SITTING undetected amongst mourners, Bill Edgar suddenly stood up as a man named Brian was giving a eulogy.
“Sit down, shut up or f*** off,” Bill said loudly. “The man in the coffin has something to say.”
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“Brian, you’re not a very good friend of mine at all, you’ve betrayed me, you’ve been trying to have sex with my wife while I’m on my deathbed, you have leave my funeral now,’” Bill told the grievers.
“If my brother, my sister-in-law and their daughter attend my funeral they can also bugger off because I haven’t seen them in 30 years. So why are they here paying their respects when they could have seen me when I was alive?”
It may sound like a manic episode or an unexpected twist in a movie. But Bill hadn’t lost the plot. The private investigator, 58, from Australia, was simply fulfilling the deceased man’s final wish – to gatecrash his funeral and declare the truth at his graveside.
Bill is the world’s only coffin confessor, he’s claimed in the past. The son of a gangster, homeless, a car thief and a counsellor, Bill has lived a hundred lives already.
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His first coffin confession client came while he was a private investigator in 2018. Bill was enjoying a cuppa with a man who revealed he was dying from pancreatic cancer.
The two were talking about life when the man suddenly told Bill his wife was having an affair with his best mate – while he was on deathbed.
Bill suggested he put this in his eulogy before joking he could crash his funeral with the shock bombshell.
A couple of weeks later, the man – named Graham – texted Bill about it. After ensuring that the alleged affair was indeed a fact, Bill and his client hatched a plan: he would interrupt the friend’s eulogy.
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When the man died later that year, Bill snuck into the service. Two minutes into the eulogy – set by a timer on his phone – he did just that.
At the time, Bill assumed it would be a one-off. But he hadn’t even reached his car when a woman came up to him and said he’s got to see her auntie.
“I stopped at a café and sat there thinking, could this be something people need? I’m standing in front of a coffin, and I’m confessing people’s thoughts, desires, sins, whatever it is,” he told Metro.
“So maybe I’m a coffin confessor, and then I went, “F**k, that’s not a bad name”.’’
Since Graham’s wake, the Coffin Confessor has crashed dozens of memorial services across Australia – including in Gold Coast Queensland, where he is from – and around the globe.
“I pick and choose what I want to do these days,” Edgar previously told The U.S. Sun in an exclusive chat.
“I’ve conducted a number of funeral crashes, wake crashes, face-to-face messages, home sweeps, afterlife gift deliveries, and placing items in coffins.”
He charges a flat rate of AUD 10,000 (a little over £5,200).
“They don’t need the money where they’re going, and I never get a complaint,” said Bill, who has now been in the bizarre industry for close to a decade.
During his eight years as the Coffin Confessor, the 54-year-old has seen – and done – it all.
One of the most shocking things Bill has been asked to do was pin-prick a man’s body at the viewing to ensure he was dead because the client was terrified of being cremated alive.
An elderly client, 88, asked Bill to remove a sex dungeon from his home because he was afraid his sons would stumble across it and think poorly of him.
His home sweeps – the removal of offending items before loved ones are able to get to them – have also included items like guns, cash, drug paraphernalia or lingerie.
“The stories shared are good, bad, funny, and sad, but infidelity seems to be very common as well as asking for forgiveness from loved ones,” said the private investigator.
One of the most common requests is for clients to ensure their mobile phone is buried with them, Bill previously told The I Paper. This is both to ensure people can call for help if they suddenly “wake up” from the dead, as well as prevent anyone else going through it.
Other requests include being buried with beloved items, such as a motorbike, or making sure people are lying face down or vertically rather than on their backs.
One London-based man allegedly asked if Bill could attend a private viewing of his body before his family did to strip him naked, lie him face down with the words ‘KISS THIS’ written across his bottom.
On another occasion a man wanted to admit to his love ones that he was gay and his lover was at the funeral.
Although Bill says that he’s not easily shocked. He says it’s the “vultures in the family” he finds the most “horrendous” – and according to him, every family has such leeches.
On one occasion, Bill recalls two siblings fighting over their mother’s car – while she was on her deathbed.
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The private investigator’s incredible and wild story has been told in a book – and TV fans have something exciting to look forward to too.
Fifth Season has secured the right to the memoir The Coffin Confessor and the series is now in development, Variety reported earlier in June. A release date has not been announced yet.