Sounds more like static electricity to me. Under the right circumstances I can create a rather powerful spark loud enough to be heard when getting out of my car and touching the metal door frame.

Try Wikipedia or google "static electricity" and "electrostatics". There are many simple devices that you can build to measure this electric potential (there isn't a great deal of power stored thou in static electricity).

I understand the level to which static electricity man can generate by friction on cloths and surrounding materials but this rarely gives shock. This man is known to give shock even when he wants to pass his cell phone to others. Only thing prevents him is by walking barefoot of the floor.

I conducted one experiment and found that some people have very little electrical conductivity in their skin, while some were of comparatively high electrical conductivity. I will like to do one experiment now to know if any one has battery like structure in his body, which is not known in humans to exist.

I usually see this person moving with underwear as only cloths and barefoot most of the time. He is scared of excessive charge generated and is well aware of his problem which is not normal. Both his body and that of others experiences shock.

It could be his fear also from static electricity and hence, I like to experiment with.

Does any one know about the capacitance of the human body to hold the static charge and form a voltage?

I think my oscilloscope can record transient discharges of electricity. I will like to discharge it through 1K-10k ohms resistance to reduce current flow and make it almost equivalent to human body model.

What are the local weather conditions when this occurs. I believe this is a fairly common occurrence in dry (low humidity) climates, depending on the type of clothing. What are the slippers (sleepers ?) made from? Wool seems to be the best for generating this type of static electricity.

slippers are generally made of rubber foam an insulating material. This place is normally dry with 40%RH and now running at about 70%RH due to rain once a while. Only in winter woolen cloths are used here for two-three months. I see this man almost without cloths most of the time and puts on only shorts and no top wear

This is a very interesting topic for me. I have had trouble with something similar most of my life although it has subsided of late.

It is worse in low humidity situations. I have killed 3 TV remote controls. In one case the spark jumped over 6 inches. I cannot wear a watch (although I haven't tried in a long time). If the watch is mechanical at first it won't keep time and finally (within a week) it stops altogether. If the watch is electric the battery drains or it just dies/fries. In either case it left a red welt where the case touched my skin.

On the other hand I can test electrical circuits for power (as in 110VAC or 50,000VDC - spark plug wires) with my hands. I've never been tazered but I suspect it would have little effect on me. I do know that a high powered electric fence is just an annoying tickle.

I probably eat less salt than average so I don't think that plays a major role. I think I am probably doing better electrically since I started taking antidepressants. Several years ago while taking computer classes at the local community college I found that I had to change stations frequently or the computer would start to error out and sometimes freeze up completely. The computer room tech then fixed me up with some wrist bands with ground clips and the problem went away.

Several years later and 3 separate antidepressants later I now no longer exhibit the random spark generation (no matter the humidity) and I have had this computer about 4 years with no more than the normal glitches. I have not tried the voltage testing because I think I might have a real shock in store.

I do, on the other hand, now have some neurological problems of a mysterious nature. The bottoms of my feet are now almost completely numb and the palms of my hands are going the same way. I have had upper and lower digestive track problems that come and go seemingly at random. I went on a treadmill EKG test because I had chest pains. Everything looked normal except that my heart-rate did not come back to rest for about 15 minutes. I now tire easily and cannot shed heat easily. Physical work I used to do for hours on end I can now do for no more than 15 minutes before resting for 30. I get bad head aches at the least stress and every other day I am in a fog.

Do you think perhaps the lack of expending such energy has possibly caused any ailments ? I for one am leery of side effects of anti depressants as well. Your situation is pretty fascinating.

Human body has lots of ions that form local battery system and also some charge is transmitted across the body through nerve system. Charge is usually balanced unless static charge gets injected from external source on the body. Even such high static charge does not affect the function of the human body and only when charge is suddenly discharged through our body, we experience shock. Discharge through cloths will have no serious affect on us.

We are talking of situation particular to a person or perhaps of few more like him.

In our house we often keep instruments on tables that are insulating and can transfer charge to our body if touched. If we are barefoot then will experience shock else will hold the charge for long. My UPS is known to do this and gives mild shock. Whenever we connect serial cable to experiments, we get that mild shock. This is perhaps due to bad design of the UPS itself.

Medicine causing such thing is not known.

Ramorrison,

I think I have had every kind of blood test known to man. I just had my cholesterol screen. I now have elevated cholesterol whereas before I had very low cholesterol. I am treating it with Lipitor. The one test that might show something worthwhile is a tilt table EKG/blood pressure test. It can only be administered by a qualified cardiologist/neurologist. The three neurologists I have seen so far either think I'm lying or it's not worth their time because it's hard to justify to the insurance company (the state in my case).

I know a former coworker in Canada who generates a lot of electricity and has the same effect on watches as you do. He's also allergic to dust mites.

It would be interesting to test with a commercial electrostatic meter.

This reminds me of an episode of Mr. Bean.

Dear Shadetree

There are two ways under which your body will not experience electrical shock from live wires.

