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Sunday, October 3, 2021

The Philadelphia Blob

 

The Philadelphia Blob

By Cole Herrold



I'm a huge fan of horror, and to me, one of the most both terrifying and interesting are those based on true stories. The infamous Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for example, is based on Multiple Murderer Ed Gein and The Girl Next Door, which was based on the horrendous torture of Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski in 1965. While these horror flicks are based more on true crime, there is a subset of films based on ostensibly true paranormal cases, which includes films such as The Exorcist, The Conjuring, The Haunting in Connecticut, Amityville Horror, The Rite, The Possession, and Fire in the Sky yet most of these cases are relatively new. One of the first films to allegedly be based on a true case is one that does not feature ghosts, greys, or serial killers but an amorphous entity that appeared for the first time in Steve McQueen's stone-cold 1958 classic The Blob.

This account which occurred on September 26, 1950, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was covered in the September 27th issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, started in true 50s fashion when a pair of police officers Joe Keenan and John Collins, were cruising around in on patrol in their red car. The pair had just hit Vare Blvd near 26th street when they noticed something that began to descend from the sky. The object was descending near treetop level, and at first, they thought it was a bizarre parachute. The pair, unsure as to why a parachute would descend assumedly without the aid of a plane, proceeded to think of the worst. It was only three months since America had plunged headfirst into the Korean War, and the papers were running countless articles about the skirmish overseas that it was always on every person's mind. The officers, both due to this mindset and the overall bizarreness of what they had seen, proceeded in calling out for help. They ultimately were able to get ahold of Sgt. Joseph Cook and his driver patrolman James Casper who were out patrolling as well only a street away, and so the pair of cars worked their ways to the assumed landing area of the peculiar parachute.

The group made their way to an empty field on 26th Street, where they had felt that the object had landed, and proceeded to park their cars and head out onto the green field with several flashlights. The group began to walk the area when they began to notice that a bizarre mist had hung along the ground, which appeared to come out of nowhere as the weather was not ideal for such a condition. The group proceeded in through this fog, their flashlight beams cutting through the atmospheric curtain ever so slightly; this continued for some time, and the group was almost certainly ready to turn back until one of the group's flashlights hit something low to the ground. As soon as the artificial luminescence hit the object, it began to glow a vibrant purple and seemed to have a sensation that one could only describe as jiggling.

The group seeing this began to come closer, and now with their beams, all guided towards the purplish haze in the fog, noticed an object that appeared as "a domed disk of quivering jelly, 6 feet in diameter, one foot thick at the center and an inch or two near the edge”. As they looked at this object, they noticed that the mist they were surrounded by seemed to come from the object. As the group tried to focus and pick out more details of the object, they noticed that while the form was what could only be described as gelatinous, it did appear as though inside its mass was some form of concentrated, crystallized kernels. Collins, out of curiosity and certainly following the same mindset as the ill-fated old man in the film this account is based on, proceeded to approach the illuminated mass and slowly knelt down and stretched out his hand.

Collins reached out and began to attempt to lift the strange object from the ground, where he noticed that even though the object was large, the grass and weeds were not bent from the weight of the object. Yet as he held the sticky, slimy object in his hands, an equally incredible incident occurred. The strange quivering mass slowly began to evaporate. Collins let go of what he had left in his hands and watched in awe as slowly from where he touched the entity slowly began to dissipate into the atmosphere, leaving nothing but "a slight, odorless sticky residue." The other officers stood by, and the four watched the amorphous entity for some 25 minutes as the figure began to get smaller and smaller before ultimately disappearing completely.



The group, unsure of what to do with this encounter, simply began to go home that night. On the next day, however, word broke out about their encounter to the local papers, and the police officers while on duty had actually attempted to get a hold of the FBI to investigate the matter. While we cannot speculate if some 1950s Mulder and Scully came to Philadelphia to investigate the sticky specter as there is no true follow up to the case outside of what appeared to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in fact, there is no even confirmation that the FBI did come, yet Cook who got ahold of the Bureau did state he was sheepish in reporting the account due to the fact that the entity did dissipate and therefore there would be nothing to investigate except "a magic circle on the ground where something purple, and quite evanescent once had been." With no follow up this account, therefore, ended with more questions than answers.

Eight years later, local filmmakers Jack Harris and Irvine H. Millgate would unveil to the world a sci-fi horror flick that would shake the world; this film would become known as The Blob. For those unfamiliar with the film, the film tells the tale of an extraterrestrial slimeball that crash-lands to earth in a meteor and goes around attacking and dissolving members of the town while growing with every life it takes, only to be stopped by eventually being frozen. The film has since been spoofed several times, had a 1972 early Meta-sequel called Beware! The Blob and then the franchise was ultimately remade into the Sci-Fi /Body Horror masterpiece in 1988. The amorphous monster has since been included in countless lists of the world’s greatest monsters and has even spawned a festival that takes place in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania (where they shot the film) that includes recreations of the infamous theatre scene and also some of the ooze used in the film on display.



