The Bizarre Tale of the Rain Man

Energy Up, Energy Up, Red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. This story that I have today starts off in kind of uh low energy mood. Okay, well, could let's just set those expectations low today. That way you'll be sure to have something better than you're expecting. It's gonna be great, I mean, sorry, it's gonna be okay, you're really sellimant. Wow. No, it's gonna get better as it goes on. This this is one of those that crescendoing, like it just grows into this what Yakay. It's a very strange mystery here. It all started in a jail cell. This guy Don Decker had been caught with stolen property and needed to serve a few months for that. You know standard you know how that is, Michelle, right, because you've probably been in jail. I have been in the back of a police car. But that wasn't my fault. It's it's never never. It was not my fault. I had been robbed and they needed to know where I was, where I was when I got robbed, so they put me in the back of the police car. And then while we were parked looking at where I was robbed, some people stole a car crashed it and so those cops had to go deal with it. So I sat in the back of the police car for three hours like a cop. That was so b and like they kept the cops kept coming up and apologizing to me, and I was just sitting in the back of the car car and little kids were walking up and looking at me and waving at ya. Kids. You don't want to end up end up like me, robbed and stuck in the back of a police car and not arrested, but just sitting here, uh for three hours. That's terrible. But oh man, what could you do? Anyway? Back to this poor man who's stuck in jail, Don is twenty one years old and he's still figuring out his life. He then just gets a call is that his grandfather, James Kishaw, had died and he was being granted furlough to Glowy's funeral. So this story is just sad, right, just like a lot of scary stories. I mean, I feel like for something to be scary for me. It has to have that sad factor. This is pretty sad. It just starts off in a funeral. What else could I ask for? This was actually a challenging time for him. Yeah, it was just I mean, imagine just being in jail. He had been going through a tough time, you know because looking back when he was growing up. And this is just a like a trigger warning case you're sensitive to these types of things, but slight mention of child abuse here he had been abused by his grandfather who was the one that had died, and he needed to go to the funeral. So it was a conflict, internal conflict, and I don't know, you know what that is? What that was for him. He was given, you know, a chance to get out and go to the funeral. Plus you know, get a chance to be out of jail. You're like, yeah, I'll go. And it was February twenty fourth, in nineteen eighty three, and this is in Droutsburn, Pennsylvania, and he was going to be staying with some friends after the funeral, And so they got to five twenty eight a street in Pennsylvania and he started getting ready for bed. This is after the funeral, after the whole everything happened, and he goes upstairs, goes to the bathroom, you know, washes his face, his teeth, whatever, and then he has a seizure. He just fell to the floor. Don himself then said that at one point he saw a crowned man staring down at him. I don't know how I feel about that. Is it like a beautiful crown man or is it like the ice king in Game of Thrones? I don't know, But I imagine this creepy, like I don't know why, imagine that Burger king guy completely different than what you came up with. That's not pleasant either. None of these are pleasant. Yeah, just imagining that to me is like, oh, like it might be part of you know, something's going on in your brain right now, so don't trust it. But once he recovered, he looked over to his arm and saw that there was a claw mark on his left wrist from the Burger king guy. Yeah, I'm telling you, Burger King. I think it's also because that one doesn't talk, you know, like Jack talks. Jack in the Box talks. So it's like it's normal in a way. And he has a family, a normal family with kids that are it though? Like his wife is like a normal, normal person. Yeah, and it's of the weird head. But yeah, like he's just a normal guy. The burking guy is a freak. Can you can tell? Everyone in the paranormal world talks about claw marks and the three scratches and how those things are the signs of something evil happening. Right, But I mean, in this case, you're in a bathroom, you fall to the floor, which is pretty gross already. Maybe it's a clean floor. Maybe these people are clean. We don't know, uh huh okay, okay, sure, yeah, a bunch of twenty one year olds. I guess their bathroom wouldn't be that clean. But anyway, continue continue, Yeah, so maybe something scratched them. We're just going off of what he said, right, he saw the claw marks. So he went downstairs and sat on the cow in the living room and he's just chilling. You know, it's the eighties, doing eighties things with his friends. And that's when he felt a chill going down his spine and then he went into a trance like state. I imagine it, Like he's just still staring into nothing and everybody's just like, what's going on? Okay? That's weird. Then water starts dripping down the walls what and everyone was confused. They're like, oh, oh, like something's happening, right, And all of a sudden, water starts coming down from the ceiling. So they're kind of like, this is weird. Oh no, go check the bathroom upstairs. Maybe something happened. First thing I would do, right, But they go upstairs and they're like, this is normal. It's perfectly fine. So as they're