N
NG Neer
I always remembered a story I had read in Reader's Digest as kid,
about strange phenomena that occured in a hosue due to downed power
lines. I was delighted to stumble upon a text copy of the actual
story, apparently released to public domain (story attached). After
re-reading it now, I can't help but wonder how accurate the details
are, or if the author made the whole thing up. Web searches for the
names, places, etc in the story don't turn up anything. Its a hell of
a story either way though, but I'm curious what you guys think.
here's the full story, posted as found:
Originally published in Reader's Digest, June 1973
An Electric Nightmare
By John Robben
I awoke that Saturday morning of August 28, 1971, knowing that
something was wrong. Outside our house in Stamford,Conn., the woods
were dripping from an all-night rain. But who, or what, had awakened
and alerted me? I got out of bed to look around, feeling a curious
chill on the back of my neck.
"Dad?" my eldest daughter, Sue, 16, called from her room. "Is
something wrong?"
"Did you hear anything?" I asked.
"No. But something woke me up. I'm scared."
On the stair landing, I strained my ears but heard nothing.
Perhaps something other than a noise had awakened me. A light? Yes, it
had been a light, unusually and oddly white. Or had I only dreamed it?
Then I looked down the stairs, and noticed a tiny light
flickering at the base of the double front doors. A firefly? At this
time of morning? I went back to the bedroom, slipping on a pair of
sneakers and went down to investigate. At the door, there were now two
flickering lights. As I leaned down to take a closer look, the two
lights erupted into 10 or 12 and began to bzzzzz. Electricity! What
had awakened me was a flash of light.
I bolted back up the stairs, shouting, to arouse my wife and
all five children. My first thought was to get everyone out of the
house. I herded them all toward the back door. But as we came into the
kitchen, an odd, gurgling sound -like sloshing water- started up from
the basement. I yanked open the cellar door, and was greeted with a
cloud of blue smoke, shot through with orange and yellow flashes of
light. Instinctively I turned on the light switch-and got a terrific
shock.
"Don't touch any thing!" I yelled. The children began to panic
and cry. I slid open the back glass door leading onto the stoop. We
stood there a moment, poised in fear. The woods were shrouded in mist,
dripping with rain, and in the gray halflight of dawn looked eerie. It
didn't seem any safer out there than inside. To run or stay?
Our large and willful dog made up our minds for us. Determined
to get out, Trooper made a dash for the door. My wife grabbed him by
the collar, but he pulled her out onto the landing.
"Hang onto him, Margie!" I shouted. How strong is habit, even
in a crisis. I was worried about his running around, barking, and
waking up the neighbors at this hour.
He bounded down the five wooden steps of the stoop, dragging
Margie with him. He was pulling her off balance and I yelled at her to
let him go. Too late! As the dog's paws touched the wet grass he
yelped and leaped away, jerking my wife to the ground. Instantly she
began screaming and thrashing convulsively on the grass. I ran down
the steps.
"I'm being electrocuted!" she shouted. "Don't touch me!"
I froze.
"Oh, God!" she cried. "Save the children."
I saw what looked like a wire beneath her twisting body. If I
touched her, I figured, I would be trapped and helpless as she was.
I don't know where I got the strength to leave her and return
to the house, but there was no choice. I had to save the children
first. They were gone from the kitchen. They'd fled back upstairs when
their mother screamed. At my order, they came running down again.
"We've got to get out," I said. "Hurry!"
The walls were humming ominously now, the buzzing and sparking
from the basement growing louder as I led the children out of the
kitchen and down the steps. On the slate walk, single file, we went
past Margie. She was still writhing on the grass, screaming for God's
help and for us not to touch her.
"Is Mom dying?" Sue cried.
"I don't know," I said.
The children wailed even louder. I took them down the walk and
past the corner of the house, where the grounding rod for our house's
wiring system was spluttering and shooting flames like a Roman candle.
We ran across a bluestone driveway and through evergreen bushes onto
our neighbors' property. Apparently awakened by my wife's screams,
Stan and Rhoda Spiegelman were standing on their high porch. I saw
terror in their eyes as they must have seen it in ours.
"Margie's being electrocuted. Our house is on fire!" I
shouted. "Call the ambulance. Call the police!"
Then, pointing the children toward our neighbors' house, I
started back for my wife. But I hadn't taken more than three steps
when I heard the children begin to scream. Spinning around, I saw that
while three of them had reached the safety of the porch, Sued and her
youngest sister, Ellen, were down thrashing on the ground. For the
first time I realized that the earth itself was electrified.
