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Struck By Lightning?

jackaroo

jackaroo

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
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40
When I was around the age of 8/9 I was walking home from school one rainy thundering day.

I was alone as my friend had just gone into his house leaving me a short distance to walk to my home. As I approached the corner of my road I witnessed a bright flash from above. At the same time I found myself surrounded by a ring of lightning about two metres in diameter at about waist height.

I was frozen with shock and remember thinking that if I came into contact with the lightning it would be painful. I was frozen for what seemed like a few seconds, then the brightness disappeared as did the ring.

I ran home to tell my mother, as I naively thought she could explain it. As you would expect I wasn't believed, but for some reason this event has created a very strong memory.

I've searched extensively for anything similar and only found information in regard to actual lightning strikes, no rings.

Has anybody here come across any similar accounts
 
And you lived to tell the tale,sounds both scary and amazing at the same time. Ive never been struck, touch wood but Ive received plenty of shocks in my construction & IT careers.
 
I read some articles about alien abduction which mentioned a strong light from above, that's about the closest phenomena to what I experienced but still it wasn't the same, and I don't claim to have been in a spaceship or met aliens, although there was this one time.....new post
 
And perhaps in the fullness of time this thread can be merged with it. In the meantime, you might let the conversation run a little.

Wondering aloud, traumatic experiences often seem to occur in slow-motion with a quicker perception of the fractions of a second. Could the ring, perhaps, have been your seeing the electricity leave your body after the strike?
 
Yithian said:
And perhaps in the fullness of time this thread can be merged with it. In the meantime, you might let the conversation run a little.

Wondering aloud, traumatic experiences often seem to occur in slow-motion with a quicker perception of the fractions of a second. Could the ring, perhaps, have been your seeing the electricity leave your body after the strike?
Click to expand...

I am open to any suggestions about what happened,

the ring certainly could be the electricity dissipating, but as I received no injuries I am assuming that it didn't enter my body.

I have a very clear memory of the spot where it happened and there was a telegraph pole right next to it. my parents still live on that road and I drive past the spot occasionally. In regard to the telegraph pole being struck, this is possible, although there were higher buildings and trees in the vicinity and I recollect the ring being at waist height and surrounding me.
 
I hypothesise that there was a faraday cage effect caused by your rubber soled shoes and nylon underwear that produced a rare 'electrical air doughnut'.
 
jackaroo said:
... As I approached the corner of my road I witnessed a bright flash from above. At the same time I found myself surrounded by a ring of lightning about two metres in diameter at about waist height.

I was frozen with shock and remember thinking that if I came into contact with the lightning it would be painful. I was frozen for what seemed like a few seconds, then the brightness disappeared as did the ring. ...
Click to expand...

Can you describe the appearance of this ring in more detail? For example: width (not the ring's diameter, but the width of it at any point); color; ...

What about sound? Did a thunderclap accompany the brightness / ring?

What were the rain conditions at that moment? Misting? Drizzle? Downpour?

Were you under an umbrella at the time?
 
jackaroo said:
... I have a very clear memory of the spot where it happened and there was a telegraph pole right next to it. my parents still live on that road and I drive past the spot occasionally. In regard to the telegraph pole being struck, this is possible, although there were higher buildings and trees in the vicinity and I recollect the ring being at waist height and surrounding me.
Click to expand...

In your memories of this event, in which direction(s) were you gazing during the light / ring appearance? Up? Downward? All around?

In your original post you referred to the brightness being a 'flash' (a transient thing), but your later remarks indicate this brightness persisted and stopped at the same time as the ring. Was there a 'flash' that started a persistent brightness (somehow distinct from each other), or did you mean the 'flash' was similar to a bright overhead lamp being turned on (i.e., the brightness appeared all of a sudden)?
 
