From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. First, this is the first episode we are recording. After we after we gave everybody a bit of a surprise with our colleagues code named Doc and Danish Schwartz giving us a fantastic exploration of the terrible history between the US and why. Thank you to everyone for tuning into that episode. If you haven't yet check it out, immediately do it now and then come back. We'll be here. It was a great episode. I really really enjoyed it as a listener. So so yeah, huge things and shout out to them and uh today's episode. I thought an interesting way to begin this would be to talk about UM, one of one of the most famous sci fi fantasy series in history. Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's it's the kind of whimsy that we might need to balance out today's story. Uh, this is not a spoiler for the story, and as you know, given the stuff they don't want you to know policy on spoilers, this has been out long enough that a spoiler warning need not apply anyhow, in a way that doesn't have necessarily a huge impact on the plot. There's a hapless character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy named Rob McKenna. Rob McKenna is a taxi or lorry driver who for his entire life has tried and failed to get away from the rain that constantly follows him. And he's got a little log book that proves it has rained everywhere anytime he's been anywhere, no matter where he goes, no matter what time of day it is. And McKenna doesn't know that I know why this happens. He thinks he's just cursed. It turns out that the rain follows him for a reason. It's fantastic ongoing thread in a fantastic series. And although Douglas Adams may not have been aware of this, there may be a real life example of a type of uh Rob McKenna, just as hapless, if not as um so sweetly Wes Anderson like wholesome. This real life rain Man, according to the story, gets his path hours not from the divine, but from the opposite of the divine, something unclean, something infernal, a case of possession or a case of abuse from beyond the grave, or or something else. Fellow conspiracy realist, today we bring you the strange tale of Dawn Decker. Here are the facts. In nineteen eighty three, which is I think the year we were all born. No, okay, just just hearing me, alright, sorry, man, a twenty one year old man by the name of Don Decker was having a really bad time. Uh. He was serving four to ten months in the Monroe County Correctional Facility of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, And that was because he had received stolen goods stolen property. On February thirty eight years from this day, as we sit here and record, he was given a furlough to attend his grandfather's funeral, a man named James Kishaw who lived in the same town where Decker was incarcerated. So this was I mean, a funeral is often not a happy event, right, at least we can agree the majority of them are not supposed to be. This was going to be somewhat of a personal milestone for Decker because from a young age, and we're not too clear on the specifics of this, but from a young age, his grandfather had physically abused him. According to Decker, this began when he was about seven years old, and in his mind, the old man's death could lead him to a new chapter in life, a fresh start. It could free him from what he described as an evil that it haunted him all his life. Like many victims of emotional or I guess social or physical abuse, he had kept these occurrences a secret, had not told people. So when he went to the funeral, you know, he saw relatives and especially his parents, talking about this man who had abused him, in of course, the overly positive terms that people often use for the newly dead. This funeral was an emotionally exhausting experience for Decker. Understandably, right, while these things are true, and seeing his parents talk about his grandfather and what he felt were glowing, glorifying terms made him furious. It had sensed him, and so after the funeral, he said, you know, I'm gonna stay with my friends instead of staying with my folks. I'm gonna stay with a couple named Bob and Jeannie f Yeah, And like we said, he's on furlough, so the police are aware of where he is and it's not like he just went off. He's there staying essentially under their custody. Important point, uh, and I love that you brought You brought it back to the furlough. Furlough is given for is only allowed if you are a pretty exemplary uh inmate right or obeying the rules in jail. So that means that we know at this point nothing unusual had happened exactly. They don't consider him a flight risk, They don't consider him a danger to anybody, especially just you know, his friends that he's going to go and stay with. They also don't think the Keefers have anything fishy going on or else that would have been an issue at least that that would that would be the understanding unless there were extenuating circumstances that we don't know about or cannot prove. So the Keefers were renting a house. It was on Ann Street there in the city and Uh, I just really quickly. I always liked doing this and always like talking about geography. But just so you know, where we are really is near the Pocono Mountains. Right near where this is taking place, there's the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau. And you've heard people talk about the Poconos before the Mountain Range, and this is I'm trying to look for a nearby place. It's basically between Scranton, Pennsylvania and Allentown, Pennsylvania kind of but to the northeast of Allentown. So that's physically where we are there in this house on Ann Street, and the night of the funeral, Deckers there with his friends, the Keefers, and Decker is upstairs. He's in the bathroom, at least according to the story, he's like washing his hands, getting ready for dinner. And according to him what he told to the keepers, uh, he suddenly felt disoriented, felt very confused, and then he fell down to the floor and according to him, was given some visions, some strange visions, including a king. You will