Suspended between wife and daughters, I stood paralyzed,
unable to move in either direction. Any moment now I expected to be
grabbed and flung to the ground myself. I could feel a tingling
sensation through the soles of my sneakers.
Unlike my wife, whose entire body was pinned to the earth, the
two trapped girls, crouched on hands and knees, were able somehow to
crawl. Ellen inched toward Stan, my neighbor, who had started out to
help her, felt a shock on his feet, and retreated to his wooden steps.
His wife ran through her house, flung open a ground-level door and
called to Sue from there. When I saw that the girls were going to make
it, I started after Margie.
She was still thrashing on the ground. The wire I thought she
was lying on was only a piece of rope. But when I bent over and
touched her, a terrific shock slammed my arm. I let go. Then I grabbed
an ankle and jerked her toward me, letting go as the shock struck
again. I continued to grab and jerk, six or seven times, to get her
away from the electric field to safer ground. On about the seventh
pull I received no shock, and Margie lay still, sobbing. After a
moment she was able to raise her head off the ground. I lifted her up
and held her in my arms.
"The children ?" she asked
"They're okay."
She wept helplessly.
I helped her walk away from our house, past the now quiescent
grounding rod and into our neighbors' back yard. There, waiting at the
ground-floor door, were the children. They came running into our arms.
The police arrived a short time later and drove Margie and Sue to the
hospital. The firemen came, but the fire was already out. Stan and I
inspected the damage. It was remarkably little. The electricity was
off, of course, and the clocks stopped at 6:10 a.m. The motor in the
freezer in the basement was burnt out. That was the extent of the
fire. We opened the cellar windows to let the smoke and smell out.
There was no damage upstairs, but the nails in the cedar shingles on
the front of the house had charred the wood.
Opening the front door, where I'd spied the first sign of
danger, I got a good look at what had happened. The broad trunk of a
dead tree, its stability weakened by several days of wind and rain,
lay sprawled across our driveway, about 150 feet from the house. In
falling it had knocked down a cluster of wires. Including -we were
told later- a two-cable circuit that normally carried 13,200 volts.
Ordinarily these two cables would have touched, short-circuited and
blown a power-line fuse, cutting the current off. But for reasons
still not entirely clear to us, this failed to happen. Instead, the
electricity ran wild.
First it had gone into our well, burning out the pump. "But
that didn't satisfy it," said the electrician who came to repair the
damage the following day. "So it kept trying to find a ground for its
force somewhere else." That's when it slithered into our house like
some evil thing, into our food freezer and our wiring. The "fireflies"
I had seen were actually droplets of rain which had become energized
when they rolled onto the metal stripping at the base of the front
door. And, in its relentless hunger, the electricity spread itself
over a section of wet ground, creating an "energized field."**(see
note at bottom)
It was probably the diffusion of its energy over this
comparatively large area that saved my wife's life. Strong enough to
cause her to lose muscular control and keep her pinned to the ground
for seven agonizing minutes, the current wasn't concentrated enough to
kill her. The doctor who examined her at the hospital that morning
said she had suffered no heart damage. However, for months afterward
she suffered recurring pains in her arms and legs. Meanwhile, repairs
to our electrical system and freezer cost only $437.25.
For the next three nights we slept in the home of friends who
were away on vacation. They had a large new house. We each could have
had a bedroom to ourselves, but instead we chose to sleep, side by
side, on the floor of their playroom. Even together like that, we were
uneasy, and we left the lights burning all night.
On the fourth day we returned to our own house, after an
electrician had checked it out from top to bottom. The first night
there was eerie. My wife turned in with some of the children and I
with the others. Finally, toward morning, I fell asleep, but awakened
suddenly with a strange feeling. I looked at the clock and saw that it
was 6:10 -the precise moment when time had stopped for us four days
earlier. At breakfast, when my wife proposed selling our house, I
agreed immediately.
It has been well over a year now since that terrifying
morning. Though we still have nightmares about it, in our new home we
have chosen not to be fearful. As a philosopher once said, "The story
of Job is man's lot. But it does no good to audition daily for the
part."
**Apparently - as electrical engineer Bernard Schwartz explained
later- the "hot" cable fell to the earth, while its companion
"neutral" cable caught in a tree or came to rest on a non-conducting
boulder. Thus for the circuit to be completed, the current had to
reach the nearest point where the neutral cable was grounded: at a
transformer installation, two poles away. Under the given geology and
ground conditions, the route lay through the Robbens' house and yard.
