Don Decker: The Rain Man

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of decoding the unknown as always i am your host simon what happens here is katie has written us a script on decker the poltergeist rainboy i as always i'm going to read it it's about poltergeists i don't believe in any of this stuff uh so this is is gonna be fun jen afterwards our wonderful video editor is going to uh well edit the video that's what she does let us get into it [Music] hi simon oh no i am supposed to read this this is uh for broadcast hi simon i know you're going to want to dump all over this being the skeptical level-headed chap that you are yes i take all of that as a compliment often people are like simon couldn't you be a little bit more open-minded and i'm like yo yo people have been talking about ghosts for a really long time and poltergeists and supernatural and all of this stuff and all we have to show for it is absolutely nothing and there's this absolute legend called james randy who was like he died recently r.i.p you absolute legend and he was like yo if you can prove to me and meet these criteria that you know ghosts or whatever i can't remember exactly what it was exist i'll give you like a million dollar it wasn't a million dollars it was a lot of money and no one ever could which says something about it doesn't it but i mean if you want to believe believe that's fine i don't mind i just think you're a little silly but just take a moment to hear the story before pooh-poohing it so readily okay i'm going in with an open mind katie maybe there are really some things that can't be explained away do you think you could do it okay this episode is not a strange 80s movie mashup in which a young dustin hoffman makes playing cards fly about by themselves it's about don decker a man who was possessed by a demon and acquired the ability to make it rain indoors um except no he didn't shh no hush now be katie i swear i don't read this ahead of time katie knows exactly what i'd be saying at that point it's like no i didn't know he didn't she's like shut up and listen to the story fact boy okay i'm going in with an open mind let me see if i can be persuaded and i just wanted to pull something out here maybe there are some things that can't be explained away fully accept that there are some things that cannot be explained but you know how they will be explained eventually it's not by ghosts it's not by any of that it's by science isn't it that's how it will eventually be shown don decker and the mysterious moisture i feel like that's a better name for this whole episode in february 1983 don decker who sounds a lot like he'd 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 4-12 month stretch for receiving stolen goods apparently his time out of jail was for several days with no police officer with him uh at the at the risk of sense telling the story again i've told that story the time i bought a stolen drone you know like a photography drone by accident off ebay i fortunately didn't get four to twelve months in prison i know buying stolen goods is a crime but you have to know you're doing it right you can't just buy a drone off ebay for a reasonable price and then be guilty of a crime i mean i hope not at least otherwise well i guess i'm gonna have to face the music for that at some point 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 seven years old that sounds like an absolute double win for don doesn't it's like yes abusive grandfather's dead and i get to go out of jail for his funeral and by funeral i mean i'm going to go to the pub because granddad 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 go and give him the benefit of the doubt here yeah i mean why not why would we not believe this they'd be like yeah yeah granddad abuse me why are you lying don i'm not lying i have no reason not to believe you yet don yet his grandfather died from cirrhosis of the liver and although i'm not a medical professional it's more than likely that this was caused by alcohol abuse giving don's claim more credence the funeral was an upsetting time for donna as he was seeing his abuser lorded and celebrated by the rest of the party while he kept his dark secret to himself i'd just not go he's not any police with him just go to the pub it's okay don after a while don said goodbye to his not beloved relative and went to stay the night with his friends bob and jenny keifer 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 maybe because he wanted to see his friends at the same time it's like yo yo family i'll see you at the funeral then afterwards i'm going to go to the pub with my dear friends bob and whoever 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 had appeared out of nowhere sounds realistic or either that or don has mental health difficulties there was a sense of intense evil in the air and as the vision disappeared don saw that he had deep bleeding scratches on his wrist i feel a sense of impatience from you mr whistler how could you tell katie how could you tell so far so laughable right well hold on we're getting to the good bit as he went back downstairs to sit with bob and jenny is it jenny genie genie maybe genie bob and genie a change came over don and he seemed to be in some sort of trance state as his friend started asking about the blood on his arm he told them that it had been satan as you do all of a sudden water started dripping from the walls in the ceiling of the living room what can only be described as a homeowner's nightmare oh my god once i absolutely did this in my own home but it wasn't because i was like magically possessed by satan uh i grew up in this old like it was edwardian or victorian house it was really old really old and uh i we had an upstairs bathroom obviously and had this big old like iron i don't didn't have his iron it was some sort of weird metal and it was so old that you know that emergency water you know where the bath gets too full and then there's that thing to take the water out this bath was so old that there was that that was just entirely blocked by limescale and i started running a bath it must have been like 13 14 years old absolutely forgot about it and my parents were on holiday and uh yeah that bath overflowed and the downs the utility room which was directly beneath the bathroom was absolutely flooded the town up like the water was dripping from the ceiling it was like satan had possessed me luckily for the kuipers they were renting the property on anne street so bob got straight onto the phone on the with the landlord