One of the most astonishing actions of lightning is certainly that of leaving the victim in the very attitude in which he was surprised by death.
Cardan gives an extraordinary example of this kind.
In the course of a violent storm, eight reapers, who were taking their meal under an oak, were struck, all eight of them, by the same flash of lightning, the noise of which could be heard a long way off. When the passers-by approached to see what had happened, the reapers thus suddenly petrified by death, appeared to be continuing their peaceful meal. One held his glass, another was carrying the bread to his mouth, a third had his hand on the dish. Death had seized them all in the position which they occupied when the explosion occurred.
We hear of many similar cases to this.
Here is one of a young woman who no doubt was struck by lightning in the position in which she was found after the accident. It was during a violent storm on July 16, 1866; she was alone in the house at Saint-Romain-les-Atheux (Loire), and outside the thunder rolled fearfully. When her parents came back from the fields, they found a sad sight. The young woman had been killed by lightning. They found her kneeling in a corner of the room with her head buried in her hands; she had no trace of a wound. Her child of four months, who was in bed in the same room, was only lightly touched.
Quite recently, on May 24, 1904, at Charolles (Saône-et-Loire), a certain Mlle. Moreau, who lived at Lesmes, was waiting for the end of a storm in a grocer's shop where she had been making some purchases. Several people were gathered round the fireplace. They felt a great movement following a violent clap of thunder. The sensation having passed, every one prepared to go. Mlle. Moreau alone remained seated, and did not move. She had been struck by the fluid, which had made a hole under her right ear and come out by the left!
The petrifying action of the electric fluid is so rapid that horsemen who have been struck have remained on horseback and been carried a long way from the place of the accident without being unsaddled.
According to Abbé Richard, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the procurator of the Seminary of Troyes was coming home on horseback when he was struck by lightning. A brother who followed him, not perceiving this, thought that he was asleep when he saw him reeling. When he tried to awaken him, he found he was dead.
The following observation is very remarkable on account of the special attitudes preserved by the bodies which had been struck:—