The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Strange Mystery of the Oakville Rain

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

What would you do if a mysterious substance fell from the sky? The people of Oakville, Washington, faced this eerie phenomenon in 1994. From health scares to wild theories, the Oakville Rain Incident remains unsolved to this day. Watch now as we delve into the details and explore the potential explanations. Subscribe to The Tape Library for more captivating mysteries and legends. Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Oakville Blobs 02:56 Intro 03:45 The Rain 09:42 Manta Sleep 10:40 The Sickness 16:48 What Fell on Oakland? 25:15 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We both looked at each other, we said, you know, Jesus isn't right. I mean, I got sick, my wife got sick, my daughter, everybody in it lived here got sick. Had a significant amount of military aircraft flying over the home prior to this happening. This isn't right, this isn't normal. It was early August in 1994 when Kathleen Bellinger and her husband were enjoying a quiet few years. days away camping on the Pacific coast, spending their days walking through Washington's Olympic National Park and the stunning views that the beaches provide of the sea. One evening though, they were relaxing in their tent after a long day of hiking when they heard something. Low rumbles

coming from out at sea. Just one or two at first, but then another, and another, followed by what sounded like, water falling. They walked out of their tent and looked over the now darkened sky over the ocean. There, in the distance, they could just about make out that there was something in the sky. Then the sound of jet engines passed overhead, and the rumbles stopped. The following day, the couple were up early again, out for a morning walk along the coast. After the the strange sounds the night before. They had been forced to remain in their tent after a strong rainstorm hit, but then the clouds had parted, and the sun was out. They walked down to the beach, towards the water. When they noticed something odd, there were crabs washed up on the beach,

not something that feels that unusual, right? But there were hundreds of them, and none of them were moving. The couple approached closer still and realised that all the crabs that had been washed up on the beach were dead. But there was something else around the crabs washing up alongside them with each lap of the waves, tiny little blobs of a gel-like substance, only about the size of a half grain of rice, but noticeable due to the sheer number of them covering the beach, stuck to the bodies of the dead crabs. The Bellinger's didn't realize it at the time, but they had just become one of the first witnesses to a mystery that people would still be struggling to explain 30 years later. Welcome to the tape library. I'm really excited to

delve into this one tonight. It's something a little different but I'm sure you all, just like me, enjoy getting into a good unsolved mystery, and this one has it all. I'm not sure of any of you can hear this, but at the time of recording, there's currently a big rainstorm happening outside my window, and it just feels the perfect setting for this story. This video is once again sponsored by our good friends at Man to Sleep, but I'll talk about them a little later. For now, grab yourself a hot drink. Unless it's boiling hot where you are, then I recommend a stiff drink. Dim the lights and and get comfortable. It's time to talk about the strange incident of the Oakville Blobs.

Oakville is a small town, just 40 miles from the coast in Washington State, in the United States of America, running along Route 12 and surrounded on all sides by deep forest. It is quite a secluded area of the country. The population back in 1994 was less than 600 residents. If something strange where to happen in this place. Word would spread quickly. If there is one thing Washington is known for, even on my side of the Atlantic, is rain. The area has on average just under 150 days of rain every single year. So when a storm rolled into town in the early hours of August 7th, 1994, no one would have thought anything of it. It was around 3 a.m. when the clouds opened up and started and started hammering down on Oakville.

Police officer David Lacey was out on patrol at that time, driving down the highway with a civilian friend of his, who was along for the ride. It had been a quiet night, as so many nights in Oakville were. The rain hit and he noticed that his wipers were having a hard time clearing his view. His entire windscreen was quickly covered in the moisture, and he was was struggling to see where he was going. Weirder still, it wasn't just that the wipers couldn't keep up with the level of rain, but it seemed to be smearing a strange paste-like substance across his window. Realising quickly that he would need to pull over, he was relieved to see the

lights of a petrol station and quickly pulled in, driving undercover from the powerful rainfall. He stepped out of the car and instantly stopped in his tracks. There was something on his windshield, and it wasn't train. Lacey grabbed a latex glove from his car and ran his hand across the strange goo that covered his windshield. He described the fill of the substance as jello-like and mushy. He glanced out into the night from the cover of the station, and he could see it all over the floor of the street. Whatever this was, was coming down with the rain. It was in the early hours of the morning that congressional spokesman, Bill Dunbar, got a phone call from an Oakville resident who claimed that blobs were raining from the sky.

