A Childhood Fear: Astraphobia, or Fear of Lightning

My husband loves a good storm. He thinks nothing of sitting on the porch in the midst of a drenching rain, lightning flashing and thunder crashing all around him. I, on the other hand, am likely to be found in the innermost room of the house, the one farthest away from any window and most insulated from the noise. If the Weather Channel so much as hints at the remote possibility of a tornado anywhere within 50 miles, that’s a good enough reason for me to start doing laundry, which is conveniently located in the basement, right next to the stairs that I can hide under when the funnel cloud touches down. Not if but when. My kids can’t understand why I have this phobia, but I have a pretty good idea where it came from.

It was a Friday night, the 4th of July, 1969, and the town of Poland, Ohio, was celebrating our nation’s birth with its annual fireworks display. My father had taken three of my brothers fishing at a mysterious Canadian locale called Lift-the-Latch. They would be gone for three days. My mother stayed home over the long weekend with us four girls and my youngest brother, Bobby, who was then four. It was a hot sticky day and we decided to walk to the village to see the fireworks, about a mile away. Bobby was wary; he didn’t like loud noises, but we assured him it would be exciting. More exciting than we could have imagined, as it turned out.

My Mom walked with the five of us through Poland, passing historic wood frame houses and Wittenauers, the local pharmacy where we were regular buyers of five cent candy sticks. We walked with dozens of other families down College Lane toward Poland Seminary High School where the whole village would turn out to watch the show.

We bought tickets and sat on the grass. The air was heavy and still, and it was hot. As we waited for the festivities to begin, my mother looked up at the darkening sky. Strange. It was turning red.

“We’d better start back,” she said. It was around 8:30. The fireworks hadn’t even begun. We looked at the sky again. One side was black. It bore no semblance of clouds, but rather a blanket of black rolling toward us, as if some invisible hand was drawing it across the sky above, enveloping all that lay in its ominous shadow below.

There was no time to run. We made it a few yards to the ticket booth, where we cowered against the wall and my mother’s legs as the air exploded around us. My mother pulled us all close to her and tried to shield Bobby’s ears. He was terrified. No one expected a tornado. Had there ever been one in Poland?

There was a brief lull after a few minutes and we ran all the way home. Trees were down everywhere. Electrical and phone lines too. The storm raged on but at least we were home. Others weren’t so lucky. One girl was killed. She had been running from the fireworks to her home on College Lane where we had all been shortly before when she was struck by a falling tree limb that she never saw in the pitch black air around her. Her friends lifted the limb and carried her home. When the ambulance couldn’t reach the house because of a tree blocking the road, her friends delivered her to the ambulance on a mattress they carried from her house. She died during the night. We learned later that the storm killed 41 people across Northern Ohio.

We had no electricity for three days, and used kerosene lamps to light our old Victorian house at night. There was no power to supply the pump, so we had no water either. “Don’t flush,” my mother said, but we kids forgot and soon the toilets were empty of water but we used them anyway. Our neighbors didn’t use a well, so they shared their water supply with us, by running a hose across the street from their house to ours. All five kids slept in the king size bed with my mother. It felt safe, and the dark wasn’t as scary when we were so close to her. Mothers can soothe even nature’s fury.

The phone lines were down but functional that first day, until the police cut those too. People did not like driving over them. I picture the sheriff with a giant pair of scissors severing our connection with my father, still in Canada.

Thankfully, no harm came to any of us but I knew from that day that a storm can be something dangerous.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a camp counselor at a YMCA camp near Erie, situated on a cliff above Lake Erie. One day I was in the Nature Pavilion, a wooden structure with picnic tables, a roof and no walls. A sudden storm rolled in off the lake and the kids cowered around me, clinging to my legs much as I clung to my mother in 1969. I couldn’t let them know I was as scared as they were. Hugging them close to me helped me as much as it helped them. As I reassured them that we were safe, an ear-splitting crack rang out and everyone screamed. Lightning had struck the big tree hanging over the Pavilion, splitting it in two.

That was a close one that fed into my fear, no, my certain knowledge, that one day I would be struck by lightning. I feel this way even now. Whenever there’s a storm, I remember stories I’ve heard over the years that lightning striking the ground can travel through the water supply of a house; I won’t turn on the water. It can travel through phone lines and shock your ear (this actually happened to me); I won’t use the phone. The house in Squirrel Hill where lightning struck through a window and lit the bed on fire; I pull the covers over my head. The time lightning struck so close to our house it destroyed our TV; I unplug the appliances. I file these tales away in my brain, retrieving them unwillingly whenever the rumbling begins. We had a dog named Jezebel when I was a teenager. She used to cower under the bed at the first hint of rain. I can relate.

I had a dream once that I was in a field behind my house. Lightning struck and killed me. I watched the scene from above as my body lay in the field and my family gathered around. I felt no fear or pain. When I woke up, I was no longer afraid of death. But I was still afraid of lightning.