looking at, you know, the water coming down, they start noticing odd things. This isn't just like, you know, something dripping from a certain area, it's like coming up from the whole ceiling. So they think there's a major league going on. So once they go and check out everything and they can't find it, they call the landlord and the landlord's wife arrives and she's like, you know, there's no pipes in that area where the water's coming from. I don't know what's going on. So they go to the bathroom check it. Everything's fine, and they're just freaking out. This is so weird. Don all this time was just still and just silent, just sitting there. I guess they're just letting him have his time his grandpa just died. They had a heavy emotional relationship. He's been in jail. Like, let the guy decompress, you know, let the rain come down when you think it can't get any worse, though it does. Along with the landlord's wife, whose name was Romaine. Just have to include that because it's such a cool name. Romaine, like the lettuce. Yeah, I guess, except with the why so Romaana so like Romayne like Romaine let us, but with the y instead of the eye Romaine. Huh weird? Okay? Romaine. Then also two police officers come with her. Why did she call the police? Maybe she didn't feel safe. You didn't call the police for a leak? I don't understand. Maybe she was thinking they were damaging her property and she wanted to document it. Maybe she's a Karen. I don't know. Romaine's actually a Karen, the original Karen. And the two police officers are John Bohan and Richard Wolbert who gave this. They gave the strangest testimony of all this stuff. Their testimony says that yes, water was coming out from the ceiling, but that it was traveling in unusual directions. That means it's not just going up and down, like literally going up and down, up water, going up and coming back down, going sideways, and just behaving just in a strange way. And then part of their report it also said that they saw a mist forming in that living room right in the middle of the room. The group of friends and Don were asked to leave because they wanted to figure out what was going on, and it was odd. Plus the landlord's wife was like, I kind of want them out of here for now, let's just sort this out. There were weird things about it. Though. The living room was the only place that was affected by this rain. You would step out of there and it would everything would be fine, So it was it was weird. Also weird that they're all just still hanging out in it, you know, like you're in a why not go to the one drive room in the house, you know, like you're all just sitting in the living room still while they all just they're just like, let's take this to the kitchen, and they're just in the kitchen while it's raining in the living room. But meanwhile Don's sitting there and they just put an umbrella over him, aplochoing non umbrella. Here you go just do your thing. You got a lot of process. Here's a umbrella. Here you go. So they basically tell him to leave and they step out, and as soon as Don leaves, the water stops. Near that house was a restaurant. Now I'm not sure if it was a diner or a pizzeria owned by this woman named Pam Scrofano or Scraffano. I guess it sounds like a pizzeria owner scraf sc scraf pizza. So we're going with pizzazz. That's where Donna and his friends Bob and Jeanie, who are the other people that were there. They end up going that night to talk about what happened. As soon as they go inside, Pam was like, hmm, the devil's working through Don. What how'd she know? She's like, huh, something's wrong here. And as they were talking at the table, Don went into another trance like state and then it starts raining in the restaurant. What the fuck? Yeah, Pam is the owner was worrying this crucifix around her name, and she placed it on his skin and said that it was able to break him out of the tracks, and the reason why he was able to break out of it is because he was like, a I burned. So she was like, oh my god, we need to get an exorcist again again. Though, I need to remind everybody exorcisms have a lot of paperwork and back and forth and a lot of stuff that goes on. So you can't just say yeah, it's exercised this guy and then have it happen, right, a lot of official channels and bureaucracies, you know. Anyway, Don leaves, you know, they steps out of the pizzeria and the rain stops. It gets weirder, right they get home from the restaurant. By that time, the landlord whose remains husband, the actual landlord, this guy named Ron Van Why, was super pissed and he was like, it's your fault YadA YadA with the heck band. What are you doing while you're making a rain in here? Yeah? Why are you making it rain in here? Why? How could you? Yeah, you're messing up our furniture. This is terrible. I just love that, the blame and the anger. Yeah, someone is intentionally making it rain with their psychic powers. Donna's just like, oh no. So then he goes into another trance like state. Now at this point, I don't know if it's to just ignore him, which is also valid. Yeah, it's just like imagine you just do that in public, just space house. Yeah, you just disassociate and leave your body. Yeah, totally normal. So he goes into one of those states again and then he starts to levitate off the floor. Wasn't expecting that. Then pots and pans started getting hurled at people. Don was thrown against the wall, and he's just like ow right, he was just like ow So from having this magical power to be able to make it rain and maybe even you know, solve California's you know, drought season or Africa miracles sunder stuff, he went from that to being possessed, Like he