Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Witnesses believe 'rain boy' was possessed by evil

Editor's Note: This is the second part of a two-part column.

In late February 1983, 21-year-old Don Decker of Stroudsburg, Pa. had been granted a furlough from jail so he could attend the funeral of his grandfather. After the funeral, the young man, who had no other place to live, went to stay with friends Bob and Jeannie Keiffer. While staying at the Keiffer home, some truly unexplained things began to happen, including the weird phenomenon of raining falling inside the house and Decker being levitated off the floor. Decker's friends and even the local police began to suspect that an evil spirit had taken possession of the young man.
Three police officers who witnessed the strange happenings were warned by their chief to not file a report or even talk about it. But the police officers ignored their chief's orders. They went to the Keiffer home to continue their investigation, according to a Web site.
One of the officers gave Decker a gold cross to hold. He took the cross but he said that it was burning his hands. Then, the young man once again levitated off of the floor.
"All of a sudden, he lifted up off the ground and he flew across the room with the force as though a bus had hit him," the officer said in a later interview for a TV program. "There were three claw marks on the side of his neck, which drew blood. I have no answer for it whatsoever. And, I just draw a blank, even today."
On the third night of these events, the Keiffer couple's landlord, Ron Van Why, asked a minister to come to the house and try an exorcism. It seemed that nothing else could rid Decker of the evil spirit that taken hold of his body, mind and spirit. As the minister started to pray, Decker went into a convulsion and started to shake. Then, his body relaxed and the atmosphere in the room changed. When the praying ended, the mysterious water that had been falling inside the house was gone. Don Decker appeared to be back to his former self, according to a Web site.
To paraphrase Ulysses Everett McGill, even if it did put him square with the Lord, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania's a little more hard-nosed. When his furlough expired, Decker had return to jail. And within a few days, the weird rain returned, this time in his jail cell.
Decker was in the cell with another inmate. For some reason, he wanted to know if he could make it rain in the jail and sure enough he could. Water started to come out of the concrete floor. A guard that saw Decker perform this feat challenged him to try it again and he was able to do it at will.
Frantic jail officials called in the Rev. William Blackburn to see if he could help them with this bizarre turn of events. Decker told the chaplain he could make it rain and that crosses placed on his body burned his skin. Blackburn told Decker to admit he was making this all up.
But all of sudden, Decker's demeanor changed and a nauseating smell came into the room.
"Nurses and doctors, medical people, say when you walk into a room where someone is dying with a cancer or something, usually there's a smell," said Blackburn in a TV interview. "You can tell when you walk in the room. I smelled a smell like that multiplied five times at least. Evil, foreboding."
Decker raised his hand and rubbed his fingers together. It started to rain inside the room.
"It was like the devil's rain," said Blackburn in the interview. "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 think I was praying more for me than him."
Blackburn prayed hard and then the rain stopped. Decker seemed to have been changed as well. He seemed at peace with the world and thanked Blackburn for praying for him.
"He was possessed," said Blackburn. "There was no doubt in my mind. There's no way a human could do what he did in that room."
The rain would not happen again. Years later, Decker said he felt that bizarre episode in his life was over for good.
"It hasn't happened again," he said in a TV interview. "Basically, I'm just hoping that it never will, and I just, you know, go day by day."
A total of nine eyewitnesses, plus Decker, stated publicly that these events happened. They believe demonic forces possessed the young man.
What Decker did not tell anyone at the time was that his late grandfather had physically abused him from the time he was 7 years old. He believes that the spirit of his grandfather was somehow responsible for the weird rain and the levitation.
This incredible story has been featured in newspaper articles, TV's "Unsolved Mysteries" and other documentaries. While researching this column, I was unable to find any updates about Decker's whereabouts. Today, he would be 48 years old.