American Hauntings: The True Stories behind Hollywood's Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring: The True Stories behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring

by Robert Bartholomew

  A Human Creation

  What happened at 112 Ocean Avenue between December 1975 and January 1976 is both a horror story and a haunting, but it is devoid of poltergeists and demons. It is a tale of imaginary events that continue to be widely accepted in the popular imagination as a genuine haunting, in the face of overwhelming evidence and logic. The Internet is replete with Web sites that take positions both for and against the reality of “the Amityville Horror,” as do many books. The Amityville affair is an interesting lesson in human psychology in the Internet Age. Nowadays believers in the paranormal can surf the ‘net and find Web sites that reinforce their own narrow viewpoints.

  For decades, the residents of Amityville have been haunted intermittently by visitors trying to glimpse the house. In April 1977, Barbara and Jim Cromarty moved in for the astonishingly low price of $55,000: a full $25,000 less than the Lutzes had paid. While the house’s tragic and haunted past repulsed most would-be buyers, they were happy to take the risk. One week later, the Good Housekeeping article appeared, followed soon after by the book. Then the real hauntings began and would drive them from their new home. They were not forced to flee by disembodied voices and disgruntled spirits, but instead by something just as frightening: an invasion of relentless curiosity-seekers. “They usually came late at night. They like to run around the house. Scream and holler,” said Jim Cromarty. It got so bad that police had to assign officers to guard the house on Friday and Saturday nights. At Thanksgiving 1977, three hundred people were outside—all uninvited.99 Souvenir hunters created their own nightmare by grabbing their own piece of history—everything from shingles to wallpaper. On one occasion someone even pulled up a chuck of lawn and ran off.100

  Amityville resident Ed Lowe recalls that on one Sunday afternoon alone, he was interrupted a dozen times while walking in the neighborhood, by people wanting to know how to get to the “ghost” or “spook house.” A journalist, he noted that this included “a van load from Michigan, a Cadillac filled with elderly people from New Jersey; two motorcycles with Texas plates, a Canadian Ford; a fancy sportcar with students from Glencoe, Illin.; two couples . . . from Gastonia, N.C.,” as well as cars from Pennsylvania, New England, and upstate New York.101 One time a group dressed in black robes with macabre hoods marched up to the house and surrounded it. They began chanting while holding candles and crosses. They soon reached a startling epiphany: they had encircled the wrong house! On another occasion, someone placed a ladder on the side of the house, climbed up to the gutters, and scooped out rainwater before dashing off.102 No one is quite sure why. At the height of the chaos, Frank Burch agreed to house-sit while the Cromartys took a vacation from their fishbowl existence. He recalls one night when he became fed up with the incessant harassment and decided to turn the tables. “These people would be peering in the windows with cameras, and I would go outside and walk down the driveway, snapping pictures of them, and they would back off.” The intruders then got angry with him. “Can you imagine that? They’re peering into the windows of my home, taking pictures, and they get angry when I look out and take pictures of them.” Burch said that getting aggressive or scaring them only made things worse. “They would run back to their friends and scream: ‘Look! There’s somebody moving in there!’”103

  Locals became so frustrated by intrusive visitors that there was even a community-wide effort to fight back. As Lowe observed in 1980, “almost everyone in Amityville has lied to scores of intruders. I have told people that the house was moved, burned out, that it sank into the ground, and that it was eaten by pigs.” Misleading outsiders turned into a pastime among locals. Hairdresser Yvonne Miller once told how a middle-aged woman entered her saloon in tears. “She had asked a dozen people in town where the horror house was, and every one of them had lied to her. It took me fifteen minutes to calm her down. . . . Then I gave her directions to Ocean Avenue in Massapequa, five miles away.”104

  The circus atmosphere and parade of strangers peering into windows at all hours of the day and night eventually took its toll. In late 1978, the Cromartys put the house up for sale; it sold the next year.105 The Amityville Horror may have been fictional, but when people believe in imaginary poltergeists and demonic forces, their actions can become real in their consequences. Just ask the Cromartys, Frank Burch, neighborhood residents, and the Amityville police force, historical society, and village council. As American social commentator Walter Lippmann once wrote about the news media’s affinity for creating reality, “[I]t is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.”106 The myth of the Amityville Horror will continue to endure because, ultimately, it is a story that many people want to believe in order to validate their belief in the existence of demonic forces, which in turn supports their belief in God. The facts, however, tell a different story. The real Amityville Horror story is every bit as interesting as any haunting, and it is valuable for the insights it affords us into the human psyche and its penchant for greed, deception, and myth. That is the real story of what happened at Amityville. It is a story that continues to be exploited by Hollywood.

  CHAPTER 6

  Don Decker: The Man Who Could Make It Rain

  What makes this case very unique is that all of the witnesses are so credible. We’re dealing with very good, well-seasoned police officers that were obviously rather frightened and shaken by this, but also had the powers of observation.

