Podcast Summary: The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Episode 625 – “Unexplained Phenomena: The Dead Village, Rain Phenomena, YouTube Mystery”
Date: January 23, 2026
Host: AJ (The Why Files: Operation Podcast)

Episode Overview

This episode of The Why Files: Operation Podcast dives into three eerie, unsolved mysteries: a time-slip experience in a seemingly dead English village, a paranormal “rain man” case connected to trauma, and the bizarre YouTube enigma known as Unfavorable Semicircle. True to the podcast’s style, each story is presented with dramatic tension, rich detail, and an open-ended invitation to wonder about the boundaries of reality.

Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. The Dead Village of Kersey, Suffolk, 1957 (01:07–12:45)

• Incident Recap:
  Three Royal Navy cadets, William Lang, Michael Crowley, and Ray Baker, encountered an inexplicably silent, empty Kersey village during an exercise. There, natural sounds ceased, the environment appeared frozen in time, and oppressive dread set in.

• Striking Details:

  • The landscape shifted inexplicably from autumn to summer green.
  • House windows were mostly open shutters, few modern features present, and no signs of life except for smoke that hung, unmoving, in the air.
  • Inside a butcher’s shop: “Three oxen carcasses with flesh rotting off the bone. They weren’t the carcasses of cows. They were Oxen... The meat turned completely green with decay, and sticky green fluid dripped from their bodies” (08:50).
  • Ducks stood motionless; dust hung, never settling; trees cast no shadows.
  • The church tower appeared half-built.

• The Escape:
  A heavy sense of being watched drove the cadets to flee the village in terror. Upon reaching a ridge, normalcy returned; Kersey appeared lively again with church bells ringing, cars, and the complete church tower.

• Aftermath and Research:
  Decades later, Lang and Crowley compared memories. Psychical researcher Andrew MacKenzie determined historical details lined up with a post-Black Death era (circa 1420), during which the village was still traumatized by plague. The “time slip” may have been the land’s memory of this collective trauma.

• Memorable Quote:

  “The trauma of 1350 burned so deeply into Kersey that it could still be experienced six centuries later. The land remembered the plague, the absence of life.” (11:30)

2. The Rain Phenomena of Don Decker (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 1983) (14:15–26:46)

• Incident Recap:
  Don Decker, on furlough from prison for his abusive grandfather’s funeral, suddenly causes water to materialize—raining around him—in his friends’ home and later, back in his prison cell.

• Witnessed Phenomena:

  • Drops materialize mid-air, often with no visible source.
  • Sudden, localized temperature drops: “The temperature dropped 30 degrees in a second. He could see his breath... The water was just appearing.” (14:25)
  • In prison, officers witnessed and documented the phenomenon, including water streaming from nowhere, Don being thrown by unseen forces, and deep scratches forming spontaneously on his skin.

• Paranormal Escalation:

  • A gold cross burns Don’s hand; a chaplain’s blessing is physically choked off by an unseen hand.
  • The case classified as “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” (RSPK), possibly linked to Don’s unprocessed trauma.

• Lingering Effects:
  Even years later, minor manifestations persisted.

  “...when his children cry, like, really cry, the kind that comes from deep hurt, a single drop of water appears on their bedroom ceiling. But Don wipes it away before anyone can see.” (26:00)

• Memorable Quotes:

  “I’ve been a cop for 12 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.” (22:59)
  “Don’s story proves that the human mind, under enough pressure, can break reality itself.” (25:15)

3. Unfavorable Semicircle: The YouTube Mystery (26:46–39:29)

• Incident Recap:
  In 2015, a YouTube channel named Unfavorable Semicircle appeared, uploading videos at a rate that defied the platform’s technical limits—eventually totaling more than 72,000 cryptic videos.

• Mystifying Content:

  • Videos varied from seconds to hours, showing abstract shapes, flickering static, screeching audio, hand-drawn symbols (often Sagittarius), and, when stitched together, occasionally revealed a faceless man or space imagery.
  • Viewers described unsettling effects.

    “One Reddit user said he watched for three hours and lost track of time. When he checked the clock, six hours had passed.” (28:21)

• Community Investigation:

  • A Reddit hunt revealed voice coordinates hidden in audio, pointing to the Atlantic Ocean.
  • The channel seemed to react to investigators: “The channel would stop uploading a type... would switch naming conventions... would disappear symbols.” (31:30)

• Theories and Reactions:

  • Was it a numbers station, botnet test, recruitment game, or outsider art?
  • “No art student claimed it as a project. No ARG company took credit. No intelligence agency admitted involvement. It remains one of the Internet’s purest mysteries.” (36:20)

• Notable Discoveries:

  • When coordinates were decoded from the videos, they pointed to “a spot in the Atlantic under 3,000ft of water. And... something’s down there. 130ft long and metallic. The sonar reading dated back to 1982... The Navy classified it.” (38:30)

• Finale:

  • Channel deleted itself the same day NASA retired the Cassini probe. In 2022, a supposed creator called it experimental outsider art, but that failed to explain all the anomalies and technological irregularities.

• Memorable Quote:

  “But when YouTube finally banned the account, they didn’t just delete the videos, they closed the upload pathway, sealed it. But in 2022, that door opened again. Different channel, same upload rate. Gone 48 hours before anyone noticed.” (37:45)

Memorable Quotes by Timestamp

• On the Kersey time slip:

  “They didn’t travel to a parallel universe. They traveled to a memory. The watchers in the windows weren’t plague victims. They were the descendants, the survivors... 600 years apart. They made eye contact through time.” (11:00)

• On Don Decker’s phenomena:

  “He snarled and thrashed and spoke in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. Three deep scratches appeared on his neck. Claw marks, as if something invisible raked him with sharp fingers.” (20:56)

• On Unfavorable Semicircle’s mystery:

  “It was broadcasting into the void. And whoever was supposed to receive the message already knew where to look.” (30:30)

Episode Structure & Key Timestamps

• [01:07] – The Dead Village, Kersey incident
• [14:15] – The Rain Phenomena (Don Decker)
• [26:46] – Unfavorable Semicircle YouTube Mystery

Tone & Style

AJ narrates with a blend of intrigue and matter-of-fact detail, striving to unnerve listeners while sticking to research and witness accounts. The tone is conversational, occasionally humorous, but always inviting curiosity and reflection on unexplained phenomena.

For New Listeners

This episode is an excellent sampling of The Why Files’s campfire-style storytelling and fascination with true mysteries, blending folklore, documented encounters, and a dash of historical research. Skeptics and believers alike are left with questions rather than answers, making these stories persistently unsettling and unforgettable.