1. You are like an insulator on body surface and do not allow current flow through your body to extent you can experience shock.

2. Your outer cover - skin is like a metal cage and conducts very high such that all current is skin current with no current flowing through inner core, keeping the potential difference across the body near zero or short circuited.

The first one is very likely. Take a multimeter, and put it in resistance mode and hold each probe by your finger in separate hands. Report me back the body resistance average value. Normally it is about 10K ohms but mat very from 1K Ohms to 1M Ohms. Those with 1M ohms sure will not experience any shock touching live wires. You are not at all advised to experiment with live wires. It may be fatal.

Shyman,

I don't currently own a multimeter. The good digital ones (Fluke, OTC) keep wigging out on me. When I retired I didn't get a new one. I started buying the cheap analog units instead and being 'cheap analog units' they didn't last long either. As soon as I can work one into my precarious budget I will try that.

I don't know if it's related but my house has been struck by lightning at least 3 times in the last 3 years. I now have 2 lightning rods, my roof is metal and it is ground-strapped to 4 separate ground rods. The first time we lost about $2000.00 of electronics. At the first sign of a t-storm now we unplug everything.

I'm guessing that your friend is generating electrostatic charge in his body, and due to extra dry skin or a related anomoly, is not becoming properly discharged. There are many static charge meters available that can be used to measure his charge. Skin moisteners, and higher humidity will assist in normal discharge. If those methods fail, try an air ionizing system. I suggest that your friend stay away from explosives until his problem is neutralized.

Having seen many of your previous posts, I find this one very surprising. I doesn't sound like the work of a sensor specialist!

According to the reports I found, electric eels produce their voltage much like a battery does, with a set of several thousand cells in series, each cell producing of the order of 0.1V, for a total of around 500 V for the larger eels. To my knowledge, no human body has any even vaguely similar structure, so NO, it is not a battery effect.

As several others have indicated, it sounds like static electricity. 500 Volts coming from a finger would only make a barely visible spark, if any. The spark generated by clothing, shoes, etc. is commonly more like 5000V or more. There is an easy test: The static electricity will easily illuminate a standard neon lamp (for just an instant), but there is not enough current to light even the smallest of ordinary incandescent lamps. I assume you would know how to do the test...

You could also set up a series of neon lamps to see how many he could illuminate. then measure the DC voltage that illuminates a single neon lamp to that brightness, and multiply by the number of lamps to get his voltage.

March 1-5, 2004 I conducted a workshop NCVER-2004 and in that I have gifted one experimental hardware to 450 participants which could measure electrical conductivity of the human body. Circuit is a relaxation oscillator designed based on CMOS IC witch injects about 2mA peak current into body to determine the body impedance at its self oscillating frequency in the range of 1Hz to 50Hz or 1kHz to 20kHz. While the first was for visible LED based indication , the later one was to measure the frequency using Atmel Microcontroller Board, which was also gifted along with software.

These circuits could find lots of difference among people with respect to electrical conductivity. Some were simply like an insulator with almost zero oscillations. Some conducted very high and have shown very high oscillation frequency and they looked some what sick or suffered from some infection like cold cough or fever.

At that time I did not monitor the self generating electricity of the body as we all know that we can hardly measure ECG with lots of signal amplification and hardly expected any static charge buildup with battery like structure in human body.

Human body as such has a large battery system which we call Sodium pump and is functional internally for cell transduction and does not show up any charge outside. Nerve signals are also well insulated and they do not fire very high charge to muscles and perhaps generate local energy to be activated. Even heart pulse at SA node is weak. Now with all that when I find some strange effect where children of the house are scared to touch their father, then there is serious cause of worry. Because this person lives only few doors away from my house, and I have all facilities, I will like to conducted fare experiments to know, what exactly is going on.

I have not yet concluded anything and will like to capture signals first. This person is very normal and fine with health and jolly happy man.

Those people feel that their hands and legs are getting numb need to consult doctor as it looks an effect of prolonged neglect blood pressure problem and perhaps may also be diabetic. Exercises along with medication may help. They must consult an expert doctor or Physician first. I am not one.

All I'm hearing is..

"I know this guy who walks around in is underwear carrying a cell phone.. eats massive amounts of salt and claims to be an electric eel or something.."

sounds mental more than physical..

give the dude some lotion, clothes, and change his diet.

pictures and test results asap!,, I don't want to be so cynical, but I am!

This man is very normal and his concern is not to harm others who get scared with one electric shock of life. He knows well about himself and by now consolidated himself to what has been wrongly gifted by God to him.

Hi,

without any doubt this effect is happening on the skin as the body fluid has almost no resistance.

This is static electricity (charge) that is generated by friction on dry surfaces if rubbing against suitable other surfaces (may be also dust in air).

This effect is also existing if fluids are sprayed in fine particles if the nozzle has some charge. or if fluid or ice particles are divided or hitting each other: Charge generating in thunderstorms.

