Don Decker: The Rain Man

In February 1983, Don Decker, who sounds like he could be a minor character from Mad Men, was granted a furlough from his jail in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania to go to his grandfather’s funeral. He was not considered dangerous or violent and was on a 4 to 12 month stretch for receiving stolen goods. Apparently his time out of jail was for several days with no police officer with him. Sounds suspicious but it is definitely a thing. Anyway, Don was allowed out of jail for a few days for this sad family occasion but it wasn’t particularly sad for him. That’s because, according to Don, his grandfather had been abusive to him since he was 7 years old. We only have Don’s word for it but it does seem pretty low to not believe him about something like this so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt here. His grandfather died from cirrhosis of the liver and although I am not a medical professional, it’s more than likely that this was caused by alcohol abuse, giving Don’s claim more credence.

The Funeral and the First Vision

The funeral was an upsetting time for Don as he was seeing his abuser lauded and celebrated by the rest of the party while he kept his dark secret to himself. After a while, Don said goodbye to his not beloved relative and went to stay the night with his friends, Bob and Jeannie Keiffer. There are conflicting reports as to why he didn’t stay with his family, either he wanted nothing to do with them or vice versa but whatever the reason, he stayed that night at the house of his pals in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

While washing his hands in the upstairs bathroom prior to having dinner, Don started to feel very weird and saw a vision of an old man wearing a crown that was looking at him through a window that appeared out of nowhere. There was a sense of intense evil in the air and as the vision disappeared, Don saw he had deep, bleeding scratches on his wrist.

As he went back downstairs to sit with Bob and Jeannie, a change came over Don and he seemed to be in some sort of trance state. As his friends started asking about the blood on his arm, he told them it had been Satan. All of a sudden, water started dripping from the walls and ceiling of the living room in what can only be described as a homeowner’s nightmare.

The Landlord and the Police Arrive

Luckily for the Keiffers, they were renting the property on Ann Street so Bob got straight on the phone to landlord and awesome name-owner, Ron Van Why. By the time he turned up, the water was still appearing but weirdly, only in the living room. I know what you’re thinking — “obviously a burst pipe.” Well no, smarty pants.

According to the landlord, the plumbing was all in the back of the house so there were no pipes going over the living room. That’s Van Why. Did they turn the water off in an attempt to stop the deluge? I don’t know, this doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone and as it was restricted to the living room, it seems that there were weirder things afoot.

Ron Van Why said that not only was the water coming down the walls, drops were also drifting across from wall to wall and even coming up into the air from the floor in a display that shattered the laws of physics and gravity. Unsure of what to do, he called the local police. My first thought might have been a plumber but that’s Van Why for you.

Enter police officers Richard Wolbert and rejected Les Miserables character, John Baujan. Nowadays you might not be so quickly inclined to believe the words of a police officer just because they’re a police officer but both men have gone on the record to state that they experienced the same thing as the Keiffers and Van Why. Wolbert described entering the house and being “absolutely pelted”. Both men said they saw a droplet of water travel horizontally between them and go out of the room.

The Pizza Restaurant Incident

The timeline gets a little muddled here with some sources saying the rest of the events played out on the same night with others saying that the next stage happened the next day. Either way, as nobody had a clue what to do and Decker was just sitting there the whole time, at some point the Keiffers and Decker left the house to get some food and the police officers called their Chief to include him in the crazy happenings going on in Ann Street. Ron Van Why noted that as soon as the group left the house, the interior rain dried up.

Across the street was a pizza restaurant so the Keiffers and Don went in there for some food. The proprietor, a certain Ms Pam Scrofano, had apparently visited the Keiffer house earlier in the proceedings and was familiar with the whole indoor rain thing. She also noticed that Don was behaving a bit weirdly and still seemed in a sort of trance. Seemingly given to jumping to conclusions, Pam Scrofano declared that it looked like Don was possessed.

As if in confirmation, water started coming down the pizza restaurant walls as well.

So, now it’s raining inside the restaurant. Vindicated, Pam did the only sensible thing you can do when faced with a water-summoning demon. She headed to the cash register and pulled out a crucifix. Why she had a crucifix in the cash register is not explained although as the owner of a pizza restaurant you probably are subjected to many unholy encounters throughout your tenure so it’s a good idea to have one handy. She forced the crucifix against Don’s skin and according to her and Don, it burned him.

It was at this point that things finally seemed to click and Don realised that he wasn’t just hanging about in buildings with terrible plumbing issues, it was he himself that was making it rain. Dampening the toppings was not doing anything to endear him to Pam so the party left once again and went back to the Keiffer’s place.

