We often discover some really strange facts about our family's past when we reach adulthood, as all the truths that our parents kept from us when we were young are revealed.
These revelations about our relatives often fill in the blanks in our past and make us feel closer to our family, as we realize that we've gone through quite a few strange experiences together.
But Pauline Dakin's childhood experiences during the 1970s and 80s are some of the strangest I've ever heard, and it all started when her family left Vancouver to vacation in Winnipeg- where their mother Ruth told them they were never going back.
"There was no opportunity to say goodbye, it was just this abrupt, severing of relationships," Pauline says.
When she asked her mother why she had done this, there was never a good explanation.
"She would only say, 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you, when you're older I will tell you.'"
The same thing happened again four years later - this time the family moved to New Brunswick, on Canada's eastern coast.
"I knew something bad was happening," she says. "I didn't know what it was, but there was always a sense of something dire that was unspoken."
Along the way Pauline lost touch with her father and anyone she'd ever known as the family sans father kept moving until, at age 23, her family put down roots for a while in New Brunswick. Now it seemed her mom was finally ready to tell her the truth:
"She said, 'OK, I'm ready to explain all of these strange things that have happened throughout your life.'"
Pauline was to meet her mother outside a motel halfway between the two cities they were living in. When she arrived, Ruth slipped a note and an empty envelope into Pauline's hands.
The note read: "Don't say anything. Take your jewellery off. Put it in the envelope. I'll explain, just don't talk."
"It was just the most bizarre thing," Pauline remembers. "I thought, 'Who are you? What are you doing?' But I did what she told me."
Her mother took her to a motel room where Pauline was surprised to find Stan Sears waiting for them.
Stan and Ruth told Pauline that for the past 16 years they had been on the run from the mafia and that Pauline's family had been targeted because her father, Warren, had been involved in organised crime. She couldn't wear her jewellery because it needed to be tested for bugs.
Read 'The Story Of A Weird World I Was Warned Never To Tell' here