Lore 310: Thunderstruck

While most folklore has a thrilling quality to it, there are some tales that are a bit more shocking. Just be careful where you stand while we explore them. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music https://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources https://www.lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: Chime: Chime is banking done right. Open an account in 2 minutes at chime.com/lore https://www.chime.com/lore. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Visit Quince.com/LORE http://www.quince.com/lore for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Gusto: Online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com/LORE https://www.gusto.com/lore, and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Aaron Mahnke?

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• 0:40Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 02

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• 1:28Aaron Mahnke?

  It's a lesson I think all of us understand. Some things just don't mix. Oil and water, wily coyote and the Road Runner, or 2,000 pounds of gunpowder and a bolt of lightning. Now, if you're thinking that that last number is oddly specific, well, there's a reason for that. Because unfortunately, 200,000 pounds was exactly the amount of gunpowder being stored in the basement of a church in Brescia, Italy during one heck of a thunderstorm. It was August 19th of 1769, and the sky was lit up with electricity. Wind lashed the houses, while the winding streets filled with rain. And then, a single searing lightning bolt shot down through

• 2:10Aaron Mahnke?

  The bastion of San Nazaro's bell tower and landed in 90,000 kilograms of Venetian gunpowder. And look, if I was in charge of 17 elephants' worth of explosives, I probably wouldn't have stored it in the tallest, most lightning-prone building in town. But this was the 18th century, and back then, people believed churches to be the absolute safest place to store something dangerous. After all, God wouldn't let anything bad happen to a cathedral, right? Well, not so much. The gunpowder ignited. The massive explosion not only blew up the church, but one-sixth of the entire city. Rocks shot a full kilometer into the air, crushing people and buildings as they plummeted to earth.

• 2:53Aaron Mahnke?

  Windows exploded, and the rainstorm gave way to a downpour of broken glass. By the time the smoke cleared, it was estimated that upwards of 3,000 people were dead. Electricity is a mysterious force. It's capable of miraculous creation and destruction alike. It can illuminate a light bulb or reduce a towering oak tree to ash. And sometimes, if history is to be believed, it can even give a real, live person superpowers. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

• 3:38Aaron Mahnke?

  At first, we thought that it came from the gods. After all, how could something as strange, as powerful, as unpredictable as lightning be anything less than divine? Of course, we know differently now. Lightning is merely a giant electrical spark created by atmospheric conditions, as good old Ben Franklin and his "kite-in-a-storm" experiment famously helped demonstrate. But you have to remember, that wasn't until 1752, pretty darn late in the grand scheme of human history. And for all those thousands of years prior, well, what we lacked in scientific understanding, we made up for in folklore. Now, you're probably already familiar with the Greek god Zeus, known for wheel-

• 4:20Aaron Mahnke?

  building lightning bolts as a weapon and zapping badly behaving mortals when he got annoyed. But it turns out Zeus's lightning strikes weren't just weapons. They could also tell the future. For example, if he hit a certain spot on the ground, it meant that he was marking it as holy, and a temple should be built right there. He would also send lightning-based signs and omens, even warnings of dangers to come. And so to interpret these, the Greeks invented a fortune-telling method called saranomancy, divination by lightning. When the Romans came along, they just transferred all this same mythology onto their own Zeus equivalent, the god Jupiter, and developed a saranomancy system of their own. A left-to-right lightning bolt, for example, meant good things to come.

• 5:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Right-to-left, though? Well, you better watch out, because this one meant that Jupiter was not pleased. But here's the thing. While the Romans took their lightning god straight from the Greeks, plenty of isolated cultures had strikingly similar figures. In Mesopotamia, for example, there was a storm god named Adad, who, just like Zeus, was usually depicted clutching an armful of lightning bolts. And over in India, same thing, where the Hindu storm god Indra wielded a deadly thunderbolt of his own. And lest we not forget Thor of Norse mythology and his magical hammer Mjolnir, which had the power to, yes, produce thunder and lightning. It's a lot of overlap for such disparate parts of the world, but it does make sense,

• 5:49Aaron Mahnke?

  right? Lightning is a massive, powerful force that comes down from the sky to seemingly punish the world below. It sounds like god behavior to me. But then again, not all cultures associated lightning with the gods. No, others believed that it came from the birds. Take, for example, the Tambaoka people of southern Africa. These folks believe lightning is caused by a large, black bird with razor-sharp claws. Get caught by this bad boy, and he'll leave long, streaking scars across your body. Scars that, I can't help but notice, sound a little like the branching scars found on the victims of lightning strikes. Elsewhere in southern Africa, the- The Hosa people have a different lightning bird known as the impadulu.