Levitation and the Return to the House

If you thought you’d heard the last of the good names, we’re going to pull another one out of the bag here. Possibly named after the priciest salad on the menu at TGI Friday’s, it’s Ron’s wife Romayne Van Why. As soon as Don got back inside, the rain started up again and Romayne and Jeannie Keiffer started yelling at Don to just get a hold of himself and stop ruining the soft furnishings. Perhaps miffed at being yelled at, possessed Don reacted in a totally predictable way.

First all the pots and pans started banging about by themselves. Then Don levitated off the floor and flew across the room. I suppose after that the women felt bad about having a go at him as he wasn’t thrown out or asked to leave which might have been a decent idea.

Shortly after this, police officers Wolbert and Baujan returned with their chief, Gary Roberts, in tow. Disappointingly for them, instead of being wowed at the indoor rainshower and giving everybody promotions, the chief was totally dismissive, writing it off as plumbing issues, telling the officers off for wasting his time and forbidding them to mention it again or make this into a police matter.

In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that aired a decade after the events in Stroudsburg, Officer Baujan said of the chief’s reaction: “I got the impression that he was put on the spot, maybe a little bit embarrassed, like we expected something out of him that he could answer. There was no way to explain what happened. I think he was put in a position where he might have felt a little uncomfortable…he just flat out denied it; it didn’t happen. And he tried to convince me that nothing happened. And he wasn’t going to do that. I saw it. And that’s all there is to it.”

More Police Witnesses and the Second Crucifix Test

Ignoring the Chief’s orders, the police officers of course told their colleagues about the mysterious events going on in the Keiffer house and the next day, two more of them headed over. The next team of officers showed up and again, Don was acting all sullen and dopey and trance-like. In a reenactment in the Unsolved Mysteries episode it shows the police officers putting a paper bag over Don’s head and then without him seeing, pressing another crucifix into his hand. Is this correct police procedure? If only cell phones were around in those days.

Anyway, according to officer Bill Davies: “We’re standing there and I gave Mr. Decker this gold cross to hold. Next thing he says, ‘It’s burning my hands.’ And there’s no explanation for it. When you picked it up, when you grabbed it, it’s not hot-hot, but it’s hot and I held onto it.”

He also did the whole levitating and flying across the room thing again and when the officers rushed over to him, he had three deep scratches on his neck. Cue everyone freaking out. Nobody had ever experienced anything like it. As Don was still on his furlough break and hadn’t committed any crimes, the police officers left him be and went back to work.

The Exorcism and the End of the Rain

On Don’s final night before going back to jail, the Van Whys, after exhausting the go-to priests for exorcisms around the Stroudsburg area, eventually found a priest to come to their house and try to expel the rain demon from within Don Decker. And it worked! As she prayed, the Van Whys and the Keiffers saw Don shudder and convulse in the way possessed people do when there’s a battle for their body and soul. Finally, he seemed to snap out of his trance and return to his mild-mannered self.

The rain also ceased and the property never had the problem again.

The Prison Cell and the Warden’s Office

After the world’s least relaxing time away from jail, Don had to go back but this time he took with him the knowledge that he could somehow control water. He was put in a cell with another man and decided to test his new powers out again. And what do you know? Within minutes there was water rising out of the concrete prison floor, water flying horizontally and his cellmate was yelling to be moved to another room.

A guard came along to see what all the commotion was and Don told him he was causing the water and had the ability to make it rain. “Oh yeah?” said the guard, “make it rain in the warden’s office then, tough guy.” That’s not a direct quote, it just feels like that was how the guard would talk.

The unsuspecting warden, Dave Keenhold, was minding his own beeswax in his office when another officer came in to let him know about the kerfuffle with the Rain Boy when he gasped and told Keenhold to look at his shirt. There was no rain cloud in the Warden’s office but a large damp patch had appeared on his shirt.

This freaked the warden out so much that he called for the second divine intervention in as many days and the Reverend William Blackburn answered the call. After talking with Don for a few minutes, the Reverend noticed a change come over him and suddenly smelled something terrible, like the stench of death. Extremely creepily, Don leaned forward and here’s what the Reverend said next: “He raised his hand and rubbed his fingers together. And all of a sudden, it started to rain.

It was like the devil’s rain. It was a mist. I was in the presence of evil. I opened up the Bible and started to read to him.

But the pages never got wet. So help me, it was a frightening thing.”

As Blackburn read the Bible at him, a look of peace came over Don and the foreboding atmosphere, as well as the rain, lifted. It was the last occurrence of Don’s strange rain-summoning powers but still offered no real explanations as to what had been going on.

Explanations?

There are some elements that can be explained or at least alternative theories can be offered. We’ll start with the whole possession element. It’s a nice, neat story that after the death of his wicked grandfather, Don is possessed and tormented by a demon of an old man. Was it the spirit of his grandfather? Don seems to think it was, stating in the Unsolved Mysteries episode: “And as for my grandfather, I think what had happened was his doing. Because he abused me when I was young, he got a chance to abuse me again.”