Being it was four in the morning, he simply dismissed it as a hoax. But then another phone call followed. And then another, residents were concerned that something strange was falling from the sky. At the same time, Sunny Barcliffe had been asleep when she was awoken by the sound of rain hitting her window. She had moved to Oakville just a few years prior to spend more time with her mother Dottie, who owned a farm in the area. Sunny lay there in bed, looking up at her windows, the rain hit when something unusual struck her. The rain looked thick. The following morning, the rainstorm had passed over, and Dottie got up early to take her dogs out into the garden. Sonny was inside enjoying her morning coffee.

When her mother returned looking a little confused, Sonny asked her mother what was wrong, and she explained that everything outside looked like it was covered in hailstones. But when she had touched it, she claimed that the hail was soft and gooey. Stranger still, the hail didn't melt in her hand. Sunny stepped outside to take a look herself, and sure enough, her mother was.

was right. Everything was covered in a thin layer of translucent blobs, each about the size of half a grain of rice. Sunny was intrigued. What was this substance? She called her brother, a paramedic who also lived in the area. He brought with him a few pairs of gloves and the pair began picking up small samples of the blobs. Sunny decided to run a few experiments herself on the blobs. First she placed it in water and discovered that it would float on top. She then put it in a vial with alcohol to see if it would break down, but it didn't. She even checked to see if it was flammable, but it wouldn't ignite. She wasn't the only resident who had taken an interest in the blobs.

One local reported going to pick up the blobs to see if she could figure out what they were, when she noticed, laying next to a pile of them, was a frog. and a raven, both of which were dead. The next day, Sunny started making phone calls, concerned that whatever this substance was had seemingly rained down on not just her mother's farm, but others as well, potentially covering many crops.

She initially contacted the Department of Agriculture, but they, along with many of the other organisations she called, didn't seem to be super concerned by the strange incident. Bill Dunbar was continuing to get calls himself from concerned citizens, while he vowed to get to the bottom of what has happened. The fact that no one seemingly had been harmed by the goo made it not really feel like a big priority. However, as these phone calls were being made, Officer David Lacey, the policeman who had been caught out driving when the blobs had fallen, was currently staggering into the local hospital. sweating, disorientated, and pale, he was immediately admitted to the hospital, and he wouldn't be the only one. Before we continue on with our story, I just want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Man to Sleep.

Longtime listeners of the tape library will know these guys have been kindly supporting the channel for a few months now, and I'm really pleased they are. I've mentioned previously that I'm really picky about featuring any sponsors on the channel, but I genuinely love these masks. Manta Sleep creates high-quality sleep masks in a variety of styles, everything from weighted masks to super soft silk ones, and even masks with built-in, razor-thin Bluetooth speakers. I've always struggled with sleep masks, but these are so comfortable and allow me to sleep in pretty much any position, as someone that used to suffer from insomnia fairly frequently. I know how important sleep is. So if you think these masks could be helpful to you, then you can find a link to their website in the description. If you use the code tape, you will get 10% off your order. Thank you once again to Man to Sleep.

And now, let's head back to Oakville. Later, on the 8th of August, Sunny returned back to her mother's farm. She entered the farmhouse and discovered something unusual. Her mother wasn't there. She began searching the house and eventually found Dottie, lying on the floor in the bathroom. She had been vomiting. was barely conscious, pale and covered in sweat.

Sunny immediately called 911. But just before they left for the hospital, she suddenly made a connection. Sonny and her brother had been very careful when handling the blobs they had found. Her mother, on the other hand, had touched the goo with her bare hands. She quickly grabbed one of her samples and brought it to the hospital with her. Dr. David Little was working in the hospital that day, when Sunny brought her mother in. It was obvious that Dottie was suffering from some sort of virus, but Sonny spoke with the doctor at length about the blobs that had fallen on their farm.

She pleaded with the doctor to at least look at the sample she brought with her, which he did agree to do. Dr Little handed the sample off to one of the lab technicians, who were shocked to discover, when they placed it under the microscope, that the goo appeared to contain white blood cells, but they didn't have the resources available to identify, what sort of creature the cells had come from. With her mother staying in hospital,

Sunny returned back to the farm. Only remnants of the goo still remained on the property. She approached the front door before stopping for a moment, as she noticed a small, dark shape out of the corner of her eye. There, she found their recently adopted pet kitten, dead, on the decking outside the home. The kitten wouldn't be alone. Numerous pets and livestock in the area fell ill over the coming weeks.

