“People were commenting saying ‘rest in peace, Grace. I love you,'” recalls Grace Wolstenholme, who shares her experience living with cerebral palsy to her 1.5 million followers on TikTok.
A British TikTok star is opening up about being a target of a death hoax on social media.
In a since-deleted viral video, a TikTok account falsely claimed that Grace Wolstenholme — an influencer who shares her journey living with cerebral palsy — had died. Wolstenholme, 22, learned about the hoax, and called out the video’s creator in a TikTok shared in May. Now, she’s speaking out about the incident and the dangerous of misinformation in an interview with the BBC.
In May 2025, Wolstenholme addressed the hoax in a TikTok video. The clip claiming she was dead featured old footage from 2021 of the content creator throwing a punch in the gym, before she falls down; the video then cut to a casket being lowered into the ground.
“I lost my autistic sister today so I bought this pillow to imitate cuddling her,” the user wrote over the video, which was viewed 650,000 times, according to the BBC.
Wolstenholme stitched the video on TikTok, and slammed the creator of the video, whom she claimed was also pretending to have cerebral palsy.
“It has come to my attention that someone has put on TikTok saying that they’re my brother and that I’m dead. Well, excuse me if I’m mistaken, I’ve not just risen from the f–king dead, have I? I’m obviously still here,” she said in the clip.
She went on to call the hoax “very sickening.”
Wolstenholme also called it “disgusting how he can make out I’m [dead] to get views, and also to pretend he’s got cerebral palsy. I cannot tell you how angry this video has made me.”
While speaking with the BBC this week, Wolstenholme said she had been ill for about three months prior to the hoax video being posted online, and hadn’t been as active on TikTok, noting that it made the false claim that she had died more believable.
She said she learned about the video when someone reached out to her mother to send their condolences.
“People were commenting saying ‘rest in peace, Grace. I love you,'” Wolstenholme explained. “People were severely devastated hearing I was dead.”
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She claimed that she lost money from the hoax, saying she lost thousands of followers and her views were reduced since users believed she was dead.
Wolstenholme expressed her frustration that not only did the creator of the hoax claim she was dead, but they falsely diagnosed her as autistic, when she has cerebral palsy.
“My disability isn’t autism, it’s cerebral palsy. So he got my disability wrong, and said I was dead,” she told the BBC.
According to Wolstenholme, she reached out to someone on Instagram with the same username of the person who shared the hoax video on TikTok, and they removed it from TikTok — only to repost it a few days later.
Wolstenholme also claimed the user sent her what BBC described as “offensive messages.”
The outlet reported that TikTok took down the hoax video after they contacted the platform.
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As for her 1.5 million TikTok followers, Wolstenholme said they were “deeply disgusted” by the death hoax.
“It’s triggering for my followers to see because some of my followers suffer with their mental health,” she explained.
According to the BBC, the creator of the hoax TikTok shared a second video, in which they appeared to mock Wolstenholme’s cerebral palsy. However, both of the user’s TikTok and Instagram accounts have since been deactivated.
Wolstenholme — who splits her time between Essex and London — reported the incident and alleged harassment to the Metropolitan Police, according to the BBC, which said authorities confirmed it was looking into “several lines of inquiry.”
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told the BBC, “The victim continues to be supported by officers. At this stage no arrests have been made.”
