A resident of Bern was left stunned after finding his own death notice in a local newspaper. Nikita Tardent received hundreds of messages from concerned friends and relatives, who were worried about whether he was okay and if the news was indeed true - which, of course, it wasn't. 

Stranger contacts newspaper to ask about obituary price 

The strange story began with a person calling the Quotidien Jurassien newspaper to ask about the price of publishing an obituary. The following day, Nikita's death notice was booked for the coming Friday. The request even came with a photo attached, allegedly from Nikita’s own email address, despite Targent never having published the image online. 

This led Tardent to believe that he was being pranked by someone on the internet. The photograph was only available on Nikita’s personal Google Drive account, so he assumes that whoever sent in the photo and notice request to the newspaper has access to his account. 

Relatives left stunned by death notice

According to Blick, Tardent said he has no idea who could be behind the death notice. “I have no enemies”, Nikita told the newspaper. He has since asked a friend who is a computer scientist to look into the case and find out who could be behind the newspaper entry. 

The hardest part about the whole thing was the reaction of concerned relatives, Tardent told the newspaper. "I've received hundreds of messages from everywhere", he told news portal Ajour.