Not every one of us can boast of having encountered lightning at least once in our life. After all, a meeting with her often ends very badly … And yet, according to statistics, at least several hundred people a year around the world after such an adventure survive. This is a miracle in itself. But other unusual things happen to these "lucky ones".
The survivors
Here is one of the typical cases of miraculous salvation. Bruno Di Filippo from Massachusetts was hosing down the lawn in his front yard when lightning struck him. It went into the man's shoulder and out of the ankles.
Bruno Di Filippo
- I noticed a flash, looked at him - his eyes became bright red, he lit up like a Christmas tree, - Bruno's wife recalls. - Then he swayed and said: "I think I got an electric shock!"
The victim was sent to the hospital, where, to the surprise of the doctors, it turned out that the electric discharge practically did not harm him. There was only a small burn on the ankle, which soon disappeared without a trace.
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In the United States, a special community has even been created, which includes survivors of electric shocks. And not only from America, but also from other countries. They regularly hold "experience exchange" congresses.
“Sometimes lightning does not even leave marks on the body, but literally pierces the insides,” says Nelson Hendler, a neuropathologist at Johns Hopkins University, who studies such people. - Or vice versa, it passes outside - and ignites clothes, charring boots …
True, the effects of the discharge on the nervous system may not be immediately apparent. Often, victims who happily escaped death from a lightning strike later began to complain of irritability, poor coordination of movements, recurrent convulsions and ringing in the ears, and even urinary incontinence. One man had to shave off his hair as it was constantly moving. And a certain Jan Glovacek from the Czech Republic boasted that after a dramatic incident, his lost potency returned to him.
Patterns on the skin of survivors after being struck by lightning
The strangest things happen to those who are struck in the head by lightning. Dr. Hendler said that one of his patients fell into childhood after the stroke. Another had problems with memory, and he had to write down every day where he put his things, otherwise he could not find them later.
Marked by a miracle
Meanwhile, at times those struck by lightning acquire unusual properties. For example, in 1921, in his brochure “Revolutionary Methods of Treatment with Electricity,” Dr. Kulishevsky from Voronezh described a mysterious story that happened to his patient. In 1904, retired captain Vladimir Ignatievich Dronov was about 50 years old. In November, he went on a hunt organized by local landowners on the occasion of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich's visit to Ramon.
Although it was already snowing, a thunderstorm suddenly began and the captain was struck by lightning. The horse under him killed on the spot. He lost consciousness himself, but after half an hour he regained consciousness. All metal objects that were with him simply evaporated, but the discharge did not cause any visible damage to health.
However, strange things soon began. At first, Dronov's bald head began to grow thick black hair. Then all his teeth fell out, but new ones erupted in their place! Dr. Kulishevsky, who was watching him, documented this fact in a medical journal.
True, there were other "side effects": the captain constantly had nightmares in which he died a painful death - either he sailed on a shipwrecked ship, then he found himself under the ruins of a collapsed house, then he got into a burning train …
At the same time, Dronov became unusually lucky in the cards. He himself assured that some kind of special instinct had awakened in him. One day, the captain advised a neighbor where to look for a lost winning ticket. And he also began to remove headaches and toothaches from friends and successfully play on the stock exchange.
On the eve of the new year, 1914, Dronov moved to the United States, where by that time he kept his capital obtained through stock exchange fraud.
In parting, he said to Kulishevsky, pointing in the geographical atlas to the Serbian town of Sarajevo:
-Here, near Voronezh, lightning struck, which changed me, - and here, soon lightning will strike, which will change the whole world.
As you know, the First World War began precisely with the incident in Sarajevo …
As for the members of the said community of victims of atmospheric electricity, they also have something to brag about. So, Harold Dean from Missouri, after meeting with lightning, stopped feeling cold. Now he wears the same T-shirt even in winter. Englishwoman Helen Ward by smell finds items belonging to different people. Gunter Lunge from Berlin suddenly discovered the ability of a "counter", and now he is able to multiply six-digit numbers in his head. There are people who claim that after the current ran through their body, they began to see the insides of others.
“I haven’t come across telepaths or clairvoyants among my patients yet,” says Dr. Hendler, “but I examined a woman who wiped magnetic stripes on credit cards and travel passes with the touch of her hand. She had several injuries in the frontal lobes of the brain. Another man with "holes" in the left temporal lobe said that he felt electromagnetic radiation. He actually determined whether the current was flowing through the wires.
There are also known cases of miraculous healings. Several years ago, an elderly American was struck by lightning while near his home. I must say that this man was practically blind and deaf. When the doctors arrived at the scene, it turned out that there was no trace of blindness and deafness!
Ball lightning pierced Vasily Sayko from Penza through and through. The discharge entered the man's chest, singing his shirt, and came out from the back. At the same time, no traces remained on the body. But Vasily has a chronic stomach ulcer who knows where …
Heavenly Hunt
Sometimes lightning seemingly deliberately seeks its victims. So, in July 2006, in a village located in the Volga Medveditskaya ridge, which is one of the most famous anomalous zones in Russia, ball lightning "attacked" a group of six young people. As a result, three guys were left unconscious, and three girls, safe and sound, rushed home in panic.
Members of the ufological organization "Cosmopoisk", who investigated this episode, found out that it is far from unique: back in 2003, in the same places, ball lightning burned down to the ground a brick building of the temple, and there were human casualties.
Was the "hit" of lightning in the church by chance? It turns out that there are still similar episodes. On January 21, 2013, a severe thunderstorm raged in Plymouth. However, no building was struck by lightning except the local church. She struck the spire of the tower, cutting a huge gap in the wall.
- Everything that was in the temple was destroyed and flooded with water, - recalls the church head Richard Loser.
- Everything looked as if the church was blown up. But the rest of the houses and outbuildings remained intact. Only a small piece of stone fell on a bench located near my pub, and there was a slight surge in tension, - commented the owner of a drinking establishment, which is located next to the house of God …
The parishioners immediately began to talk that all this was not without reason. But why exactly did God strike the church?
However, it is not for nothing that people say: "Break you with thunder!" Isn't it really God's punishment behind this? Here is the story of Oksana P. from Samara: “I loved one guy. And he just laughed. Once he left with a girl for Sochi. I remember getting angry and sending curses at him. And a week later I found out that he had died. A thunderstorm found them on the highway. They hid in a subtree. They stood huddled together, but the lightning killed only him. Is this really God's punishment?"
Several years ago, a tragic and amazing story happened in Altai. A group of tourists went to the mountains. During the ascent, they were tied with one rope. And then a thunderstorm began, and lightning hit the climbers. At the same time, every third in the bundle was killed.
And later it turned out that all the victims were, to put it mildly, not angels. One was a criminal and was on the federal wanted list. The other was a secret polygamist. The third victim was engaged in prostitution, and the fourth abandoned her own children, handing them over to an orphanage …
One way or another, we still do not know much about this world, where even natural phenomena can have mystical properties that can be explained only in an irrational way.
Margarita TROITSYNA