Donnie Decker, the Man who made it Rain
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After attending his grandfather's funeral in the early 1980s, a man in Pennsylvania experienced a barrage of hostile anomalous phenomena that haunted him for days. Donnie Decker entered an altered state of consciousness, developed spontaneous scratches, and was twice lifted from the ground and thrown across a room. For the three days that he stayed at a friend's house on a furlough from prison, it rained continuously indoors, and afterwards, he could produce the rain at will. Decker's case is unique for involving such a singular power over nature, but it also demonstrates a mysterious, but important link between emotional trauma and the occurrence of the unexplained.
The Rain
Donnie Decker led a troubled life that began with physical abuse from his grandfather. In 1983, Donnie was 21 years old, serving a four-to-twelve month sentence at Monroe County Correctional Facility in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, for receiving stolen property. His grandfather died in February, and Donnie was released on a weekend furlough to attend the funeral on the 26th. Happily rid of his abuser, he then called friends Bob and Jeannie Kieffer and stayed with them and their kids for the weekend.
The night that he arrived at the Kieffers', Donnie was upstairs washing his hands in the bathroom when he felt a deep chill in the air, and sensed that the "atmosphere" had changed. He became disoriented and uneasy, as though he were being "attacked" by something, then fell to the floor after feeling the air be sucked from the room. At this point, he saw the face of an old man wearing a crown in the bathroom window, and at the same time, three deep scratches appeared on his wrist. The feeling soon passed, and Donnie went downstairs for dinner. Bob asked about the scratches, as well as Donnie's pained, pale expression, and Donnie said that he felt he'd been attacked by Satan.
After dinner, everyone was sitting in the living room when it became unusually cold. Donnie sat quietly to himself, seemingly in a trance-like state, and the Kieffers noticed trails of water running down the walls. After a loud noise from upstairs, water began dripping from the ceiling. Bob called his landlord, Ron Van Why, who drove over with his wife to inspect the house. There were no water pipes in the area of the leaks, and it hadn't rained for days. Bob and Ron inspected the second floor and found no leaky pipes, although they sensed a cold, menacing presence that Bob called "evil." Upon closer inspection, the liquid was not water, but something more sticky when rubbed on the skin. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, dripping from the ceiling and emanating from the walls. The witnesses even saw droplets materialize on the floor and fly upwards to the ceiling. Donnie was convinced that his grandfather had returned to attack him.
Baffled, Ron called the police, reaching patrol officer John Baujan, who went to the Kieffer residence immediately. Baujan called his partner, officer Richard Wolbert, who joined them at the residence. The officers immediately noticed the liquid pouring from the ceiling, and sensed the chill in the air. Baujan and Bob Kieffer saw a large droplet of water appear in the air between them, then shoot off horizontally through the next two rooms. Bob said the droplet was abnormally large, as if it were meant to capture their attention. Both officers were utterly amazed by what they were seeing, but could do nothing about it, so they left the house to report the incident.
Donnie Possessed
Hours later, the Kieffers were tired and hungry, so they took Donnie to a Pizzeria down the street. The Whys, who remained behind, said the rain stopped the moment that they left, but it continued in the Pizzeria. The store's owner said that Donnie was possessed by a demon, and put a crucifix around his neck, which burned him.
When the Kieffers' returned home with Donnie, Ron and his wife, as well as Jeannie Kieffer, accused the boy of perpetrating the incident and demanded that he stop. Donnie did not respond, but the pots and pans began to rattle in the kitchen, and he raised from the ground and hovered there. Soon after, he was violently flung five or six feet across the room. Donnie snapped out of his trance when he hit the floor, but had no memory of being thrown. Again he felt a sharp pain on his forearm, and found a bloody wound in the shape of a crown. At this point everyone agreed that Donnie was possessed by something that Ron called "demonic."
