Absolutely classic prank. The old fake your death and then turn up at the funeral in a helicopter to give your traumatised family the shock of their lives. Gotcha b*tches! You thought I was dead! You totally fell for it! What a bunch of idiots!
David Baerten, 45, says he staged the prank in his native Belgium to teach his wider family a ‘life lesson’ because he’d lost touch with so many of them. Judging by the scenes when he turned up, I think it may have had the desired effect? Watch below:
In fairness to David, he did at least let his wife and daughter in on the scheme, with his daughter even faking a tribute to her dad on Facebook ahead of the fake funeral. Here’s what she wrote:
‘Rest in peace Daddy. I will never stop thinking about you.
Why is life so unfair? Why you? You were going to be a grandfather, and you still had your whole life ahead of you.
I love you! We love you! We will never forget you.’
David explained himself after the big reveal:
‘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.
That’s why I wanted to give them a life lesson, and show them that you shouldn’t wait until someone is dead to meet up with them.’
Lol. Well I don’t know that he had to jump straight to elaborate and expensive fake death prank instead of just talking to them about it but I guess he made his point in the end. Naturally a lot of people on social media are calling the prank ‘cruel’ and ‘pitiful’ but David says it ‘proves who really cares about me’ as apparently ‘only half of my family came to the funeral’. Other relatives did reach out afterwards, though, so that’s nice:
‘Those who didn’t come, did contact me to meet up. So in a way I did win.’
What a guy. He’s actually lucky that his family weren’t so vexed about the whole thing that they cut him out of their lives completely. Now that would’ve been an ultimate prank backfire.
Speaking of which – to watch a YouTuber get his nose broken following a cash machine robbery prank, click HERE.
