DRENCHED IN THE DARKNESS: The Demonic Watery Mystery of Don Decker

Rain fell indoors. Crucifixes burned flesh. Police were left speechless. And one man stood at the center of it all.

The clouds loomed low over Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on that cold day in February of 1983. At his grandfather’s funeral, Don Decker stood stone-faced. But the tears he was staving off weren’t from grief — they were from rage. James Kishaugh had not been a loving grandfather. He had abused Don since he was seven years old.

Don shouldn’t have even been at the funeral. He was serving a yearlong sentence at Monroe County Correctional Facility for receiving stolen property. But the prison granted him special permission to attend the service. Not wanting to be around his estranged family — his mother had nearly disowned him — Don chose to stay with family friends, the Keiffers, for the remainder of his leave.

No one could have predicted what would happen next. Not Don. Not the Keiffers. Not even the police officers who would later see it with their own eyes.

The Bathroom Incident

That night at the Keiffers’ home, Don went to use the bathroom. Suddenly, the room turned ice-cold. So frigid, in fact, that Don started to feel faint. The world spun around him as he collapsed to the floor.

And then he saw something.

His grandfather — the man who’d been buried just hours before — stood over him, gazing down with empty, lifeless eyes.

Before Don could scream, deep gashes began to tear across his arms. “These weren’t little gouges,” he later said. “These were deep cuts that appeared out of nowhere.”

Panicked and bleeding, Don ran downstairs to the Keiffers. But before he could explain what happened, a series of loud, violent bangs echoed through the house.

And then came the water.

The Impossible Rain

It started with a few drips from the ceiling. Then more. Within minutes, it seemed to be raining inside the Keiffers’ living room. Water poured from above and — most bizarrely — bubbled up through the floorboards.

“There was no basic direction that it was coming from,” said landlord Ron Van Why. “It could come from all over the place.”

He couldn’t find any leaks or plumbing issues. Meanwhile, Don had entered a trance-like state. His eyes glazed over, and he became withdrawn — as if something else had taken hold of him.

Fearing for their home — and their sanity — the Keiffers called the police. Officers Richard Wolbert and John Baujan arrived and were stunned by what they saw.

“I literally had a chill up my spine,” Baujan later recalled. “This was a situation where things were happening that I never, ever dreamed could possibly transpire.”

Hoping to snap Don out of his state, the officers escorted him across the street to a pizzeria. But the strange phenomenon followed them. As soon as Don entered the restaurant, water began to fall from its ceiling, too.

The Cross Test

Pam, the pizzeria’s owner, watched in horror as Don sat in a fog. She had a chilling thought: what if he was possessed?

Trusting her instincts, she pulled a small crucifix from the cash register and placed it on Don’s skin.

The moment the cross touched him, it seared into his flesh. Don shrieked in pain — and just like that, the trance lifted.

“There was no way anybody could have played a joke like that,” Pam later said. “This was real. Donny was doing it himself. He was doing it without realizing he was doing it.”

And just like that, the rain in the pizzeria stopped. But when Don returned to the Keiffers’ house, the phenomenon started again. Rain from nowhere. Objects rattling and crashing in the kitchen.

Van Why accused Don and the Keiffers of playing an elaborate prank. The argument grew heated — until Don suddenly levitated and was hurled violently into a wall by an unseen force.

Nobody was laughing anymore.

Police Witnesses

The next day, Officers Wolbert and Baujan returned to the Keiffers’ house — this time bringing two more officers, Bill Davies and John Rundle. Their supervisor, Gary Roberts, told them to drop the whole thing. But they couldn’t let it go.

At first, everything seemed normal. No water. No strange behavior. Don was calm.

Then Officer Davies asked Don to hold a gold crucifix.

Don reluctantly agreed — but almost immediately, he cried out that the cross was burning him. When Davies reached to take it back, Don levitated several feet off the ground and was violently thrown across the room.

New wounds appeared on his body — deep scratches, like slashes from something with razor-sharp claws. One cut ran across his neck.

“I have no answer to it whatsoever,” Officer Rundle said later. “None of us did.”

Prison Hauntings

After Don’s leave ended, he returned to Monroe County Correctional Facility. But the bizarre events didn’t stop — they simply moved with him.

And now, Don seemed to be in control of them.

He told guards he could “make it rain” in his cell — and then, it would. He would concentrate, and water would drip from ceilings or walls, just like it had at the Keiffers’ house.

Word of this reached the prison warden, David Keenhold. Alarmed, he brought in the facility’s minister, Reverend William Blackburn.

Blackburn was skeptical. He told Don it was all in his head.

Then Don’s eyes glazed over. The room filled with a vile, putrid odor. And water began to fall.

“I was in the presence of evil,” Blackburn said. He opened his Bible and began to read aloud.

Strangely, despite the rain drenching the room, the Bible remained completely dry.

As Blackburn read, the trance faded. Don returned to himself. The water stopped. The stench vanished.

“There is no doubt in my mind,” Blackburn later said. “There was no way a human could operate what he did in that room.”

The Mystery Remains

After that day, the strange occurrences stopped. Don completed his sentence and attempted to live a quiet life — though he occasionally spoke of his story on paranormal TV shows.

In 2012, he was arrested for arson, which caused some to question his credibility. Others said it only added another bizarre chapter to the life of a man who once made it rain indoors — not with plumbing, not with weather, but with something unexplainable.

What really happened to Don Decker in February 1983?

Was it the vengeful spirit of his abusive grandfather? A true case of demonic possession? Or something stranger — a psychic energy fueled by pain and trauma?

With so many credible witnesses — police officers, prison staff, a reverend — it’s hard to dismiss the events as a hoax.

Don Decker believes it was his grandfather’s spirit, tormenting him one last time.

We may never know for sure.

But some say that in Stroudsburg, on rainy nights when the water falls heavy and strange… Don wasn’t the only one with the power to make it happen.