Dad Fakes His Own Death Then Shows Up To His Funeral — 'I Never Get Invited To Anything & Felt Unappreciated'
He wanted to teach his family a lesson about keeping in better touch and, well... suffice to say it worked!
@eltiktokeur2 / TikTok Let this story serve as a reminder to you — keep in touch with your dad, or else! Otherwise, you may end up like the family of a father in Belgium. When his family fell out of touch, he decided to rectify the problem in the most unhinged, petty way possible, and it's made him instantly famous — or maybe infamous — worldwide.
Belgian TikToker David Baertan, aka Ragnar Le Fou, staged his own death and then showed up to his own funeral in a helicopter.
No, this isn't just some TikTok stunt. Er well — it is a TikTok stunt, but it actually happened. Baertan, 45, enlisted his wife and children to help him make the stunt happen. They announced his death on social media, prepared a funeral, and gathered all his family together near his Liege, Belgium home to celebrate his life and send him off to the next astral plane.
But just as the funeral got underway, a helicopter swooped in. Inside was none other than the man they were all there to celebrate, Ragnar Le Fou himself. As you might guess, it caused quite an uproar at the funeral service.
Grief-stricken relatives were seen crying and embracing Baerten and each other, relieved to see that their beloved relative hadn't actually shuffled off this mortal plane after all, and Baerten says that reaction is precisely why he threw the whole prank together.
Baerten says he faked his death to 'teach his family a lesson' because they'd fallen out of touch and stopped inviting him to gatherings.
That's certainly one way to get the point across! Most of us at one time or another have been there — my Dad and I often quibble over who owes it to who to pick up the phone (sorry Dad, I'm trying!), and the older we all get and the more settled into our own lives we become, the hard it is to remember to keep the home fires burning when it comes to our extended family members and far-off friends.
Baerten, however, isn't having any of that. In an interview with the UK's The Times newspaper, he said, "What I see in my family often hurts me. I never get invited to anything. Nobody sees me. We all grew apart. I felt unappreciated."
So, he decided to wake them up in pretty much the most unforgettable way possible. "I wanted to give them a life lesson," he said, "and show them that you shouldn’t wait until someone is dead to meet up with them."
Photo: TikTok
The stunt definitely worked, but not everybody is happy about it. Baerten has gotten a lot of blowback, but he's not backing down.
Baerten's friend Thomas Faut captured the moment when Baerten made his big helicopter entrance to the funeral — whereupon, in a moment of classic camp that will live on forever, Baerten hilariously said, "Cheers to you all, welcome to my funeral."
But hilarious as it was, what Baerten's family felt was a relief. "You had us," Faut wrote in the caption to his TikTok of the scene. "We love you, my friend. We are happy you are still among us." Other videos from the event showed Baerten's friends and family openly sobbing with relief that he was still with them.
Photo: TikTok
That is precisely what has made several people online turn on him. "Now we know why people didn't like him," one man commented on TikTok, while others called his prank "a pathetic stunt" and "just wrong." Others marveled that "the ego on this guy must be tremendous."
But for his part, Baerten isn't backing down. On his own TikTok page, he's been responding to his critics, including one who scolded him to "pay back the [$7,500 in funeral costs] people shelled out for your scam, then we'll talk about life lessons." "Nonsense," Baerten responded. "You're completely crazy."
Photo: TikTok
And he posted a special dedication to all his friends and family doubling down as well. Over the classic 80s French pop song "Aimons-nous Vivants" by François Valéry, which urges everyone to "love each other while we're alive" and not "wait for death" to make us show it, Baerten smirked knowingly to the camera, clearly aware that his message had been received.
Okay sure, maybe a simple conversation would have done the trick — and not caused his friends and family a moment of trauma and sadness in the process. But you gotta hand it to Baerten, nobody has ever sent the message to keep in touch quite so clearly. And with that, I'm off to set a calendar reminder to call my Dad on Father's Day. Thanks, Monsieur Baerten!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social media and human interest topics.