Walter Summerford’s story is as shocking as it is rare, marked by an extraordinary series of events that seem almost too bizarre to believe. Major Walter Summerford, who served in the British Army during World War I, was known not just for his military exploits but for his incredibly unusual luck with lightning. Over the course of his life, he was struck by lightning on three separate occasions, each more improbable than the last, marking him as a statistical anomaly in the truest sense.
Summerford’s first encounter with lightning occurred during a battlefield in the latter years of World War I. While riding across a field, a bolt from the blue struck him down, leaving him severely injured but alive. He recovered, but his brush with electricity was far from over. Years later, after retiring and moving to Vancouver, Canada, he was fishing when lightning struck a second time, this time paralyzing him from the waist down. Summerford’s third and final personal encounter with lightning happened six years later, while he was out in a local park. This strike, amazingly, caused no severe injuries.
One might think that with his passing, Summerford’s magnetic relationship with lightning would have ended, but that was not to be the case. In a turn of events that sounds almost like a folk tale, lightning struck his gravestone in Vancouver not long after his burial, chipping the stone. This final incident cemented Summerford’s legacy as a man who attracted lightning, whether in life or in death.
The odds of being struck by lightning are extremely low, with estimates usually putting it at about 1 in 1,000,000 annually. To be struck three times in a lifetime and then have one’s grave struck posthumously elevates Walter Summerford to a level of improbability that challenges belief. It also raises fascinating questions about the forces of nature and whether certain environmental or personal factors might increase one's likelihood of being struck.
While the reasons behind Summerford's frequent lightning strikes remain largely inexplicable, his story has captured the imagination of many, serving as a dramatic reminder of nature's power and unpredictability. It reminds us of the respect we must maintain for natural forces and the strange ways in which the world can make its mark on individual lives.