get into it well, well if the way he says, is a man with a crown, which kind of like a Russian law about anyone who happens to the president. But yeah, he had these He had these visions. Uh, he felt disoriented and confused. And that's something that a lot of people report when they have visions for caused by any number of medical or cognitive situations. According to Decker, and you can see video by the way of him describing this, and we'll we'll talk a little bit about the shows that widely publicized or popularized this story. According to him, scratches appeared unbidden upon his wrist. He rejoined the keepers. He seems oddly subdued. Think of Jack Nicholson as the Overlook Hotel is slowly getting it's its um psychic talents into his mind. Yeah, almost almost understated hypnosis. And he sits down to eat. Picture him. We're editorializing a little bit picture moving kind of robotically, going through the motions. You can attribute this a lot to the grief of losing a family member, even if it's one you didn't particularly care for, the shock of going to a funeral. His pal Keeper notices Bob Keeper, that is, notices the blood when Decker sits down to eat, and like any friend would say, he asked what happened? What happened to you. H Decker tells him about this vision, this man in a crown reflected in a window that does not physically appear to be in the bathroom with him. Uh, he's got the scratches, which he attributes to Satan, you know, kind of small talk. I could probably have a dinner, right yeah, yeah, but and you can imagine to some evil presence. That's what he's attributing to. But in his mind it's that would be Satan, right right, and that's an important division so or differentiation. So a few minutes later, the family, here's this loud, kind of banging noise from above, and they noticed that water is dripping from the walls and the ceiling. That's fun. Something similar happened, uh at my daughter's mom's house the other nice she had a friend sleepover, and they didn't realize the toilet was just constantly overflowing, and nobody noticed until water literally started seeping through, uh, into into her mom's closet and roomined all of her clothes. So yeah, Immediately, the first thing your mind would go to is, Okay, there's a nasty, nasty plumbing problem, something catastrophic, and you're scrambling to like figure out where it's coming from and and stop it. Right, but this seems to be something different. Yeah, there's never a good time for plumbing problem, as anybody who's experienced one can assure you, especially homeowners uh and plumbers as well. It's because a burst pipe, depending on its location, can become very expensive, very quickly. So Bob Key for uh, he and he and his partner are renting this structure, so they immediately phone their landlord. And this is you know, like this, they're not renting from some big complex or company. They know the guy. His name is really cool. Actually it's Ron van Y w h y. That's really cool. And you know, all the homeowners that are listening right now are going, oh, thank god they're renting, right, because it really is expensive. But Ron of course doesn't feel the same way because he owns the house. So so he goes over immediately, let's get on the case, and the two guys set off to investigate what they naturally assumed to be leaking pipes. Uh. Of course, plumbing problems are are likely on the rise at this time. Again, it's February. In it's February, and Pennsylvania here. There has been a storm earlier, so if the pipes are old enough, you know, they may have burst, they may have had problems with freezing and so on. But eventually, pretty quickly they realize something that the police will also later realize. All of the plumbing just it goes to the kitchen in the bathroom, and they're on the other side of the house from where this leak is occurring. Like the whole plumbing system, the whole circulatory system of the house, it's all towards the back of the structure. The second decker appears to have progressed from being kind of out of it an oddly calm maybe in shock, to a full on trance state. This guy is in something meditative or approaching catattic. This prompts Keeper to call the police and think about it from Bob's perspective. You know, yes, this is your friend. Your friend is technically on vacation from jail, so you want to be as above board as possible. Uh. The leaks, however, are continuing. At the same time they appear to be increasing at a worrying pace. Where the hell is all this water coming from? This is the question, right, where is the water coming from. And I want to jump back to this concept that all of the plumbing is on the other side of the house. And it's simply because I'm I'm imagining them sitting downstairs and then hearing that bang that that you demonstrated, Ben, that that loud banging from above them. I'm a iagining the Keefers and know where the bathroom is in location to them above them, right, you've probably been on a second floor before, if you're aware of it, you know where the bathrooms kind of are in relation to you. If they believed that that sound came from the bathroom or from the plumbing in the bathroom, you imagine they would, you know, look to the place and and think about it in being in that general area and if that occurs, and you know, depending on where the bank came from, because we don't I don't have an exact you know, like geolocation of was it above them and to the right, was it above them to the left, but then the water was coming down from the right, I don't have We don't have that information necessarily, but it just made it. It made it more curious to me. The fact that the plumbing is way over there in the skeletal structure of the house. Really, what I'm wondering is where did the bang originate and where was the plumbing and where they definitely into completely different places. I don't know. It's a question, and it's one that uh, it's one that isn't specifically explored even in the subsequent attempts at a police report. The cavalry arrives first. There are two officers on the scene, officers John bow Jean