  —Chip Decker, paranormal researcher1

  It is one of the most compelling claims of paranormal activity on record. It is supported by the testimony of no fewer than four police officers, a jail supervisor, two respected couples, a restaurant owner, and a reverend. For decades, this case has been touted as defying scientific explanation. In 1983, a young Pennsylvania man named Don Decker was reported to have performed remarkable feats, including making it rain inside buildings and levitating his body in front of astonished onlookers. The case has been promoted as a genuine episode of paranormal activity on such TV programs as Unsolved Mysteries and Paranormal Witness.2 Even skeptics have had difficulty coming up with a plausible alternative explanation for what happened. A decade after he first investigated the case, parapsychologist Peter Jordan, who was one of the first researchers to unmask the Amityville hoax, remarked, “The Donald Decker case is by far the singularly most fascinating and important case I have ever personally been involved in.”3

  On February 24, 1983, twenty-year-old Don Decker of Stroudsburg was on a furlough from the local Monroe County jail to attend the funeral of his grandfather, 63-year-old James Kishaugh, who had passed away four days earlier.4 Decker was serving time for receiving stolen property. During the service he grew distraught upon seeing the outpouring of sympathy for his grandfather, whom he despised because he said he had been abusive. Two days later, witnesses claim that Decker entered a trance and was responsible for a mysterious indoor rain, that he floated and exhibited telekinesis (moving objects with his mind), and that he made a cross heat up. Does the Decker case offer proof of paranormal powers, or is there a scientific explanation?

  The Episode

  The public first learned of the story in 1983, when a report appeared in the Pocono Record that rumors about “Strange Happenings” were sweeping Monroe County.5 The case rose to prominence when the popular NBC TV show Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on the claims,6 and it was featured on the nationally televised Maury Povich Show the following year.7 According to the story, while on compassionate leave from the jail, located in the Pocono Mountains of extreme east central Pennsylvania, on the evening of Saturday, February 26, Don Decker was staying at the home of family friends Bob and Jeannie Keiffer at 528 Ann Street when a series of strange events took place. Decker said that he was in the upstairs bathroom, washing before supper, when he felt strange and confused, fell to the floor, and had a vision of a sinister-looking old man wearing a crown, sta
ring at him through a mirror. He then noticed three deep scratches running down his right wrist. Struggling to his feet, he washed away the blood and went downstairs to eat with the family. When Bob Keiffer saw the blood, Decker told the devoutly religious couple of his vision of the evil face in the mirror, and he attributed the wound to Satan. Before long, water began dripping from the walls and ceiling of the living room, which coincided with a loud noise from above. Mr. Keiffer phoned his landlord, Ron Van Why, who soon arrived to fix what he assumed to be a leak. To their surprise, when they went upstairs to investigate the only plausible explanation they could think of—leaky pipes—nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Keiffer later observed, “We thought there had to be some kind of leak but there’s no water in that end of the house [where it was “raining”] . . . there’s no water lines in any place but the kitchen and the bathroom which were in the back of the house.” The two men were mystified.

  After going downstairs, Decker appeared to be in a daze. They immediately drew a connection between the “rain” inside the house and Decker’s strange mental state. Believing that the house was possessed by an evil force, Mr. Keiffer phoned local police. Officer John Baujan and patrolman Richard Wolbert soon arrived and were baffled by what they saw. Baujan said that not only was there “rain” falling but that “droplets would come from the floor . . . defying gravity.” After the two officers left, the Keiffers and Van Whys—both devout Christian families—confronted Decker, accusing him of causing the “rain.” Decker stood in silence with a blank stare. Pots and pans hanging in the kitchen began clanging. Suddenly, Decker levitated off the ground and was flung against a wall. He then drew attention to deep, bloody scratch marks running the length of his forearm and forming the shape of a cross near the joint of his inner elbow. By now the Van Whys and Keiffers were convinced that Decker was possessed by the Devil. When Officer Baujan later returned to the house, he walked into a tense, electrifying scene. Mrs. Keiffer was in the living room, reading the Twenty-Third Psalm of the bible in an effort to “exorcise” Decker. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. . . . He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness.” After surveying the scene, Baujan said that he too now believed that Decker was possessed by the Devil. Adding to the eerie atmosphere, the mysterious “rain” was confined only to the living room.

  Puzzled by what they had seen, Baujan and Wolbert contacted Stroudsburg police chief Gary Roberts and brought him to the house. Roberts walked in, surveyed the scene, and was unimpressed. He ordered his officers to leave the house and not file a report, as indoor rain was not a criminal act. The next day Stroudsburg police officers William Davies and John Rundle visited the Keiffer home, against their chief’s wishes, and claimed to observe Decker’s body being flung through the air. Davies said that when he handed him a gold cross, Decker dropped it, claiming that it burned his skin. “All of a sudden, he lifted up off the ground and he flew across the room with a force as though a bus had hit him. There were three claw marks on the side of his neck, which drew blood,” Rundle said.