just hopped categories into possession. There you go. I mean, also, he wasted all that rain power in a living room and in a pizza restaurant. The police officers were still there and they passed the info to the chief, and instead of wanting to get involved, he told the two officers just to leave it alone. Don't talk about it. You're gonna come off as like silly. This is what I'm imagining, Like, I just don't do it. It's not worth it. It's gonna hurt your career. Just I don't know what was going but he was just like, don't do it be paperwork. It's like, ah, how am I gonna describe this to? No, don't want to deal with it. So anyway, the police officers did not do what they were told. They were like, this is too weird. I want to figure this out, or we want to figure this out. So three officers come back, this time to interview Don, and at this point they were just being nosy about it. Right. Don was either confused or just acting dumb because he couldn't answer the questions properly. So one of the officers decides to give him a crucifix to hold, and then Don said, oh, it burns. Not the best actor. I think it's fantastic, and he dropped it ow it burns. When the officers picked it up, they said that the crucifix was hot to the touch. Don goes into another trans like state and suddenly he starts to levitate in for everybody and then gets thrown again against the wall. The officers went over to help them, and then they noticed the claw marks on his neck. Oh shit. Also, if I were those police officers, I would have left. I mean, it's just like, you know, not my circus, No, my monkey's like when someone starts to levitate, it's like, not your deal. So it was like what am I gonna do? It's like a doctor having to work on a paranormal curse, like are you what are you gonna do? At that point, like imagine they just turn around and walk out. Yeah, it's just okay, well he's levitating and I will good luck, good luck. Time to out. Yeah, that's the end of my shift. After all those things, people noticed that things were just getting worse, so they they call the preacher over and they wanted him to pray over Don. No. I don't think it was an exorcism exactly, because, like I said, they're difficult to they have a whole process to get those done. But a preacher came and was doing his thing and then Don started to convulse and started making it rain again while he was like you know, then they said that it started smelling really bad in there, and they kept going, I mean, black mold is a serious problem. You know when they talk about demons and possession, that smells like a common thing, right, Yeah, it's sulfur usually yeah. Oh, it's like a sulfur smell. Oh no, spooky. This guy, he's going through everything right right now, he's convulsing on the on the floor, starts stinking, and the preacher keeps going. Eventually everything stops, you know, and even the rain stops. I'm thinking this whole time, I feel bad for this guy, like going through everything, this exorcism type of thing, the funeral, the everything. It's just like, oh, this guy just can't catch a break. Does he have to go back to jail in the morning. Yeah, that's where I was going. Yeah, then he has to go back to jail. What a terrible break. He's like, oh, man, So he's back in jail, right, and he's you know, he's already been there for several days. And then it starts to rain in his cell. His cell mate actually called the guards over because water was pouring down from the ceiling and the walls and everything. And both the guard and the janitor saw the mist and the rain in there, and they're like, what the heck is going on? Right? And Don okay, this is according to the guard. Don said that he was able to control the ring. So the guard was like, oh, yeah, prove it make it rain in the warden's office, and a little while later the warden comes out all confused, saying that his shirt was now soaked with water while he was working at at the desk. The jail reverend was then called by the warden and he spoke to Dawn. No one called a doctor, what's the doctor? No, I knows, I gotta call the priest for like everyone of the jail was like, let's call the friese. It's terrible, like honey, yeah, And then it started stinking and then raining. Yeah, and you know, according to the reverend, he opened his bible to pray for Don and the bible didn't get wet and the rain stopped. Then he went over to perform another ceremony on Don and then everything actually ended there, like everything went away. So that's where the theories come in. This was documented by police officers and people at the jail and everything, and it makes me wonder, like why would anybody fake this? Like do you want to be famous? Are you gonna write a book or a movie about this? Yeah? It's weird, I don't know it, just why would this be be a hoax? One of those theories, obviously is that it was a hoax and they wanted to get money, just like all these other people, like your friends, the one that make crop circles, and they just want to make fun of something or I don't know, this is unrelated, but you know that big foot footage huh that we talked about last time with the with the boob to swinging in the air. Yeah, I saw a stabilized version of it. Uh oh, And you don't think it's real anymore? Huh man, And it sucks to think that, but but like, why did they put boobs on it? So they dressed up in an outfit and put boobs on it. It's just if anybody out there, if you include this in the in the episode, and somebody out there listens to this part, and if you happen to watch that, just google the AI stabilized version of big Foot footage. Look at one of their thighs. I don't know if it's just me looking at this. I saw one