and Richard Woolbert. By this point, from their accounts, water just wasn't just leaking within the house, you know, kind of streaming down the walls or whatever. Uh. In fact, Bob Kiefer and Ron Van why when the police showed up, they got they were at a loss to explain what was happening. They were saying, okay, look just come in here, just coming you gotta see it for yourself. It's weird. We need help. And the police decided to enter the premises and what they found inside is less like a bunch of leaks. From everything they could tell, it was literally raining inside the house. No, not necessarily a torrential downpour, but the water appeared not just to be obeying the patterns of rain you would see outside. It appeared to be uh. There appeared to be violations of the laws of physics inside the house. The old rules no longer applied. This stuff was falling upward from the floor. Yeah, I mean it was the There were reports from the scene that it was literally defying gravity. Uh. And and there was no uh discernible source for the leak, for the of a leak, in the existence of a leak, of the of the water appeared to just be kind of being summoned in some weird way. It was only happening in the living room though, So it was like this localized like storm cloud like you see in the cartoons. Um. And the police were absolutely at a loss, as I mean, this isn't something that they're they're really equipped to deal with to the police left the scene because they had to figure out how to summarize all this craziness and some semblance of you know, UM report that wouldn't get them fired, I guess. Uh. And then the keepers went with Don Decker to a nearby restaurant. So the landlord Ron than Why called his wife Romaine fantastic name, um, and she joined him at the house and they stuck around while everyone else left, and then all of a sudden, the rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. Yeah. Either the It's interesting to one detail I'm wondering about this is whether the police, the tenants definitely the homeowner. Surely someone immediately said let's turn off the water, right, that's step number one. But that's not really that's not a detail that's really reported in this story here. Well, yeah, and that's the thing. Ron and Romayne know that house, right, They know the ins and outs of that house, where the pipes are. They've probably had to fix things in the past. You would imagine, like, really, what I want is more info from those two, and I wish we had more of that. There may be a reason we don't. Uh. This restaurant across the street is a pizzeria. It's owned by a lady. At the time, it's home by lady named Pam Scrafano, and she also gives interviews on video about this Everyone we've named so far is on video at some point talking about this story or appearing to talk about this story. The program unsolved mysteries which some of some of us in the audience today may have loved as much as I did in younger years. Unsolved Mysteries has Scrafano on the on this episode talking about how she earlier gone to the Keefer's house, Like, clearly this pizzaio was their cheers. It's right across the street. They serve pizza, they probably have beer. What more do you want from life? And uh so she knew these folks. She had apparently already went across the street earlier to look at this bizarre meteorological phenomenon. Micro meteorological phenomenon, will work on it. Uh And when she saw when she saw the Keepers and Don arrive, apparently rain started falling in the restaurant too. She looked at Don's odd behavior. He was still very out of it. And I imagine this is my speculation here, folks, but I imagine what happened. His dinner was ruined at the keeper house. And they decided that regardless of the chaotic universe in which they live, they still wanted to get something to eat. Uh So, so they had gone to a pizza restaurant with a very weird vibe. Pam is freaking out. She goes to the cash register, where she retrieves across the symbol of Christianity, and she tries to give the cross to down and he can't hold it. He claims it burns his hand. Pam, being of a somewhat religious bent, feels like she's cracked the case. She tells the keepers they need to take him to a church for the process of performing an exorcism. While we do not know the specifics of the conversation that followed, we know that instead of going to a church immediately, they went home, probably because a lot of churches are closed at that time. Right. Well, yeah, and they just ruined a ton of pizza. Let me think about how bad is soggy pizza. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to that as a party foul. To be sure, all of this, by the way, is is delightfully recreated in that Unsolved Mysteries episode. It's during like the golden age of Unsolved Mystery where like Robert Stack's hair is just perfect, and like the experts that are on this particular episode, one of them looks like a sort of a miniature Ringo star. I can't remember the guy's name, he's he's one of the investigators that we're going to get to one of the two, so I don't remember which one he was exactly, but he almost looks like um Andy Circus in like Lord of the Rings, but with like a ringo star like goatee, perfectly quafft and like a bun. It's it's something to behold. And then you know the thing that's about to happen next, also beautifully dramatized. Remain Uh confronts Decker as he is in this like trance like state, like a fugue state. Uh. And then she tries to, I don't know, settle him down or kind of talk him down. Pots and pants start banging around the kitchen, classic possession one on one type stuff. And then they claim and again it's beautifully done. And then the show that Decker began to levitate off the floor as the cacophonous sounds of pots and pans clanging and banging around began to increase to a fever pitch. Then and and seeing you might recognize from the movie The Exorcist, Uh, these unseen you know things start slashing at Decker's skin, and these you know, cuts or or scrap to start to open up all over him as he's supposedly levitating there and they form the shape of a