6

A "Missing Child" Returns To His Parents, Is Actually An Impostor

Alexandre Guirkinger

When young Nicholas Barclay vanished from a basketball game near his house, his parents had to prepare themselves for the possibility that they might never see their son again. But they never completely gave up hope. Three years later, that hope was rewarded when their son turned up alive and well in Spain. The family was so grateful to hear their son's voice and put an end to their nightmare that they booked a ticket for him on the first plane home ... which was the precise moment everything went wrong.

You see, hope and grief are powerful emotions; so much so that Barclay's parents didn't take a particularly close look at the man who got off the plane claiming to be their son. For example, they apparently didn't think much of the fact that their formerly white, blue-eyed son now had olive skin and brown eyes. Or that he now had a French accent. Or that he was clearly in his mid-20s when he should have been 16. After all, years of trauma can dramatically change a person -- up to and including their race and speed of passage through spacetime, it seems.

Picturehouse Entertainment, Francparler / Wiki Commons
What towheaded young man doesn't grow up to look like a dime-store Quentin Tarantino?

5

The LAPD Returns A Missing Child To His Worried Mother ... But It's The Wrong Kid

Los Angeles Public Library

Nine-year-old Walter Collins left his house on March 10, 1928, headed for the movies with a dime clutched in his fist (because dimes used to be able to pay for things). He was never seen again. His disappearance sparked a national outcry (and eventually a Clint Eastwood movie) over the LAPD's inefficiency in their handling of the case. But right as Walter's mother Christine was beginning to give up hope, the LAPD contacted her with good news: Walter had been located in Illinois, and they'd put him on the first train home to LA.

4

Twins Who Were Separated At Birth Find Each Other ... And Unknowingly Get Married

Michael Blann/DigitalVision/Getty Images

This story combines two elements of feel-good made-for-TV dramas: A couple discovering the soulmates they magically have everything in common with, and adopted children discovering the truth about their biological parents. Shit, that's like exponential happiness right there!

Or not. In 2008, a husband and wife approached the high court of Great Britain in order to request that their marriage be annulled. It wasn't because they didn't love each other anymore or had gotten married on a reality show. No, this couple had recently found out that they were brother and sister. And unless you're a Game Of Thrones character, no amount of rationalization can make that relationship comfortable.

The twins (who had requested to remain anonymous in the media for obvious reasons) were separated at birth and adopted by different families, and lived normal lives up to the point where they met as adults and discovered that they had an awful lot in common. Including the same birth date and location, and the fact that they were both adopted. Crazy coincidence, huh?

Nick White/DigitalVision/Getty Images
As was that mutual post-coital feeling that they had masturbated.

You might think that being adopted and sharing every detail of your early life with your spouse would put up a couple of red flags, but the couple decided that this was merely evidence that they were destined to be together, because movies teach us to be stupid assholes. Finally, they decided to look into their biological heritage, and discovered that they had so much in common that any children they bore had a high chance of being mutants.

HBO
Or monsters.

3

A Woman Grows Up Not Knowing Her Father, Then Discovers She's Been Married To Him

Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images

Valerie Spruill's life turned upside down when she was nine years old and the people she had been calling her parents told her that they were in fact her grandparents, and that the nice lady who used to visit her a lot was her biological mother. Still, she got over the betrayal and grew up to live a relatively normal life, eventually marrying a man named Percy and living happily with him until he died at the age of 60 in 1998.

It was then that Valerie decided to finally track down information about her biological father. After a bit of sleuthing, she discovered that her father's name was ... Percy Spruill. A DNA test conducted on hairs from his old brush confirmed that she had married her own father.

HBO
We're one away from a Game Of Thrones sexual hat trick.

Valerie is unsure to this day whether Percy knew the truth (he had hooked up with Valerie's biological mother at the age of 15). Percy and Valerie didn't meet until many years later, when they were both much older (Valerie had already been married once before). Thankfully, they didn't have any children together, but Valerie still had to go through what was presumably the most awkward family lunch in history when she broke the news to her three kids from her previous marriage.