As the voltage is easily at 5KV (my estimate for this effect in my own experience if leaving my car or getting off some woolen or synthetic clothes I generate sparks around 4 to 6 mm long) any electrostatically sensitive device is easily killed.

To measure: a charge amplifier with enough feedback capacitance should be ideal.

People that have problems should try to leave traces of primitive (but pure) soaps on their skins and some glycerol added. (In former times called "Savon de Marseille", French for soap from Marseille)

Soaps are sodium salts of fatty acids and if the other "modern" ingredients are missing are unlikely to cause any harm to the skin. Glycerol is somewhat hygroscopic and thus the skin will be a little bit humid also in dry environment and thus generate some conductivity if soap is present. Traces should be sufficient.

If color is not a problem I would also try some graphite paintings on the body: like the stem and branches of a tree or some other artistic network to channel the charge to the discharge areas.

What may help - please try - are the very sharp needles that are used in air-ionizers made from tungsten for durability. The electric field at the tip is so high that air molecules are ionised and blown away by electrostatic force. An enclosure shall prevent injuries from the needles. The base of the needles to be electrically connected to the most charged part of the body.

Try and please tell us what you experienced.

Have success

RHABE

Humans generating a spark is not unusual. I, myself, experienced a shock when I happened to stand next to my friend and a spark flew between us! We were assisting in an instrumentation lesson in a local school and several students saw the spark arc between our arms.

We both jumped and shouted in pain. We weren't touching anything so the shock was clearly static electricity but we never knew who generated the charge in the first place.

That is a good point to the problem. We all know how it feels when one touched a Vendigraph charge storage ball. Your hair will separate from each other due to charge. This is good way to know that your body is charged up. In air it is about 40kV / cm electric field to cause spark. If you say meters then it is like million volts.

In this case we are talking something like a gas lighter which may spark at about 15kV to 18kV in 3mm to 5mm air gap space.

Spark can take the path of cloth surface if it finds direction for the charge to move on. On some cloths million volts can form so don't get surprised if that did happen in your case. Rarely it directly kills any one but can ignite a fuel tanker easily. You know thereafter what follows next.

I can see where this mans body may be unusually good at accumulating or holding an electric charge. Maybe his frequent surroundings are what is causing the charge in the first place. We know we can all generate static charge with our bodies under the right conditions such as low humidity and friction with the right kind of materials. Maybe his home, place of employment, garden etc. has some unique properties that are aggravating his problem. Would it be possible to do some testing based on his location for a period of time?

Also the electrostatic discharge devices used in industry work best when there is an electrical path from your skin to the device (usually sweat). Maybe this man could get some relief if he wore shoes with conductive rubber soles (they do make them). This may give him a better grounding path than a bare, completely dry foot.

Dear DaveB

This point is good one and I need to examine source of charge that may get on to his body. I can also scan his bed and other cloths and perhaps entire room to see accumulated charge distribution.

Does the man in this video have the same qualities that your test subject has?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aos0hnwiHt8

good parlor tricks

interesting shocks

am I the only one who watched this whole video..!?

I'll admit.. that's wierd.. who else has documentation of this type of situation..?

My Saturn use to shock the hell out of me when I got out, but this is different.!?

this guy seems to be able to shock like we can burp, but he's not pushing pencils through tables or moving a knife through telekinesis any more than David Copperfield.

all hail the eel man.. I'm almost sold!

quick turnaround huh?

Shyam, had this been posted by almost anyone else, I'd probably make some comment about sending for Mulder and Scully (a reference to a U.S. television show about paranormal phenomena, and total fiction, called the X-files). You, however, have a reputation here for being level and truthful, so I am wondering what you will find out about this fellow. Intriguing!

Dear EnviroMan

Well, it is not a fiction story and is a real life stuff. I have an experimental lab where hundreds of engineers come and experiment in whatever area they wish to do so. I became interested in this person after hearing from him and his family members. They have no idea of its scientific background and have stated all facts they knew very politely. It is for me to find out the facts and I should try to understand the cause from experimental data.

One good point this man has pointed out that, whenever it is cloudy weather or there is bad weather, he gets more charged. He also told me that, on walking he gets more charged than when he is simply sitting or doing nothing.

His salt eating habit is very unusual and he eats 50g to 100g each time he has his food. He also stated that all male members in family including his father and sons do so while daughters don't like salt at all. However, other male members did not report similar effect on their body. He is unique in this way.

Excessive salt increases blood pressure and is known fact. How badly it may result into charged human body is not known. Also how weather is affecting him is also not known. Perhaps it related to his perspiration salt ion moving towards the surface in some peculiar way.

I have planned three experiments now.

A. Measure his body conductivity five-six times daily at predefined intervals and before and after his food intakes.

B. Measure static potential difference developing in his body with respect to earth while his body is insulated from earth.

C. I will also like to map if there is potential difference across his body, which I am afraid may not exist unless his body is really Eel like and has bio-batteries in series.