cross allegedly uh near the inside of his elbow or like the crook of his arm. There. Officer bow Jean came back where he found Genie Keefer reading the Bible an attempt to do her own kind of d i y exorcism on Decker bless her Heart. Uh. In a show called Paranormal Witnesses, bou Jean said that he too, truly believed that Decker was possessed, and he decided to call in the big guns. The chief of Police, Gary Roberts. So Chief of Police Gary Roberts is an important part of this story. He is convinced by by the cops to go visit this scene in person. When he gets there, he says, Okay, yeah, moisture, it's it's moisture, is not itself a supernatural, norm invidious thing. I understand this might be a weird situation for you, key, for family. We've all had a tough day. Things are going to be fine. There's absolutely nothing unnatural going on. And we know there's a bit of at least a verbal reprimand to his employees because he orders them to leave and not to bother filing a report, you know what I mean, just another night in another episode of Law and Order, Straulsburg, Pennsylvania. This was certainly not the end. When we returned from a quick break, we will tell you what happened the next day. So the next day some officers returned there, and there are two other officers who are you to the story, but they've heard about it over over the past few hours. These are officers William Davies and officer John Rundle. They along with bou Jean, kind of defied their boss and they they were like, Okay, maybe the police chief of police is not fully grasping the enormity or the importance of this situation, or at least the bizarreness of this situation. So they visit the house themselves, and Davies says Decker, who is still there, recoils when he offers Decker a gold cross, just like Pam at the pizzeria. Decker drops it, claiming again that it burns his skin. There's some kind of consistency there, uh. And then these officers, these police officers who are trained to accurately report what they see, say that Decker is lifted off the ground by unseen forces Decker is also on video saying this uh and that he's thrown across the room quote as though a bus had hit him. Uh, And additional scratches appear on his neck. I haven't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in in a number of years, but I'm pretty sure Rob McKenna just gets rained. I don't think he gets thrown around. So that's that's another difference if you're keeping tracked. So finally, on this next night, Ron Van, why the landlord is able to convince a preacher to come and attempt an exorcism. This is not the first preacher he talked to. It's definitely not his first choice. He had talked to several other religious figures, ministers and priests, and they had all turned him down. Because, as you've seen in previous episodes, we've done like exorcisms one oh one and so on. Uh. Exorcisms are something that religious institutions take very, very seriously because people have been hurt in the past, and also you have to spend a great deal of time figuring out whether it could be anything other than a case of possession. Right, So you get a lot of you you know, if you are. If you are a religious authority listening to today's episode, I'm sure that you have also received a lot of strange calls from very upset and scared people, and you've had, you know, you had to realize that maybe this isn't an exorcism, Maybe they just need someone to help a walk back from whatever ledge they're on. So this so he finally finds a guy who says yes. Preacher arrives unseen, he begins to pray as his bible out. Don begins to convulse violently physically, and then the preacher performs some sort of ceremony. It's definitely not, you know, obviously, the Catholic right of exorcism, but whatever it is seems to work. People who are present describe an intangible difference in the feeling, and not to be dismissive, but they describe a change in the vibe, right of change in the energy of of the of the house, of the room. And then at the end of one of these prayers, the rain stops and it will never appear in the key for home again. So maybe this bizarre incident is over and Don has just had a terrible furlough, but he still has to go back to jail. He got convicted, he has to serve his sentence. That's one of the nicer furloughs I've ever heard of, where you get multiple days off rather than you okay, you get to attend the funeral and then you have to immediately return. That's a it's a very nice thing that Don got to to receive. He was pretty unusual then, m I don't know the practices, but but still a different thing, right, a different experience than probably a lot of people have had um. But it it doesn't stop here, you're right, And just a few days later he ends up back in the jail. He's going to do his thing. And while he was there, it appears that whatever rituals took place a few days prior that stopped the rain at the Keefer's house didn't work when he returned to incarceration, because now it's raining in the jail. Or yeah, at the very least it's described as rain, but very least, uh water is a puri in a way that seems inexplicable. We have a we have a quote from Don Decker where he says, they put me in a maximum security cell. I was in there with another inmate, and I was thinking I should make it rain in here, and all of a sudden, water started mean out of the concrete floor, and at that point I thought I can do stuff. And then uh yeah, he realized he's Storm. He's like, oh man, I'm Storm. This is awesome. Or like your you know, with the black cloud following him around, or like Rob McKenna, who is maybe a little bit more of an ambitious robin kind of but but yeah, he says, maybe this is something that I can U in some way control. There's a guard who's skeptical about it, and it's like, oh yeah, Decker, well if you can, you can control rain, and that's why you're doing so well in life. Locked up here in jail, why don't you make it rain in the warden's office. The warden at the time was a guy named Dave keen Holt. He just started making it rain. Sorry, just started making it rain. Yes, no, you're so