With many dying soon after falling ill, some were reported as being found with a strange green film covering their mouths. Dottie and Officer Lacey wouldn't be alone either. A seeming outbreak of flu had suddenly hit the small town, with numerous people being admitted to hospital, all with very similar symptoms. Sunny was convinced that the blobs had something to do with his sudden illness. spreading throughout the town, and she quickly sent out further samples to various organisations and began speaking to the press. Later that week, a reporter came to visit Sunny at the farm. While they were there, a sudden rainstorm hit. The reporter looked out the window and said something to Sunny that sent chills down her spine. They had noted how the rain

that was hitting the window, looked kind of thick. The blobs raining down on the community wasn't a one-off occurrence. Over the course of three weeks, at least six separate incidents of the blobs raining down were reported over the space of a 20 square mile radius. Each time it did, there was a sudden spike in sick and dead animals being found, and more and more people were being emitted to the hospital, with this mysterious flu.

But this wasn't any normal flu, as one resident noted. People weren't sick for days or a week. They were ill for multiple weeks, and even months in some cases. After four days, Dottie and Officer Lacey were sent home from the hospital. Both apparently had some sort of virus that the hospital couldn't identify, but they were confident that with some medication and bed rest, they would be okay. Interestingly, the majority of Doty's symptoms were actually blamed on a severe inner ear infection, something that a number of people who were hospitalized during this time were also diagnosed with.

At the same time, the results of the various tests being run on her samples started coming back to Sunny. Confusingly, the results seemed to contradict one another slightly. The Department of Ecology concluded they believed it was some sort of biological waste, but they couldn't say for certain what it was. The Washington Health Department concluded that the cells in the blobs did not contain a nukuli, and did not believe that any white blood cells were present. They did, however, find two types of bacteria within the goo, both of which are apparently found in the digestive tracts of humans and most mammals. From one source I read, the bacteria in question is apparently also used to treat plants of

various diseases, seemingly being used to kill off unwanted viruses. The man who studied the blobs at the health department was a microbiologist named Mike McDowell, a man who became, much like Sunny, obsessed with trying to find out what had taken place in Oakville. Mike is unfortunately no longer with us, but during his career he had close connections to the military, apparently being one of the experts called upon during the concerns about anthrax. In the wake of 9-11, Sunny said he did the most research on the blobs out of everyone, although she did send one final sample to an independent lab, a year later, having kept one in the freezer during that time, but they weren't able to provide any conclusive theories on what

the substance was either, might kept the samples in a medium containment facility, worried that it was some sort of dangerous biological material. His leading theory on the blobs was that it was some sort of delivery device for the bacteria contained within, that it was there simply to allow the bacteria to be dropped from a great height and land safely on the population of Oakville. Mike's theory suggested that whatever the blobs were exactly, they were not a natural occurrence. Someone had created them, someone with a specific purpose for making them rain down, on Oakville. This, however, wasn't the official theory that was now quickly spreading like wildfire through the press. The commonly suggested theory at the time, and even in some areas today,

is that what rained down on Oakville was the remains of jellyfish. Those rumbles that were heard by Kathleen at the start of the story were apparently the sounds of the Air Force running practice bombing sessions in the sea, something that had been taking place in the sea, something that had been taking place in the area for some time now. The theory was that the bombing had blown a school of jellyfish to pieces. These remains were then sent up into the air, and ultimately came falling down in the rainfall

that night. As a theory, it feels totally possible. Stories of strange objects and animals falling from the sky have been reported all over the world, and are a phenomena that we are able to explain. But the fact that this apparently happened, six times over the course of multiple weeks raises questions, as does the fact that none of the scientists who looked at the samples

identified them as simply the remains of jellyfish. But the fact that there was military activity in the area is well documented and true. In fact, Dotty and Sonny had noticed a drastic increase in military aircraft flying over Oakville, in the weeks leading up to the rainfall, with Dottie even filming the helicopters passing overhead on some occasions, pointing out they looked like the fabled black helicopters, of many a good conspiracy theory.

In 1997, Unsolved Mysteries did an episode on the Oakville incident, but nothing new was really discovered. It was around this time, though, that Sunny had a strange encounter. She was now working in a diner in the town, and not long after the episode had been released, she had three men walk into her diner that she didn't recognise. Instantly, she felt something was off about them. But as she filled their cups of coffee,

one of the men looked up at her and asked flat out, is this the town where the blobs fell? Sunny told him it was and the man continued to question her. In a manner that made her feel a little uncomfortable, she then specifically mentioned that he asked about her and her family. seeing military aircraft flying in the area during that period. Eventually the men finished up and left. Sonny instantly rushed to the window as they got into their car,