• 6:33Aaron Mahnke?

  This guy generates lightning during a hasty flight down to earth where it lays its eggs on the ground. Now, apparently, only women can see its true form. To other genders, it appears not bird-like at all, but like a regular human being. Which, might be a problem. You see, you're gonna wanna know when you have an impadulu on your hands. Because making lightning isn't its only hobby. Impadulus are also big fans of drinking human blood and stealing babies. Meanwhile, in North America, everyone from the Sioux of the Great Plains and the Klingon of the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes Ojibwa tell tales about the giant lightning-causing creature called the Thunderbird. Some tribes depict the Thunderbird as a massive bird of prey, others a hybrid of a human and

• 7:18Aaron Mahnke?

  a bird. But all versions share two essential details. One, the Thunderbird's wing beats cause thunder, and two, it can shoot lightning from its eyes. In Sioux tradition, the Thunderbird can also visit you in your dreams. In fact, those who dream about the Thunderbird are supposed to then dedicate their lives to being a sort of sacred fool known as the hyouka. In addition to living as clowns, these hyouka live every day like opposite day. They dress for cold weather in the summer, claim to be full in times of famine, and generally have to say the opposite of what they mean forever. And yeah, suffice to say, Thunderbird dreams are pretty high stakes. But don't think that you can get away with having a Thunderbird dream and just keeping it a secret.

• 8:03Aaron Mahnke?

  Refusing to become a hyouka after such a dream has consequences. What kind? Well, you'll be struck by lightning, of course. Speaking of which, there are all sorts of legends about what happens to people or things who are struck by lightning. Let's say you're out on a picnic and you find that your bottle of wine has been struck by a lightning bolt. Well, you might wanna stick with water. According to the Roman philosopher Seneca, drinking lightning-struck wine will cause the drinker to go insane and die. On the other hand, in 1684, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather's father and the sixth president of Harvard, wrote- That venomous animals who are struck by lightning, and I quote, "lose their poison altogether."

• 8:45Aaron Mahnke?

  Meanwhile, Chinese legend holds that if lightning strikes a mountain stream, the stream disappears and ginseng grows in its place. And let's say you want to protect your house from being zapped. Well, according to French and Flemish folk belief, simply place a piece of lightning-struck tree under your bed and you're good to go. But then again, lightning can't always be escaped, and sometimes it's not just houses and streams and bottles of wine that get hit. Sometimes the victim is you. Now sure, given the common idea that lightning is chucked deliberately by the gods, being struck is usually seen as divine punishment. But then again, in the high Andes of Peru, the gods select their healers by hitting them with lightning.

• 9:29Aaron Mahnke?

  The most powerful healers, they're struck not just once, but up to three times. I can't imagine what happens to a person after three lightning strikes. Heck, maybe you do end up with magical healing powers. Because here's the truth: while the folktales are one thing, there are plenty of real-life lightning-strike survivors whose lives have changed forever. And sometimes those changes are so much stranger than fiction.

• 10:11Aaron Mahnke?

  Greta was absolutely electric, and not just because of her lively personality, complete with iridescent moomoos and a beehive hairdo. No, when I say she was electric, I mean that literally. It was 1961 when a bolt of lightning sprang through Greta Alexander's bedroom window and set fire to her bed while she was in it. But that wasn't the end of her. In fact, it was only the beginning, because rather than kill her, that rogue spear of lightning gave Greta psychic powers, or at least she claims so, to everyone who would listen. Before long, this lightning-struck psychic was the hottest guest on every TV and radio show in her native Illinois.

• 10:52Aaron Mahnke?