so. Warden. Keene Hold is also on video and he says the following I was sitting at the desk writing a report. I was all by myself in the administration area. Nobody else was around. It was approximately eight in the evening at the time, I didn't feel anything, but my shirt was drooping down. And he goes on to say, uh, as another officer entered and was going to tell him something and was like, warden, look at your shirt, and so he looks down. He literally looks down at his shirt and right around the center of a stern um about four inches long two inches wide, there was this huge spot of water, and he says, I was uh. I was startled, I was scared. The officer was frightened. I didn't have an explanation of why it happened. And so then the warden, oh, and other people reported seeing this. So his cellmate saw it, two guards saw, janitor saw it. The warden saw this stuff appear on his shirt. And the warden contacts a guy named Reverend William Blackburn to attempt another like another exorcism, a third exorcism for those of us keeping track at home. So then a third and final exorcism was attempted, and this appears to perhaps have done the trick. Another reverend by the name of William Blackburn meets Don in jail um and he sees with his own eyes this rain appear, apparently summoned by Don himself, like he said, matt Um, and he prayed over him, and the rain stopped. Who stopped the rain? Indeed? Uh? Or who will stop the rain? Apparently it was it was William Blackburn as a credence clearwater revival reference um speaking of great references. Uh. In the wake of this kind of bizarre indoor weather the thing or ben as you not to in the outline inner weather, shout out to Robert Frost um Don and these various witnesses still claim that they're unable to explain where this was coming from, where this indoor rain was coming from? Um. And and there are quite a few people that that saw it. So what's what's the deal? What actually happened? Here's where it gets crazy. This is a story that, as you said, Noell still does not have an official explanation, by which I mean it still does not have explanation as considered a hundred percent factual by all people involved. Uh. There are several possibilities, and not all of these possibilities are immediately apparent. So what makes this case unusual or remarkable in comparison to other cases that have some similarities is that there are nine eye witnesses, several of whom have their careers stated on their ability to be accurate and credible, right, and in recalling what they've encountered. Uh Don himself. You know, we could count him as as an extra witness, but let's let's leave him bracketed to the side. All of these nine witnesses were willing to go on record saying that they heard, saw, and felt unusual phenomena. But first importantly, and this is where those shows can be a little bit misleading, not all of these witnesses are saying there was something demonic at play. The police chief right, was never convinced. Several witnesses will still they'll they'll go as far as saying they saw something they can't explain. That doesn't make it necessarily supernatural. And additionally, if you look at exorcisms overall, the claims of creating rain indoors seem oddly specific and somewhat unprecedented. It doesn't follow the exorcism tropes of Uh. The demographics of people who tend to be possessed often children, predominantly women. Remember, not all claims of possession or exorcisms are Christian and nature and the Decker case does include like a couple two big, big common signs of what's considered to be possession, some kind of levitation mysterious wounds and so on, levitation of Don Decker himself, and then some kind of psychokinetic movement of the pots and pans in the kitchen. But the primary thing inexplicable rain uh, wetness generated somehow by the human mind or by you know, by somehow some action or presence of a human being that usually is attributed to stuff like the old practice of rainmakers, you know, people who were paid to go out and do anything from early signs of cloud seating to using their own allegedly unique cognitive or spiritual abilities to bring rain to drought stricken areas. Yeah, it sounds to me, if it's real, more like a superpower that is being unlocked through a highly stressful situation or something, you know, more way more so than a possession by somebody. It sounds like he got extremely stressed to do the funeral and this abusive person in his life that died, then it went away after. It feels like being calmed down. Whether or not the exorcism actually did anything spiritually or it was just someone giving him attention and calming him down, a lot of people being around him, heart rate, lowering endorphins. Well, then then it comes back when he gets back to the stressful situation of being in prison. Right, so interestingly enough, like to me, it's it's almost like it's being triggered through some kind of stress or internal turmoil. It's a very Stephen Kingy type trope. Like it makes me think of Carrie, you know, when she's picked on and uh and humiliated at the prom and then all of a sudden she just kicks into like fight or flight mode and like burns everybody alive or or firestarter for example. You know, a lot of these powers or latent abilities are brought out by you know, stressful events and that are triggered. And then it is also usually beyond the individual's control or at least you know, to or to a large degree. And of course, um, fellow fellow comic fans, you we're called that this is this is one of the common ways for mutant powers to express and things like Marvel comics. Uh, it's often tied to puberty in those or tropes just like or those sort of stories, I should say, not tropes, just like in Um Sinking Carrey. As you mentioned earlier, noal with this. We have to remember Don is at the cusp of his early twenties, so his body is still developing to that to that theory, Uh, we don't know how much, if any, medical research has been done on his brain, right, which is another interesting question. And we also there hasn't been a ton of research done on the