2

A Guy Turns Up Alive At His Own Funeral, Then Goes On A Rampage

James Akin

Timothy Dexter was an American businessman in the 18th century who was best known for being "eccentric" -- which we all know is a euphemism for "crazy rich person." Despite growing up as a farm laborer with a room temperature IQ, he managed to blunder his way into fortune through a series of bad business decisions that turned out to be lucky successes, like selling coal bed warmers to tropical countries, only to get rich when the locals bought them to use as big ladles. That's not a joke. This is how this man made his money.

Then one day, thousands of Dexter's friends and associates received a telegram announcing that the poor man had passed away. Thousands of mourners showed up to pay their respects at Dexter's funeral, and then attended the wake at his mansion, which supplied no shortage of free booze. It was only later in the evening when a surprise guest appeared: Timothy Dexter himself, prancing dramatically out like he the Red Death, only presumably way more drunk.

John Tilton
Unless you think somebody wrote this, earnestly thinking it better than Shakespeare, while stone-cold sober.

No, he wasn't a zombie fresh out of the grave, and the wake didn't descend into a brain-scooping orgy of supernatural violence. Dexter had conspired with a few members of his immediate family to fake his death and organize a mock funeral, all for the sake of seeing how many people would show up. His bad business sense was evidently overshadowed only by his crippling insecurity.

John Henry Bufford
You'd think a guy whose giant statue of himself included the inscription "the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world" would have fewer confidence issues.

1

A "Murdered" Man Turns Up Alive ... After His Friend Is Executed For Killing Him

Nebraska State Historical Society

John Cameron and his friend William Jackson Marion set out from their small town in Nebraska in 1872 to look for work, because the job market was even worse back then. However, only Marion made it back home, suspiciously carrying all of his friend's possessions and claiming that Cameron had run off by himself and disappeared, presumably looking to make a better life for himself somewhere less depressing than Nebraska.

The plot thickened when a body was discovered with multiple bullet wounds to the head, and identified as John Cameron. Marion became the key suspect in the murder, because there has never been a more obvious murder suspect in history. He was like the suspect in a five-year-old's version of a mystery novel.

Gage County Historical Society
Right down to the shifty eyes and cartoonishly twirlable mustache.

Marion was taken into custody and stood trial for the robbery and murder of his friend. After only an hour of deliberation, the jury found him guilty, because this was long before the time of CSI, fingerprint databases, or really, any scientific way of identifying a body beyond "Well, the victim had a mustache, and this mostly-decayed body appears to have a mustache, so this is clearly our guy." Take special note of that fact, because it will become important later.

Marion firmly denied that he had anything to do with Cameron's murder, even after his conviction -- but in fairness, that's exactly what a murderer would say. So Marion was hanged in 1887, and that was the end of the story.

That is, until four years later, when the very much not-murdered John Cameron came back looking for his friend William Marion and all of the belongings he'd loaned him.

Omaha Bee
The original headline just read "Oops."

Yeah, it turns out that the bullet-riddled corpse that had been found lying in the dirt wasn't John Cameron at all, but some other poor soul whose murder will forever remain unsolved. We're sure that Cameron's family was thrilled to learn that he was alive, but the conversation about how they executed his best friend while he was gone was probably pretty awkward. But hey, at least he got all his stuff back.

Janel Comeau has never been reunited with anything horrifying except her student loan debt. And if you want to read more from her, you can reunite with her on Twitter or her excessively funny website.

For more incredibly unfortunate circumstances, check out The 7 Most Bizarrely Unlucky People Who Ever Lived and 6 People Who Mixed Bad Luck With Stupidity.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Bad Conference Call, Pretty Decent Live Sex Cam, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, because we have a great chili recipe with bacon and all that shit. We might share it, but probably won't.