wanting to grab their license plate before they drove away. But seemingly, Sonny wasn't the only one who had felt uncomfortable about the presence of these men. One of the other customers in the diner told her they had already made a note of the plate. The customer said to Sonny that they had been listening into the conversation and then said, I don't know who those men were, but something about them made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Sonny was able to get someone at the local police station to run the plates through their system and discovered that it was registered to Fort Hood, a military post down in Texas. The strange, seemingly military men questioning her, the appearance of military aircraft in the build-up to the incident. and Mike McDowell's theory about the blobs being some sort of delivery device for bacteria, cemented a theory in Sunny's mind that is echoed by many others in recent years,

that the Oakville incident was some kind of military experiment, an attempt to test a delivery device for some sort of biological weapon onto an unsuspecting population, or even to see what affects the bacteria in question, would have when distributed in this way. The Air Force denies this and claims to have nothing to do with the Oakville incident. While similar experiments have been carried out in the past, such as Operation C spray, where the military pumped out what they believed to be a harmless bacteria into the Bay of San Francisco to test how it could spread among the population in the city. However, numerous people fell sick shortly afterwards, with one even dying, although officially it has never been proven that the tests led to those illnesses.

Despite this, it shouldn't have been happening in the 1990s. In 1969, then-President Richard Nixon renounced the usage of chemical and biological weapons, meaning if there really was a test in Oakville, it would be a violation of international treaties. If this was the case, why would the military make such a test? a visibly obvious delivery device, such as a goo that was falling from the air. Although others have pointed out that there have been similar reports of blobs falling from the sky, in other places throughout the country and world. But because these didn't lead to people falling ill, they were mostly forgotten about or not widely documented and studied, as much as the Oakville

incident. In other instances where similar blobs have been found on the ground, a natural explanation explanation has been discovered. Such as the case in Somerset in 2013, where overnight a bird sanctuary was suddenly discovered to be covered in a similarly large amount of blobs. However, this turned out to apparently just be large quantities of frog spawn. To add to the whole conspiracy angle, Mike McDowell was never able to finish his research on the blobs. After his samples went missing.

He told Sonny, and later in life before his passing, his children, that he went to work one day and discovered that his sample was gone. Mike was panicking. He had worked in this lab for decades and had never misplaced the sample before, especially one that he considered could potentially be so dangerous. He immediately went to his supervisor, who simply told Mike to forget about it and to not ask any more questions. The samples were gone. But McDowell did at least ask some more questions of the other staff members in the lab. The receptionist apparently revealing to him that some men in black suits had come to the lab earlier that day and taken the samples with them.

She had not been informed who they were or what organisation they were from. But Mike's supervisor had handed over the samples, apparently with little to no resistance. Many theories about what the rain could have been have been discussed over the years, everything from star jelly to airplane toilet waste, to vast amounts of frogs spawn, but in most cases these theories have either been debunked

or just don't explain everything that happened. In the case of the airplane toilet waste, it was actually officially investigated as a potential cause, as it would have explained the appearance of biological material in the samples. But a key part of why this was dismissed is that Waste from planes comes out blue, not translucent like the blobs had been. The samples that Sunday collected were all sent out to various labs and organisations. They have all been used up in testing, and in some incidents have apparently gone missing, meaning there are no remaining

samples of the Oakville blobs that are known to still exist. The Washington State Department of Health doesn't even have any records of ever having received a sample. despite Sonny keeping detailed records of all the organisations she dealt with during this time. The vast majority of the people who worked on the samples are no longer alive, meaning much of the story of the Oakville incident, now only exists as a combination of oral history and a handful of newspaper clippings. But Sunny continues to this day to try and get answers about what happened to her community back in 1994. If she will ever receive any answers, remains as much of a mystery as the Oakville reign itself. That's all for this entry into the tape library.

As always, I would love to hear your theories on this case. Do you have a theory of your own of what the Oakville blobs were? Or is there some information that I may have missed here that could potentially explain it? If you're watching this on YouTube, then please do drop me a comment below. Or if you're listening to the podcast, then you can find my email address in the description, if you would like to get in touch with your theories. I really enjoyed putting this episode together. It was something a little different after a few episodes of haunted houses and forests,

so I hope you guys had fun with it. If you did and you haven't already, then please consider subscribing. You can also click the like button. I know everyone on YouTube goes on about that, but it really is a super simple way to support creators you enjoy. I'll be back next week with some more true paranormal tales on my second show, Night Drive Paranormal. And then we'll be back here in two weeks with another entry into the tape library. And with that, it's time to say a special thanks to the tape library's wonderful patrons.

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