‘Twilight’ scene sparks a rash of seizures

Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE

Shaking, sweating and swooning are par for the course among the passionate young fans of the “Twilight” series. But reports that a scene in “Breaking Dawn” has been sparking seizures in theaters nationwide has epilepsy experts on the alert and parents thinking twice about letting their kids see the movie.

Officials at the Maryland-based Epilepsy Foundation issued a warning this week to their nearly 11,000 followers on Facebook, saying people prone to certain types of seizures might want to skip the film, which has been the top-grossing movie in the country for two weeks straight.

“If you were parents of a child with epilepsy, you would not send your child to the movie,” says Mimi Carter, the foundation’s director of communications. “Why would you risk it?”

There have been at least nine reported instances of people suffering seizures during “Breaking Dawn,” the latest installment in the teen vampire series. The trigger seems to be a particularly intense birth scene that involves a strobe effect with flashes of red, white and black light.

In one widely reported instance, a California man at the theater with his girlfriend began to convulse during the graphic scene.

According to CBS Sacramento, paramedics rushed Brandon Gephart to the emergency room after he was “convulsing, snorting, trying to breathe.” Gephart remembered nothing of the attack, but his girlfriend, Kelly Bauman, told reporters, “He scared me big time.”

Other instances have been reported in Oregon, Maine, Utah, Massachusetts and Canada.

People susceptible to this sort of attack suffer from what’s known as photosensitivity, a stimulus-induced seizure disorder. Though epilepsy is relatively uncommon in the population — about 3 million Americans have it — photosensitivity is even rarer, occurring in just 3 percent of those with epilepsy.

These types of seizures are typically not life-threatening, said Dr. Tricia Ting of the University of Maryland.