Do you remember PostSecret? I was delighted to find out that it’s still going strong. Now powered by WordPress, the original PostSecret was a Blogspot blog run by Frank Warren, started in 2005. Visitors were invited to send an anonymous postcard to a post office box. On the postcard, they wrote a secret. Every Sunday, Frank posted (scanned images of) a selection of postcards. As far as I can tell, that is still the basic setup. I don’t remember exactly when I started reading PostSecret, nor do I know when I stopped, but I will never forget one postcard that haunted me when I read it and haunts me still: on it, the anonymous writer confessed to escaping the twin towers on 9/11 and starting over, letting their loved ones believe they had died. Was it real? I don’t know! Maybe. The beauty of PostSecret is that every secret could be real, and there’s no proof it isn’t.
(In 2013, one of the secrets was a murder confession that has been proven to most likely be a hoax. So I guess sometimes the secrets aren’t real, but I feel strongly that it’s better to believe the majority of them, regardless of the likelihood that they’re 100% true.)
One of the best and most frustrating things in literature is when conflict is caused by characters keeping secrets. Sometimes those secrets are big, life-altering, plot-driving secrets; other times they are small, only affecting the secret-keeper and perhaps one other person. Sometimes they are good secrets, sometimes bad. Sometimes the secrets are revealed and sometimes they are not. I have created eight PostSecret postcards, each of them written by a fictional character. You can guess who, if you like — some are more obvious than others! All of the anonymous secret writers are identified at the bottom of the post.
Post Secret for Fictional Characters
Post-Secret: Fictional Characters Revealed
Note: some of these reveals are spoilers!
Bruce Wayne
Surely Bruce would want to tell someone about his secret identity. Thanks to Eileen Gonzalez for this great idea!
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Darcy didn’t intend for Elizabeth to find out he was the one who “saved” Lydia. But he might have told Frank.
Anne of Austria
Aunt May
Oh, please. Like she doesn’t know Peter is Spider-Man. (You guessed it, this was Eileen’s idea.)
Mary Katherine Blackwood
Grace Pool
I’ve always wanted to know more about Grace Pool, the woman Edward Rochester drove to drink while he romanced Jane Eyre.
Chloe Brown
Korede
How many of them did you guess?