- Find out why dying even on paper isn’t a solution to your problems.
Extreme situations require extreme solutions. You can’t imagine someone faking their death unless they are in very literal life-or-death difficulties.
Or so you’d think. But it turns out that people will attempt to forge their demise for absolutely hairbrained reasons – or sometimes no reason at all.
Here are seven strange stories about people who chose to fake their deaths and the reasons why.
1. To Avoid Prison Time
Nobody wants to go to prison, and dodging jail is probably one of the most understandable reasons for pretending you’ve died. And that’s just what serial car thief Robert Berger from New York did in 2020 when facing significant jail time.
Using his unwitting lawyer as a middleman, Berger submitted a carefully forged death certificate to the courts to get his impending conviction annulled. Or, well, the certificate was almost carefully forged – Berger had misspelled a single word.
With that one typo, his entire plan unraveled. Unfortunately for Berger, his plan backfired completely, and he ended up facing an even longer prison sentence.
Want to know what word he misspelled? Read the full story of this (attempted) faked death.
2. To Escape a Traffic Charge
A long sentence for repeat thefts is one thing. But faking your death to escape a traffic charge really is an overreaction.
Mr. Si from China, first name unknown, had a habit of getting behind the wheel after having a few drinks. After getting caught repeatedly, he decided earlier this year that he would die, at least on paper.
Si even got his mother and grandmother in on the plot. His family staged a hasty cremation and invited their neighbors to pay their respects to the supposedly dead Si.
The plot might have worked if Si had been smart enough to not keep using his bank account. The police caught Si and sent him to prison after they began wondering why the dead man was constantly withdrawing cash.
3. To Run Away from Family
In 2024, Ryan Borgwardt – a Wisconsin husband and father of three – drowned when his kayak capsized during a fishing trip. Or that’s what his family thought until Borgwardt was discovered alive and well in Eastern Europe.
The police got suspicious when they didn’t find Borgwardt’s body. Following passport and bank record, they found out that he was alive and had left the country through Canada.
However, the reasons for his stunt aren’t entirely clear. Obviously, he wanted to get away from his family and everything else, but no one’s quite sure why.
At least he had been gracious enough to insure his life for a huge sum of money before “dying” so his family could live comfortably. Then again, since he’s alive, they probably didn’t get the cash.
4. To Improve Family Life
The 45-year-old Belgian David Baerten took the opposite approach from Borgwardt. When he started becoming estranged from his family, he decided he’d show them what living without him would be like.
So, through undisclosed methods, Baerten fooled his entire extended family into thinking he had died in 2023. But then he arrived to his own funeral on a helicopter.
You’d expect his family to be furious, but Baerten’s scheme actually worked. His family was genuinely relieved that he was still alive and their relationship has significantly improved.
That led to Baerten feeling really bad about his stunt. Lesson learned: don’t fake your death and instead talk to your family if you feel unappreciated.
5. To Promote a Piano Concert
Friedrich Gulda was an Austrian classical and jazz pianist who was so notorious for his eccentricity that he was known as the “terrorist pianist.” For example, he flouted the expected concert dress codes and wouldn’t advertise his concerts in advance.
Except for the one time he did it in the most bizarre way possible. In 1999, Gulda had Viennese newspapers print his obituary and promote his upcoming concert as a memorial to himself.
At the show, the very much alive pianist then walked on stage and gave his usual performance. According to Gulda himself, he just really wanted to have a “resurrection party.”
6. To See Who Would Mourn Him
Lord Timothy Dexter, a 17th-century American businessman, was a bit of a weirdo. The thing is, the man was well aware he didn’t behave according to then-current social norms. Consequently, he suspected his loved ones and friends didn’t actually like him very much.
Dexter really wanted to find out their true feelings about him. In a completely normal decision, he faked his death to see if they would mourn him.
They didn’t, as it turned out. In fact, Dexter noticed his wife seemed positively relieved and was even smiling at the funeral.
So, he stormed into the place and beat his wife with a cane for not crying as he felt she should’ve. This episode must’ve certainly shown everyone that Lord Dexter was not weird at all.
7. For Too Many Reasons
Finally, we have the British occultist, magician, artist, and all-around oddball Aleister Crowley. The inventor of the mystical practice of Thelema faked his death in 1930, pretending he had jumped to his death off a cliff in Spain.
Why? Oh boy, where do we start.
First, he had just taken on a new “magical partner,” Hanni Jaeger. She, however, turned out to be even more insane than Crowley himself, and he wanted to get rid of her.
Second, he wanted to divorce his estranged wife, Rose Kelly. We suppose a marriage isn’t on a stable platform when you have “magical partners.”
Third, Crowley was having some money problems. He figured that by dying, his creditors would stop hounding him for money.
Fourth, he was super conscious about his reputation. He wanted everyone to think he was extremely theatrical and dramatic, and faking your death was just the thing to cement his notoriety.
Fifth, and last, he was simply curious about how the world would react to the news of his death.
To be completely honest, though, the man probably had even more reasons. We just don’t know them all.