The episode was filmed 10 years after the events with not much press in between. However, there was no mention of the “old man with a crown demon vision” in the show. In fact, it wasn’t mentioned until the case was televised again in an episode of Paranormal Witness in 2011 so it’s not outside the realms of possibility that Don’s story was sexed up to create storylines that weren’t originally there.

Regarding the trance state, yes, he probably was feeling pretty weird after his grandfather’s funeral, maybe he had sunk into some sort of depression or was suffering from PTSD after the abuse he had suffered. This would make his behaviour seem odd but it wouldn’t mean he was possessed. It’s also highly possible that he himself caused the scratches on his arm, either knowingly or unknowingly if he was in a deep funk.

Once one person, such as Pam Scrofano of the pizza place, has got it in their heads that there’s devilry about, it’s probably easy to convince other people who have also witnessed some weird shit, that this is the cause. A priest reading the Bible to you might act as some sort of relief because everyone knows that’s how you’re supposed to help someone who is apparently possessed. You can also fake being burned by a crucifix by just saying that it burns. Did anyone try any other shaped metal on Don to see if it had any effect?

Nope, they went straight for the tried and true cross shape.

I’m not saying Don was deliberately trying to pretend he was possessed, just that he might have been in such a weird state that it just all happened and he was taken along with it. Him levitating and flying around the room could potentially have been just him throwing himself around but why this whole story has endured as a mystery is that there were 9 other eyewitnesses to many of these events who have gone on the record to state what they saw. And many of these were serving police officers who could have been putting their reputations and therefore jobs on the line by sticking to this bizarre story.

There is a line of thought that states that what we sometimes refer to as “poltergeist activity”, for example the rattling of the pots and pans and Don being thrown around the room, is a manifestation of adolescent energy as this kind of thing usually occurs around teenagers. Don was 21 at the time and while I’m making no judgment on him being a late-bloomer, maybe his distress was channeled this way?

One other thing that’s a bit fishy about this part of the story is that everyone seems to have jumped straight to possession and not some sort of medical issue. If my friend had been acting strangely for a while and had deep scratches on their arms, my first thought might be to consult a medical practitioner or mental health professional, not my local ghostbuster. It’s not possible to say now if these things actually happened as reported or whether the real events were blown-up in the witnesses’ minds due to the other strange happenings, coercion by the tv producers and the passage of time but if we really must, we can probably discount the whole possession part of the story.

The Rain

Which brings us on to the rain. Some of the elements here can be explained. Let’s get back to Warden Keenhold’s shirt. If you remember, Don was in jail and had been challenged to make it rain in the Warden’s office.

When another officer had gone in there, the Warden was made aware of a wet patch on his shirt which frightened him so much he called an exorcist. This seems the most easily explained part of the story to me. That patch could have been anything! He could have been sitting under a real leak, he could have been sweating, he could have splashed his shirt when washing his hands, there are many possible explanations here.

Moving on, being caught in an indoor rainstorm in one house is weird. In two locations is even weirder but in three? More than a coincidence. Don was the only person to experience all these indoor rain shenanigans so it stands to reason that it was him that was the target or the cause.

People have tried to explain the interior rain at the Keiffer house as being linked to the weather. Researcher and skeptic Robert Bartholomew has posited that the rain inside the Keiffer house was due to a weather condition known as “ice damming”. This occurs when snow or ice on a roof is melted due to warmer air in the attic beneath it.

This creates pools of water which can then leak into the house. There had been a snowstorm not long before these events which might lead you to believe that this might be the answer until you remember that this happened in a DOWNSTAIRS room and the room above it was perfectly fine! And if this was a weather-related thing, wouldn’t some people have been familiar with it and been like “oh yeah, it’s just another ice damming leak” instead of being totally awestruck by the water which I remind you is stated to have been flowing in all kinds of directions, not just dripping down.

And it surely can’t have happened in all three locations that Decker was in over those few days.

So how can we explain this? The short answer is that we can’t. The only non-mysterious explanation is that this whole thing was a hoax. The evidence that points away from the hoax, though, is that again, 9 people have been recorded more than once swearing to what they saw. This includes a man of God, a prison warden and officer John Baujan who had gone on to become the regional police chief when he told the story again for Paranormal Witness.

I mean, why would everybody involved keep lying about it? What would anyone in this story have to gain? An increase in footfall to the pizza place? Hardly, the first TV show came out a decade after the events happened.

And 2 TV shows in almost 30 years isn’t exactly raking in the big bucks for keeping up such a pretence. You might expect one or two people to maybe carry it on for the minor fame, I’m looking at you, Pam Scrofano, but for several police officers to maintain their stories even when it could have cast doubt on their judgement and quite, frankly, sanity, is quite compelling.

