28 Things People Keep At Home But Avoid Talking About Because They Are So Controversial, As Shared Online

A Bengal tiger pelt.

My wife is half Indian. A friend of her family died, and they found a tiger pelt in his belongings. He was early 80’s and was born and raised in India before moving to my country (Canada). The estate was split in 3 so most everything had to be liquidated. Well you can’t sell tiger pelts here, and no museum or anything seemed to want it. So somehow I wound up with it.

My wife’s a vegetarian for ethical reasons. So naturally I was floored to bring it home. Id never hunt an endangered species, and I’m firmly against hunting for sport. But I wasn’t going to let it get thrown in the trash.

My great grandpa was a medic in ww2 and we own a little chest with his personal belongings, including his diary, some old bandages

And 3 vials of 1940s morphine

Apparently, a full vaccination card. (A genuine one.) And a mask.

A packaged stick from Afghanistan that claims to cure all known illnesses, including cancer, if you rub it on you.

I traded an energy drink for it.

I think it’s pretty controversial since I now own the cure for all ailments.

As a joke I told my mom I wanted my dogs testicles in a jar after we had him neutered…. She took it seriously and now I have had my dogs balls in a jar for almost a decade

Allister Crowley's Key of Solomon. It's a book about summoning demons. It's just a curiosity piece.

My Scottish family crest is a hand holding a severed head on a sword. The owner of the head is a Moor who allegedly was wanted by the king. The reward was land. My ancestor caught this guy, cut off his head and brought it to the king. Pretty controversial when you know what a Moor was.

When my sister was in high school she wrote letters to Charles Manson. He wrote her back. My dad intercepted the letters in the mail. He never opened them, but still has them. My sister never knew he wrote back.

**Edit to answer some questions**

I can’t believe I woke up this morning to this explosion…

My sister is 7 years older. Mental health was left generally undiagnosed and untreated in the 80s. She was a rough kid to parent, and even as a sibling there’s a lot of trauma stemming from her I’ve had to work through. I haven’t spoken to her since I was in my 20s. She’s estranged from my dad, my other sister, and I. She has worked her way back into my mom’s life as she’s gotten older, more than likely to benefit from her death.

I do remember her being obsessed with Manson when I was a kid. She was a f*****g menace, constantly getting into some sort of trouble, running away, police calls, etc. As soon as she turned 18 she was kicked out. She turned 50 last month, and according to my mom “she finally has her life together, she bought her first house”.

My dad told me about the letters approximately a year ago. This happened 30 years ago, I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be any federal charges brought against him (haha), and he has no reason to make this up or lie about it. I told him I want them left to me in his will.

To the people messaging me to buy the letters…big fat f*****g NO. If and when I get them in my possession, I’ll evaluate what I want to do with them at this time. I agree they’re worth more sealed than opened.

Probably a small bone I lifted from a catacomb In Peru when I was younger. Technically I’m a grave robber and definitely getting haunted.

5 grams of uranium metal, stored under oil in a glass vial.

Not me, my parents growing up..

they had an actual elephant foot turned into a table.

Like an actual foot cut from an elephant and taxidermied made into an end table. Had a glass table top. You could feel the thin hairs on it. F****n haunted my dreams man.

My family owns a petrified walrus [wang], my grandmother took it to get it identified at the Smithsonian several decades ago. Apparently her grandfather or maybe it was her great-grandfather brought it home after he spent several years on some type of expedition up around northern Alaska and points north. It has been loaned out to several museums at different times. The family has talked about selling it but everyone has to agree and so far there is no agreement about selling it. So I own 1/67th of a petrified walrus [wing-dang-doodle].

Umm mortuary toe tags from an asylum in New York ....like twenty or so of them ... I think they could be the only things left showing that these people actually lived

An ornate, Boer tobacco jar from the 1800s. My great grandfather looted it off a dead militiaman during the Second Boer war.

I have a glass vial/small bottle of pure histamine. If anyone would be exposed to this they would get a deadly allergic reaction. I have it double sealed.

A first print edition of Batman Damned #1, the one featuring Batman's "little batman". (From DC Black Label featuring more adult content. Violence and swearing are totally fine, but a shadowy [phallic] profile made people flip out enough they removed it from subsequent print runs).

A small horse figurine made of ivory. I have a small collection of horse figurines, and it was a gift from my grandmother from when I was little. Nothing I can really do about it, but I still feel a little icky for having it.

An original Asteroids arcade machine.

But my brother and I removed the original (burned-in) oscilloscope screen and replaced it with an LCD panel, replaced the controls with six-button arcade fighter sticks, and hooked the whole thing up to a hacked Xbox with thousands of dumped ROMs on it. The original board was gone before we got the cab, donated to another machine that did have a working monitor.

Controversial because some arcade historians would prefer to see these cabs preserved rather than hacked. But with a burned screen and no board, this cab was pretty useless.

An original copy of Mao’s Red Book from when they were distributed in China back in the 60s

Also a copy of Mein Kampf but I’m not sure about this copy’s backstory

Troll dolls we're very big in the early 90's. I have a confederate soldier troll doll in full uniform with flag in hand. Thanks Dad!