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If you believe lightning never strikes the same place twice, you haven’t met Roy Cleveland Sullivan—a U.S. park ranger whose life reads like a myth written by the gods of chaos.
Between 1942 and 1977, Roy was struck by lightning seven separate times—and survived them all.
It began innocently enough. In 1942, while hiding from a storm in a fire lookout tower in Shenandoah National Park, lightning struck the tower and traveled down into his leg, leaving a scar and burning off a toenail. That was the first.
The second strike came decades later, in 1969, while driving his truck. Lightning hit nearby trees and bounced through the open window, knocking him unconscious and burning his eyebrows.
The third time, in 1970, he was in his front yard. The bolt hit a nearby power transformer and jumped to his shoulder.
The fourth? While working inside a ranger station. The lightning struck the building’s electrical box and leapt to his head, setting his hair on fire.
The fifth? He was patrolling the park. A bolt hit him on the hilltop, searing his legs and again setting his hair ablaze.
The sixth? He was fishing. Lightning struck his head, set his hair on fire (again), and knocked him into the water. He survived by crawling to his truck.
The seventh and final strike came in 1977, while he was walking in the park. It hit his ankle. He survived.
Statisticians have tried to calculate the odds of this happening. The result? Astronomically low—something like 1 in 10 octillion. But Roy wasn’t just a statistical anomaly. He was a man who kept showing up to work, kept walking into storms, and kept surviving.
He became known as the “Human Lightning Rod.” His story was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. He carried the scars, the burns, and the trauma—but also a strange kind of pride.
And here’s the strangest twist: despite surviving seven lightning strikes, Roy’s life ended not by nature’s fury, but by heartbreak. In 1983, he died by suicide after a failed relationship. It was a quiet end to a life that had defied every natural law.
His ranger hat, scorched and singed, now sits in a museum. A relic of a man who walked through storms and lived to tell the tale—again and again and again.