Parents shocked after son thought ‘dead for six months’ calls them

Steve Hopkins

“My mum was absolutely in tears and my dad was just kind of gobsmacked.”

As far as family feuds go this is heartbreakingly cold.

A man has revealed his sisters were so angry at their parents that they told them he was dead and buried.

The man, who has been identified only as Callum, shared his story on New Zealand’s ZM Radio station where hosts, Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Megan Papas, couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing.

Callum said when he finally got in touch with his folks, they thought he had risen from the dead.

ZM listeners had been asked to call in if they’d ever been presumed dead, but the hosts weren’t quite ready for what Callum had to say.

“Yes, I definitely have been presumed dead, mate… So, my parents thought I was dead for about six months.” Callum began.

He said his sisters were “in a bit of a tiff” with my parents, and weren’t “really getting along”.

At the time, Callum was living in Wellington, in New Zealand’s north island, and the rest of his family were in Christchurch, in the south island.

“My older sister actually called my parents up and told them that I had died,” Callum went on.

@fvhzmCallum wins the award for the greatest sentence ever said on-air in ZM history ?♬ original sound – FVHZM

Parents shocked after son thought ‘dead for six months’ calls them

The vengeful sisters added that Callum already had his funeral and that his ex-girlfriend’s parents didn’t want his mum and dad there.

Vaughan chipped in at that point with an observation: “What! I’m going to say this in the nicest possible way Callum, your sister sounds like a crazy b****.

“No offence. Your sister sounds like a top level, red flag, crazy b****!”

Callum was then asked why he hadn’t been in contact with his parents for half a year and responded simply that he was “just busy with life and work”.

He went on to say that when the absence of contact occurred to him, he got in touch.

“And I gave them a call-up,” he explained. “And my mum and dad are like: ‘You’re alive?’

“My mum was absolutely in tears and my dad was just kind of gobsmacked. He was just like ‘what the f*** is going on?’

“My parents don’t really talk to my sisters anymore.”

The hosts then erupted in laughter, before quizzing Callum on whether his parents had just accepted the news of his death without questioning it.

“They were kind of like running around calling our other family seeing if they had heard anything, from what I was told,” he said.

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

But it didn’t end there. Callum later revealed his sisters told his parents that he had been stabbed to death.

At his point, Vaughan shouted in disbelief: “Wait wait wait wait wait wait, so you were murdered?

“You’re not dead by your own hand or dead in an accident. Someone murdered you… Oh my god… We’ve nearly been doing this for 20 years together. This is the wildest phone call I think we’ve ever had.

“Were you the sort of person who would have got stabbed?”

Callum then comically responded: “I was definitely not in some gangs but I will say, at the point in time, it wouldn’t have been unpeculiar for me to get stabbed.”

He added that his mum and dad were “over the moon” to learn he was still alive and that he had rushed back to see them that weekend to “reassure them, look look it’s really me”.