house, and we know that for sure. But let's let's so those are interesting possibilities, they're interesting um paths of thoughts. We have to take another one, which is a little more nitty gritty, And it's an unfortunate fact of the reality that Don and these eyewitnesses were living in during the early nineties when this case was publicized on those shows we cited earlier. Uh, And it's a it's an unfortunate reality of the world we live in today. That's kind of the rise of reality television, unscripted allegedly nonfiction programs with heavily edited interviews. Again, the vast majority of people who learned about this story, especially outside of UH the area between Allantown in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The people learned about this learned about it because they were watching stuff, and I say this with love, they were watching stuff that was meant to be entertainment, right, entertainment TV. It is completely possible. We've explored this before. It's completely possible that any of these witnesses, even Don himself, may have been manipulated or goaded in some way by the producers, either into exaggerating their original statements or having their words taken out of context. You know what I mean, Like, if there's something like I bet Chief of Police Gary Roberts was the most difficult interview for those producers, What do you guys think? Yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah, been to to this end. I want to just point out exactly what you're saying. It was when this occurred. Then it wasn't until the nineties when it was retold right on one of these one or more of these scripted shows. Um, this is something that Skeptic Magazine points out. Michael Shermer that writes in in that magazine, Uh, why didn't anyone think to snap any kind of photograph, take any kind of um evidence of this occurrence? Why doesn't that exist? We're talking about days of this kind of thing happening, and you're you know, you're at the police station. You're talking about a place where people are incarcerated, where pictures are taken of people for mug shots. Why didn't somebody take a picture of any of this stuff? It's just it feels strange. Why didn't anybody, for instance, take a sample of the water? Right, especially because the water left will find a physical impression. We know that there really was water, that part is for sure. We're just now arguing over how connected it was with Don and where the water came from. Right, be right? Memory is treacherous, arguably one of the most treacherous bodily processes, uh is remembering something. And then we have to look at the credibility of of these shows. As enjoyable as they are, Um, these shows have an angle, right. They want you to be tantalized, They want you to be fascinated. They want you to leave with more questions than you had when you started watching, and maybe one decision, one answer, which is will I watch the next episode of the show? And the answer is hopefully yes. Right, what they're trying to get you to, um, they they do very well. There is an art and a craft of this, But it also means it's like telling these stories, making these narratives is like whittling a block of wood. You have to get rid of some stuff for the final product to have the shape you want people to see. And that's why they don't invest a ton of time looking at any possible mundane explanations that might be kind of boring. Uh. They do have subject matter experts, you know, that's part of the format of those shows, and the experts in the in each of these programs are billed as paranormal investigators. Paranormal investigators is a very large term, right. There's a lot of stuff that fits in there, from people who believe they are mediums to people who believe that they are hardcore skeptics trying to debunk the idea of a haunted house, you know what I mean. So the problem with describing people as paranormal investigators wherever they fall on that spectrum, is this, there is no widely accepted accreditation process. There's no board or other authority that reviews you. You know, like veterinarians have boards and um the medical professionals have boards to make sure that their researches up to date, to make sure that their practices are sound and there is no such thing as, for instance, a licensed paranormal investigator. You can call anyone you want. There are plenty of people who will issue you a certificate of some sort, but there's not like a you can't go to the d m V or your local courthouse, you know, like the place you would get a gun license or divorce or marriage license and say, hey, I need a judge to sign off of me being a paranormal investigator. I tried, I looked into it. It's just not a thing. And yet we've got priests that are like supposedly qualified to do exorcisms. I guess maybe that's the closest thing to having accreditation for for being a paranormal investigator of some kind. I mean not kind of. You're if you're a priest, you're showing up, you're investigating a paranormal event, and then you are doing something about it, supposedly, and it's sanctioned by this very very old, established organization. I just I find it fascinating. I'm not trying to, you know, downplay anybody's beliefs or religion, but particularly the idea of sanctioned exorcisms has always sat a little oddly with me. Well, it's interesting because we have to remember that the church in in a real way, uh, proceeds the modern state. I would argue religion precedes the modern state, rather so in a way. That's they're the oldest licensed paranormal investigators, even if they're licensed for you know, a very specific niche of that sort of stuff. But that's why I think that I agree, that's a good point. Let's pause, though, Let's pause for a word from our sponsor. Will return, and Will will look into the part of the story that these programs did not like John Decker's reign. We have returned. Uh. Third point here, objective scientific investigations, one in particular, do appear to have a plausible explanation for what occurred. To your point, Matt, these explanation, this explanation occurs um