Before smartphones. Before social media. Before anyone thought to record the evidence.
Boomers on the Edge is a weekly storytelling podcast where two lifelong friends revisit the wild, reckless, and often unbelievable adventures of their youth. Kenn and Ron trade stories from the 60s, 70s, and 80s — the mischief, the bad decisions, and the close calls that somehow didn’t kill them.
From gritty Detroit bars and summer days on the lake to high school locker rooms and blue-collar job sites, every episode blends sharp improv, vivid memories, and outrageous true tales.
It’s unfiltered nostalgia — raw, irreverent, and laugh-out-loud funny.
If you like your comedy honest, slightly inappropriate, and full of “there’s no way that really happened” moments… welcome to the edge.
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When lightning strikes your house, things can get a little… possessed!
One stormy night, Ron’s home became the scene of a full-blown paranormal event—or at least that’s how it seemed after lightning struck the house.
Ron has a knack for attracting lightning, and once again, he’s here to tell the tale of one crazy evening when his house appeared to have a mind of its own.
What followed was a never-ending parade of eerie sights and unexplained sounds:
· A microwave oven flashing a spark that looked suspiciously like a hand reaching out from the other side!
· A garage door that seemed to have a mind of its own!
· An answering machine that suddenly started speaking in foreign tongues!
Was Ron’s house possessed, or was it just a very bad night for electrical equipment?
In the spirit of Halloween, join the Buds for another hilarious and spooky personal story from Boomers on the Edge—where sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and a lightning strike can turn an ordinary night into a haunted house!
Hey, and welcome to Boomers on the Edge. Some guys in their 60s who still think they're 16. Your hosts, Ken and Ron. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_00
Hey, yeah. We've been podcasting for almost a year now, maybe a little over. And uh, you know, one of our first episodes was about Halloween. And um I listened to this music and I'm thinking about maybe I should go get my masks. Yeah? You mean the one from the 60s? Yeah. And if you guys listened to the episodes in the past, I said that I had my masks from when I was a kid, and I don't know if these guys believed me. And then we'd put a YouTube out there to show that I did have the actual masks. This music makes me think I should pull them back out. But but, anyways, it does make me think of haunted houses and all this stuff that goes with Halloween. Yeah. And didn't you kind of have a house?
SPEAKER_01
I had an experience where I you know, I talk about lightning, but the story really is about my house. Seemed like it turned into a haunted house from lightning.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and you and we've referenced that in a few of the other episodes, but we never really dove into it at any great length. And uh why don't you tell us about that? Okay.
SPEAKER_01
One night, uh, this story's back on Boomers on the Edge era of before my son was here and before we had any children. I was at my house one evening and it was starting to storm. My wife had gone over to uh my mother-in-law's house and she was pregnant at the time. But it was a you know dark, uh stormy night. Interesting enough, uh, for some reason I was on the phone talking to my mother. And so uh no no cell phones in those days, they're uh kids, uh only uh landlines. So I'm on a landline, which uh not really advised to do, I don't believe, during a lightning storm. Correct. Um, so I'm you know, you know, error one. And so I remember talking to my mom, it storms getting pretty bad, you know. Boom, bang. I said, I said, you know, mom, uh, it's getting really bad. I might I might end up uh going here. I might who knows, maybe we'll lose our power. And so then all of a sudden, boom loudest lightning you ever heard. It sounded like it had hit the house. And when I tell this story, I'm sitting in the kitchen and I'm on the phone, and the microwave, it's sparks out when it when it when it hit, and I I describe it as a like a hand came out at me. Okay, a hand, like a hand in a horror movie, okay? Yeah, and I'm like, this is getting pretty weird. So then the power went like what I'd call half phase, like it didn't, it didn't uh go completely out, and it, you know, and it and it didn't stay on. It was kind of like you know, like half phase after that spark. Then I started smelling smoke, and I'm like, what the hell? So I go running around the house trying to figure out what's on fire, what's on fire, and everything's kind of like half phase, like there's half power. I look and there's smoke coming out of my VCR, and I'm freaking out because it's like I don't know if it's gonna catch in flame or what it's gonna do. So I I I I I'm ripping, I mean, I'm ripping power cords because I want to get it out of my house. I carry the VCR smoking, smoldering into my I open the door to my like uh garage, and when I do that, like in a horror movie, I look and my garage door is going it's going it's like going up and down like six inches. The lights are shimmering and sparkling and like you know, like going halfway or like they're flickering. Now I throw the I I I put the VCR smoldering on the cement floor, figuring at least it's not on anything, because now I got a bigger problem. So I go grab the ladder, and I because I want to pull the plug, I'm pushing buttons and it's not doing anything in the garage door. Okay. I go grab the ladder, like 10-foot ladder, run up the ladder. I'll never forget, like in a movie. The power then goes out, of course, right? And I have no windows in my garage because I thought that was a good move for security, you know. So there's no light, it's pitch black. I'm on the top of a 10-foot ladder in pitch black. Light power goes out, then it comes back on again, half phase. I pull the plug, so now that stops going up and down. But then as I start to crawl down the ladder, I can hear a noise back in the house, and it's like I'm like, what the hell is going on? What the hell? You remember I'm like in my 20s, you know, like I'm thinking this is like right from a movie, you know, like this. I must have built the house on ghosts or something, you know, on the on the, I'm sorry, on a cemetery or something. Right out of poltergeist. I think the movie was just out then. And I go walking and back in the house, I'm like, what is this now? And I hear this noise. I go back into my bedroom where our answering machine is. It's going like weirdo, like and I I pull the plug on everything, okay? I was like, so that was basically then my wife eventually came home and she's like, So what's going on? I'm like, what's going on? The whole place was like like some haunted, you know, haunted storm or something. So of course, you know, the one thing you learn, and that's the part of the story here about being a homeowner and learning, other than that the fact that your house is maybe haunted, is I call insurance and they come out and they're walking around my house and they're taking pictures of the outlets. I'm like, what? Why are you taking pictures of the outlets? I you know, I got a broken answering machine, I got a broken garage door opener, I've got a broken uh microwave, uh microwave, I got a broken VCR. I mean, what what what I would I go around and what would I do, you know? Well, there's no sign of uh like what was the lightning gonna I mean I think the house would have burnt down if it was that, you know. So they're taking but they didn't want to replace anything because you know I couldn't prove that the lightning had hit the house. And believe me, the lightning may not have hit the house, but it hit something very close to that. And the fact that the VC, oh, I've left one part out.
SPEAKER_00
The receiver and how long into your marriage was that when that happened? Just a couple years or so?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because my wife was pregnant, yeah. Yeah, not very long into it. So, you know, you learn a lot of things about how insurance treated me. Oh, yeah, and you learned about having surge protectors and so forth, you know. It just it was and it was literally, if you would have ran behind me and filmed me, it was like being in a horror movie.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we're gonna have music taking us out, huh? Yeah, why not? You know? Yeah. So I don't know, that was scary, huh? Yeah, that was scary. And uh, you know, remember guys, it's Halloween. And it's okay to go back and listen to old episodes. Help get yourself in the mood for Halloween.
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Boomers on the Edge. We hope you'll join us again. And until then, have a great time. Thank you.
