Man fakes his own death, turns up dramatically at his funeral in a helicopter

In a bizarre incident, a man faked his own death in Belgium and then dramatically reached his own funeral in a helicopter. The dramatic stunt was pulled by the man to teach his family the importance of staying in touch.

TikTok creator David Baerten, aged 45, informed his wife and children about his plan of faking his death and they helped him in pulling the stunt by going along with him on the social media platform.

To trick Baerten's followers, one of his daughters wrote on social media, "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."

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A 'cruel joke'?

Many people on the online platform slammed it as a 'cruel joke'.

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Last weekend, the family staged a fake funeral near Liege and mourners gathered as Baerten, who goes by Ragnar le Fou online, made his grand entry at the ceremony in a helicopter and accompanied by a film crew.

The TikToker has 162,000 followers andhad to face some serious backlash from some quarters.

Explaining his bizarre stunt to The Times, Baerten said that he did so because he wanted to see how his wider family would react after he stated that they had fallen out of contact with the TikTok creator.

"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," he said.

Baerten has till now not shared the completevideo of him arriving in a chopper.

Emotional reunion

A TikTok user, who was present at the funeral, shared a video of him landing in a field where his friends and family were gathered. Many people rushed over to Baerten and greeted and hugged him as he got down from the helicopter. Baerten then explained the whole stunt to those in attendance.

His close friend Thomas Faut posted a video of the two men hugging as they met and captioned the emotional clip 'you got us'.

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"I swear I was crying and then I had the shock buddy, we love you very much," he said, while speaking about the emotional reunion, despite the deception of his friend.

Baerten said that while "only half of my family came to the funeral," other relatives have reached out to him since then.

"That proves who really cares about me. Those who didn't come did contact me to meet up. So in a way I did win," he said.

Some of his followers agreed that he did give a valuable 'life lesson' to his family and asked him to "ignore the haters".

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