General Information About Item:
- Type of Lore: Customary, Superstition
- Language: English
- Country: United States
- Informant: Anya Sorensen
- Date Collected: 5/29/2020
Informant Data:
- Anya Sorensen is a sophomore at Dartmouth. She lives with her family in Florida.
Contextual Data:
- Cultural Context: The informant indicated that she has heard this superstition from other people who live in Florida. It is possible that this is a regional superstition or at least a superstition that is more prevalent in Florida, where thunderstorms in the afternoon are very common.
- Social Context: The informant indicated that this is a superstition generally passed down from parents to children. The informant indicated that she had seen a twitter post from another Floridian mentioning the superstition with the text “do your parents let you shower during a thunderstorm?” Additionally, she mentioned that she learned this superstition through a parental prohibition on showering during a storm.
Item:
- Showering during a thunderstorm carries a risk of being electrocuted
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Transcript:
- Informant: “That’s just a superstition, that it’ll, like, if you take a shower, and there’s a lightning strike, it’ll like… zap you”
- Interviewer: “So it’ll like go through the shower?”
- Informant: “I don’t know how it works, but yeah.”
Informant’s Comments:
- The informant indicated that this superstition might be based on a story of someone who got electrocuted in the shower during a thunderstorm, however, she also admits this might be speculation
Collector’s Comments:
- The informant’s connection of this superstition to a (most likely) apocryphal tale of a person being electrocuted in the shower connects this superstition to an urban legend if true. However, this is only a possibility – the informant was not sure about this information.
Collector’s Name: Ted McManus
Tags/Keywords:
- Thunderstorm, Superstition, Storm, Lightning, Florida