Fake children.

In the mid 00’s, in a fb community, a “dad” posted for years in our group about his two boys who had CF. Supported others, posted pictures, stories, even talked to other parents on the phone, had accounts for his two boys, chatted with other children with the accounts.

He had so many friends and so much interaction that he became one of the most well liked dads in the community.

One day after several years, he posted that his sons were both in a horrific car accident and died.

Then he disappeared.

The community was crushed. People were trying to figure out what happened. Through the efforts, we came to realize that nobody had ever met him in person. Nobody had ever actually talked to the boys over voice. And nobody knew where he lived.

With some more investigation, we were able to find out he lived in Ohio, that his accounts belonged to someone whose job was a baseball analyst and that he was single and had no kids, not even married.

The community wrote about it on blogs and on fb, and there would always be one or two comments from “anon” refuting any new info that came up. With some digging, we discovered those anon comments were from, you guessed it, Ohio.

This random guy had made everything up and kept the ruse going for years for funsies. Something made him decide to stop so he “killed” his boys and moved on.

It devastated our community for months. Especially those who had “talked” to the boys regularly over fb.

We never figured out why he did it.