When Baujan returned to the house later that morning, he found Jeannie Kieffer reading Psalm 23 from the family bible as the rain intensified around her. Baujan called the chief of police, Gary Roberts, who saw the rain in the living room, but insisted it was nothing more than a plumbing problem. He left after a few minutes, asking Baujan and Wolbert not to file a report, and prohibited any officers from visiting the house. Regardless, Bill Davies, John Rundle, and another officer visited the Kieffer's house the next day. Davies put a bag on Donnie's head and a cross in his hand, without telling him what it was. Donnie immediately threw it away, claiming that it burned him, and Davies said it was hot when he picked it up. The officers later saw Donnie rise from the ground and fly across the room with tremendous force, then found three bloody scratch marks on his neck.
When the rain continued into Sunday, Ron arranged to have an Evangelical preacher perform an exorcism, after every other priest and minister in Stroudsburg had turned him down. Donnie began to convulse and contort when the exorcist prayed, but later went calm. Everyone present felt the atmosphere shift, and the rains ceased at the house for good.
Back to Prison
At the end of Donnie's Furlough, he returned to the Monroe County jail. Rumours spread amongst the inmates and the guards, and Prison Warden Dave Keenhold said many were afraid of demonic activity. Everyone noticed an eerie feeling around Donnie, and Keenhold said that he felt physically sick in his presence. At one point, Donnie imagined that he could make it rain in his cell, and water immediately began to appear on the concrete floor. Once again, rain appeared from the ceiling and the walls as well, and flew up, down, and sideways. His cell-mate was so disturbed by the rain that the Warden had to put him in a different cell. Donnie realized that he could control the phenomenon through a process that he likened to meditation, and by rubbing his fingers together.
After this incident, a couple of prison guards asked Donnie to prove his powers by firing a droplet of water at the Warden, whose office was in a completely different area of the jail. Soon after, another officer alerted Keenhold to a large wet spot in the centre of his chest. Convinced of a supernatural presence, Keenhold arranged to have the Reverend William Blackburn perform an exorcism in a common area outside the cell block. Once Blackburn began reading from the bible, an odour like rotting flesh appeared in the air and intensified as the reading progressed. Soon after, a misty rain fell in the room, which soon became a downpour, although the drops only landed on the reverend, and not on his bible or on Donnie. After a few short readings, the rain stopped, and Blackburn concluded the exorcism. Donnie and the Warden were convinced that the evil spirit had been exorcised, and none of the symptoms ever returned.
Significance
The Donnie Decker case, often referred to as the case of the "Rain Man" or the "Rain Boy," was slow to gain attention. Chip Decker, a regional anomalist of no relation to Donnie, interviewed the young man, and together with Peter Jordan, a parapsychologist from New Jersey, helped verify the sequence of events. The case achieved worldwide notoriety in 1993, when NBC's, Unsolved Mysteries, did a reenactment based on interviews with Donnie, the Whys, Baujan, Wolbert, Keenhold, Blackburn, and the Pizzeria owner. In 2011, Syfy's Paranormal Witness did an episode on the Decker case, and interviewed Bob Kieffer, as well as many of the others. The episode condensed the timeline of events, and omitted a few of the unusual occurrences.
Decker's case contains elements familiar in instances of spirit possession and poltergeist activity: objects moved by themselves, Donnie entered a trance state, and all phenomena responded to exorcisms. The case also demonstrates the efficacy of Christian symbols and rituals in reversing the symptoms of spirit possession. Christian exorcists take this as a sign of the literal truth of their religious beliefs, but it has also been suggested that certain practices only work because those who use them believe that they work. For example, Ann Druffel has shown that abductees, or experiencers, can expel their captors through firm directives and mentations, and no reference to religion.
Donnie's sudden acquisition of a supernatural power, though rare, is also not entirely unusual. Some who have had near death experiences feel they have gained new powers of perception and intuition, and many abduction experiencers feel the same. And of course, there are also many religious traditions in which certain people and prophets gain great powers over nature after encounters with the divine, or through agreements with a deity. In particular, Donnie's case invokes the popular archetype of the "deal with the devil," although he seems to have been an unwilling participant.
