I fixed the problem. Pursuing this answer, hoping that this might be useful to someone.
When I checked the type of the CLOB instance retrieved by request, it appeared as oracle.sql.CLOB. Therefore, I assumed that this should have been a mismatch of the ojdbc.jar version. I checked my project gazillion times for several copies of ojdb.jar. There were none.
Finally, it turned out to be a clash between sleeping and ojdbc. I changed the link to java.sql.Clob. Hibernate uses java.sql.Clob. This resolved the issue.
source share