  By the mid-1970s, she'd even begun using her supposed psychic skills to help the police. Although, to be fair, exactly how "helpful" she was is up for debate. In any case, she quickly became a local legend, with a product line to prove it. She had a 900 number that fans could call for inspirational messages, she sold astrology charts, t-shirts, fortune cookies, even shaving cream, and would read your palm for just forty bucks a pop. In short, she sounds like a scam artist, doesn't she? But consider this: Greta Alexander isn't the only person to have claimed psychic abilities after a lightning strike. Far from it. In fact, there's a whole bevy of firsthand accounts right on the National Weather Service website.

• 11:36Aaron Mahnke?

  "I started to know so much, such as when I was being lied to," said a survivor named Blair. "I could see who was a bad person and predict when things would happen." Another, by the name of Thys, wrote: "I found myself somehow knowing things about folks I didn't know well." And from another survivor named Missy: "It's almost as if I get ESP every once in a while. There have been times where I speak someone's name, someone that I haven't heard from or seen in many years, and all of a sudden they walk in the door. Or the time I knew my plumbing was going to back up in the laundry room, and sure enough, that night it happened." Now, before you go running into a lightning storm hoping to get zapped with superpowers,

• 12:20Aaron Mahnke?

  might I remind you that lightning is more likely to give you a heart attack than ESP? And sure, if you survive, which, on the plus side, ninety percent of victims do, you might still be left with burns, muscle spasms, numbness, and sensory problems in the short term, as well as long-term muscle pain, heart problems, cognitive impairment, and even an entire personality change. And then, there are the stranger symptoms. Some lightning-strike survivors believe that they've become permanently electrified. They claim that their watches lose time, batteries drain rapidly while they're around, cellphones and computers behave strangely, credit cards become demagnetized, and lights turn off in their presence. And the weirdest thing?

• 13:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Many say that these incidents are more frequent when they're in an emotionally heightened state, as if their feelings have a current of their own. Now look, there's an explanation for everything. Most skeptics chalk the effects up to confirmation bias. After all, if you're convinced that your body can drain a battery, you'll be a lot more likely to notice when your iPhone is dwindling, right? But I will admit, it's hard to ignore just how common these experiences seem to be. And then, there are the people who appear to become electrified without ever being struck by lightning at all. Meet Caroline. She was a Canadian teenager in the 1870s who, after a long illness, found that she had become, well, electrified.

• 13:48Aaron Mahnke?

  According to the newspaper reports, she delivered shocks to anyone she touched. Knives would jump into her hand, and needles would hang from her fingers. To quote an article in Ontario's Daily Expositor, "When she entered a room, a perceptible influence seized hold of all others. And while some are affected to sleepiness, others are ill and fidgety till they leave, and even for a considerable time afterward." One article even dubbed the kid, and I quote, "A perfect battery." A couple of decades later, in the 1890s, an "illiterate country girl," that's a quote from a newspaper, from Missouri, named Jenny Moran, found herself in a similar situation. Jenny would light up any room she entered, uh, literally.

• 14:33Aaron Mahnke?

  Like Caroline, she zapped everyone that she touched, which was probably a fun party trick, until she picked up a cat and electrocuted it to death. But perhaps the weirdest incident of all? Well, that would be the 1967 Rosenheim Poltergeist case that happened in, of all places, a German law office. It was almost as if the place was haunted by a poltergeist. The phones rang endlessly, but when employees answered, there was no one on the other line. Only what staff described as, and I quote, "A presence." Then, other equipment went on the fritz as well. Lights turned on and off on their own, photocopiers gushed fluid, and the phone calls became downright incessant. At first, everyone thought that it was just a prank.

• 15:17Aaron Mahnke?

  But no, it was all too elaborate for that. Figuring that there must be some wonky thing going on in the wiring, the office switched to a backup generator, but that didn't help. Photocopiers turned on by themselves, spitting out sheet after sheet of blank paper. Light bulbs rotated in their sockets, and once, hanging pictures flipped to face the wall. In short, things had gotten completely out of hand. Now, at this point, the law firm's boss, a man named Sigmund Adam, was at the end of his rope. He got the police involved, as well as the phone and electric companies, and together they discovered a rather, well, shocking coincidence. The malfunctions only occurred when one specific employee was inside the building.

