Oakville blob incident

Details: On August 7, 1994, in Oakville, Washington at 3am, rain began to fall, blanketing a twenty square mile area. Though that is common there, residents began to note that it was not water but a strange, gelatinous substance they had never seen before. Over a period of three weeks, it fell a total of six times. At the time it first began, Officer David Lacey was on patrol with a civilian friend. When he turned his windshield wipers on, they smeared it against the windshield instead of washing it off. The obscured windshield forced him to pull into a gas station to try and clean it manually, after donning a pair of latex gloves for safety. He described it as being "very mushy, almost like if you had jello in your hand." Local resident Dotty Hearn stepped outside after it had stopped and noticed it was everywhere. At first, it looked like hailstones to her, but when she touched it, she noticed that it had an odd gelatinous texture.

By the afternoon that day, David, Dotty, and various other residents had become mysteriously and violently ill. They described having difficulty breathing, extreme vertigo, blurred vision, and an increasing sense of nausea. Beverly Roberts, another resident, said that everyone in town contracted a flu-like illness that lasted two to three months. Additionally, several cats and dogs that came into contact with the substance fell ill and died.

An hour after first noticing her symptoms, Dotty was found sprawled on her bathroom floor, conscious but very weak. Her daughter, Sunny Barclift, described her as feeling cold and sweat-drenched and looking pale. She was moved to the hospital where she stayed for three days and was diagnosed with a severe inner ear infection. As she was being moved to there, Sunny remembered the odd rain and, thinking there might be a connection to Dotty's illness, collected a sample and sent it to the hospital. A lab technician examined it and found that it contained human white blood cells but couldn't identify what it was or how it came from the sky. The sample was quickly sent to the Washington State Department of Health for further study. Mike McDowell, a microbiologist at the department, noted that it was teeming with two species of bacteria, one of which lives in the human digestive system.

Because of Mike's findings, it was initially speculated to be human waste from an airplane, but Federal Aviation Administration regulations require that to be dyed blue, while it was perfectly clear. Furthermore, regulations forbid pilots from releasing this "blue ice" in mid-flight. Nearly a year after Dotty fell ill, she mailed a sample she had stored in her freezer to AmTest Laboratories, a private research lab. There, while analyzing it, Tim Davis, another microbiologist, believed he saw an Eukaryotic cell; complex, nucleus-containing cells that are present in most living creatures. This meant that it is or had been alive.

One theory as to its origins was that one of the military's naval bombing runs at sea had accidentally destroyed a school of jellyfish and sent their pieces flying into the atmosphere, (Star Jelly) where they settled in Oakville, 50 miles inland. The distance the parts would've traveled, the number of times it fell, and the lack of any rotting smell in it put this theory in doubt to most residents. While the Air Force confirms that they were doing practice bombing runs over the Pacific Ocean in August 1994, they deny knowledge of the substance or any involvement in creating or dispersing it. Oakville residents are skeptical of this; prior to it, many noticed a significant - almost daily - amount of slow-moving military aircraft in the skies above. Some believe Oakville was the site of a military experiment, designed to test a new biological weapon or to test the possible damage a biological attack on U.S. soil could do. No samples of the substance exist today.

Extra Notes: This case first aired on the May 9, 1997 episode.

Results: Unsolved

Links:
 * Oakville Blob on Unsolved.com
 * Oakville on Wikipedia
 * Mystery blobs rain on Oakville
 * Rain twice brings mysterious, gelled blobs
 * Blobs From Space! They're Strange, They're Gooey, They're Falling From the Sky
 * They're alive: Mysterious blobs contain cells from living creatures
 * Mystery blobs were once alive
 * Television crew investigates mysterious blobs
 * The Day Blobs Rained Down on Oakville
 * 20 Years Later: The Oakville Blob

From Wikipedia
On August 7, 1994, a resident reported that a translucent, gelatinous substance had rained down in the night; she expressed concern that it may have caused her and her mother to become ill, and speculated it may have been the reason her kitten died. When the substance appeared again, samples were collected and tested by a local doctor, who initially stated that the substance contained human blood cells. Further testing by the Department of Ecology refuted these results, as tests showed that there were no nuclei present. Several theories were given by residents, including wondering whether the substance might have been waste from a commercial plane toilet or whether it may have been particles of deceased jellyfish that had evaporated and been incorporated into a rain cloud. No theory was ever proven to be correct, but for a time, the incident received coverage in several media outlets, including The New York Times, and a segment was produced about it for an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Photo of the day
Source: https://www.whaleoil.net.nz/2015/10/photo-of-the-day-564/