It's also revealing that the case occurred so soon after the death of an abusive family member. Psychologists have demonstrated a link between emotional trauma and one's chances of experiencing anomalous phenomena such as hauntings, poltergeist activity, and psi abilities. Even those who have not lived a traumatic event themselves can have anomalous experiences in the space that it occurred: hauntings often manifest in spaces where traumatic events like murders and fatal accidents have occurred, for example, as if the victim's trauma survived their death and lingered there in the same location. The link with trauma has received some attention from clinical psychologists, warranting a full volume of essays in 1992. More recently, Thomas Rabeyron and Tianna Loose have theorized that anomalous experiences are ways for people to "symbolize and transform their subjective experience" in response to traumatic events. Anomalists Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber have argued that trauma can "break" the ego and open the senses to other realities. This can lead to experiences of divine transcendence, or experiences of hellish terror, according to the witness's frame of mind.
Summary
Donnie's case seems too remarkable to be believed, but an abundance of first-hand witnesses have verified the story, and stood by their claims. Donnie's altered state of consciousness could potentially be explained as an effect of stress and a powerful emotional experience, but there's no way to account for the rains, the scratches, and Donnie being thrown across the room. In this case, it seems that either all the witnesses are lying, or the story is true. Maybe Donnie's grandfather returned in spirit to harm him, as he believes, or maybe Donnie unconsciously produced the phenomenon through his own mental power. Whatever the cause, the case suggests that our experiences can transcend our minds and bodies, and manifest themselves in the physical world.
Sources:
Anomalous Experiences & Trauma: Current Theoretical, Research and Clinical Perspectives. Edited by Rima Laibow, Robert Sollod, and John Wilson. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Center for Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma, 1992.
Ann Druffel. How to Protect Yourself from Alien Abduction. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Christina Tatu. "Paranormal Skeptic Rains on Stroudsburg's Devil Tale." Pocono Record, May 26, 2013. Available at:
http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20130526/News/305260327
Kevin McCaney, "Stoudsburg Strangeness being Checked." Pocono Record, March 19, 1983.
Syfy's Paranormal Witness, 2011, Season 1, Episode 6.
Thomas Rabeyron and Tianna Loose. "Anomalous Experiences, Trauma, and Symbolization Processes at the Frontiers between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neurosciences." Frontiers in Psychology 6:1926 (Dec 21, 2015).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01926/full.
Unsolved Mysteries, 1993, Season 6, Episode 18.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
After attending his grandfather's funeral in the early 1980s, a man in Pennsylvania experienced a barrage of hostile anomalous phenomena that haunted him for days. Donnie Decker entered an altered state of consciousness, developed spontaneous scratches, and was twice lifted from the ground and thrown across a room. For the three days that he stayed at a friend's house on a furlough from prison, it rained continuously indoors, and afterwards, he could produce the rain at will. Decker's case is unique for involving such a singular power over nature, but it also demonstrates a mysterious, but important link between emotional trauma and the occurrence of the unexplained.
The Rain
Donnie Decker led a troubled life that began with physical abuse from his grandfather. In 1983, Donnie was 21 years old, serving a four-to-twelve month sentence at Monroe County Correctional Facility in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, for receiving stolen property. His grandfather died in February, and Donnie was released on a weekend furlough to attend the funeral on the 26th. Happily rid of his abuser, he then called friends Bob and Jeannie Kieffer and stayed with them and their kids for the weekend.
The night that he arrived at the Kieffers', Donnie was upstairs washing his hands in the bathroom when he felt a deep chill in the air, and sensed that the "atmosphere" had changed. He became disoriented and uneasy, as though he were being "attacked" by something, then fell to the floor after feeling the air be sucked from the room. At this point, he saw the face of an old man wearing a crown in the bathroom window, and at the same time, three deep scratches appeared on his wrist. The feeling soon passed, and Donnie went downstairs for dinner. Bob asked about the scratches, as well as Donnie's pained, pale expression, and Donnie said that he felt he'd been attacked by Satan.
After dinner, everyone was sitting in the living room when it became unusually cold. Donnie sat quietly to himself, seemingly in a trance-like state, and the Kieffers noticed trails of water running down the walls. After a loud noise from upstairs, water began dripping from the ceiling. Bob called his landlord, Ron Van Why, who drove over with his wife to inspect the house. There were no water pipes in the area of the leaks, and it hadn't rained for days. Bob and Ron inspected the second floor and found no leaky pipes, although they sensed a cold, menacing presence that Bob called "evil." Upon closer inspection, the liquid was not water, but something more sticky when rubbed on the skin. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, dripping from the ceiling and emanating from the walls. The witnesses even saw droplets materialize on the floor and fly upwards to the ceiling. Donnie was convinced that his grandfather had returned to attack him.
