My best friend Matt was killed by a lightning strike over the July 4th weekend in 1995. He was living in North Carolina at the time, and had crab traps out in the water. I was not there, but another of our friends was. Apparently it was not particularly stormy, but there were storms brewing. Anyway, Matt went out to check the traps, and our friend John saw him get hit and knocked off his feet. John ran out to him while Matt’s girlfriend called 911. One of his shoes had been knocked clean off, and the wire between the frames of his sunglasses had melted. He was breathing irregularly and had an erratic heartbeat, but according to the EMS folks on the scene, he was instantly brain dead. Efforts to stabilize or revive him were unsuccessful, and in accordance with his living will, he was not placed on life support.
As a sidenote, if he had died one day earlier, his grave marker would have looked pretty cool, because it would have read: Dec. 25, 1968 - July 4, 1995. Matt was the kind of guy who would have thought that the way he died was pretty hilarious, too.
Sorry to hear about your friend pldennison. That really sucks
I’ve noticed at least three of the stories here involve boats, two of them kayaks. And while most people don’t get super powers, edwino’s wife’s cousin became psychic and thinksnow’s friend got some weird watch stopping power. Hmmm…
My Grandmother was struck twice by lightning. Once she was doing dishes, and according to my Grandfather, Mother and her brothers, it came through the kicthen window, right above the sink. The other time was while she was on her porch coming from her car.
This is also the same woman who watched a tornado destroy both houses on either side of hers, and left her house intact. Needless to say, she would get very paranoid and head down to the basement when it even LOOKED like it was gonna storm outside.
As for me, never been hit. Came close once, while camping. Felt the static buldup in the air, then BOOM and then felt the shockwave. It had hit a tree probably 15 feet from where I was standing. I sat in the car until the storm passed after that
No… the guy I’m thinking of was nobody famous, no one ever heard of him… (keep in mind that my dad may have been funnin’ me! It may all be BS. VERY possible… I was around 12 at the time… so I am not a reliable witness in ANY sense of the word!)
I don’t know, for sure, that the guy was EVER ONCE hit by lightning… let alone 7 times! The guy in question was a homeless wino who hung around where my dad was born (again… second-hand info., I was 12!! Or so…), so I just threw that out… I can’t back it up with any data whatsoever… Sorry!
I’m not sure how close I came, but it must have been close. Driving in my car, traffic crawls to a stop as a very heavy storm passes over.
Suddenly, there was a flash of brilliant, white light right in front of me. I didn’t see any sort of beam, or ‘bolt’, just an incredibly loud “BANG!”, the radio zapped, and I instinctively ducked (though I was in the car).
It happened so fast, and was so bright, I couldn’t see anyhing. -and the noise! Man, it was pretty scary.
My girlfriend was struck by lightning at about the same time we got together. She was on her way to work (this is in London) was lightning struck her umbrella and went into her from there. Why the lightning chose to strike her rather than any of the surrounding taller buildings i don’t know. I joked at the time that it was God telling her not to get together with me.
She even went to work after that and tried to work for about half an hour before giving up and going to hospital to have a check up. She said she felt quite strange for a few days, but since then she hasn’t got any magical powers or anything which is a shame.
My house was hit by lightning, with my mother and me in it at the time.
It was a rainy Saturday morning, and she and I were sitting on her bed and talking, when we heard a loud bang and the smoke alarms in house went off. (They’re connected to the house’s wiring.) My mom and I ran outside to see if the house was on fire, which it wasn’t, but the very edge of the high point of the roof (right above my mom’s bedroom) was curled up a little. That and a shorted computer monitor were the only bits of damage we sustained, fortunately.
The sad thing is that I had always comforted myself during storms with the thought that my house was at the bottom of the hill in our neighborhood, so surely we weren’t at great risk of being struck by lightning. After that Saturday morning, lightning storms terrified me.
