Don Decker, the Rain Man of Stroudsburg

Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. February 1983. Donald "Donnie" Decker was serving a 4-to-12-month sentence for receiving stolen property. He was given a furlough for his grandfather's funeral, a man he said had physically abused him from about age 7. He stayed with family friends Bob and Jeannie Keiffer, in a rental at 528 Ann Street owned by Ron Van Why.

Before supper, washing in the upstairs bathroom, Decker said he felt strange, fell to the floor and saw "an old man wearing a crown." Afterwards Bob Keiffer saw fresh scratches on his wrist.

That evening Decker sat in the living room in a trance-like state. Then water began dripping from the walls and the ceiling. A sudden chill came with it. Van Why and Bob Keiffer looked for leaking pipes. They found none. Jeannie read Psalm 23, and the water seemed to target her. "It could come from anywhere," Van Why said. "There was no basic direction that it was coming from."

Patrolman Richard Wolbert arrived with Officer John Baujan. "We were standing just inside the front door and met this droplet of water traveling horizontally," Wolbert said. "It passed between us and just traveled out into the next room." Baujan said drops seemed to come up from the floor. Chief Gary Roberts called it a plumbing problem. Witnesses say he ordered that no report be filed.

The water seemed to follow Decker. At a nearby pizzeria, it dripped from the ceiling. "Couple of seconds later, there's water all over the pizzeria, too," said owner Pam Scrofano. She put a gold crucifix on him, and Decker said it burned. Back at the house, Lt. John Rundle said he saw Decker lifted and thrown across the room, bleeding from two sets of claw marks on the neck. Then an evangelical preacher prayed over him. "The rain stopped," said Van Why. "The house was normal."

Decker went back to the Monroe County jail. There, he said, "all of a sudden, water started coming out of the concrete floor." Dave Keenhold, described as the warden, said it began to "rain" in his office. A drop hit his chest, and soon "my shirt was drooping down." Rev. William Blackburn performed an exorcism. He said Decker smelled of rotting flesh. "It was like the devil's rain. It was a mist." Afterwards Decker was peaceful. "He said thank you."

No photographs, films or police reports of the phenomenon are known. In 2013, Robert E. Bartholomew and Joe Nickell revisited the case in Skeptic. They wrote that the television versions "left out key information and twisted facts," and noted that poltergeist "agents" are often caught faking. They appear to propose that waterlogged insulation or ice damming started a real leak, which Decker then augmented with tricks. Supporters ask why the rain followed Decker and stopped when he left.

Unsolved Mysteries brought the story to a national audience, and Paranormal Witness retold it in 2011 as "The Rain Man." Decker later surrendered in federal court in Wilkes-Barre on an arson charge. Richard Wolbert, now a detective, told WNEP it began as a call about a plumbing problem. He still can't explain it.