As a result, there was a current flow -lasting approximately 20
minutes- which was finally sufficient to blow a line fuse.
about strange phenomena that occured in a hosue due to downed power
lines. I was delighted to stumble upon a text copy of the actual
story, apparently released to public domain (story attached). After
re-reading it now, I can't help but wonder how accurate the details
are, or if the author made the whole thing up. Web searches for the
names, places, etc in the story don't turn up anything. Its a hell of
a story either way though, but I'm curious what you guys think.
here's the full story, posted as found:
Originally published in Reader's Digest, June 1973
An Electric Nightmare
By John Robben
I awoke that Saturday morning of August 28, 1971, knowing that
something was wrong. Outside our house in Stamford,Conn., the woods
were dripping from an all-night rain. But who, or what, had awakened
and alerted me? I got out of bed to look around, feeling a curious
chill on the back of my neck.
"Dad?" my eldest daughter, Sue, 16, called from her room. "Is
something wrong?"
"Did you hear anything?" I asked.
"No. But something woke me up. I'm scared."
On the stair landing, I strained my ears but heard nothing.
Perhaps something other than a noise had awakened me. A light? Yes, it
had been a light, unusually and oddly white. Or had I only dreamed it?
Then I looked down the stairs, and noticed a tiny light
flickering at the base of the double front doors. A firefly? At this
time of morning? I went back to the bedroom, slipping on a pair of
sneakers and went down to investigate. At the door, there were now two
flickering lights. As I leaned down to take a closer look, the two
lights erupted into 10 or 12 and began to bzzzzz. Electricity! What
had awakened me was a flash of light.
I bolted back up the stairs, shouting, to arouse my wife and
all five children. My first thought was to get everyone out of the
house. I herded them all toward the back door. But as we came into the
kitchen, an odd, gurgling sound -like sloshing water- started up from
the basement. I yanked open the cellar door, and was greeted with a
cloud of blue smoke, shot through with orange and yellow flashes of
light. Instinctively I turned on the light switch-and got a terrific
shock.
"Don't touch any thing!" I yelled. The children began to panic
and cry. I slid open the back glass door leading onto the stoop. We
stood there a moment, poised in fear. The woods were shrouded in mist,
dripping with rain, and in the gray halflight of dawn looked eerie. It
didn't seem any safer out there than inside. To run or stay?
Our large and willful dog made up our minds for us. Determined
to get out, Trooper made a dash for the door. My wife grabbed him by
the collar, but he pulled her out onto the landing.
"Hang onto him, Margie!" I shouted. How strong is habit, even
in a crisis. I was worried about his running around, barking, and
waking up the neighbors at this hour.
He bounded down the five wooden steps of the stoop, dragging
Margie with him. He was pulling her off balance and I yelled at her to
let him go. Too late! As the dog's paws touched the wet grass he
yelped and leaped away, jerking my wife to the ground. Instantly she
began screaming and thrashing convulsively on the grass. I ran down
the steps.
"I'm being electrocuted!" she shouted. "Don't touch me!"
I froze.
"Oh, God!" she cried. "Save the children."
I saw what looked like a wire beneath her twisting body. If I
touched her, I figured, I would be trapped and helpless as she was.
I don't know where I got the strength to leave her and return
to the house, but there was no choice. I had to save the children
first. They were gone from the kitchen. They'd fled back upstairs when
their mother screamed. At my order, they came running down again.
"We've got to get out," I said. "Hurry!"
The walls were humming ominously now, the buzzing and sparking
from the basement growing louder as I led the children out of the
kitchen and down the steps. On the slate walk, single file, we went
past Margie. She was still writhing on the grass, screaming for God's
help and for us not to touch her.
"Is Mom dying?" Sue cried.
"I don't know," I said.
The children wailed even louder. I took them down the walk and
past the corner of the house, where the grounding rod for our house's
wiring system was spluttering and shooting flames like a Roman candle.
We ran across a bluestone driveway and through evergreen bushes onto
our neighbors' property. Apparently awakened by my wife's screams,
Stan and Rhoda Spiegelman were standing on their high porch. I saw
terror in their eyes as they must have seen it in ours.
"Margie's being electrocuted. Our house is on fire!" I
shouted. "Call the ambulance. Call the police!"
Then, pointing the children toward our neighbors' house, I
started back for my wife. But I hadn't taken more than three steps
when I heard the children begin to scream. Spinning around, I saw that
while three of them had reached the safety of the porch, Sued and her
youngest sister, Ellen, were down thrashing on the ground. For the
first time I realized that the earth itself was electrified.
