A trope of pulp fantasy is the lightning bolt strike that grants its target strange powers. Mind Hacks discusses how this occurred, in a sense, when a healthy 23-year-old mountain climber was hit by lightning and suffered impact to her visual cortex. After rescue and three days spent in a drug induced coma, she awoke to a strange world, thus described by the British Medical Journal:
These exclusively visual sensations consisted of unknown people, animals and objects acting in different scenes, as if in a movie. For example, an old lady was sitting on a ribbed radiator, who then became thinner and thinner, finally vanishing through the slots of the radiator. Later, on her left side a cowboy riding on a horse came from the distance. As he approached her, he tried to shoot her, making her feel defenceless because she could not move or shout for help.
In another scene, two male doctors, one fair and one dark haired, and a woman, all with strange metal glasses and unnatural brownish-red faces, were tanning in front of a sunbed, then having sexual intercourse and afterwards trying to draw blood from her. These formed hallucinations, partially with delusional character, were in the whole visual field and constantly present for approximately 20 h.
At the time of appearance, the patient was not sure whether they were real or unreal, but did not report them for fear that she might be considered insane. Over the next few days, she had increasingly better insight.