Firstly, the story is true, but the picture of a ‘giant blob’ that often circulates with this story is something else, and not related to the incident. It is in fact a photograph of eggs from the?Northwestern Salamander.?The 1994 newspaper accounts of the incident describe the globs/ blobs as ?half the size of rice grains? which is far different than the image associated with the story.

The townspeople of Oakville, Washington, were in for a surprise on August 7, 1994. Instead of their usual downpour of rain, the inhabitants of the small town witnessed countless gelatinous blobs falling from the sky. Once the globs fell, almost everyone in Oakville started to develop severe, flu-like symptoms that lasted anywhere from 7 weeks to 3 months.

No-one could successfully identify the blob, and how they were connected to the mysterious sickness that plagued the town.

Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack said, ?It all happened in Oakville, Washington, population 665. Here in Oakville, clouds fill the skies daily, bringing rain some 275 days a year. So, when it began pouring on the morning of August 7, 1994, no one was particularly concerned ? until they realized it wasn?t raining rain. It was raining tiny blobs of gelatinous goo. It came down in torrents, blanketing 20 square miles, and brought with it something of a plague.?

At 3:00 am the rain began to fall, and over a period of three weeks, the rain would fall a total of six times. Oakville resident Beverly Roberts told the show that sickness was widespread, ?Everybody in the whole town came down with something like the flu, only it was a really hard flu that lasted from seven weeks to two or three months.?

The show interviewed Officer David Lacey at the time, who said that the ?goo? came from nowhere. ?We turned our windshield wipers on, and it just started smearing to the point where we could almost not see. We both looked at each other and we said ?gee this isn?t right?. We?re out in the middle of nowhere, basically, and where did this come from?? Lacey said that when he touched the substance, he became concerned. ?The substance was very mushy, almost like if you had jello in your hand. You know, you could pretty much squish it through your fingers. We knew it wasn?t something we would normally see, because we had never experienced it before.

We had some bells go off in our heads that said that basically ?this isn?t right, this isn?t normal.? The show states that samples were sent off to Washington Department of Ecology microbiologist Mike McDowell for testing, who was interviewed by National Geographic in another show that he believes that this was not natural. ?We found to 2 organisms, pseudomonas fluorescens and enterobacter cloacae.? Said McDowell, who added these organisms could lead to severe illness.

Before anyone else could test his samples, McDowell says they disappeared. ?I came in, and the material was not where it was supposed to be. I asked management ?what happened to it?? and the exact words were ?Do not ask.?? McDowell added, ?This material, and I have no proof one way or the other, was manufactured by someone for some purpose, and for some reason, Oakville was chosen as the test site.?

It made people sick, including:

Maurice Gobeil:

?I got sick, my wife got sick, my daughter, everybody that lived here got sick.?

Beverly Roberts:

?Everybody in the whole town came down with, like, a flu, only it was a really hard flu. It didn’t last, like, 7 days. It lasted 7 weeks, 2 or 3 months.?

Officer David Lacey was on patrol with a civilian friend at 3:00 AM when the downpour began:

?We turned our windshield wipers on and it just started smearing to the point where we could almost not see. And we both looked at each other and we said, ?Jeez, this isn’t right.? I mean, we’re out in the middle of nowhere, basically, and where did this come from??

Officer Lacey pulled into a gas station to de-goo his windshield. As an added precaution, he put on a pair of latex gloves:

?The substance was very mushy. It’s almost like if you had Jell-O in your hand and you could pretty much squish it through your fingers. We did have some bells go off in our heads that basically said that this isn’t right, this isn’t normal.?

Local resident Dotty Hearn was equally puzzled.? By the time she stepped outside that morning, the storm had ended but the blobs were everywhere:

?It looked like hail laying on top of the wood box and everywhere else.? So I just went over, and I touched it, and it wasn’t hail. It was a gelatinous-like material.?