• 16:01Aaron Mahnke?

  Her name was Anne-Marie Schneider, a nineteen-year-old secretary. And when Adam rigged up some electrical monitoring, well, he was amazed to see that whenever Anne-Marie entered the office, the entire building experienced a power surge so strong, it should have blown out the fuses. So what did Adam's do? Well, he fired the girl. It turned out to be okay, though. She had always hated him anyway. And what do you know? As soon as she was gone, the unexplained electrical issues stopped entirely. So what was going on here? Well, some think that Anne-Marie simply despised her boss so much that she engineered an elaborate theatrical prank just to mess with him. Others think that it was a hoax that Adam himself created to drum up publicity.

• 16:46Aaron Mahnke?

  After all, once the wild story got out, business absolutely boomed. But then there are the other theories. You see, in the midst of all the chaos, a parapsychologist named Dr. Hans Bender came and interviewed Anne-Marie. He didn't think that it was a hoax at all. On the contrary, he became convinced that the effects were not only all too real, but actually the result of heartbreak. You see, Anne-Marie was going through a breakup at the time, and she was taking it badly. Very badly, to the point where she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "What if," Dr. Bender asserted, "her distress was so intense, it was manifesting as poltergeist activity." And yeah, that sounds pretty suspect to me.

• 17:29Aaron Mahnke?

  But then again, what is a broken-hearted teenager if not the epitome of a walking storm cloud?

• 17:52Aaron Mahnke?

  The year of 1846 had just begun, and Angelique Cautin was 14 years old. The peasant girl had lived an unremarkable childhood in the village of Bovigny, France, a simple provincial existence. I can imagine young Angelique, like any teenager, lying awake in bed and waiting for her life to start, waiting for a spark. And in January of that year, a spark is exactly what arrived. It was a rainy month, the sky troubled by frequent storms, by thunder and lightning. Electricity, the papers recorded, seemed to charge the very air. Meanwhile, Angelique and a few other girls were hard at work in Angelique's aunt's house,

• 18:32Aaron Mahnke?

  busily weaving silk into gloves, when suddenly Angelique's heavy oak weaving frame gave a wild jerk. The girls blamed each other for upsetting the frame and then got back to work, but then it happened again, and this time there was no mistaking it, the frame had moved on its own. Now, as you can imagine, the girls were totally freaked out by this. They fled the house, babbling about witchcraft, but when they told the adults what had happened, no one believed them. And so they had no choice but to go back to work, and once more, when Angelique sat down and reached out her hands, the wooden frame started violently rattling before she'd even touched it. This was only happening to her, mind you, not the other girls.

• 19:16Aaron Mahnke?

  And when it repeated the next morning, Angelique's aunt got to see it as well. The shaking frame, the disembodied jerks, yeah, let's just say that the adults started to believe the girls. That is, they were sure that poor Angelique was demonically possessed, but when her aunt brought her to a priest, the priest concluded that it wasn't a spiritual issue, but a medical one. So her parents took over, dragging her to doctors and scientists all across the region. Although skeptical at first, the doctors all soon observed the same thing. Angelique seemed to have become repellent. Chairs would skid away from her, papers and pens would Fly away from her touch, even a table once floated into the air just as she passed by.

• 20:01Aaron Mahnke?

  Baffled, the doctors watched as gusts of wind rose around Angelique from nowhere, even with the windows closed. Small objects would fly away from her at a single touch, or even by brushing against her apron. When she tried to lay in bed, the bed frame would tremble and even levitate, making it impossible to rest. According to an article published a few years later in The Atlantic, and I quote, "Shovels, tongs, lighted firewood, brushes and books were all set in motion when the girl approached them. A pair of scissors fastened to her girdle was detached and thrown into the air." And then, there's the question of how Angelique affected people. Standing near her, the hair on your arms would rise on end as if with static,

• 20:46Aaron Mahnke?

