The garments are intact, the body presents no difference, it keeps the attitude it had at the supreme moment, but it is entirely burnt, consumed. Thus--
At Vic-sur-Aisne (Aisne) in 1838, in the middle of a violent storm, three soldiers took shelter under a lime tree. Lightning struck them all dead at one blow. All the same, they all three remained standing in their original positions as though they had not been touched by the electric fluid: their clothes were intact! After the storm some passers-by noticed them, spoke to them without receiving an answer, and went up to touch them, when they fell pulverized into a heap of ashes.
This experience is not unique, and even the ancients remarked that people who were struck crumbled to dust.
Here is a similar case, no less curious--
On June 13, 1893, at Rodez, a shepherd named Desmazes, seeing that a storm was threatening, collected his beasts and drove them quickly towards the farm. When he was just there, he was struck by lightning. His body, which was completely incinerated, preserved a natural appearance.
It is by this complete incineration and the probable volatilization of the cinders that certain authors explain the sudden disappearance of some of those who have been struck.
Legend attributes the mysterious death of Romulus to a similar cause. According to Livy, the illustrious founder of Rome was reviewing his army in a plain near the marsh of Capra. Suddenly a storm accompanied by violent claps of thunder enveloped the king in a cloud so thick that it hid him from sight. From that moment Romulus was seen no more on earth.
It is true, Livy adds, that some of the witnesses suspected the senators of having torn him to pieces: kings have sometimes been subject to all kinds of surprises on the part of their "courtiers."
In most cases the electric matter produces burns more or less severe. These, when they do not attack the whole organism as in the preceding examples, are localized to certain parts of the body. Sometimes they are quite superficial and only attack the epidermis. Often without absolute carbonization, they penetrate deep into the flesh and cause death after the most fearful suffering.
Here are some examples of different sorts of burns--