on to play college ball at a notable University and later to become the lead coach for that University for about a year before getting caught banging one of the cheerleaders and developing pill addiction.
Now he's back in our hometown and barely leaves his parents house.
A Rough Couple Of Years
All within a few years a city councilman was arrested for drug possession, another one committed suicide (he had been arrested for domestic violence accusations), and another one was shot and killed in what turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.
A Tortured Existence
A mother and her boyfriend starved her son to death. She even told his teachers at school not to feed him if he asked for food. All 3 were Polish also and she didn't even teach him basic English before moving to England.
After his death, the body showed that he was beaten and tortured also.
Stop Going To The Pond
GiphyI don't live there, but my family has a lake house near a town of ~1000 people and I think the biggest scandal is that kids keep dying in the Quarry Pond.
Just Do It Hard Enough, It'll Work
My town was infamous for the parents that didn't treat their daughter's diabetes with anything other than prayer. Unfortunately, she passed away.
Years later I saw the mother at the airport checking in puppies she bred as air freight to go to their new owners. She had all proper medical documents and vaccinations. I was furious seeing that she could take dogs to the vet for treatment but not her own child to the doctor.
Something That Never Stuck
This is really late, but in my hometown(population around 1,500)we had an ex-cop who was accused of shooting and killing his children and his wife. He was tried three times, convicted twice then those convictions were appealed and subsequently reversed, then his third trial resulted in an acquittal.
This was before we moved there so I don't know all the details, but my youth football coach was the prosecutor in the case. A lot of people in town and in the general area still think he's guilty as well. It ended up getting a lot of National attention and he has since gotten involved in the Innocence Project.
Exactly Where She Was
Some lawyer's wife went missing, there was a big search effort to find her including air force jets flying over the surrounding woods to find recently disturbed ground (indicating a possible burial). They couldn't find her for days until finally a neighbor went to the media to point out the lawyer had remodelled the sitting area in his garden recently including pouring himself a nice big concrete slab right outside his back door the day before he reported his wife missing.
Sure enough, they dug up that area and found her body.
What was really stupid is the neighbor told this information to the police as soon as he heard the wife was missing, then again two days later, and they did nothing with it until he went to the press.
Nothing But Publicity
There's a girl from my town that was kidnapped and found 29 days later. Kidnapped by three men who did some horrible sh-t to her. Her mom has really tried to push it for publicity, and she is going to be on the Dr. Phil show soon.
She goes to my high school, and she always looks so sad. The sad thing is because her parent is using her for publicity, she will never have a normal life without people knowing who she is. I feel so bad for her, she's such a sweet girl who has gone through too much.
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