Haunted house

That was one of the nastiest storms I've seen. I was out, trying to go to dragonboat practice (stupid huh?) but eventually headed home as the roads were flooding and I wasn't going to make it anyways. Got my car washed by a fire truck zooming through foot-deep water. The semi-flooded intersections seemed to be starting to drain already on my way back, but traffic was backing up even more. Got home, and my parents were downstairs, and called up to ask if I had had my desktop on. I hadn't. I went downstairs and discovered it was on. Apparently my dad had gone down to check that my laptop was unplugged since there'd been some big nearby strikes (it was). While he was downstairs, there was one so bright and loud he figured it hit an alley telephone post, or perhaps a tree across the alley. He thought he saw sparks from something in the room, but it might have been a reflection. Meanwhile, upstairs my mom had jumped out of her chair with the startling bang, and found herself listening to a couple little battery-operated music box things on the shelf that had turned themselves on. I guess the vibration had rattled it enough for the contacts to hit? She went downstairs to join my dad, and a moment later they heard a beep, and discovered that my desktop computer had just turned itself on. How creepy is that? I got home a minute after that while they were still downstairs, received the question, and went downstairs to see what was up. So we unplugged it all, and went back upstairs. Only to discover my dad's super-old stereo had turned itself on since I had gone downstairs. It was really weird. We also discovered the phones were dead. It reminded me of some kind of scary movie. Anyways, nothing else turned itself on, and eventually the storm passed.

Damage report... Things seem to mostly be okay. Except for the cable modem. It's lights suggest it can communicate with the internet, but it can't connect to any computer (I believe modem's ethernet port is dead). Oh well, I guess there are more valuable things that could have gotten fried. We figure the jolt entered via cable (which explains why the computer and the stereo got affected despite surge protectors) so it makes sense that the cable modem was the most likely casualty. Oh, we found a small water leak in our house too.