I'm a bit of a sicko Mitch and Laura.
That's not a surprise to anyone, But I cannot tell you how excited I am for this chat that we're about to have. We're about to speak to Bill Edgar, who I think has one of the most interesting, creepy, intriguing, disturbing jobs in Australia. So he's a businessman, he's a counselor, he's an author, he's a private detective sure, but the best part is he's a coffin confessor.
This is what he calls himself. Bill's job is to go to people's deathbeds.
So people as they know they don't have much time left, or maybe they do whatever it is they He goes to their deathbed and he gets their dying wish and their dying confession. So maybe it's something that this dying person wants to happen at their own funeral. Maybe it's just something they want to confess. And Bill has to go and stand up at the funeral or the grave site and like and say the confession, Hey, I know Johnny's passed away, he's employed me to blah blah blah blah.
And then they get all his secrets out. It's actually insane. I find it so fascinating. He charges ten thousand dollars to do this, and I have so many questions around, like the how, the why, the what the deepest secrets? So I have got Bill on the phone to have a chat toy, Right, Bill, Welcome to the pickup.
Hey guys, thanks for having me, Hi Bill, Bill?
How does one end up.
Confessing people's dying last wish?
Oh? You know what, It started as a joke. I just told a dying man that I crash his funeral for him, and he took me up on the offer.
When you said you're going to crash his funeral, like, why were you crashing his funeral?
What was the like?
What was the sentiment behind it that he needed his funeral crashed?
Oh? I got to meet this gentleman probably eight ten weeks before his death, and we were talking about death, the afterlife and everything in between, and I suggested he do a eulogy and he said that he'd been through enough funerals where the eulogy isn't played out of disrespect or whatever it is. And I just said, yeah, it just as a joke, you know what. Graham I can always crash your funeral for you, Mane. And a couple of weeks later, I get a text and he says, Bill,
You're going to crash my funeral for me. I'm going to pay your ten grand to do it.
Wow, what a what a fee he put on that for you?
And what was what was.
It that you crashed? Would you mind telling us, like, what happened? What did you have to say?
Well, his best mate, while performing the eulogy with his crocodile tears to two to three minutes into that eulogy. I was to stand up, excuse myself and say to the crowd, excuse me. My name's phil Epia. S down, shove up or bug off. The man in the coffin's got something, they say, and this is what it is. You know, best made of mine. You've been trying to screw my wife while I'm on my deathbed. And if my brother, his wife and their daughter at my funeral,
they can bugger off too. I haven't seen him in thirty years. Their vultures get lost.
Oh my god, what happened when you said this?
Well, yeah, you could hear a pin drop at the same time. Those that truly loved the man. They knew and understood, and the best mate ob looks he just ran out. He left really quickly. The other three that were in attendance, they stood up and they left as well, and a few other people left. I think they thought they were going to get targeted. But it was his skill and it is his funeral, so why not he got to have you stay.
I wantn't know what happened with the wife. I mean, was the wife was she still there? Was she did she get up and leave? Or was she was the one who was telling him that this was happening.
Yeah, she was very grateful for what happened. This this so called best mate is no longer in her life or you know, anywhere around them. She was very upset about the best mate trying to do what he was trying to do. Oh wow. And obviously she didn't want to put too much on her dying husband. But at the same time he could see everything from his bedroom on,
you know. And it was one of those cases that when you're lying on your deathbed and you, yeah, you got no energy, you sleep most of the time, you've got no confident, you've got nothing, and then you're needed.
Help Edgar, Is there a line for you? Do you think to yourself, I want this to be ethical? Is there any ethical element to it?
Or no?
Will you do absolutely anything once that, once you've been.
Paid, I know no, it's definitely ethics and morals and my integrity. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I am an investigator. I'd like to investigate everybody's claims. I'm very careful. I sit with my clients and we go through everything. I will not act for a third party. In other words, if you wanted me to crash your mother's or father's heeral, I can't do that. I can only crash on behalf of them.
Okay, well, hold on, this is very, very exciting.
Why don't we go to a break you let's get some story, some deathbed confession stories.
Yeah, I need more.