Baffled, Ron called the police, reaching patrol officer John Baujan, who went to the Kieffer residence immediately. Baujan called his partner, officer Richard Wolbert, who joined them at the residence. The officers immediately noticed the liquid pouring from the ceiling, and sensed the chill in the air. Baujan and Bob Kieffer saw a large droplet of water appear in the air between them, then shoot off horizontally through the next two rooms. Bob said the droplet was abnormally large, as if it were meant to capture their attention. Both officers were utterly amazed by what they were seeing, but could do nothing about it, so they left the house to report the incident.
Donnie Possessed
Hours later, the Kieffers were tired and hungry, so they took Donnie to a Pizzeria down the street. The Whys, who remained behind, said the rain stopped the moment that they left, but it continued in the Pizzeria. The store's owner said that Donnie was possessed by a demon, and put a crucifix around his neck, which burned him.
When the Kieffers' returned home with Donnie, Ron and his wife, as well as Jeannie Kieffer, accused the boy of perpetrating the incident and demanded that he stop. Donnie did not respond, but the pots and pans began to rattle in the kitchen, and he raised from the ground and hovered there. Soon after, he was violently flung five or six feet across the room. Donnie snapped out of his trance when he hit the floor, but had no memory of being thrown. Again he felt a sharp pain on his forearm, and found a bloody wound in the shape of a crown. At this point everyone agreed that Donnie was possessed by something that Ron called "demonic."
When Baujan returned to the house later that morning, he found Jeannie Kieffer reading Psalm 23 from the family bible as the rain intensified around her. Baujan called the chief of police, Gary Roberts, who saw the rain in the living room, but insisted it was nothing more than a plumbing problem. He left after a few minutes, asking Baujan and Wolbert not to file a report, and prohibited any officers from visiting the house. Regardless, Bill Davies, John Rundle, and another officer visited the Kieffer's house the next day. Davies put a bag on Donnie's head and a cross in his hand, without telling him what it was. Donnie immediately threw it away, claiming that it burned him, and Davies said it was hot when he picked it up. The officers later saw Donnie rise from the ground and fly across the room with tremendous force, then found three bloody scratch marks on his neck.
When the rain continued into Sunday, Ron arranged to have an Evangelical preacher perform an exorcism, after every other priest and minister in Stroudsburg had turned him down. Donnie began to convulse and contort when the exorcist prayed, but later went calm. Everyone present felt the atmosphere shift, and the rains ceased at the house for good.
Back to Prison
At the end of Donnie's Furlough, he returned to the Monroe County jail. Rumours spread amongst the inmates and the guards, and Prison Warden Dave Keenhold said many were afraid of demonic activity. Everyone noticed an eerie feeling around Donnie, and Keenhold said that he felt physically sick in his presence. At one point, Donnie imagined that he could make it rain in his cell, and water immediately began to appear on the concrete floor. Once again, rain appeared from the ceiling and the walls as well, and flew up, down, and sideways. His cell-mate was so disturbed by the rain that the Warden had to put him in a different cell. Donnie realized that he could control the phenomenon through a process that he likened to meditation, and by rubbing his fingers together.
After this incident, a couple of prison guards asked Donnie to prove his powers by firing a droplet of water at the Warden, whose office was in a completely different area of the jail. Soon after, another officer alerted Keenhold to a large wet spot in the centre of his chest. Convinced of a supernatural presence, Keenhold arranged to have the Reverend William Blackburn perform an exorcism in a common area outside the cell block. Once Blackburn began reading from the bible, an odour like rotting flesh appeared in the air and intensified as the reading progressed. Soon after, a misty rain fell in the room, which soon became a downpour, although the drops only landed on the reverend, and not on his bible or on Donnie. After a few short readings, the rain stopped, and Blackburn concluded the exorcism. Donnie and the Warden were convinced that the evil spirit had been exorcised, and none of the symptoms ever returned.
