Yahoo News A phantom mourner has been crashing funerals at her local church for 14 years
A phantom mourner has been accused of crashing almost every funeral at her local church for the past 14 years.
It’s claimed the unnamed woman chats to grieving family members and eats buffet food set out for mourners at wakes.
She has allegedly been attending numerous funerals at the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Slough, Berkshire, for a decade and a half.
The priest at the church, Fr Noel Connolly, says he has spoken to the woman but that he cannot prevent her from turning up for funeral services.
He said she believes it is her ‘duty to attend as many church masses as possible’.
Fr Connolly said: ‘Every funeral we have she comes and if there is a reception afterwards she makes her way to it without invitation.
‘She is a Catholic woman and she is convinced she needs to go to as many masses as possible.
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‘She has been coming and going since I have been here for the past 14 years. I can’t exactly say you can’t come here.’
Margaret Whitehead, who organised the funeral of her daughter Catherine, 42, at the church recently, was angry at the woman’s attendance.
‘She got my son Kevin to give her a lift from the church to the Irish Centre for the wake,’ she told The Bracknell News.
‘There were a lot of people at the funeral from Catherine’s work so I just assumed she was a colleague.
“When I spoke to her though she told me she used to work with Catherine as a waitress. My daughter never worked as a waitress.
‘She was eating from the buffet like there was no tomorrow. At the end of the wake she took out a Tupperware box, filled it up with food and cycled off with it in the basket on her bicycle.
‘There’s mass every morning, she doesn’t need to go to funerals. She’s only going when there’s a cheap lunch. She intrudes on people when they are upset and sad.’
