Lichtenberg electrocution deaths - GIF

[clavius]

I have never seen or heard of this before. I assume from the video that the surface was wetted with some sort of liquid and then the voltage was applied. VERY dangerous!!! I can see why there were fatalities.

Correct, I think a salt water or similar solution is soaked into the surface of the wood. A lot of the DIY versions of this use microwave oven transformers (as noted already) or perhaps worse, oil burner ignition transformers to supply the HV. Unfortunately lots of the people trying this are following instructions they find online and many of those folks are not necessarily very knowledgeable about working around exposed electrical stuff. So they tend to underestimate or just be completely unaware of the dangers and risks. Several of the deaths that I read about resulted from simple accidents like people tripping while they have one of these in process and getting their hands onto the energized piece of wood trying to break their fall. Pretty unfortunate.

I seem to recall that youtube has actually banned posting how-to videos of this process due to the number of injuries and deaths that have occurred.

They do make really cool looking pieces though.