Priest arrives at lavish funeral but finds the coffin is empty and mourners are actors

Father Rupert McHardy says a funeral he’d been booked for at the London Oratory Roman Catholic church in South Kensington appeared to be fake (Pictures: Rupert McHardy)

A priest arrived ready to conduct a funeral in London only to find there was no body in the coffin and the mourners were actors.

Father Rupert McHardy, 49, was due to begin the lavish service at the London Oratory Roman Catholic church in upmarket South Kensington at 11am on Monday.

There was a horse-drawn hearse, two luxury vintage cars, men in top hats, a full choir, and a person to film the funeral.

The were also several photos of Lauris Zaube, the 23-year-old Latvian man it was apparently for, placed around the church.

Dressed in his robes and with a prepared sermon in hand, Fr McHardy was about to start the service when the choir master pulled him aside to explain everything wasn’t as it seemed.

He then learnt there was no body in the coffin and the mourners were actors, reports MailOnline.

The organiser of the funeral had previously said his name was Clyde Zaube and that Lauris was his brother.

He said Lauris was found frozen in ice after going missing following a New Year’s Eve party.

Lauris Zaube, who went missing in Latvia after a New Year’s Eve party (Picture: Facebook)

The funeral directors, T Cribb and Sons, were even provided with a death certificate – although it was allegedly from Russia.

A Lauris Zaube did go missing near an iced-over dam in Latvia at New Year’s but his body has apparently never been found and it’s not thought he has brother called Clyde.

Fr McHardy therefore doesn’t believe Clyde is who he said he was.

The priest eventually decided he could not go ahead with the service and the whole thing was cancelled.

He said: ‘It was all some sort of fake funeral.

Father Rupert McHardy said the whole thing was ‘very, very weird’ (Picture: Rupert McHardy)

‘I was quite shaken afterwards. I felt very disturbed by it.’

Fr McHardy said the funeral request came in three or four weeks ago. Asked if they had connection with the church, they were told yes, they did.

The man calling himself Clyde apparently chose the readings.

‘On the day of the funeral, it all started to unravel,’ said Fr McHardy. 

‘The undertakers were going to collected the body and then at the last minute they were told, ”there is no body, we have ashes.”’

Fr McHardy said there were two groups of ‘mourners’ in the church, one turned out to be actors, who were respectful and polite.

Police searching a frozen dam for Lauris Zaube in Latvia (Picture: Facebook)

The other group, he said, wore puffer jackets, balaclavas, hoods and dark glasses and were ‘sinister-looking’.

One of them was ‘Clyde’, who refused to talk to Fr McHardy.

When the priest realised something strange appeared to be going he asked the groups to leave, which everyone did ‘relatively happily’.

He said if the non-actor group of ‘mourners’ were family and friends of someone who had died they would, most likely, have been a lot more upset.

London Oratory Roman Catholic church in South Kensington, where the funeral was due to be held

Fr McHardy added that he and the funeral directors were all paid, so they were not left out of pocket, but that the whole thing was ‘very, very weird’.

Last year, a dad faked his own death and then dramatically arrived at the funeral in a helicopter in an attempt to try and teach his family ‘a life lesson’.

David Baerten staged the extraordinary prank in Belgium to see how his loved ones would react after he died.

The 45-year-old TikTok creator claimed he wanted to pull off the elaborate stunt because he had lost touch with his wider family.

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