Hello everybody!

I have 6 phals and three months ago I visited my sister to NY for Christmas so I had to leave my plants to a friend, who (I thought) she knew the basics since she has some phals herself. I got them back yesterday. Two major things I noticed when I walked in her house. She had placed them in front of a window (where did the no "direct sunlight" rule go?) and very close to her fireplace- believe it or not! (where did the "no changes of temperature and no extreme temperature conditions" rule go?). The plants seem ok though, with a lot of new tiny buds and new spikes growing high on the old spikes (THAT is something that I haven't seen before- usually new spikes grow from the bottom of the plant right? They don't look so pretty this way). As soon as i got them home, I noticed the pots were... flooded in water! I have no idea if she kept them like this the whole time, or if she had just watered them and waited to drain them after a while. I tokk them out one by one and drained them. One of them had this smelly slimy goo dripping from the bottom of the plastic pot. I tried to rinse it, it was all around the plastic pot and inside the ceramic pot i keep them, and it was slippery and disgusting! WHAT IS THIS THING? Is it fungus? Did it develop from- obviously- overwatering? Will it kill my plant? Can I do anything to help it? I rinsed off almost all of it but I believe there is more left INSIDE the plastic pot. The weird part? This plant has the biggest growth of all! It has 4 new spikes, full of tiny little buds! Thank you in advance for your precious advice! Maria