comment about it. But look at the thigh, like the one that's facing the camera, and watch how it bends as is stepping, and it looks like you know, and when you're bent plastic in like when you crush a water bottle and it just just does that. Yeah, crumple, And I hate to be that guy. I hope it was. Maybe it's the AI fucking up the thing. Maybe it's the AI, but uh uh oh, because when I see it looks just like a person walking with a suit on it. It just looks exactly like that. That's so funny. I'm disappointed those two cowboys faked. Like, think about it would be those two cowboys and one of them dressed like a female bigfoot with boobs, and it was just the two of them out in the woods doing that. Like that's just as weird. That behavior was just as weird, Like what are you guys doing a lot of effort to do a prank? And I'm not saying that people don't put in lots of effort for pranks, but like, I don't know, they've like based their whole career a lot of the other one based their whole career on the prank. So could this have been a hoax for that? Maybe could it had actually been possession he possessed? Was it some type of anger thing because of what had happened and triggered maybe by the funeral? Maybe so angry that it uses the psychic powers to do whatever he's doing, make it rain instead of crying, you make it rain. Wow. You know. And I've heard and actually I believe it that we have these other powers that we don't know about. I'm pretty sure we do. I think, especially if you just swallow your anger so much, that's gonna pop out in weird ways. I used to think of, you know, the movie Matilda. I used to be so jealous of her to be able to leave things around and just with their mind and everything. I was like, what if I try it? And yeah, I'm guilty of trying to move you know, rice crispies and cookies, light things. Yeah, you know what he was able to do, and just how well documented this was makes a story one of the creepiest ones I found. You know, I actually made an episode for this for Dark Memory, and that's actually where we get a lot of the info. So that's a more serious take in case anybody wants to look it up. And you know, some people think though that the guy was a career criminal. I don't know. There's a big jump between just random stealing, which doesn't require much like intellect. Because he got caught and then, uh, faking a gigantic hoax where you make it like you defy physics. I don't know. It's a bit of a stretch that he would be able to pull that off. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I feel so bad for him. I don't know why. I just feel bad for him. The last thing Maddie, who researches this stuff for you know, the episodes for Dark Memory. She said that when she did some digging around, found that the last thing she found out was he was arrested in twenty twelve for arson and an unrelated incident. Wow, the opposite of the rain as you start a fire. Haven't connected those two things. So he was trying to go the other way to try to do another hoax. Maybe maybe not, I don't know. He might just like to watch fire. It might just be a weird sexual thing. You know. Also found ice. It's called like ice damming or something where like water, ice starts to melt and then it kind of drips through ceilings. Interesting. That's a positive, but it doesn't explain anything else like interesting. So could this have been a case of poor plumbing, a hoax, or an actual supernatural ability that can make it rain? The story will remain a mystery. Oh, this is a pretty intense to me to think that it was reported by police officers and guards out of jail that this stuff happened. They would all have to be in on it, which I know it'd be pretty extreme for to get everybody, Like, there's so many eyewitnesses that it's it would be really hard to get them all in sync with a lie. Wait, how old would he be now? So he was twenty one and eighty three, twenty one and eighty three, all the way to twenty three some, another twenty some another twenty so it's plus forty so he would be sixty one. Is that right? Let me see from nineteen eighty three to twenty twenty three. Wow, seaeh, that's forty years. It's forty years. So he was twenty one and nineteen eighty three, so yeah, I had forty to twenty one. Wow. Well, I hope he's out there. I hope he's out there and he's figured something out, you know. Yeah. Yeah, don if you're listening to this, give us a like, I mean, review, subscribe. I don't know if I have those abilities to make it rain. I think I would. I would use them. I would make it rain, But it looks like he needs a building to make it rain. So I know that's the disappointing thing is that you have to be inside in order to make it the bus like a nursery, like get a job there, or maybe yeah, you'd have to chest the limits of your pa. You know, it's like, do you have to be within like with the walls of the nursery work if they're just like a thin plastic or yeah, I'm maybe be like a chef in a kitchen in case, you know, there's a fire. You're just like I got this, guys, which is the dream? You just wash the kitchen at the end of the night, it right, which would be great there you go, Or you know, you're at a grocery store and you're, you know, just sprinkling the fruits vegetable, keep them fresh. You know, you gotta keep him fresh. So there's a lot of ways he could have taken this, and I hope he found one that worked for him, you know, Yeah, I hope. So, I hope he's doing better. I hope he's not in jail or dead. I hope he's alive. I hope he's doing well and making it rain. Ye me too, and making it rain. So what are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise, all right, Okay, bye peace,