My grocer's son told me he saw a man hurrying in the street under the heavy rain, and a lightning was running just beside him on the sidewalk! I can tell you the boy was impressed and I would have been too seeing that!
Another true thunderstorm story? Paul's grand-mother (we're talking beginning of XXth century here) was living in Morvan (center of France, an area rather wild and remote). For a living she was selling dry goods as a migrant, with a donkey. The farmers' wives payed her with rabbit skins. Her house was a stone one, just one or two rooms, with the donkey stable being part of it. One day there was a thunderstorm (usual in this place) and a lightning ball entered the stable, killed the donkey, drilled through the wall, ran under her metallic bed and out, w/o hurting her. Then she came to live with her children as she couldn't work w/o her donkey, of course.