APAD: Something nasty in the woodshed

Meaning:

    A traumatic but unspecified incident in someone's experience, or something

    shocking or distasteful that has been kept secret.

 

Background:

   Stella Gibbons first used the expression in her 1932 comic novel Cold Comfort

   Farm. The phrase is used on numerous occasions in the text as it refers to a

   significant plot device, the supposed source of the behaviour of the deranged

   Aunt Ada Doom:

 

     Flora gathered that she [Mrs. Beetle] did not altogether disapprove of old

     Mrs. Starkadder. She had been heard to say that at least there was one of

     'em at Cold Comfort as knew her own mind, even if she 'ad seen something

     narsty in the woodshed when she was two. Flora had no idea what this last

     sentence could possibly mean. Possibly it was a local idiom for going

     cuckoo.

 

   What Ada saw in the woodshed is not explained and the comic effect is

   heightened by allowing us to speculate on that for ourselves. What we do know

   about Stella Gibbons in real life is that she had an unhappy childhood and a

   father who worked from home as a doctor and was frequently unfaithful to his

   wife. Gibbons was educated at home in her early years and again we can

   speculate for ourselves what happenings she might have stumbled upon in the

   garden shed.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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I heard that it's the embarrassing things, those we feel ashamed of, treachery,

injustice, cruelty, etc., that make good tales. Two cultures, however, may not

agree on what is shameful and a story that moves some to tears might be shrugged

off by others. "Something nasty in the woodshed" could bridge the gap as a comic

umbrella term.