Truth or Blarney: Instantly frozen horses in Maryland

Included in my novel, you know, that novel, there’s a story about frozen horses.

“They struggled very briefly, and before a crew could be assembled for any kind of rescue, the horses froze solid. They became statues of beastly, twisted terror.”

I don’t recommend searching for information about instantly frozen horses, because you will find a great many disagreeable things, like bitter discussions of super-cooling in various types of water, offers of frozen horse semen, and pictures of animals accidentally frozen in things. There’s even a Radiolab episode on the subject.

Seriously, don’t bother. I google so that you don’t have to.

There is an often-cited story about  hundreds of horses freezing instantly in a lake at the border between Russia and Finland, which is taken from a work of fiction. It’s such a horrific and intriguing image that it was adapted by re-enactment in a “docu-fantasia” by…