Conducting family research can be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack and that’s why a lot of family lore and legend is passed down the old-fashioned way: through stories about ancestors.

And today we’re going to get a bunch of interesting family history stories from folks on AskReddit.

Check out these tales and see what you think.

A fascinating, terrifying life.

“My grandfather was born in Poland.

He was around 16 when the wars broke out, and because he was a fit, healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed farmer boy, he was sent to work in German farms. Before that though, he was put into a concentration camp while they figured out where to send all their new slaves.

During this time, his older brother actually escaped. My grandfather says he stole a gun climbed the fence, tanked the cuts from the barbed wire, and just ran. He made the escape with a few other people, but all but two of them were killed. My grandfather was supposed to join them, but he said he just froze and chickened out. His brother later joined some battallion, where he later died fighting nazis.

My grandfather was eventually moved to a small town in Germany, and was housed with landowners who grew some sort of crop. He was set to work.

This small town was actually secretly against the war though, and the family he stayed with used their house as a safehouse to smuggle Jews. They had the whole “hidden room under the floorboards” thing. Luckily, they were never discovered. They, and a few other families in the town, wanted my grandfather to marry their daughters and stay in Germany.

He did stay in Germany for a few months, he said he also joined the peace corps. Once he had his full of that, he simply jumped on the first boat out of there with nothing but his tool belt and the clothes on his back. That boat went to Australia, which is where he met my grandmother, and yada yada yada, I was born.

He had such a fascinating, terrifying life, full of turmoil and danger. But one thing never left him: his passion for plants. Right up until the week he passed away at age 86, he was still climbing ladders to trim his trees, hand pollinating all his bean plants with a feather, and shooting Indian Mynas out of the tree with his slingshot to let the native birds have the nest.”

Heroes.

“Dutch here.

My maternal grandfather was part of a group of people that hid Jews and Allies in a hidden village (underground house) made in the woods during WW II.

They where later discovered by the SS but they still managed to save a lot of people. To this day you can visit the remains of the hidden village to see what it was like.”

Mistaken identity.

“My great uncle was at Pearl Harbor and his cousin was too. My great uncle survived and his cousin did not.

They were very similar looking and the government thought my great uncle had d**d and notified his wife. She had quite the surprise when he made it home.”

A bullet in the head.

“Grandpa was shot in the head on the Russian front (he was German).

He was declared d**d and put on a pile of d**d bodies. A friend of him (who grew up in the same village as my grandpa) went to the pile to give him the last goodbye.

And he saw my grandpa was shaking a little bit. He yelled at the doctors “this man is not d**d!”. And yea, the doctors got him out of the pile and actually rescued him. But they couldn’t remove the bullet in his head. It was too dangerous.

So my grandpa lived with this bullet in his head his whole life.

He was not able to make a driver’s license due to the risk of epileptic shocks. He named his son (my father) after the man who rescued him.”

Earthquake.

“My dad’s aunt was living in Messina, Italy in the early 1900.

In 1908 there was a huge earthquake that destroyed half the city and she was stuck under the rubble for 3 whole days right next to the bodies of her parents and 3 brothers without being able to move an inch.

When she was found she didn’t even have a broken bone and went on to have 10 children of her own and die at 97 years old.”

Wow!

“Che Guevara taught my grandfather to play chess.

His father used to get into bar fights with Pancho Villa.

And my family’s last name exists because two Scottish brothers got drunk, stole a cannon from the local militia armory, and accidentally shot the steeple off the local church.

While hauling a** out of Scotland, they told their kids “if anyone asks who you are, just say you’re German and pretend you don’t know English” they didn’t know German either.”

Survival.

“I’m 34 but my paternal grandfather was born in 1895.

He got shot through both knees sideways in Belgium during World War I then had to limp miles to safety…

Sounds impossible but I have a newspaper article about it! His brother also survived WWI, only to d** in the Spanish flu pandemic.

Sadly my grandfather d**d quite a while before I was born.”

The Wild West.

“One of my ancestors was Curly Bill Brocious, the leader of the infamous Cowboys gang which fought against the Earps in and around Tombstone Arizona in the 1870s/80s.

He was k**led by Wyatt Earp himself by a shotg** blast that reportedly tore him in two.”

Insane!

“My great great great great grandfather was abducted my pirates as a boy and raised as one… in Canada. They were river brigands.

My mom has a book on him. Her parents were from Czechoslovakia and Germany though so I’m not sure how that happened.

I always told people I was part pirate though.”

Made the right choice.

“My Great-Grandmother had two suitors – a man in America and a man in Manchester, UK.

The guy in America bought her a ticket to to cross the Atlantic and be with him, and she was set to go, but at the last minute the guy in England proclaimed his love and won her over.

And that’s how my great-grandparents got together, as opposed to my great-grandmother d**ng on The Titanic.”

These are so fascinating!