and awesome name owner ron van wye legend 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 there 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 wye did they turn the water off in an attempt to stop the dailyge 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 oh well the other day i just wake up in the middle of the night and my wife's like the bathroom's flooded and i'm like what are you talking about i go in the bathroom and there's the pipe by the jar is just absolutely spraying everywhere i immediately turn off the master water because that's what you do anyway ron van wyk said that not only was water coming down the walls drops were also drifting from wall to wall and even coming up into the air from the floor and a display that shattered the laws of physics and gravity now that's a little more weird i'm not sure like shutting off the masterwater is going to stop the whole gravity thing unsure of what to do he called the local police my first thought might have been a plumber but that's van y for you enter officers richard walbert and rejected le miserable character jean beaujon 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 had gone on the record to state that they experienced the same thing as the kuipers and van wy robert described ever entering the house and being absolutely pelted both men say they saw a droplet of water travel horizontally between them and go out of the room the timeline gets a little muddled here with some sources saying that the rest of the events played out on the same night while others say that the next stage happened the next day either way there's nobody had a clue what to do and deca was just sitting there the whole time at some point the kuipers and deca left the house to get some food and the police officers called their chief to include him in the crazy happenings that were going on on and street braun van wyk noted that as soon as the group left the house the interior rain dried up across the street was a pizza restaurant so the kyaphylas and don went in there for some food the proprietor a certain ms pam scriffano apparently visited the kaifer house earlier in the proceedings and was familiar with the whole indoor rain thing as you are she also noticed that don was behaving a bit weirdly and seemed to be in some sort of trance seemingly given to jumping to conclusions pam scrafano 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 i get the feeling the the next line is going to be ridiculous she headed to the cash register and prolls pulled out a crucifix this one does 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 so yes the definitive textbook proof of demonic possession it was at this point that things finally seemed to click and don realized that he wasn't just hanging about in buildings with terrible plumbing issues it was he himself that was making it rain this is this is so ridiculous and this is one of those things where it's like all right all right so obviously something weird's going on there are a lot of people involved for this just to be made up somehow but i mean unless i saw it myself that is and even if i did see it myself i'd still be like there is a rational explanation and that's like obviously not everything can be explained away like i cannot explain this i don't have close to enough information but what i do know is it's not don the poltergeist possessed by a demon and is burning flesh it's just a bit silly dampening the toppings was not doing anything to endear him to pam so the party left once again and went back to the kuiper's place 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 tji fridays it's ron's wife romaine van wye vann wise such a good name he's like gotta be dutch or something as soon as don got back inside the rain started up again and remain and jenny keifer started yelling at don to just get a hold of himself and stop ruining the soft furnishings perhaps miffed 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 you know hey don why don't you go and stand in the garden and help my beans along or whatever i'll just get the hell out of my house and stop ruining i don't care if you're possessed by a demon or have just set up some weird sprinkler system in my living room either way i want you out don you're ruining my sofa shortly after this police officers warburt and baujan returned with their chief gary roberts in tow disappointingly for them instead of being wowed at the indoor rain shower and giving everybody promotions the chief was totally dismissive writing it off as a plumbing issue i like you chief telling the officers to telling the officers are for wasting his time or forbidding them to mention it again or make this into a police matter in an episode of unsolved mysteries that aired a decade after events in stroudsburg officer belgian said of the chief's reaction quote i got the impression that he was put on the spot maybe a little 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 except you're saying you saw it and you're saying the chief saw it and then is lying about not seeing it which is a bit weird like i feel that you like random police officers are coming to this have a reason to lie it's like ah you know it's a little bit of fame you're gonna appear on a tv show the chief has absolutely nothing like what's he got to gain by saying that it didn't happen like what i can't spot it ignoring the chiefs orders the police officers of course told their colleagues about the mysterious events going on in the kaifer house and the next day two more of them headed over yes i know the timeline seems to be dragging on presumably it was raining all night in the living room too i'm not sure and if this had been me spending more time with a possessed criminal playing havoc with my rental deposit would not be what i'd choose to be doing the next team of officers showed up again and 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 onto his hand is this correct police procedure yeah yeah it sure is it's about as is about as right as everything else in this episode if only cell phones were around in those days anyway according to officer bill davies quote we're standing there and i give mr decker this gold cross to hold next thing he says is it's burning my hands and there's no explanation from it when you picked it up when you grabbed it it's not hot hot but it's hot and i held on to it well good for you mr davies i think we've already established from the whole cash register crucifix episode that don was undoubtedly possessed even if there is some like