Mr. Thermal

I was in a barn along with about 8 or 9 other people. It was starting to storm so we had a little tobacco we wanted to finish unloading. Before we got into the cars we had there, the lightening bolt came through a board in the side of the barn and got me. I felt myself falling but it didn't hurt. 

Then I noticed I was above myself looking down at me. My body was actually smoking. I watched one guy jump from the wagon he was on, to the ground. On his way over to me, it seemed like it took him 10 minutes to land. 

Everyone was moving so slow. I was speaking out loud. I could hear myself, but it seemed the others couldn't. 

I saw them gathering around me trying to wake me up, but I was awake. I was above them. I tried to look at my hands but couldn't see them. I knew they were there. I could feel them move. And I could feel my feet too, but again, my body was on the ground right beneath me. 

I saw this bright light. It was as though I could grab a piece of it. 

Somehow I knew I could fly. 

I had a peace I can't explain. I wasn't scared or hurting. I felt free. But then I was thinking out loud. I said, "God, I'm not ready yet!" And just as fast as I had got struck, I was back on the ground in my body. 

I felt the lightning every time it hit around that barn. My body would convulse every time it did. It was like grabbing a 2 ten and holding it. 

The guys in the barn had to pick me up and lay me in a car. I didn't have any motor skills at that point. I couldn't speak or move. 

I saw this bolt go right over the car while it was in the barn and they were putting me in it. I could swear the lightning looked like a skeleton hand reaching through the barn.

My body started jumping and I had no control over it. 

They rushed me to the hospital. At the hospital, they left me in a dark room for, I believe, several hours. 

I still couldn't move. I was trying. The flash nearly put out my right eye, so I was having trouble seeing things clearly. 

After awhile, the doctor came back in and I told him to try to help me sit up. It took some doing, but finally I got up. It took a bit for me to stand on my own, but I walked out of the hospital that day. I had to wear a patch on my right eye for 2 weeks and I had one mother of a headache; but, I was alive.

The doctor told me I was lucky. I had taken a lot of electricity through my body. He didn't know why I was alive! I do. 

I was talking to something in that light. I knew something was there. No one can ever tell me I wasn't dead. I knew I was at the time and the funny part is, no one else got hit, and they weren't more than 3 ft away.