A man threw his boyfriend a 'surprise funeral' for his birthday and told attendees to pretend that he was a ghost

• A man reminisced about an experience on his 33rd birthday when his boyfriend threw him a "surprise funeral" in 2017.

• In a Twitter thread on Wednesday, Eli McCann told the story of when his boyfriend, now husband, gathered his loved ones for a funeral service on his birthday, because "people shouldn't have to die in order for their friends to gather and say why they loved them."

• "It was so charming and funny and morbid and I loved every second of it," McCann told the Mirror Online.

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A man was a witness to his own "surprise funeral" that his boyfriend orchestrated for his birthday.

Eli McCann, who was turning 33 at the time, reminisced on this unique experience on Twitter on Wednesday. He said that his boyfriend, Skylar Westerdahl, to whom is now married, put on the event back in 2017 because "people shouldn't have to die in order for their friends to gather and say why they loved them."

Westerdahl set up the funeral as a surprise and told McCann to get dressed for "a nice dinner," according to the Mirror Online. Almost a half-hour later, the couple showed up at a friend's house and McCann noticed that "all the windows were blacked out with curtains," the newspaper reported.

McCann, who is a lawyer and a host of the podcast Strangerville, said he was shocked to see 15 of his closest friends dressed in black and crying.

"My husband immediately took a seat and a friend in priestly attire stood and welcomed everyone to my funeral. They all pretended they couldn't see or hear me through the entire service," McCann told the outlet.

McCann described it as the "weirdest thing I've ever walked into."

Photos from the event show a room organized like a realistic funeral with a fake casket, chairs for loved ones, and programs. According to McCann, there was also a slideshow — set to "Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler — and musical performances.

McCann recalled that Westerdahl told attendees to pretend that he wasn't in attendance. "He instructed everyone to ignore me so it would be like I was a ghost visiting my own wake," McCann said on Twitter.

"After I realized they were ignoring me, I just sat on one of the chairs and watched the service," he told Mirror Online. "It was so charming and funny and morbid and I loved every second of it."

According to the newspaper, the party guests stopped ignoring McCann after the 30-minute funeral service and a regular birthday celebration followed.

McCann told Mirror Online that the experience "was so perfect" and reflected on his husband in the thread: "He melts my heart constantly, but especially when his expressions of love get weird."

Read the full report from Mirror Online

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