A dead cat and a paternity test: Children reveal the most surprising things they’ve found in their parents’ bedroom
People took to question-and-answer website Quora to share their stories
SHORT of a lock and key for parents to stop curious kids from wanting to venture where they're not welcome - chiefly, your bedroom.
It's a sacred part of the house, given every other room has been taken over by toys, school artwork and piles of nappies.
But many of these children who snuck into their mum and dad's boudoirs when they weren't looking probably wish they hadn't given in to temptation.
People have taken to question-and-answer website Quora to share the most unexpected things they found in their parent's bedrooms.
And some of them are downright weird.
Hillary Rankin, the person who started the discussion, wrote: "My parents split up when I was 11. At some point not long after that, I was being a bratty kid, looking through my mum’s stuff before she got home from work.
"In the back of a drawer I found this weird thing that seemed to be a knot of various adjustable belts, intertwined with a fairly scary-looking purple plastic thing that I knew even then was supposed to look like a penis.
"At the time (I swear!) I really had no idea what this odd device was used for, and I still don’t know whether this was a leftover amusement from her relationship with my dad, or something she bought or had been given since he’d moved out."
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Ella Ross made an even more bizarre discovery.
She responded: "When I was six my cat disappeared and I was told that she (her name was Birthday… what was I thinking?) had run away to go live on the cat island far away.
"While looking for something later that day I found a plastic bin bag under my parent’s bed.
"Bet you can guess what was in it. Yes, it was Birthday. With tire tracks on her.
"I confronted my parents and learned that she had been run over on the road outside our house. I was heartbroken."
Answering on behalf of his ex-wife, Grant Davis wrote: "After her own parents split (she was about 10) she snooped in her mother’s drawer and found a paternity claim against her father.
"From the dates she estimated that the child in question would have been about two years younger than herself.
"One day, many years later, she was [in] a café and spotted a young woman who was the image of her brother and wondered if she was her half-sister."
In response to the question, Rik Levesque joked: "You mean besides my mother’s vibrator and my dad’s Playboys?"
Christmas was ruined for Rick Bruno when he ventured into his mum and dad's room and found his unwrapped presents.
He wrote: "This was about a week before Christmas. I thought they were supposed to come from Santa. Sigh."
Others' experiences had been more welcome, with several admitting to being surprised to find their baby books containing their first footprints and locks of hair.
Though for one Quora user, this wasn't a happy discovery.
She explained: "My sister and I found my sister's baby book. Not mine. I was born first, but there was no evidence of their pride of my birth.
"It had always been made clear that my father and his family wanted a boy. Nothing made this more clear than the only entry in my sister's baby book."