Flashlight funny business prompts dark weekend

A rural village in Sweden spent the best part of a weekend in darkness after a prankster used a torch to trick a streetlight sensor into thinking it was daylight. In many parts of the country only 17.5 hours of sunlight are seen throughout the whole month of November, with Brokind in eastern Sweden – where the incident occurred – getting an average of just 35 minutes a day.

Under normal circumstances, when Brokind was plunged into darkness on the evening of Saturday, November 13, a technician would have been dispatched straight away to deal with the problem. But, perhaps not noticing the difference, the sleepy villagers chose to spend the whole of Sunday in the shadows before reporting the fault.

When a technician finally arrived on the scene, he found the town clown had trained a torch on the streetlight sensor to create the illusion of sunlight. The cheeky trick has now been reported to the police and local residents are less than delighted.

“We had to fumble our way forward and it was hard to find. I think this is a pretty serious case of mischief that you leave it there all day so that it was dark even on Sunday evening. I think this is serious,” said Inga-Lena Holm, chairperson of the Brokind residents’ association to the local Corren Daily.