Parents left in disbelief after 'son who'd been dead for six months' called them

As far as wild sibling rivalries stories go, this one from New Zealand seems straight off a soap opera.

But Callum’s fake death tale isn't a subplot from a dark TV show; it's a rather cruel prank his sister pulled on their parents for reasons unknown.

In a clip from 2023 that has since been doing the rounds on TikTok, a listener called Callum rings local New Zealand station ZM Radio to tell his bizarre story.

Hosts Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Hayley Sproull were left in shock when they heard what Callum's sister came up with to get back at her family.

"My sisters were in a bit of a tiff with my parents at the time and they weren't really getting along," Callum explained.

At the time Callum was living in Wellington, around 270 miles away from his parents' home in Christchurch.

He continued: “My older sister actually called my parents up and told them that I had died."

The woman's prank also included some pretty grim details. She told her parents that her brother had been murdered and that his burial had already taken place.

The poor parents were also told that their son’s ex-girlfriend’s parents didn’t want them at the funeral.

“No offence,” host Vaughan said.

“Your sister sounds like a top level, red flag, crazy b**ch!”

One can only imagine Callum’s parents’ reaction when he finally called them up — six months after they were told he’d died.

Asked about why he hadn’t been in contact with his parents for that long, he simply said: "I was just busy with life and work and then I was like wait - I haven't heard from my parents in a while, I wonder what's going on?"

"And I gave them a call up, and my mum and dad were like 'you're alive?'" he continued.

"My mum was absolutely in tears and my dad was just kind of gobsmacked - he was just like 'what the f**k is going on?'"

The hosts also quizzed Callum as to why his parents took his sister’s spiel at face value.

He responded: “They were kinda like running around calling our other family seeing if they had heard anything, from what I was told.

“Then they didn't really know anything to go off so my parents just kind of presumed 'yeah, he died’.”

“This is the wildest phone call we've ever had,” Vaughan added.

From what Callum told the hosts, it seems his sister and their parents aren’t exactly on speaking terms, understandably.