Ken,
Is that really true about the florescent light?
Yes. Maybe I can get my wife to come out with a camera after dark and get a picture of me holding one.
This is not real uncommon. Any strong field will ionize the gases in the bulb.
When I was a teenager, we moved from the farm into a small "corner store." At that time, and to this day, I have an amateur radio license. If I was "on the air" when my parents closed the store, the fluorescent lights would stay dimly lit from the Radio Frequency energy field.
That gave me and another teenage ham fool a great idea. One summer night we took a couple old bulbs from the basement of the store. He lived on a very wooded lot next to a business district. We setup an antenna and ham station in his backyard. We taped the bulbs to our antenna feedline. We got on the air using Morse code. Everytime the key was down, the bulbs would light.
It caused quite a stir. There were reports of UFOs phoned into the police. The police -- my dad's cousin -- was sent to investigate. He made us take the bulbs down.
