But eating a light bulb without harm is not an unlikely event, it is a seemingly impossible event. Therefore, the question it raises is not how often, but how it happened at all, just like the guy who stuck a needle through his arm and had it heal in 30 seconds.
The key point here is
seemingly impossible.
If you Google
eat "light bulb" you'll get two references in the first two pages to people who do this very thing - one of them a
New York Times Theater Review of a 2003 Off-Broadway show called Carnival Knowledge.
Whether it is a trick - in the sense of being an illusion or fraud - or is for real and so requires training and skill is perhaps an open question, but either way it can be done by professionals.
The point is there is no supernatural element involved, so the only thing percentages of the person doing it coming to harm are going to tell you is how good they are at doing whatever physical actions are required.
I just re-read Schraf's
Message 75 and just before she mentions the light bulb eating she says:
Well, yes, I'm not saying it was a "normal" occurence. But if you are trying to tell me that this was some kind of supernatural occurence, there is a LOT more in the way of controls and testing I would want to put the guy through before I bought that something other than a freakshow act was going on.
I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
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