  and if she touched you, you would receive a violent electric shock. All of this already sounds strange, but there's more. You see, it seems that the effects were worse at night between 7:00 and 9:00 PM, and when she was standing directly on the earth, almost as if she were drawing the power up from the ground. During these two hours in the evening, the phenomenon was so strong that she could only stand or sit on the floor. Why? Because any furniture that she tried to sit in would rocket away from her. Her left side seemed to be more powerful than her right, though, and often felt hot when the phenomenon was going on. And her pelvic area was also abnormally charged. For poor Angelique, it was debilitating,

• 21:29Aaron Mahnke?

  a sort of Midas touch if, instead of everything turning to gold, everything you touched was electrically shot out of reach. She couldn't hold anything, she couldn't sit down at night, she couldn't be close to other people. Standing on rugs or wax paper did ease her symptoms a bit, as did sitting on a cork-covered stone, but these were only brief fixes. Soon enough, the effects would return in full force. Also, and this is extra weird, touching the north pole of a magnet would give Angelique herself an electric shock, but touching the south pole, nothing. The phenomenon was caused by some kind of magnetic field, but that wasn't all. You see, the scientists were amazed to find that her mood affected this phenomenon.

• 22:13Aaron Mahnke?

  When she was exhausted, agitated, or frightened, the electricity seemed to calm just a little. But when she was careless or distracted, she was basically the human equivalent of rubbing a balloon on your hair. It wasn't long before Angelique became known as "The Electric Girl of Bovigny." Now, sometime during all of this testing and tinkering, lightning struck Angelique's parents. Not actual lightning, just the bolt of an idea. You see, they knew that they had something special on their hands, and so they started hosting private shows where Angelique would exhibit her powers. To a paying audience, of course. And so, between doctor's appointments and visits from curious scientists, Angelique

• 22:55Aaron Mahnke?

  transformed from a peasant into a performer. It had only been a couple of months since the whole phenomenon had begun, but word of the miraculous Electric Girl had made its way to the lecture halls of Paris. There, a formal committee of academics wanted to verify what the previous doctors had seen. And so, Angelique and her parents packed their bags, left their small town, and headed for the capital. That was it. Once and for all, the world would learn what a marvel Angelique really was, vouched for by some of the most respected thinkers in France. Now, I have to say that this committee wasn't easy on her. Angelique was pushed and prodded to complete exhaustion, and for a while, their efforts actually worked.

• 23:39Aaron Mahnke?

  Like in one experiment, when Angelique sat down next to a scientist on a heavy sofa, only for the whole thing to fly with great force against a wall. Impressive, no doubt about it. But then came the frog incident. In an experiment that probably wouldn't pass ethics codes today, the committee men skinned a laboratory frog, put its slimy, flayed corpse on the child's arm, and fed an electric current through it. Why? Well, I have no idea, but the dead frog twitched, and naturally, Angelique was totally terrified by it. She wouldn't stop talking about it, it had nightmares. about frogs for days. Now, remember, when Angelique became frightened or exhausted, her powers seemed to fade. And she certainly had been driven to both of these situations.

• 24:24Aaron Mahnke?

  She was only a small-town kid, after all, and here she was in the big city, forced to be a guinea pig for some of the most powerful men in France. Suddenly, the test began to go a little differently. That is, her electricity stopped. No sparks, no repelling, no vibrations. It was possible that the stress had made her powers disappear. Or perhaps, they had never been there at all. Whatever the case may be, the committee came to believe that Angelique was nothing more than a fraud. And who knows? Maybe she was. Because after returning home to Bovigny, ten weeks out from that fateful day with the shaking loom that started it all, the electrical girl's electricity was gone for good.

• 25:23Aaron Mahnke?