So maybe not a hoax. A prank then, played by Decker himself on these unsuspecting witnesses? Pretty weird prank. And how could he have pulled it off in three places unless he was some sort of plumbing genius. Which he was not.

The Evidence Problem

There is one big flaw in the whole indoor rain story though. There is no evidence. We literally only have peoples’ word for it. Nobody took pictures or video of any of the instances of rain or of Don being possessed or exorcised.

Pretty suspicious, huh? Well, yes and no. This was 1983 so people couldn’t just whip out a cell phone and start livestreaming the strange goings on. What about camcorders?

The first consumer camcorders hit the shelves that very same year and were large betamax jobbies you had to put on your shoulder. So even in the unlikely event that the Keiffers or the Van Whys were super early adopters of the home video trend, it’s not that surprising that nobody thought to pick it up.

Normal film cameras were very much available, though, but maybe in the wet and evil-feeling atmosphere, it just wasn’t at the forefront of anybody’s mind to snap a few pics to be mailed off to the development lab and then returned a few weeks later, only to find that most of the blurry shots had been covered by somebody’s thumb.

Did nobody think to alert the local media? Apparently not. But again this doesn’t scream hoax to me. You could explain it as just an event that people tried to get through and were then relieved when it was over. Why should they involve the media? There was no evidence and Don’s powers had left him so they had nothing to show. Maybe it was only years later that they realised what a completely unexplainable thing it still was.

What Happened to Don Decker?

And what happened to Don Decker after all that? In an ironic twist, the man once known as “Rain Boy” was sent back to jail in 2012 for, guess what? Arson. Yes, for his part in destroying a restaurant in an insurance scam, the man with the power to magically flood it out instead decided to burn it down.

Does this cast doubt on him as a reliable narrator of his paranormal moisture based activities? Yes. But even discounting him as a witness, everyone else is still in play. And if you see footage of Don, he’s not a charismatic Svengali figure who could bend people to his will and make them say the things he wants them to say.

He’s a soft-spoken unassuming fellow who appeared to have a weird experience for a few days in the early 80s.

Paranormal investigators have taken great interest in this case, mainly because of the credibility of the witnesses, and have been unable to come up with any plausible explanation for the appearance of the gravity-defying indoor rain. One of them, Peter Jordan, said in the Unexplained Mysteries episode: “The Donald Decker case is by far the singularly most fascinating and important case I have ever personally been involved in. That does not mean I believe that it necessarily is proof positive to me of demonic infestation. But it is the case, in my own personal experience up to this point, that comes the closest to that hypothesis.”

Conclusion

So, Don Decker. Real life rain boy and poltergeist vessel, complete hoax monkey or traumatised young man who was at the centre of some extremely strange occurrences? Maybe this one really can be filed as “unknown.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Don Decker?

Don Decker is a man who, in February 1983, was granted a furlough from jail to attend his grandfather’s funeral. During this time, he reportedly experienced supernatural events, including the ability to make it rain indoors.

What was Don Decker’s criminal background?

Don Decker was in jail for receiving stolen goods and was serving a 4 to 12 month sentence. He was considered non-violent and was granted a furlough to attend his grandfather’s funeral.

What happened during Don Decker’s furlough?

During his furlough, Don Decker stayed with friends, Bob and Jeannie Keiffer. While at their house, he reportedly experienced a vision of an old man and then witnessed water dripping from the walls and ceiling, despite there being no plumbing in the affected room.

Who were the eyewitnesses to the events involving Don Decker?

Eyewitnesses included Don’s friends Bob and Jeannie Keiffer, their landlord Ron Van Why, and police officers Richard Wolbert and John Baujan. Additionally, Pam Scrofano, the proprietor of a nearby pizza restaurant, and Reverend William Blackburn were involved.

What was the reaction of the police chief to the events?

The police chief, Gary Roberts, was dismissive of the events, attributing them to plumbing issues and forbidding the officers from mentioning it again or making it a police matter.

How did the events end?

The events ended when a priest performed an exorcism on Don Decker, after which he reportedly returned to his normal state and the indoor rain stopped. Don was then sent back to jail.

What happened to Don Decker after the events?

In 2012, Don Decker was sent back to jail for arson, specifically for his part in destroying a restaurant in an insurance scam.

What are some of the explanations proposed for the events involving Don Decker?

Some explanations include poltergeist activity, a hoax, or a prank. However, the lack of evidence and the credibility of the witnesses make these explanations less likely. The indoor rain has been attributed to ice damming, but this does not fully explain the events.

What is the significance of the Don Decker case for paranormal investigators?

The Don Decker case is significant for paranormal investigators due to the credibility of the witnesses and the lack of a plausible explanation for the indoor rain and other supernatural events.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Don Decker: The Rain Man
• Hero image source by Brandon Zhang / openverse, cc0.