The Opposite of an Exploding Whale: Oregon Coast History of 'Zombie Whales'

Published 12/27/25 at 7:55 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Depoe Bay, Oregon) – You could almost call them “zombie whales:” whale carcasses that apparently move along the beach, rather mysteriously so for some. Photo above: a whale skull in winter of 2016 at Short Sand Beach. Courtesy Seaside Aquarium.

Really, it's just a matter of the surf picking them up and shuffling the deceased cetacean north or south. But there's a kind of lore to the idea of “zombie whales” - a history here that gets rather amusing. And no, it has nothing to do with the famed exploding whale. There have been several of these over the last two decades that Oregon Coast Beach Connection has covered, but nothing quite like this one.

The tale of this undead tail surfaced a few years ago when the North Lincoln County History Museum in Lincoln City stumbled upon an amusing old newspaper story about a decades-old stranding.

Back on December 1, 1952, a local paper published the headline: “Twice Buried Whale Returns to Depoe Bay.” This was nearly twenty years before the infamous Exploding Whale in Florence. Like today, the standard means of getting rid of a beached whale back in the '50s was to bury it. However, at this point in '52, they already done that far back in April of that year.

Adding to the wackiness of the article is its description of the 40-foot wanderer as “excessively dead,” likely written with the same tongue-in-cheek tone as the rest of the piece. The “mass of blubber,” as the reporter called it, washed ashore somewhere in the Depoe Bay area, though the exact spot wasn’t named. Given Depoe Bay’s miles of rocky cliffs, it could have been Fogarty Creek to the north, Lincoln Beach, Whale Cove, or even Beverly Beach near Devil’s Punchbowl.

Whale bone re-emerges on north Oregon coast (Seaside Aquarium)

A “whale disposal expert” was summoned from Waldport and teamed up with the Oregon Highway Department to bury the carcass. But a month later, shifting sands exposed it again, sending the unfortunate creature drifting back into view and prompting a second burial.

The reporter noted a quote from the burying crew chief at the time: “If this thing comes back once more we’ll entomb it in cement.”

A larger headline above the story read “CEMENT JOB?.” Only after you get a ways into that article does that make sense.

Then, in late November, as if straight out of a George Romero flick, high tides freed the whale yet again. This time, it announced its return with an especially potent aroma.

“The whale again hit the beach. Residents didn’t have to see it to believe it. Ocean-blown breezes whipped the smell to every part of the city.”

Anyone who has ever been downwind of a dead whale knows the scent is unforgettable - pungent, overwhelming, and capable of ruining a restaurant’s dinner rush from blocks away.

Courtesy North Lincoln Historical Museum

Once more, the state highway department (the precursor to ODOT) was alerted. Whether they actually arrived is left unclear; the article ends on a cliffhanger.

Like a lost final reel of a campy coastal horror flick, the conclusion to this saga is missing. The story does note that while residents waited for state officials, they were still debating whether to encase the whale in cement.

The final line reads: “Meanwhile, the odor lingers.”

Also meanwhile: to this day we wonder. What became of this zombie whale? Was there ever a cement-encased tomb for this smelly cetacean?

Does a watery sarcophagus lie somewhere off Depoe Bay even now?

Among other similar incidents was up around Manzanita in September of 2016 where a 38-foot Humpback whale kept showing up 

See the Imploding Whale story - from Florence as well.

The Warrenton / Astoria area had the first exploding whale back in the '30s. Warrenton Exploding Whale.

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