The Oakville Blobs

The Beginning

In Oakville, Washington State, rain is not unusual. It can rain a lot, actually. However, on August 7, 1994, instead of the normal H2O, flecks of goo smaller than a grain of rice fell down. Gloopy, translucent blobs, similar to Jell-O hailed from the sky at such a volume that they became visible across the ground and on shed roofs. 

At that same day, people started getting sick with flu-like symptoms from contact or being close to the blobs, some even  reported of cats and dogs dying after sniffing the blobs. Local resident Dotty Hearn had been in contact with the mysterious blobs that had been raining down during the night. Dotty started noticing symtoms of nausea and dizziness. An hour later, Dotty was found sprawled on her bathroom floor. She was very weak, but still conscious. Her daughter, Sunny Barclift, took her mother to the hospital where Dotty stayed for three days. The doctors diagnosed her with a severe inner ear infection. Sunny remembered the gelatinous blob-rain, and thought there might be a connection between her mother's acute ear infection and those blobs she had been close to just hours before she fell violently ill. 

Therefor, Sunny collected a sample and sent it to the hospital for examination. 

Unidentified Cells

In the hospital lab, it was found that the blob contained human white blood cells but no one could say what it was or why it came from the sky. The sample was quickly sent to the Washington State Department of Health for further testing. 

Mike McDowell, a microbiologist, reported finding two species of bacteria in the Oakville Blobs. One of these was known to live in the human digestive system. This prompted the suggestion the gelatinous blobs were concentrated fluid waste from an airplane, but it was considered unlikely by Federal Aviation Administration, since toilet fluids are typically dyed blue, giving it the nickname “blue ice”. 

At the Washington State Department of Ecology, scientist Mike Osweiler, said that “a number of cells of various sizes” were found in the blobs when they looked into it, as well as two types of bacteria. However, they were not able to identify them. Another significant finding was that none of the cells found had any nuclei, which means that the previous claim that the blobs contained human white blood cells, was refuted. Human white blood cells have nuclei. 

The Jelly-fish Theory

A more intriguing theory to explain the Oakville Blobs, is the blowing-up-jellyfish-theory. I don't think the jellyfish themselves were the main targets, but happened to be the in the way of the bombs the 354th Fighter Squadron  dropped in the Pacific ocean at the time. I hate when that happens. 

Over the next three weeks, blobs would be raining down on five more occasions, over an area of some twenty square miles. The distance the party-streamer jellyfish would've traveled and the amount of times it rained down in the same area, doesn't seem like a likely story. Adding also that jellyfish are made up of eukaryotic cells like other animals, which contain nuclei.

The cells found in the blobs did not contain nuclei, and the only kind of life we humans know, that would lack nuclei, would be made up of prokaryotic cells, found in bacteria and archaea. For those who want to know;  Archea are a huge part of Earth's life. They can be found in the microbiota of all living organism and are considered to be one of the "ancient ones". The ones that lived before everything else lived. They also live in our guts, mouth and on our skin. Side-note, we have more bacterial cells, than actual human cells, so we are more kind of bipedal bacterial colony in a human skin-suit, than actual human. Mind-twisting, I know...

Anyway, no clear examples of archaeal pathogenes or parasites are known, so it's unlikely they would cause that kind of illness as the residents described.

The Military Experiment Theory

While the Air Force confirms that practice bombing over the Pacific Ocean was indeed happening in August 1994, they totally deny knowledge of any gelatinous substance falling down, as well as denying any involvement in creating or dispersing forbidden Jell-O.  

As expected, the Oakville residents are skeptical of this, rightfully so. I mean, who trusts the military... Add to that, prior to the blob-rain, many residents noticed an increased and almost daily amount of slow-moving military aircrafts in the skies. This makes some believe that Oakville was the involuntary candidate of military experiments.  The blobs could have been a new biological weapon or a test of the possible damage if a biological attack was happening on U.S. soil. It's not that the military or whoever created the blobs would hand out forms of consent to the residents and say "Hey, we have this bio-weapon, do you mind if we test it on you? Like, it's just a small test. Nothing to worry about. And no, you're not getting paid." Not many people in their right mind would sign up for that.   

And peculiarly, no samples of the substance exist today. Not in a lab, not in an official department, not in anyones fridge or hidden bunker. What we know of. In fact, the Washington Department of Health claims they have no records of ever receiving any blobs and never investigated them. 

Other Reports of Wierd "Rains"

Throughout human written history, there have been some wierd weather happening around the globe. Frogs, fish, worms, and what not have all seemingly been raining down for us humans to ponder and wonder. In 2013, slime was found in Somerset, UK. Despite testing, no conclusion was ever made of what it was. 

But what about blobs? There have actually been reports of a similar substance raining down elsewhere, under the name of  ‘star jelly’, ‘astral jelly’ or ‘astromyxin’. The naming comes from a legend claiming that those blobs falls from the sky during meteor showers. And August is the month of the meteorshower called the Perseids, so a meteor shower is in the right timeline. But what would that blobby mass be? Space-snot? 

Space-snot or not, what did happen in Oakville, in August 1994? Could the phenomenon be explained by mass-hysteria or mass-hallucinations? One have to consider the population was and still is around 700 people, and only a dozen of those people claim to have fallen ill due to the blobs. That is about 2 % of the population, and that is not much, it's just slightly below the limit of quantified data. But, that doesn't mean it never happened. Something clearly happened, and those 2% that did get sick, either as a result of the blobs or they just happened to be ill that very day, they still have their experiences. We might never know what those blobs were, how hey got there or where they came from. We might never know if it was "star jelly" or military experiments. But the truth is out there. 

Maybe.