  Electricity is all around us. It lights up our homes. It sends signals through our bodies. Heck, it's powering the device you're using to listen to my voice right now. But if I were to ask you specifically how it all works, would you be able to tell me? We can look to the zeus and thunderbirds of the past and scoff, but really, today's average person doesn't understand much beyond the flick of a switch. And the truth is, we don't know how Caroline, the Canadian girl from the 1870s, zapped knives into her hands. We don't know how Jenny Moran ended up electrifying a cat, nor what exactly went on in that German law office back in the 1960s. And yes, we still, to this day,

• 26:06Aaron Mahnke?

  have no idea what the heck was going on with the electric girl from Bovigny. Perhaps the Parisian committee was right and it was all a hoax. Maybe Angelique was just a bored, very clever teenage girl, tired of weaving gloves and eager for a little excitement. One researcher did happen to note, though, and I quote, "A double movement on the part of the girl, a movement first in the direction of the object being thrown, and afterwards away from it. The first movement being so rapid that it generally escaped detection." Was Angelique subtly shoving objects away and making it look like magic? It is a convenient explanation, I will fully admit that.

• 26:48Aaron Mahnke?

  Except, well, I should probably mention another of the experiments that were conducted on this tiny fourteen-year-old French girl. You see, at one point, three full-grown men sat on a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound block of wood, and as soon as the hem of Angelique's dress brushed against it, the entire thing, men and all, hovered into the air. And yeah, that one's a lot harder to explain away with a simple push. But let's, for the sake of argument, ask if it could be real. Could her abilities have had something to do with those wild thunderstorms that were plaguing Bovini the week it all began? Or did Angelique possess some kind of telekinesis? At the end of the day, we may never know the truth.

• 27:30Aaron Mahnke?

  Whether the Electric Girl of Bovini was the phenomenon she claimed to be, or if she was just a poor girl dreaming of bright electric life. Either way, one thing is for sure: her story is certainly magnetic.

• 27:58Aaron Mahnke?

  I hope today's stories of thunder gods and magnetic girls have sparked your imagination. After all, what can be more mysterious than an invisible force humming in the very air? Now, it's strange enough when an electrical anomaly affects a single person, but what happens when it buzzes through an entire community? I have one last story for you today that answers that question. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode is sponsored by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot. On October 20th of 1967, Roger Patterson captured fifty-nine seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods, footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history.

• 28:43Aaron Mahnke?

  Fifty-nine years later, a reel of sixteen-millimeter film discovered in a safe Changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery, told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret. Featuring a brand-new 4K scan of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called "the best rendering of the footage ever seen", as well as never-before-seen footage shot by Roger Patterson that will change the discourse around the Patterson-Gimlin film and the legacy of Bigfoot forever.

• 29:25Aaron Mahnke?

  Now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Your mental health does not know that it's World Mental Health Day. Stress does not politely wait until October 10th. Burnout does not RSVP. And your brain definitely does not check the calendar before deciding to spiral at 11:47 PM. Mental health is just a part of everyday, regular life. Therapy isn't just for big life choices, though. It can be a place to talk through smaller things, too.

• 30:09Aaron Mahnke?

  The work situation taking up too much mental real estate, the relationship dynamic you can't quite name, or simply the sense that something feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/laur to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash laur.

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• 32:01Aaron Mahnke?

  They call it Little Siberia, and it's easy to see why. A remote, high-security prison in the upstate New York village of Dannemora, the Clinton Correctional Facility feels like it's on the edge of the world, the sort of place where a person might vanish entirely. First built in the mid-1800s, the prison has a long and storied history. Most famously, it was the site of a prison break in 2015 where two inmates incarcerated for murder escaped like something out of a Hollywood movie. And speaking of Hollywood, the prison has held a number of big names inside its walls over the years. Everyone from beat poet Gregory Corso and rapper Tupac Shakur and Winston Mosley, the man who murdered Kitty Genovese.

• 32:46Aaron Mahnke?