a number of years after the actual events. There's a great report, series of reports by the Pocono Record or poken House, that that details the work of a researcher from New York located in New Zealand, a medical sociologist named Robert Bartholomew. He became interested in this case when a colleague referred it to him and said, hey, man, this is right up your alley. I don't know what the explanation is based on the info I have. Bartholomew's legit, he's accredited. He teaches at Botany Down Secondary College, or did at the time. He wrote in a ton of journals on on things that were allegations of paranormal right. And when I say wrote in journals, we're talking about medical and sociology journals, not you know, his own personal mole schemes or something. Uh. And and he had a pretty he had a pretty solid theory for this, that's right. Um. He he did make it very clear that he did not have any connections to Stroudsburg UM and kind of considered himself as as a bit of an outsider. Um. But he said, quote, I can be seen as an impartial third party. My goal is to understand what happened. Uh. And he believes, I think, kind of like what we were conjecturing earlier, that through this kind of perfect combination, perfect storm of stress, uh, the weather and a particular type of ice formation, Bartholomew believes that he can reasonably explain what happened. So for him, it all goes back to this thing called an ice dam like the Hoover dam. Ice damning is a phenomenon that occurs when warm air enters an attic uh like snow melt like melt water from like a roof seeping in um and then if temperatures drop after the sun sets, ice can form and it can trap the water that had previously melted with nowhere to go and still at a temperature, keeping it in a liquid form. Because of the internal heat of the house. The water will eventually leak outside. And you can actually see a pretty helpful um image of this if you go to University of Minnesota Extensions website, UH and just type in what is an ice dam and it shows the phenomenon. It really is little pockets in the eaves kind of of an attic, so it would be like in a corner for example. Uh. It's a it's a pretty pretty helpful image, but it's sort of like what what's described, but I don't know, not quite well really what you'd be seeing here. You may have seen this before because this is fairly common, like weeping. You can see like your walls look like they're weeping, like they're crying, or it's it's just dripping water down a little bit. This has happened in older houses that I've rented here in Atlanta, depending on what's going on with the temperature and accumulation. Sometimes, uh, it's it's it's fairly common. That's all I wanted to say. So the yeah, the reason I have that diagram there is if you it is helpful look at it if you're curious. Um, what what you're seeing is a kind on the roof. You're seeing a a combination of of water in three forms. The ice is towards the bottom, right toward the eaves of the roof. The snow is the top, the damned water in the middle. And what you know. The immediate question if you look at this diagram or other ones like it, is how does it get through the insulation while the insulation becomes sodden? And that heat is going to be continual because you have to keep a house warm, right, ideally while you're in snowy conditions, and so things like a snowstorm can exacerbate that. But the big question, probably one of the more tantalizing perps, is Okay, fine, I understand weeping, right, I've seen leaks before. I know what leaks are like. Leaks do not shoot out from the bottom of the floor like rain from a cloud. And isn't it pretty big coincidence that this occurred at the house where Don was, then at the pizza place, then again at the jail. Yeah, and and corroborated by various unrelated witnesses from from these Uh, well, it didn't seem like they would have an agenda, you know, I tend to I tend to believe folks like that. Uh, it's it's it's hard. Yeah, it's hard to justify. Of course not. Of course this wouldn't have And this is the thing that happens in houses very rarely, like under very specific circumstances. Yes, So going back to um, what I'm building toward here, or what it was building towards there, is that it Really The other problem with definition here is what defines rain. Torrential downpour is rain, but a drizzle is also rain, you know, And and fog is just moisture in the air. So is it possible that they were, um, the people who are witnessing this, we're seeing air heavy with with moisture. But was the was the moisture somehow being affected by the heat of the house after it left the walls or after it left that dam, you know what I mean. Was it somehow um being dispersed the way that a humidifier would or something. Uh. To the point about specificity of ice stamming, Yes, you're correct. The weather in the area, the weather on Ant Street there does appear to be within the bounds of what would what an ice stam need would need to form. Uh. Daytime highs were in the forties and fifties fahrenheit, but then the lows dropped down to the twenties and the thirties. UH. Also, Bartholomells research shows that ice stamming can be pretty common if a major snowstorm has just hit an area where temperatures go above freezing during the day to turn stuff in the water, and then below the point of freezing thirty two degrees at night. UH. This makes perfect conditions for your classic ice stam and the Poconos have been hit by a snowstorm about thirteen days before all this stuff went down with Don Decker. So maybe there was something unclean at play. But maybe it wasn't a demon, or maybe it wasn't an angry ghost. It was a dirty roof with a pile of unswept snow still unclean. And then also I totally get it. I've been in snow areas before. Why would you like just plow? Like cleaning your driveway is enough. Who goes on their roof all the time to clean off snow? I go there to clean off leaves. Yeah, the leaves are the problem here in Georgia for sure. Uh, although the and I kind of like it. I think that's meditative. Also, you're not freezing, why to it? Uh? And then