While the Philadelphia Blob is a particularly interesting case from the original newspaper article, it is important to note that there are alternative sources that offer variations to the account. One of the most prominent which appears in Frank Edward's Strange World is that the object was originally investigated by Keenan and Collins alone before deciding to call back up later on. Another detail he cements is that the entity was a living entity that seemed to move or creep along the ground. This seems to be completely different from the initial report in the papers. This biological appearance has appeared on several other sites and books, and some, even though I have been unable to find the original source that claimed this, says the object seemed to slither along the ground with noticeable pseudopods that seemed to be clinging or feeling the nearby objects one which was said to be a streetlight.

Another variation was on the description of the object in the July 1954 edition of FATE Magazine; a recounting of this encounter described the object as less blob-like and more like a purple craft. The article in FATE would describe the object as looking like a purple glowing six-foot globe as opposed to a parachute-like non-self-glowing blob. Perhaps this was due to a misunderstanding or because of some other alternative source that the object described in FATE was more UFO-like than what actually was seen.

A final piece of this account that does also need to be mentioned is the chance that the Philadelphia Blob might not have inspired the film. All the sources that mention this connection reference the Strange World account. Strange World was written several years after the release of the film, so there is always the possibility that the account had no direct inspiration or connection to the film. Yet I am of the mind that it just might of seeing as both the account and the plot of the film are eerily similar.

While there are variations to this account, it still does not mean it did not happen. There's no denying that these trained men had encountered something bizarre on that night; the question is what. There is a natural phenomenon that has occurred from time to time known as Star Jelly; this blob-like structure has been reported to of been found in trees, and the grass reports state that this phenomenon is dropped on earth during meteor showers, and its description is often said to of been a grayish-white in color and appearing as a gelatin in shape and consistency. What this jelly is exactly is still debated as to when testing the anomalous slime; scientists have found that it carries no DNA. Yet, some scientists do theorize that it is a kind of fungus, algae, or slime mold. This, however, is simply speculation, and it is a mystery science accepts, but its identity is something still debated to this day.

Photographs of Star Jelly

Now the problem with the Star Jelly hypothesis and the Philadelphia Blob is two things specifically one typically Star Jelly specimens are grayish-white in color and do not give off the purple glow reported in the Philadelphia case, as well as the possibility that the object was six feet in diameter Star Jelly tends to drop down as small pellets like a kind of slime rain or hail. This means that the Philadelphia case would be something entirely unique and revolutionary if it is a true case of Star Jelly as none have ever been reported to be that large. This also seems to be a moot point if the blob was alive, as some sources state, or as what was implied in the initial sighting since Star Jelly is an essentially nonliving object.

Another possibility to what the Philadelphia Blob could be is that the blob could be a Sky Critter. Sky Critters are a phenomenon originally described by Trevor James Constable in his book The Cosmic Pulse of Life and later expanded on in Sky Creatures. Constable's theory was that our atmosphere was home to countless flying organisms that appeared to be very similar to unicellular or invertebrate life. One particular kind he would describe is like an amoeba which would have a very similar design to the Philadelphia Blob. One theory about these entities is that they remain elusive by being almost transparent and that when they die, they fall to the ground, and because their forms are similar to bacteria or protists, they simply evaporate. This is very similar to what occurred with the Philadelphia Blob, so perhaps this could be what was occurring here and could explain why the creature was relatively larger than typical Star Jelly clusters.

This case is extremely interesting partially because there was potentially a movie based on the encounter but also because there are very few slime cryptids or slime anomalies that seem to come from the sky. This entity or object defies rational explanation when one looks at the full case as it does not fit nicely into any known category and instead seems to even defy classic skeptical answers for sky phenomenon. Parachutes, weather balloons, balloons, blimps, frisbees, none of these objects evaporate when being touched, which is the main important feature to this account that makes this object something unexplained. Yet while we can ascertain that this object is a mystery, we have no true answers as to what it truly is until on some meteor-filled night, another one crashes into the ground to confuse and bewilder a whole new generation.


Original Newspaper Reports

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Invertebrate, Fungi, Protist

Location: 26th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sighted: September 26, 1950

Works Cited:

Mysterious Fires and Lights By Vincent H. Gaddis

Strange World By Frank Edwards

The Philadelphia Inquirer September 27, 1950

FATE Magazine, #52, vol. 7, no. 7, July 1954. Pgs.78-79

Rossen, Jake “The Real-Life Creepy Blob That Inspired The Blob” Mental Floss. May 5, 2021. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/639625/the-blob-horror-movie-true-story. Accessed September 25, 2021.

Pauley, Patti “The Weird, True Life Incident that Inspired the “Blob”” Rue Morgue. August 7, 2018. https://rue-morgue.com/the-weird-true-life-incident-that-inspired-the-blob/. Accessed September 27, 2021.

“1950, September 26: The Purple Mass” Anomalies. http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1950-september-26-purple-mass. Accessed September 27, 2021.

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