
A psych ward patient in Holland killed power to an entire hospital thinking he was solving a puzzle in Silent Hill.
Jan H., the patient, shut down power to Sophia Hospital in the Netherlands thinking that by doing so he could acquire a toothbrush that would complete a puzzle. The hospital lost power for 45 minutes, stranding some folks in elevators and forcing doctors to resort to manual efforts to keep intensive care patients breathing. Noone was hurt. (Poor Noone.)
In a trial last week, Jan H. skated on – what else – insanity. A court ruled he had “no idea of the true consequences of his deed.”
Man Causes Blackout in ‘Silent Hill’ Hospital [OffGamers via Hot Blooded Gaming]



















Greg Tannahill
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 4:40 PMCheck your sources. OffGamers doesn’t cite any sources (or suggest they’ve spoken to the hospital, police, or the patient), everyone else on the web is quoting OffGamers, and the mainstream media doesn’t appear to have picked up the story. It’s probably for real but as far as you know you’ve been taken for a ride here.
Greg Tannahill
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 4:46 PMActually, scratch the “probably real” and insert “probably a hoax”. OffGamers claims it “sparked controversy” – but web searches are unable to turn up any dicussion of it predating the OffGamers post which is more than a little suspicious even considering the sources would more than likely be non-English. If this was on Hardcasual we’d take it as a joke and in the absence of sources we should probably do the same here.
Greg Tannahill
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 4:55 PMIn fact Google News searches don’t return any results from Netherlands news services that link the words “Sophia” (as in the Hospital) and “Jan”, both of which should survive translation. I think you (and the gaming journalism community in general) have been had.
David Wildgoose
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 5:11 PMThe original article on Dutch blog 24Oranges links to the ruling on the Dutch Judiciary and Supreme Court of the Netherlands website.
Running the relevant section through Babelfish gives us:
Greg Tannahill
Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 8:24 AMThanks David! That does indeed appear to validate the story.
Ribs
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 9:21 PMOh a crazy person did something crazy, what news.
Roland
Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 12:39 PMCome on Ribs, its game crazy tho – so thats news to us :)
Fracture
Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 5:23 PMgo patient go!