supernatural goings-on to then tie it into like religion and crucifixes is even just more silly is he it's just like no no don't know he also did the whole levitating and flying across the room thing again when the officers rushed over to him and he had three deep scratches on his neck cue everyone freaking out nobody had ever experienced anything like it as don was still in his furlough break and hadn't committed any crimes the police officers left him b and went back to work on don's final night before going back to jail the van wise 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 deca and it worked as she prayed the van wise and the kaifas saw don shudder and convulsing the way possessed people do when there's a battle for their body and soul everyone knows that and it's not from real life it's from movies fictional movies also this guy don decker definitely has something to gain from this right like he's supposed to be in prison for this thing and i don't know if like he's possessed or whatever they're gonna you know is he gonna be allowed out of prison for a longer time because they want to get to the bottom of this possession or whatever i don't know it just is so unbelievable it's silly finally he seemed to snap out of his chance and return trance and return to his mob man itself the rain also ceased and the property never had the problem again after 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 you know what 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 i feel like that is something that there's going to be documented evidence of like it's a prison right they're gonna write that in some sort of prison journal a guard came along to see what all the commotion was and don told him that he was causing the water to do this and he had the ability to make it rain oh yes said the guard make a train in the warden's office then tough guy that's not a direct quote it just feels like how the guard would talk it's like yes the unsuspecting warden dave keenhold was minding his own beeswax in his office when another officer came in to let him know what the kerfuffle was about with the rain boy when he gasped and told kean keenhold to look at his shirt there was no raincloud in the warden's office but a large damp patch had appeared on his shirt yes i know let's keep the skepticism until the end of the story please okay okay katie i will hold my tongue come on we're nearly at the end you can do it i've just ruined it so many times katie has to remind me not to be a this reward announcement 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 all of a sudden it started to rain it was like the devil's reign 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 i sure do hope he was like yelling in like a deep southern preacher like the televangelist preacher like and god dispelled you from these pages you know that sort of thing that's how i'm imagining this this is like a movie and not fact as blackburn read the bible at him a look came over don and the foreboding atmosphere as well as the rain it lifted it was the last occurrence of don's strange rain summoning powers but still offered no real explanation as to what had been going on explanations and now let's dig into it okay so you've been waiting ever so patiently to bash this story i've been anything but patient katie not patient at all so let's go through a few of the details now there are some elements that can be explained or at least alternative theories that can be offered we'll start with a whole possession element it's a nice neat story but after the death of his wicked grandfather don is possessed and tormented by the demon of an old man was it the spirit of his grandfather don seems to think that it was stating in an unsolved mysteries episode and as for my grandfather i think what had happened was his doing because he abused me when i was young you had a chance to abuse me again this 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 shocking and also like there's the motivation right you're making up some sort of paranormal story so you can go on these paranormal shows and sell your to someone who's probably paying you something small or maybe just you know you get some craft services so you get a free lunch i mean it's all very silly isn't it looking back that might not have been the best phrase to use but you get what i mean 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 that he had suffered this would make his behavior seem odd but it wouldn't mean he was possessed it's also highly someone looks a bit disgruntled and sort of just sad stare not disgruntled what's the word um dis-something like just sort of sitting there staring off into space like all melancholic i know it's melancholic ah but i mean that doesn't mean you're possessed does it does it 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 scriffano of the pizza place has got it in the heads that this devilry about it's probably easy to convince other people who have also witnessed some weird that this is the cause the priest reading the bible to you might act as some sort of relief because everyone knows that that's how you're supposed to help someone who is apparently possessed everyone knows this possession's a real thing except it's not it's almost always mental illness and reading a bible at the main gonna do 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 no they went straight for the tried and true cross shape i'm not saying don was deliberately trying to pretend that he was possessed just that it 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 just have been him throwing himself around but why this whole story has endured as a mystery is that there were nine other eyewitnesses to many of these events who have gone on record to state what they saw and many of these were serving police officers who could have been putting their reputations and therefore their jobs on the line by sticking to this bizarre story there's a line of thought that states that what we sometimes refer to as poltergeist activity for example the rattling of 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 while making no judgments on him being a late bloomer maybe his distress was channeled this way another 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 yeah i feel like possession of this kind of feels like an excuse for improper diagnosis and mental issues if my friend had been acting strangely for a while and had deep scratches on his arms my first thought might be to consult a medical practitioner or mental health professional