You're happy to stick around and tell us some after this, Bill, absolutely all right, stay there. We're back after this with the Coffin Confessor on the pickup Britt, Laura and Mitch joined by Bill Edgar. He's the Coffin Confessor. He's a counsel,
as an author, he's a businessman. It's also a private detective and he's channeling his work now into going to the deathbed of people that are terminally ill, getting a secret that they want off their chest, and then revealing it to their friends and family in the world.
Hey, Bill, is there ever any request that someone has asked you to do that you've had to put your foot down and say I can't do that, that's too far.
It was, but I ended up doing it anyway because I am the coffee professor and it was a message. It was for me to actually be a lady suicide note and that was confronting. But at the same time, there's nothing that was going to stop this lady doing what she did.
Wow, God, there can be a real tense job.
I can only imagine tell us one of the craziest confessions that you've ever had to do. If you're at a pub having a couple of beers and your mates going to tell us us the best story?
What is it?
I think I got to say the best story, or the most confronting story for me, was going to the viewing of the body and pin pricking the body because the person was petrified of being cremated alive.
Oh wow, No, they wanted you to go and check and make sure they were dead.
That's awful.
Well, that's right. We all have a phobia, we all have a fear, and we've all got a skeleton in the closet. So it's just one of those jobs that had to be done. So now I'm placing items in coffins, mobile phone, Soto's jewelry, whatever it is. Plus, I'm delivering gifts from the afterlife, which is a beautiful thing to do. I rock up at somebody's house. It could be six seven, eight months after somebody's died, on an anniversary of birthday and I'm delivering a gift special.
Do you find that these people because you're spending time with people in the most vulnerable last moments? Do many people who you've spoken to have regrets or are there things that they wish they'd done differently about their life? And that's the type of thing that you're enacting or taking out, you know, I.
Believe we all have that moment, you know, especially I noticed it more on the people's set beds that they wish they had more time and time to one thing. We can't buy, we can't there's nothing we can do. Time to seek It just comes in the name.
Really on.
So it's really one of those things that people wish they had time. But I got to say, everybody that I've met who's now no longer alive, they've all said the same thing as in, they're not the fear of death is nothing. They don't see your death. What they see you is leaving their loved ones behind. That's the biggest fear.
Yeah.
Yeah, Well, if you had to say the juiciest secret that you've had to pass on, what is it?
Oh, the juiciest would have to be the lady who passed away and left me a message to tell her son that his sister was his mother grandmother.
Oh my my, oh wow, and ten thousand dollars you could have that experience to me.
That to me sounds horrible.
Imagine that being how you find out, Like, you don't need to know that after the fact, if they're going to die and take that wish with them, I just I wouldn't want to know. I think that's so how did you respond to it?
She's like mom, grandma's sister.
I think it's one of those things that you know, people can't seem to live or let go of things, and so they hire me to do that for them. At the same time, I've asked many a person that why meet you know, why not do it yourself, or why not get a friend, and they just have no trust to or or they just can't do it when it's issues of infidelity, and I find that either revenge people doing it as a revenge thing, or they're coming
clean and going you know what. So recently I crashed a fearal where the lady said that she knew her husband had been sleeping around and that she decided to do the same, and he had no idea. But when he did find out, he broke down terribly. And I said, well, you know what, man, she found out you were doing it, and she let it go, but you kept doing it, so now she's done it.
You're more so the confrontation expert, right than it is the Coffin Confessor. I mean people hate confrontation. I guess that is why people are so drawn to you.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. At the end of the day, keep telling people I'm just a messenger. It's not me, it's your luve.
Look, if you want more from Bill Edgar, you can get his book The Coffin Confessor. More stories like that inside Hey, thanks for coming on the show. Bill, very exciting stuff. Interesting.
Thanks Bill so much, all your listeners.
Good man, and if you wanted services DM Bill.
I just think it's I mean going like I think, when you're going to die, having such vengeance or wanting to like, you know, enact revenge on someone, it just seems really sad.
Yeah, it's their dying wish if it makes them happy.
I think, all right, we're done, let's get out of here. We need to end the shore