  But today's story goes back a little further than that. A century ago, in fact, to the year 1920. You see, before Clinton Prison was known for its jailbreaks and celebrity inmates, it became famous for a little electrical problem. It went like this: in February of 1920, thirty-two inmates fell ill in rapid succession. But this was no ordinary flu. The prisoners struggled to balance and walk, they had difficulty speaking, and had problems with fine motor skills. Even their eyelids drooped, severely impairing their vision. But it was another symptom that left everyone absolutely bewildered. You see, when a doctor was called in to examine the sick, he watched as one man, lying in

• 33:28Aaron Mahnke?

  bed in the prison hospital, balled up a piece of paper in his hands and attempted to toss it into a wastebasket. A simple enough task, right? But the paper absolutely refused to leave the man's hand. It just stuck to him, as if it was glued to his skin. Fascinated, the doctor began conducting experiments. He found that when patients rubbed their hands together, they appeared to generate an electric charge. They were able to make a newspaper so staticky that it could stick to a wall. They could cause a lightbulb filament to vibrate and spark, rotate a compass needle, and move a hanging steel tape without ever touching it. And apparently, if you passed a hand over the men's hair, it would snap and crackle,

• 34:12Aaron Mahnke?

  like a mouthful of Pop Rocks. The doctor knew that it sounded crazy, but he had no doubts. His patients had developed what he called, and I quote, "a peculiar static electric power." The affected men were dubbed "human magnets," living storage batteries literally impregnated with static electricity. But let me be clear here: this case wasn't like others that we've heard today. The cause was no great mystery. It didn't stem from a lightning strike or psychokinesis. No, the men had become electrified from eating salmon. Yes, you heard that right: salmon. You see, while the doctor had never seen anything like their electrical symptoms before,

• 34:54Aaron Mahnke?

  he had seen their other symptoms: that is, the poor balance and muscular problems. And the diagnosis was easy: all thirty-two men were clearly suffering from botulism. The cause: eating canned salmon. Now for a little botulism refresher. This is a rare, sometimes fatal neurotoxin created by the same bacteria that's used to make Botox. It attacks the nervous system, preventing muscles from functioning properly, hence all those muscular symptoms that the inmates were experiencing. And while foodborne botulism is usually the result of improperly preparing home canned food, it sometimes shows up in commercially-prepared foods as well. Foods like the canned salmon, very unfortunately being served to the inmates of the Clinton Prison.

• 35:38Aaron Mahnke?

  Now, I know what you're thinking: killing you is one thing, but I'm pretty sure that botulism doesn't make you electric. And yeah, you'd be right, at least it's certainly not a known symptom. But the doctor there at the Clinton Prison simply couldn't deny the correlation. All of the men who had botulism displayed electrical symptoms. No one else at the prison did. The men who were sickest from botulism had the highest electrical charge, and as they recovered, their electrical powers waned and vanished as well. It may not have made sense, but there you have it. Somehow botulism had electrified the inmates. And no, science still has absolutely no idea how this happened, and it's never been reported since.

• 36:20Aaron Mahnke?

  Today, foodborne botulism is rare, with fewer than 20 cases noted per year. But of those who do end up with it, many are, coincidentally, incarcerated. It's not due to salmon anymore, though. No, the modern link between botulism and prisons is because a homemade prison-brewed alcohol known as Pruno happens to be one of the leading carriers of the toxin. Over the past few decades, Pruno-induced botulism outbreaks have occurred in prisons in Mississippi, California, Arizona, and Utah. And before you ask, no, none of the reports from those other cases mention any strange electrical symptoms. The Clinton Prison incident stands alone. But then again, who knows?

• 37:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Maybe it isn't only people being locked away behind those heavy prison walls, but a truly electrifying secret.

• 37:23Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra DeAlba, and music by Chad Lawson. Just a reminder, I have a brand-new, very weird history book coming out on August 4th. It's called Exhumed, and it explores the roots of the New England vampire panic and the story of Mercy Brown through the lens of folklore, medical advancements, and pseudoscience. It's available for preorder right now, and if you preorder the hardcover, there's a webpage where you can submit your receipts and get a free tote bag with some gorgeous artwork from the book on it. Head over to aaronmahnke.com/exhumed to lock in your copy today. I'll put a link in the description for this episode. Don't like hearing ads on Lore?

• 38:05Aaron Mahnke?

  Well, there's a paid version on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Subscribers there also get weekly mini-bonus episodes called Lore Bites, and Patreon members specifically get discounts on Lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more about how you can support the show over at lorepodcast.com/support. You can also follow this show on places like YouTube, Threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

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• 39:21Speaker 05

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Apparently we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.