what happens to this house? Don's gone. The keepers stay at the house for about two more years, so they must not have been that freaked out, and they didn't see anything else super unusual. Uh. They couldn't get those stains from the water off the walls. And we can't do any on the scene testing or try to reenact the events unsolved mystery style because the house has been demolished. And the fourth the fourth point here, this one we can maybe close with for the skeptics. You hate to see it, and this is not victim blaming, but there's a question about credibility on Don's part that becomes crucial to the story. A few years later, or a few decades later. Yes, that's correct. There is a news story that we stumbled upon from October of two thousand twelve, when Don Decker found himself back in the news. He'd been rather obscure after these nineties television shows. He'd you know, you'd every once in a while seeing an interview with him or him talking about something over the years. But this was the most high profile thing. Uh. He was in the news because he turned himself in to a federal court on charges that that he had set ablaze a business as a restaurant in the Poconos. Is an event that occurred in two thousand eleven. This is in will Bar, a different area there in the Poconos, a rival pizzeria. Perhaps I don't I don't think so, but but it does appear that Dawn was involved because the restaurant owner, this is allegedly the restaurant owner brought him in to do it on purpose. Oh like for like an insurance money. Uh yeah, yeah. It was called Dana's Restaurant and tavern, not not a not a pizzeria at all. Uh. And the owner was named Theodoro's Kiriakopolos. I think I got that right. Um. And this was located at five hundred Sterling Road there in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. So he got the arson pinned on him. A grand jury charged the pair with mail fraud, criminal conspiracy, and used to fire to commit a federal felony ouch um. And this is because you know there's an insurance claim involved, right, oh a million. That might be an unfair assumption on our maybe, but it's some just want to see the world burn or the very least certain restaurants. Um. But this is important, right because other than Decker himself, uh, the events seemed unrelated. But his involvement in this arson scheme really calls his entire credibility. Mean, you know, he he was he was pinched the first time for receiving stolen goods. Now he's committing mail fraud and arson. You know, it seems really sketchy his whole kind of account of things. But again, there are others that are that are seeing this happen. But it does indicate a strong ability or willingness at least to tell stories to the public. Right, well, I had from my mind, it's more that it could be taken as indicating his overall willingness to portray a false narrative. I don't know, I don't I don't know if it's fair to see it's strong willingness, but it's definitely there's definitely a proven case where he was totally fine with doing that. Maybe maybe that's from desperation, right, um, because people can be driven to crimes of necessity. Maybe that's a maybe that's a completely unrelated event because people have bad stuff happen and people make unrelated mistakes in their lives, or or you know, maybe the devil made him do it. So at this point, we want to hear from you, what do you think, folks? Does the proposed scientific solution for this bizarre rain well, does it hold water wamp wamp or was there something else at play? And if so what, Because I'll be honest, like, the the ice standing seems a really good explanation for how water could get into the house, if not through the pipes, But from the eyewitnesses explanation, it doesn't. It sounds like a out of them grew up in an area where they would have been familiar with ice stamming, right, Like they would have known that uh certain types of weather it can cause certain types of leaks. And this from their descriptions, at least from the way they're depicted describing these things, it doesn't it doesn't appear the thought that's what was going on. Yeah, it looks, at least on camera in the in the things that have been shot for those unscripted series like it is, it is much more of a there's much more water in these places than you would find if there was moisture in between the walls or the ceiling or something. Uh, and it was just dripping out from the drywall or you know, whatever the wall was made of at the time, it seems like more, but again, we don't know. I've been I think the most convincing thing to this entire story or the eyewitness accounts of these police officers, simply because it, you know, you listen to them who they've given interviews. I believe them that they're actually police officers, that they actually went through this stuff, because they appear to be baffled by it. And these are these are as an occupation where you're trying to find answers for things, especially if you're an investigator. Maybe not necessarily to the extent that I'm thinking of, if you're you know, just in an officer who is on the street or something responding to calls. But this, like, I believe them that they saw something strange that they could not define or explain, and we want to hear We wouldn't hear from you, especially if maybe you've encountered something like this that you are at a loss to explain. We would love to hear your story. We try to be easy to find online where on Facebook, We're on Instagram, we're on Twitter. We particularly like to recommend our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy when you can share, uh, your personal experiences, your opinions of this case with the best part of the show, your fellow listeners. But hold on, you might be saying, I do know what happened to Don Decker, and I hate social media because those are somehow related. I'm freestyling here, folks, But the point is, if you don't care for social media, you can also give us a call directly. We have a phone number, that's right. The number is one eight three three s T D W y t K. 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