That afternoon, Officer Lacey suddenly became ill:

?I was to the point where I could hardly breathe. I started to put it together that, possibly, whatever the substance was, it made me violently sick like I never had been before, to the point where it just totally shut me down.?

Across town, Dotty Hearn was sick also:

?I started feeling dizzy. Everything started moving around and around, and it got worse, and, as it did, I became increasingly nauseated.?

An hour later, Dotty’s daughter and son found her sprawled on the bathroom floor. Sunny Barclift is Dotty?s daughter:

?She was cold, drenched with perspiration. My mom had been vomiting. She had extreme vertigo. She complained that she had difficulty with her vision, her vision was blurring.?

Dotty spent the next three days in the hospital. The diagnosis: ?a severe inner ear infection. But Dotty?s daughter had a different idea:

?For some reason, as we were going out the door, I remembered the substance and I wondered if perhaps it might have had some sort of an effect on her, if it might have made her sick.? So I opted, at that moment, to take a sample of this gelatinous material to the hospital.?

From Sunny Barclift:

The Unsolved Mysteries segment on the fallouts was probably the most accurate media piece done on the subject. Not all information was covered during the program but what they did cover was correct. Oswiler did not find human white blood cells in the substance. That was done by a lab technician where my mother was hospitalized after coming in contact with the substance. I personally carried a sample of the gel to the hospital. Mike Mc Dowell the epidymiologist for the Washington State Health Lab found two types of bacteria in the gel. Over time and after studying the substance he concluded it was a man made material and called it a matrix.

It was in his view a material made for the express purpose of being a delivery method for something like viruses or bacteria. Oddly, the material was kept in a medium containment facility and disappeared. When he reported it to his supervisor he was advised not to ask any questions. I have every reason to believe that the fallouts (there were 6 of them in August 1994) was a military exercise. I came across information about 2 years ago that led me to that conclusion.

The notion that the blob like gel came from jettisoned human waste from an airliner was dismissed by the FAA as that material is dyed blue by regulations. The blobs were clear. No color. The idea that the blobs may have been remnents of jelly fish was ridiculous. The jelly fish would have had to be blown up into the jet stream, floated 50 miles inland and over a period of 3 weeks fallen 6 times. It never made sense and still doesn?t.

My mother and I saw black military aircraft flying over her farm several months before the fallouts and they continued periodically for several months after. The aircraft was witnessed by many in the area including a county counselman who I spoke with. He had also wondered about the aircraft as they flew over his farm as well. I do not know who originally posted the photo of the gelatinous material shown above but you are correct it is a fake.

Some people believe the remote Oakville town was the site for military to experiment a new biological weapon or to test the possible damage of a biological attack. The U.S. air force confirmed they were doing practice bombing runs over the Pacific in August 1994, but they denied any involvement in the mysterious substance. The locals of Oakville, however, are skeptical of this, because many Oakville residents say they noticed, almost daily, slow-moving military aircraft in the skies before the blobs poured down.

According to a popular theory, the rain of blobs originated from one of the military’s naval bombing runs in the ocean 50 miles (80 km) away from the farm causing accidental explosion within a school of jellyfish, which were then dispersed into a rain cloud.

Read more about this weather related phenomenon sometimes called as?Star Jelly. This theory was so popular in the town that there was a discussion of holding a jellyfish festival, also the local tavern concocted a new drink in honor of the incident – “The Jellyfish” composed of vodka, gelatin, and juice.

There is little doubt that something rained down on Oakville in August 1994. With little physical or photographic evidence, it is doubtful that this mystery will ever be solved. And with any unsolved mystery, a host of theories abound about the origin of the blobs.

Origin of the image
Original: http://www.fotopedia.com/albums/BafR2DGRNrw/entries/6PUW5qEgJw0 Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20131022150403/http://www.fotopedia.com/albums/BafR2DGRNrw/entries/6PUW5qEgJw0

It's a photo of "Northwestern Salamander" (Ambystoma gracile) eggs.

Oakville Collusion Theory It has been suggested by some skeptics that the residents of Oakville have enhanced the original story for notoriety. The original news report in fact stated that local residents were discussing an annual jellyfish festival, and mentioned a drink called “The Jellyfish” at a local tavern.