Edgar has built a career as the “Coffin Confessor”, with his primary job being to crash people’s funerals to tell his client’s closest how much they were loved - or the ones they hate to “f*** off”.
Speaking to Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast, Ask Me Anything, Edgar said that this all started for him around 2018 when he was working as a private investigator for a man called Graham, who had suspicions a friend was trying to infiltrate his family.
“Graham was on his deathbed. We spoke about death, life and everything in between. And, I said to Graham, ‘do your own eulogy if you want to do something’. And he said, ‘I’ve been to too many funerals and the family view the eulogy first, and they say whether it goes on or not, and I don’t want that’.
“I just said out of a joke, ‘I could always crash your funeral for you, mate’. And he said, ‘Oh, yes, that sounds reasonable’.”
Edgar set up cameras at Graham’s house first to prove his theories, and within 24 hours had proof that the friend was hitting on his wife and trying to take over the family.
“And I thought, ‘you know what, Graham, not a problem in the world, mate, I’ll go and I’ll do that’.
“And then Graham said to me, ‘if my brother, his wife and their daughter attend my funeral, please tell them to f*** off. I haven’t seen him in 30 years. They’re vultures in the family. Get rid of them’.”
After Graham’s funeral, Edgar thought it would be the only time, but he said that it “went nuts”, and he went on to do one funeral after the next.
Not only does he reveal people’s secrets, but the Australian has also been hired to dispose of or protect items for his clients, and even conduct “sweeps” of their homes before their families arrive for a cleanout after their passing.
“The first time I ever did that job was an 88-year-old man on palliative care. And I didn’t realise that elderly people, they have a fall at home, they go to hospital, but they get told they’re never going home again, so they can’t retrieve their items.
“And this gentleman, he basically had what you’d call, it was a sex dungeon, but it wasn’t bad. It was a romantic type of setting. It was ridiculous, but he had all these women in their 60s, 70s, 80s that loved him.
“But he had three sons and he would be mortified if they were to walk in his house and find this secret room.”
Part of his job involves dealing with the “vultures” trying to clear out his client’s estates, sometimes before they have even died.
“There was a lady on her deathbed in the hospital and her son walked in while I’m talking to her, trying to take the rings off her finger while she’s still alive, so he could hock them because he can’t get his car going.”
Some people are even afraid that they’ll be buried or cremated when they are still alive, and he’s been asked to slip a phone into their coffin, or even pinprick them to confirm they are actually dead.
One thing he won’t do though is break the law - even though Edgar admits he walks a fine line with his profession.
That includes a time when he was asked to burn a client’s money after death, which is illegal in Australia, so he offered to bury it instead.
“And I’m like, well, where the f*** am I going to bury this stuff that no one’s going to find. And it came to me at another funeral when I was actually standing at the grave site and I’m looking down at the graves and I went, ‘Holy sh*t, I wonder if I could jump in there, dig a hole, bury what I need to, and then wait for my client to go on top and then him bury it?’.
“And lo and behold, I could. And I did.”
Listen to the full episode for more from Bill Edgar about his unique job, what he will and won’t do for clients, and what he has learnt about death from his role.
His new book, The Afterlife Confessional, is available in book stores now.
Ask Me Anything is an NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every Sunday.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