Suspended between wife and daughters, I stood paralyzed,
unable to move in either direction. Any moment now I expected to be
grabbed and flung to the ground myself. I could feel a tingling
sensation through the soles of my sneakers.
Unlike my wife, whose entire body was pinned to the earth, the
two trapped girls, crouched on hands and knees, were able somehow to
crawl. Ellen inched toward Stan, my neighbor, who had started out to
help her, felt a shock on his feet, and retreated to his wooden steps.
His wife ran through her house, flung open a ground-level door and
called to Sue from there. When I saw that the girls were going to make
it, I started after Margie.
She was still thrashing on the ground. The wire I thought she
was lying on was only a piece of rope. But when I bent over and
touched her, a terrific shock slammed my arm. I let go. Then I grabbed
an ankle and jerked her toward me, letting go as the shock struck
again. I continued to grab and jerk, six or seven times, to get her
away from the electric field to safer ground. On about the seventh
pull I received no shock, and Margie lay still, sobbing. After a
moment she was able to raise her head off the ground. I lifted her up
and held her in my arms.
"The children ?" she asked
"They're okay."
She wept helplessly.
I helped her walk away from our house, past the now quiescent
grounding rod and into our neighbors' back yard. There, waiting at the
ground-floor door, were the children. They came running into our arms.
The police arrived a short time later and drove Margie and Sue to the
hospital. The firemen came, but the fire was already out. Stan and I
inspected the damage. It was remarkably little. The electricity was
off, of course, and the clocks stopped at 6:10 a.m. The motor in the
freezer in the basement was burnt out. That was the extent of the
fire. We opened the cellar windows to let the smoke and smell out.
There was no damage upstairs, but the nails in the cedar shingles on
the front of the house had charred the wood.
Opening the front door, where I'd spied the first sign of
danger, I got a good look at what had happened. The broad trunk of a
dead tree, its stability weakened by several days of wind and rain,
lay sprawled across our driveway, about 150 feet from the house. In
falling it had knocked down a cluster of wires. Including -we were
told later- a two-cable circuit that normally carried 13,200 volts.
Ordinarily these two cables would have touched, short-circuited and
blown a power-line fuse, cutting the current off. But for reasons
still not entirely clear to us, this failed to happen. Instead, the
electricity ran wild.
First it had gone into our well, burning out the pump. "But
that didn't satisfy it," said the electrician who came to repair the
damage the following day. "So it kept trying to find a ground for its
force somewhere else." That's when it slithered into our house like
some evil thing, into our food freezer and our wiring. The "fireflies"
I had seen were actually droplets of rain which had become energized
when they rolled onto the metal stripping at the base of the front
door. And, in its relentless hunger, the electricity spread itself
over a section of wet ground, creating an "energized field."**(see
note at bottom)
It was probably the diffusion of its energy over this
comparatively large area that saved my wife's life. Strong enough to
cause her to lose muscular control and keep her pinned to the ground
for seven agonizing minutes, the current wasn't concentrated enough to
kill her. The doctor who examined her at the hospital that morning
said she had suffered no heart damage. However, for months afterward
she suffered recurring pains in her arms and legs. Meanwhile, repairs
to our electrical system and freezer cost only $437.25.
For the next three nights we slept in the home of friends who
were away on vacation. They had a large new house. We each could have
had a bedroom to ourselves, but instead we chose to sleep, side by
side, on the floor of their playroom. Even together like that, we were
uneasy, and we left the lights burning all night.
On the fourth day we returned to our own house, after an
electrician had checked it out from top to bottom. The first night
there was eerie. My wife turned in with some of the children and I
with the others. Finally, toward morning, I fell asleep, but awakened
suddenly with a strange feeling. I looked at the clock and saw that it
was 6:10 -the precise moment when time had stopped for us four days
earlier. At breakfast, when my wife proposed selling our house, I
agreed immediately.
It has been well over a year now since that terrifying
morning. Though we still have nightmares about it, in our new home we
have chosen not to be fearful. As a philosopher once said, "The story
of Job is man's lot. But it does no good to audition daily for the
part."
**Apparently - as electrical engineer Bernard Schwartz explained
later- the "hot" cable fell to the earth, while its companion
"neutral" cable caught in a tree or came to rest on a non-conducting
boulder. Thus for the circuit to be completed, the current had to
reach the nearest point where the neutral cable was grounded: at a
transformer installation, two poles away. Under the given geology and
ground conditions, the route lay through the Robbens' house and yard.
As a result, there was a current flow -lasting approximately 20
minutes- which was finally sufficient to blow a line fuse.
