OAKVILLE, Wash. — The mystery of the “Oakville Blob” may never be solved, but that doesn’t stop the people of the small Grays Harbor County timber town from talking about it.
"I actually believe it happened, something happened, I don't know what," said Marilyn Ames.
On August 7, 1994, residents of Oakville reported finding a gooey substance that had fallen during an overnight rainstorm.
“I know I became very sick to my stomach, severe vertigo,” Dotty Hearn told KING 5 News in 1997 after the story got national attention on the “Unsolved Mysteries” television show.
Hearn blamed her illness on the substance and said her kitten mysteriously died after the storm.
State investigators initially determined the goo was organic, but was officially listed as “unknown.” They were prevented from doing further experiments because the samples were lost within a year, according to Washington Department of Ecology spokesperson Curt Hart.
”I don't know, it’s still kinda spooky,” Clarence Hankins said Wednesday on the anniversary of the sticky storm.
The tree farm owner remembers finding what he thought was sap on many of his trees. He always believed it was fuel dropped from a passing airplane.
Other theories claimed the substance was human waste dropped from a commercial aircraft, or jellyfish parts that made it into clouds after Air Force bombing training runs in the Pacific.
The mystery is featured in a Netflix documentary series, “Files of the Unexplained.”
In the 1997 “Unsolved Mysteries” episode, Robert Stack, the show's host and former actor, summarized the incident at the end of the segment: ”At present, it’s impossible to say what the strange goo was or where it came from. Unfortunately, all samples of the substance are gone, making further study impossible. Perhaps the answer will come someday soon when the skies open up over another small community and the blobs once again fall to earth.”