I was looking intently at the ring trying to stay in the middle of it so as not to touch it. my recollection was a flash which I assumed was from above as that's the direction I associate(d) lightning with, it was like a lightning flash in the way that lightning flashes illuminate everything around their vicinity for a brief moment, and the ring appeared in that instant then vanished a few moments later. drizzle, no umbrella, no recollection of a thunder clap although I must say my attention was focused entirely on not getting burnt. The ring was about 8-12 inches thick and white silver like lightning, and looked like it was frizzling or crackling although no recollection of sound. like I was frozen for a few moments
 
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Thanks for the additional details ...

I've been within a few dozen feet of lightning strikes, and (at least in my experience ... ) the explosive blast of sound is a much bigger shock than the visible effects. An absence of sound would suggest your event wasn't related to a close strike.

On the other hand, the circumstances (young child; long ago; priority of visible over aural memory, etc.) leave open the possibility a close strike shocked / stunned you so dramatically that all you retained were the visible effects. I can assure you that 'stunned' is the unavoidable result of a close strike's sonic flash.

The white / silver color would seem to rule out a rainbow / halo sort of optical effect (akin to a glory). That's what I was driving at by asking about color.

I'm starting to wonder if the ring was some sort of after-image caused by the bright flash.
 
I agree with much of what you said, and add that the circumstances you mention are a major factor, especially that I was young in years and hence possessed nothing I could reference it to, and that still stands.

the only thing similar that Ive heard of, the closest phenomena, comes from the alien abductees who talk about a bright beam coming down from overhead. But, there were a few differences which could be explained by my level of comprehension at such an early age.

I dunno, ever heard of other similar phenomena?
 
jackaroo said:
... I dunno, ever heard of other similar phenomena?
Click to expand...

No - I don't recall ever hearing about (much less experiencing ... ) this particular combination of effects.

The encircling light-ring bit is completely new to me.
 
PHOTOS: Man Tells How Lightning Bolt Left Ringing In His Ears
5:17pm 5th January 2016

A Coastwatch officer from Boscastle has revealed what it is like to be struck by lightning.
Andy Salmon and a colleague were on duty at the lookout station in north Cornwall during a storm on new year's eve.
The building was hit by a bolt of lightning, causing major damage. But the two men inside escaped without serious injuries.

Andy told ITV News Westcountry: "There was a huge bang and that was it. We heard a bang for no more than a few seconds.
"John looked over at me, I looked at him. We both seemed to be standing. He said: 'What's happened?'
"I looked at the door. The kick plate was at ninety degrees, I looked higher and there was a hole in the top of the doorframe, all the architrave was hanging off. I said - 'I think we had a lightning strike John.'

"The most important thing is that both of us were still standing.
"John took a heavy knock to his knee and we had a bit of ringing in the ears.
"But apart from that we're both still here to tell the tale."

Scroll down to see pictures of the damage.

A spokesperson for the Coastwatch base, which keeps a lookout for people in trouble, said: "It'll take more than several million volts to keep us closed."

It follows days of stormy weather that has battered Cornwall. Cardinham on Bodmin moor saw almost 7cm of rain fall over three days, making it one of the wettest places in the country.

http://www.piratefm.co.uk/news/late...-how-lightning-bolt-left-ringing-in-his-ears/
 
Has anyone here ever heard of lightning hitting water then 'bouncing' (for want of a better word) off of it and hitting a second target? ... I ask because I was once a live in night porter at a seaside hotel that was hit by lightning, a local told me he'd witnessed the bolt strike the sea first then hit the hotel afterwards. Was he pulling my leg or is this a known about phenomena ? ..
 
Swifty said:
a local told me he'd witnessed the bolt strike the sea first then hit the hotel afterwards
Click to expand...

Even if this phenomenon was to have been sequentially-feasible (which I'd doubt), in order for him to have physically witnessed it, he would've required visual accuity that was exceedingly high.

It's not quite perceiving target-hits at faster than the speed of light (as plasma arcs may be seen to travel long distances, within the perception thresholds of witnesses) but, it must be at the extreme end of purported human capability, if it was an accurate and truthful statement from the witness.