not my local ghostbuster that local ghostbuster should be far far far down your list it's not possible to say now if these things actually happened as reported or whether the real events were blown up by the witnesses minds due to the other strange happenings coercion by tv producers and the passage of time but if we really must we could probably discount the whole possession part of the story dismissed it before we even got started which brings us onto the rain some of the elements here can be explained let's get back to warden keenhold's shirt if you remember dom 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 that he called an exorcist this seems like the most easily explainable part of the story 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 he was washing his hands there are so many possibilities here so i'm just ignoring this one as quite frankly it's kind of stupid moving on being caught in an indoor rainstorm in one house is weird in two locations is even weirder but in three it's more than a coincidence don was the only person to experience all these indoor range 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 and the keith house as being linked to the weather researcher and skeptic robert bartholomew has posited the rain inside the kaith 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 that can then leak into the house there have 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 be 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 just a hoax the evidence that points away from hoax though is that again nine people have been recorded more than once swearing to what they saw this includes a man of god a prison warder and john beaujon 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 gotten to gain like i said small tv appearance fees or something a little bit of fame people are weird an increase in footfall to the pizza place hardly the first tv show came out a decade after the events happened and two tv shows in almost 30 years isn't exactly raking in the big bucks for keeping up such a pretense you might expect one or two people to maybe carry it on for the mine of fame i'm looking at you pam scrafano but for several police officers to maintain their stories even when it could cast out on their judgment and quite frankly their sanity is quite compelling i'd agree it's a lot of people to like get in on something and make it up i guess like it's a combination of the two that would be my guts like it's a hoax perpetrated by maybe the main dude and the kaifers and then they call the police and the police here and they're like nah it's real even though it's a hoax probably a combination of the two that's what i would say so maybe not a hoax a prank then played by decker himself on these unsuspecting witnesses okay here we go this was my idea 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 there is one big flaw in the whole indoor reign story though there's no evidence we literally only have people's word for it nobody took pictures or video of any of the instances of rain or don being possessed or exercised pretty suspicious yeah well yes and no this was 1983 so people couldn't suddenly whip out a cell phone and start live streaming what was going on so what about camcorders well the first consumer camcorder hit the shelves the very same year and they were large betamag's jobbies that you had to put on your shoulder so even in the unlikely event that the kyphners or the van wise were super early adopters on the home video trend it's not 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 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 out that most the blurry shots have been covered by somebody's thumb ah the past i remember when you'd have cameras in there have like what 24 or 36 shots per roll of film and you have to send it off and it was always cheaper if you'd wait like a couple of weeks for them to send the photos back to you but you had no idea how any photo was until like that came back and it was always quite exciting like after holiday you'd come back and you'd get your photo developed your photos developed and then they'd come back and buy oh yeah this was a nice holiday look all these pictures like a nice little blast from the past it was today it's all very present isn't it i mean it's better obviously better did nobody think to alert the local media apparently not but again this doesn't scream hoax to me you could explain it just as an event that people were trying to get through and were then relieved when it was older 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 they realized what a completely unexplainable thing it still was and what happened to don decker after all that in an ironic twist the man once known as rainboy was sent back to jail in 2012 for guess what arson yep for his part in destroying a restaurant an insurance scam that 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 yeah 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 fengale 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 appears to have had a weird experience for a few days in the 1980s 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 reign one of them peter jordan said in the unexplained mysteries episode quote the donald decker case is by far the singularly most fascinating and important case i've 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 way to hedge your bets there peter yeah this is i mean if this is the most compelling thing ever i'm like yeah but it could have been a hoax that a couple of people fell for and then it spread around it's like that's the most compelling ever really so don decker real life reign boy and poltergeist vessel complete hoax monkey or traumatized young man who's at the center of some extremely strange occurrences maybe this one really can be filed as unknown so i really hope you enjoyed that little episode there if you did please do if you're watching this make sure you smash that like button make sure you're subscribed if you're just listening to this show in its podcast form leave it a review that would be fantastic you could review could go something like this i don't like how simon constantly laughs at all the paranormal stuff he makes it seem like he doesn't believe at all which is disappointing go for it go for it type away this has been an episode of decoding the unknown thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 153,417

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Id: 64_1B57uB40

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 07 2021