Weird and Wild on the Oregon Coast: My Own Personal X-Files

By Andre' Hagestedt

I may not believe in ghosts, but I firmly believe in making fake ghost shots in Photoshop

(Oregon Coast) – Let’s be clear on one thing: I don't believe in ghosts. And as for UFO's, I'm like that poster in Mulder's office in the "X-Files" TV series, which reads, "I Want To Believe." But the weird stuff always fascinates me, and between that and my obsession with anything coastal, I've managed to combine the two in some odd ways.

I'll never forget what sent me down that road. It was 1987 and I was seeing a girl named Christine. It was a Friday the 13th - March to be exact - and a full moon, although it was overcast. And if you do your math, that means that exactly a month before, in February, it was also a Friday the 13th and a full moon: eerie all its own. So that March night, Christine and I headed out to join friends in Neskowin at their beach house. We arrive after midnight, and serendipitously, there was a fire burning on the beach - as if made for us (we were celebrating the fact we'd been together exactly a month, since that previous Friday the 13th).

We're drinking champagne on the beach, enjoying the fire, when I begin to notice something odd over her shoulder, on the pitch-black horizon. There was some vague, undulating, red glow, apparently on the water; and it appeared as if it was far, far out there. It was too dark to tell for sure. Christine and I talked, and for some 10 minutes or so I watched it behind her: changing shape, fading in and out and never getting very bright.

Mysterious Neskowin

Finally, I mentioned it to her, and she saw it too. So, apparently I wasn't going crazy. We watched and gawked at it, completely puzzled. Was it a reflection from the moon above the clouds? No. It wouldn't be red. Was it a reflection from a boat? Possibly. But over the years I looked closely at every boat at sea I spotted at night and never saw a similar effect at all. It actually, more than anything, looked like it came from beneath the water.

Since then, I was increasingly fascinated by weird coastal tales or strange scientific facts. This experience haunted me, and I began to collect such tales like some people collect hubcaps.

A few years later, I heard about "glowing sand" in that secret cove at Road's End in Lincoln City. Some years after that, in 1993, I'm wandering the beaches of Newport at night with some friends, and spotted odd, bluish/green sparks beneath our feet. At first I thought it was all the booze I'd guzzled earlier, but my friends saw it too.

Years later, while researching such coastal oddities, I discover it's bioluminescent phytoplankton that glows. It's rare in these parts, but it does happen.

Rewind slightly to the spring of '93: I find myself staring slackjawed at what looks like snow going the wrong direction, drifting upwards to the highway from the Devil's Churn, near Yachats.

Cape Perpetua on that exceptionally foamy day, 1993

I pull over immediately, flipping my wig, and take a few pictures of a tide so foamy that it resembles snow flurries flying at you and then going upwards. (And then who can forget that crazy, super warm December 26 later that year on the coast, with temps in the high 60's? Now that was practically paranormal all its own.)

In the late 90's, I discover the glowing phytoplankton and that freaky, snowy tide have a lot in common. In fact, they're pretty much the same thing. Sea foam, it turns out, is made of the dead skeletons of phytoplankton. That's right, there are so many of them they form all that foam you see.

Fiery sunset in Cannon Beach, 2006

In the meantime, other weird things or wonders crossed my path. There’s the green flash at sunset - which I eventually saw three times, once in Seaside, in Lincoln City and once near Waldport. This I wound up researching quite a bit. Then there's that freaky "singing sands" phenomenon, where sand in the National Dunes Recreation Area and near Cannon Beach can make a singing or violin-like noise. And then there are all those ghost stories I've collected over the years. That process continues.

Oh, and some possible explanation for that weird, red blob in 1987 did finally pop up. I talked to a bioluminescence expert in Florida on the possibility it might've been what's known as "red tide": a form of phytoplankton that glows red. She said that was extremely unlikely, since that species couldn't survive in our cold waters. As she gave up on guessing what it was, her final words on the subject filled me with the same chill and wonder the X-Files TV series did in its heyday: "But there are a lot of things out there we don't know about."

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