Originally Posted by
Poopadoop
Ong, did it feel like time went in slow motion? I had an experience where that happened.
I was caught in a wicked thunderstorm back in Canada one time while walking my dog. Super loud thunder, lightning everywhere, the kind of thunderstorm you only get on the prairies. Anyways, we were walking through a residential part of the city, heading back towards the house. We came up to a school, and I decided to walk through the school grounds near the tall buildings rather than around it on the exposed sidewalk.
I was walking and took a step and everything I'm about to describe took place in-between the time I put my foot down and before I had lifted it up again.
As I put my foot down it suddenly felt like a hand had come out of the ground and was squeezing my foot. I was obv. like wtf, so I looked down and there was a spark coming out of the ground on either side of my foot and meeting above it in a wishbone shape. It was about the thickness of a coat hanger and gave off that fuzzy blue light that electrical sparks do. It was all jagged too. I didn't have time to process it before it brightened then faded really quickly and the force around my foot grew stronger then went away. The next instant there was a huge flash and lightning hit the ground about 20 feet in front of me, with a huge bang. The next thing I knew I had thrown my hands up in the air, let go of the dog's leash and was running as fast as I could, while the flash was so bright it basically burned into my retina for a couple of seconds afterwards.
It took me about 3 seconds to regain my senses and realise my dog was just as scared shitless as me but instead of running next to the building he was taking off across the middle of the field. I called him back and we went to an entrance to the school, like a sort of porch area with steps, where there was a little shelter. Waited out the rest of the storm then went home.
I couldn't sleep that night and barely at all for the next two or three nights. People said I looked like someone who'd almost got killed lol. Had a real phobia about lightning for a couple of years after that where I wouldn't go outside in a thunderstorm, and since then I'm still not a big fan.
This was in 1996 and I remember every millisecond of that one moment like it was yesterday. It was both completely amazing and absofuckinglutely terrifying at the same time.
Apparently that spark around my foot was a "leader", and several of these come up from the Earth before a lightning strike, then it chooses one to drain it's charge into. I like to think my foot blocked the lightning from meeting the spark somehow but who knows, I probably just won the dice roll that day.