Significance
The Donnie Decker case, often referred to as the case of the "Rain Man" or the "Rain Boy," was slow to gain attention. Chip Decker, a regional anomalist of no relation to Donnie, interviewed the young man, and together with Peter Jordan, a parapsychologist from New Jersey, helped verify the sequence of events. The case achieved worldwide notoriety in 1993, when NBC's, Unsolved Mysteries, did a reenactment based on interviews with Donnie, the Whys, Baujan, Wolbert, Keenhold, Blackburn, and the Pizzeria owner. In 2011, Syfy's Paranormal Witness did an episode on the Decker case, and interviewed Bob Kieffer, as well as many of the others. The episode condensed the timeline of events, and omitted a few of the unusual occurrences.
Decker's case contains elements familiar in instances of spirit possession and poltergeist activity: objects moved by themselves, Donnie entered a trance state, and all phenomena responded to exorcisms. The case also demonstrates the efficacy of Christian symbols and rituals in reversing the symptoms of spirit possession. Christian exorcists take this as a sign of the literal truth of their religious beliefs, but it has also been suggested that certain practices only work because those who use them believe that they work. For example, Ann Druffel has shown that abductees, or experiencers, can expel their captors through firm directives and mentations, and no reference to religion.
Donnie's sudden acquisition of a supernatural power, though rare, is also not entirely unusual. Some who have had near death experiences feel they have gained new powers of perception and intuition, and many abduction experiencers feel the same. And of course, there are also many religious traditions in which certain people and prophets gain great powers over nature after encounters with the divine, or through agreements with a deity. In particular, Donnie's case invokes the popular archetype of the "deal with the devil," although he seems to have been an unwilling participant.
It's also revealing that the case occurred so soon after the death of an abusive family member. Psychologists have demonstrated a link between emotional trauma and one's chances of experiencing anomalous phenomena such as hauntings, poltergeist activity, and psi abilities. Even those who have not lived a traumatic event themselves can have anomalous experiences in the space that it occurred: hauntings often manifest in spaces where traumatic events like murders and fatal accidents have occurred, for example, as if the victim's trauma survived their death and lingered there in the same location. The link with trauma has received some attention from clinical psychologists, warranting a full volume of essays in 1992. More recently, Thomas Rabeyron and Tianna Loose have theorized that anomalous experiences are ways for people to "symbolize and transform their subjective experience" in response to traumatic events. Anomalists Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber have argued that trauma can "break" the ego and open the senses to other realities. This can lead to experiences of divine transcendence, or experiences of hellish terror, according to the witness's frame of mind.
Summary
Donnie's case seems too remarkable to be believed, but an abundance of first-hand witnesses have verified the story, and stood by their claims. Donnie's altered state of consciousness could potentially be explained as an effect of stress and a powerful emotional experience, but there's no way to account for the rains, the scratches, and Donnie being thrown across the room. In this case, it seems that either all the witnesses are lying, or the story is true. Maybe Donnie's grandfather returned in spirit to harm him, as he believes, or maybe Donnie unconsciously produced the phenomenon through his own mental power. Whatever the cause, the case suggests that our experiences can transcend our minds and bodies, and manifest themselves in the physical world.
Sources:
Anomalous Experiences & Trauma: Current Theoretical, Research and Clinical Perspectives. Edited by Rima Laibow, Robert Sollod, and John Wilson. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Center for Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma, 1992.
Ann Druffel. How to Protect Yourself from Alien Abduction. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Christina Tatu. "Paranormal Skeptic Rains on Stroudsburg's Devil Tale." Pocono Record, May 26, 2013. Available at:
http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20130526/News/305260327
Kevin McCaney, "Stoudsburg Strangeness being Checked." Pocono Record, March 19, 1983.
Syfy's Paranormal Witness, 2011, Season 1, Episode 6.
Thomas Rabeyron and Tianna Loose. "Anomalous Experiences, Trauma, and Symbolization Processes at the Frontiers between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neurosciences." Frontiers in Psychology 6:1926 (Dec 21, 2015).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01926/full.
Unsolved Mysteries, 1993, Season 6, Episode 18.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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