Going back to the (for me, more-reliable recollections of the OP incident).... @jackaroo, I am drawn to ask you a question, which is prompted by the line being elucidated by the eternally-wise @EnolaGaia. Even allowing for the passage of time since the experience occurred, can you be certain that there was a gap all around, seperating you from the ring?

Did you perceive any depth to the ring, in plan view, looking slightly downwards?

I wonder: could you somehow have been partially-inside a ball-lightning globe of plasma? Like a wet finger in a soap-bubble...and the 'ring' around you was the intrusion of yourself into the ball?

Whilst some reports of ball lightning refer to perfect floating spheres, that explode when impacted by ground objects, I do remember also reading of instances where ball lightning is reportedly seen to apparently pass through physical objects. I'm wondering if this could perhaps be explicable were it's topological integrity sometimes be seen to adhere to (or circumconduate?) obstructions, giving the perspective appearance of a penetrative effect...adduced by yourself, almost like being within the enclosed eye of a tiny local vortex 'storm'...?
 
Swifty said:
Has anyone here ever heard of lightning hitting water then 'bouncing' (for want of a better word) off of it and hitting a second target? ... I ask because I was once a live in night porter at a seaside hotel that was hit by lightning, a local told me he'd witnessed the bolt strike the sea first then hit the hotel afterwards. Was he pulling my leg or is this a known about phenomena ? ..
Click to expand...

Allusions to the notion that lightning can 'ricochet' among objects on the ground is a common way of describing strikes / flashes that seem to involve more than one such object. For example, there's this 1981 news story:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=UPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4880,1073882&hl=en

... which describes a man's death as having occurred " ... when a bolt of lightning bounced off a palm tree and hit him in the head."

I've seen close lightning strikes in which the visible flash seems to bridge between two objects on the ground (e.g., a lamp pole and a nearby tree), and I admit to having parsed the perception as a lightning bolt traveling among those objects in a sequential bank-shot. I therefore understand the inclination to treat such bridging as evidence of a discrete thing moving in one direction along a path.

However ... Based on some things we've come to know about how lightning works, I've become skeptical that this understandable post hoc description actually reflects what occurs.

We now know that a lightning strike is not simply a wad of accumulated charge launched spontaneously from above, but rather a discharge unleashed all along a path of potential ('leader', 'channel') that had been invisibly accreting between cloud and ground. These leaders / channels seem to form incrementally, are capable of branching repeatedly, and result in a lightning discharge if and only if they provide a path of least resistance to ground at just the right time.

My point is that the path of the flash precedes the flash itself. The flash itself does not spontaneously demarcate its path during discharge; its path was invisibly already 'there', and the flash merely illuminates it.

Once a viable path is established, the discharge may occur all along its length, and the visible flash (which is, after all, an after-effect) may appear on high-speed recordings as instantaneous everywhere, proceeding downward from above, or even proceeding upward from the ground.

As a result, I now tend to treat 'bank shot' descriptions as possibly being accurate with regard to what was perceived about the resultant flash, but almost surely misleading with regard to how the actual discharge occurred.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Allusions to the notion that lightning can 'ricochet' among objects on the ground is a common way of describing strikes / flashes that seem to involve more than one such object. For example, there's this 1981 news story:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=UPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4880,1073882&hl=en

... which describes a man's death as having occurred " ... when a bolt of lightning bounced off a palm tree and hit him in the head."

I've seen close lightning strikes in which the visible flash seems to bridge between two objects on the ground (e.g., a lamp pole and a nearby tree), and I admit to having parsed the perception as a lightning bolt traveling among those objects in a sequential bank-shot. I therefore understand the inclination to treat such bridging as evidence of a discrete thing moving in one direction along a path.

However ... Based on some things we've come to know about how lightning works, I've become skeptical that this understandable post hoc description actually reflects what occurs.