  Decker was soon back in the Monroe Correctional Facility, but when he entered his cell, the rain reportedly returned, and water began to drip from the ceiling. His cellmate began to panic at the sight of the water and was moved to a separate block. Decker was now in the cell by himself. Two guards then began to joke with him about his supposed ability to make it rain. They issued a challenge: to use his “powers” to make it rain on their shift supervisor, Dave Keenhold. A short time later, Keenhold, who was in his office in a distant part of the jail, says that he was struck in the chest by a drop of water that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The incident convinced Keenhold that Decker was possessed by an evil force, and he summoned the jail’s chaplain, William Blackburn, to perform an exorcism. The two men were placed in a room, where Blackburn performed a brief exorcism, during which they both said it began to “rain.” Afterward, Decker said he felt a great relief and lost his paranormal powers.

  In the Eye of the Beholder

  At the time of the events, Don Decker was under extreme stress, serving jail time and experiencing a range of emotions after the death of a relative whom he loathed. Trance states can be triggered by stress and do not necessarily denote mental illness or disorder; they are also easily feigned. It is remarkable that Decker did not receive medical attention and that outside experts from the government or a university were not called in to investigate. Instead, attempts were made to exorcise him. If those around him—the Keiffers, the Van Whys, the police, and the prison supervisor—were all so quick to assume a demonic explanation, their perceptions may have been affected by their willingness to interpret other natural events within a supernatural framework.

  The witnesses’ actions are also inconsistent with the nature of the claims. Imagine you are in a house where supernatural events are supposedly occurring: an indoor “rain” is moving upward from the floor, and a man supposedly levitates and can move objects with his mind. If documented, it is a monumental event in the history of science, for it would defy the laws of physics as we know them and prove the existence of paranormal activity. It was an event spanning several days and supported by numerous eyewitnesses. So why didn’t anyone bother to record these happenings with a video camera or take photos? On Officer Baujan’s first visit to the Keiffer house, he reported seeing a drop of water suddenly materialize from nowhere and fly horizontally through the room. So what did he do soon after witnessing this amazing happening? He and his partner left! Surely they had access to video equipment or a camera that could have documented this remarkable occurrence. Why not phone the local TV station to record the happenings? Decker’s forearm supposedly had deep scratches that formed the bloody image of a cross. Why didn’t anyone have the presence of mind to photograph the scratches and the image? It is the equivalent of a flying saucer landing on someone’s front lawn and no one thinking to record the event. Such lack of foresight is inconceivable. It is important to remember that these events were not said to have happened over a few seconds or minutes but over the course of several days—during which time any one of those involved could have snapped photos or gotten access to a video camera. Yet not a single photo or video of the event was taken for later analysis. The failure by so many people, many of whom were trained professionals, to take such a fundamental action leads to an inevitable conclusion: there was likely nothing out of the ordinary to photograph. However, their actions are consistent with events that were almost certainly exaggerated over time. In the end, we are left with eyewitness accounts from excited observers with a worldview that includes the reality of the Devil.

  Police are often touted as trained observers whose testimony is beyond reproach, yet they are not trained to detect trickery, and they too can be easily fooled, despite their status. Officer Baujan observed, “Droplets would come from the floor, absolutely defying gravity. It was truly amazing. . . . When all of a sudden this drop materializes . . . [i]t flies through the living room, through the dining room and into the darkness of the kitchen and out of sight.” If it was so amazing, why not record it or contact the media? The local newspapers and radio stations would have had cameras. He did return later with Chief Roberts, who did not interpret the “rain” as paranormal. If the activity was so remarkable, why didn’t Baujan return with a camera? Human perception is notoriously unreliable, even under ideal conditions. Stress can alter our perception of the world, and it is difficult to imagine many events more stressful than believing that you are in the presence of a man who is possessed by demonic forces. Shortly after the “rain” began, Bob Keiffer and his landlord examined the upstairs pipes for leaks, but in their excitement, they failed to check the most likely cause: the roof, because as Mr. Van Why observed, “it hadn’t been raining outside for days.” Officer Baujan, Bob and Jeanette Keiffer, and Ron and Romayne Van Why all concluded that an evil force was responsible for the “rain.” Ron said, “There was no shadow of doubt in my mind. I wa
s in the presence of evil.” Mr. Keiffer concurred: “I thought there was some kind of spirit controlling him. Some kind of demon in him.” Officer Baujan even concluded at the time that the strange events were the work of “the Devil.” It is notable that Baujan says that the police chief observed the same phenomenon that they witnessed. “When the chief got to the house, he was pelted with rain just as Rich (Wolbert) and I were,” he said. Yet Chief Roberts considered the water to be a natural event.8 Roberts was called to the house on two separate occasions and saw nothing unusual. “Sometimes what people believe happens and what actually happens are two different things,” he said defiantly.9 A skeptic on such matters, he was also an outsider and had moved to Stroudsburg three years earlier to take up the position of chief.10

  A person’s education level does not necessarily make him or her immune from deception. One of the most brilliant minds of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who was duped by two schoolgirls into believing that they had photographed fairies in their yard. Of course, one’s preexisting belief system has a powerful influence on how one interprets the world. In this instance, it just so happens that all of the principal observers had deeply held religious convictions that affected their interpretation of what they were seeing.