A UK man was struck by lightning while playing video games inside his living room.
Aidan Rowan was using his PlayStation when a bolt of lightning struck him on Monday, Metro News reported. The 33-year-old told said he heard a “loud crack” followed by a “heavy sensation” in his body at around 10.30pm.
Rowan, who lives in Oxfordshire with his husband Aaron, keeled over and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told him it looked like he had been struck by lightning.
“I was on the sofa playing a game where you play as a stray cat and it was thundering outside,” he told Oxford Mail. The game he referred to – Stray – is ironically one in which the main character is a stray kitten that gets lost during a thunderstorm.
“There was a very loud crack of thunder and I sort of felt a very heavy sensation all over and then a searing heat in my right arm where there are now burns,” Rowan continued.
He says it took him about a minute to regain his senses, and when he came to, he realised his arm was burning. “He [Aaron] asked what that smell was and it was me burning. He then called his parents to take me hospital. He said he could see my arm blistering as he watched,” said Rowan.
The gamer was rushed to the John Radcliffe Hospital where he was kept under supervision for hours and checked by nine doctors from different departments.
In an Instagram post, Rowan said that after five hours in the hospital, he was told that he had been struck by lightning through an open window.
Rowan has now been discharged from the hospital. He says he feels fine – although he experiences soreness and headaches, and has burn marks down his arm.
“Never going to play cute cat games during a thunderstorm again,” he wrote.
To the Oxford Mail, he said that doctors theorised that lightning “bounced off the water and through the window” to strike him.
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