We now know that a lightning strike is not simply a wad of accumulated charge launched spontaneously from above, but rather a discharge unleashed all along a path of potential ('leader', 'channel') that had been invisibly accreting between cloud and ground. These leaders / channels seem to form incrementally, are capable of branching repeatedly, and result in a lightning discharge if and only if they provide a path of least resistance to ground at just the right time.

My point is that the path of the flash precedes the flash itself. The flash itself does not spontaneously demarcate its path during discharge; its path was invisibly already 'there', and the flash merely illuminates it.

Once a viable path is established, the discharge may occur all along its length, and the visible flash (which is, after all, an after-effect) may appear on high-speed recordings as instantaneous everywhere, proceeding downward from above, or even proceeding upward from the ground.

As a result, I now tend to treat 'bank shot' descriptions as possibly being accurate with regard to what was perceived about the resultant flash, but almost surely misleading with regard to how the actual discharge occurred.
Click to expand...

Thanks and I nearly used the word ricochet in my original post. I imagined it as a bolt behaving like a stone skimming across water ... I'll need to read up a bit more about this it seems.
 
Fascinating stuff.... @EnolaGaia (in particular, following your own analysis of the dynamics and sequence involved in a lightning strike) : do you have any thoughts regarding the purported phenomenon of 'crown flashes'? I mention this here as I'm wondering if there could be a related mechanism for both the persistent arc in a crown flash (as opposed to a transient explosive discharge), and this fascinating 'ring' enclosure experience. It also deserves an airing, in any case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_flash


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v229/n5281/abs/229184b0.html

Possible Newly Recognized Meteorological Phenomenon called Crown Flash

JOHN C. GALL JUN. & MAURICE E. GRAVES

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

ON July 2, 1970, at about 1945 h EST a thunderstorm cell passed a few miles north of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The column of cumulus cloud towered in the light of the setting Sun, far above the dark mass below, which occasionally flickered with lightning. Thin lamellae of cirriform cloud began to form above the peak of the cumulus column and streamed off to the north-east, in advance of the storm cloud. The cumulus column impinged on these lamellae as it boiled upward, causing the horizontal layers of thin cloud to become somewhat dome-shaped in the region of the rising column (Fig. 1). At and just above the peak of the storm cell the cloud mass seemed to be undergoing sudden changes in brightness lasting for several seconds at a time. J. C. G.'s wife and two children also noticed the effect when it was called to their attention. M. E. G., a meteorologist, also verified the observation. The phenomenon continued to occur repeatedly at intervals of 30–60 s during the next 15 or 20 min, providing the basis for the following description.
 
Ermintrude said:
Fascinating stuff.... @EnolaGaia (in particular, following your own analysis of the dynamics and sequence involved in a lightning strike) : do you have any thoughts regarding the purported phenomenon of 'crown flashes'? ...
Click to expand...

No, I have nothing to offer on crown flashes. I've seen the online videos, but I've never witnessed anything quite like that.
 
Article about a lightning survivor's support group
Inside the hidden society of lightning strike survivors
Guardian Selects
Life and style

After getting hit, they suffered devastating symptoms that wouldn’t go away. It seemed no one could help – until they found each other
James Walker for Narratively
Wed 17 Feb 2021 06.30 GMTLast modified on Wed 17 Feb 2021 06.32 GMT


The Jack Britt high school girls’ soccer team was playing on a muggy evening in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when the sky grew dark. It was 30 September 2015. Shana Williams Turner, a 46-year-old teacher in the school’s special education department, was supervising. She watched as the weather started to turn.
Thunder rumbled above, each clap bringing lightning closer. Shana saw a lightning bolt hit a grocery store across the street. Scared, she and the choir teacher, Richard Butler, ran to a nearby ticket booth to find shelter.
Lightning struck again with a deafening crack. A transformer 30 feet awayexploded and burst into flames. Shana felt excruciating pain, as if her shoulders had been reduced to burning jelly, and she was thrown to the concrete.
etc
Click to expand...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/16/lightning-strike-survivors-support-group
 
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