Time Travel and Teleportation: Secret Government Experiments
Not Just at the Movies
Time travel and teleportation have long been popular modes of transportation in science fiction. H.G. Wells' book, The Time Machine, was published in 1898 and launched a science-fiction time-travel genre that has spawned dozens of wildly successful and diverse entertainments, from action-horror films like The Terminator series, to lighthearted teen comedies like Back to the Future and Hot Tub Time Machine. In 1966, Star Trek made its television debut and the teleportation directive, "Beam me up, Scotty," entered the pop-culture lexicon.
Like time travel, teleportation was used to tell a variety of different stories. The mutant Nightcrawler, from the X-Men comic books and films, used his powers of teleportation to assist his fellow mutants in a swashbuckling struggle for survival, while director David Cronenberg brilliantly used the technology as a backdrop for his 1986 remake of The Fly.
But according to some conspiracy theorists, surfing the space-time continuum is more than just a fictional flight to the '50s in a souped-up DeLorean—it is a terrifying reality. They claim it all began with a series of bizarre, top-secret experiments during World War II and continue in underground government laboratories to this very day.
The Philadelphia Experiment: Invisibility and Teleportation
The Philadelphia Experiment, aka Project Rainbow, is the earliest and most entrenched conspiracy theory about teleportation. It involves a disappearing United States Navy ship and its entire crew, Albert Einstein, a paranormal bar fight and a cover-up.
The story goes that, besides escorting destroyers, the USS Eldridge was used in a series of experiments to test Albert Einstein's Unified Field Theory as a way to cloak large vessels from enemy view. Believers in the experiment say the ship was outfitted with powerful electromagnetic generators that could bend light around the ship and render it invisible to the naked eye.
The first test took place in July 1943 in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. When the switch was flipped, according to a witness who said he was there, the ship was enveloped in a greenish fog and when the mist lifted the destroyer was gone. The only evidence that the ship was still there was the deep impression its hull made in the water. When the vessel reappeared, the crew were said to be disoriented and violently nauseous.
A subsequent test on October 28, 1943 caused the ship to disappear from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and reappear moments later in the waters off Norfolk, Virginia. The ship's next trick was to disappear again from Norfolk and re-materialize back in Philadelphia.
In the short time it took the ship to teleport, however, theorists claim the experiment went nightmarishly awry. Many of the crew members were stuck temporarily between dimensions, others disappeared forever, and five sailors became fused with the deck and hull of the ship when it reappeared. Half of the officers and sailors were driven insane by the experience and others supposedly disappeared and reappeared spontaneously years later.
Shocked by the unexpected teleportation and its horrifying results, the Navy shut down the experiment and immediately began covering up any evidence that it took place. Conspiracy theorists say the crewmen who still had their wits about them were brainwashed so they couldn't tell the tale.
Teleporting the Truth
The story began circulating in 1955 when a man named Carlos Allende wrote several letters in strange handwriting to Morris Jessup, a UFO researcher and writer. In his correspondence, Allende claimed that he witnessed the USS Eldridge suddenly disappear and reappear while he was aboard the nearby civilian vessel, the SS Andrew Furuseth.
Among other claims, Allende said he knew firsthand that Albert Einstein had solved the Unified Field Theory and that he witnessed a bar fight involving crewmen of the Eldridge who suddenly disappeared mid-punch.
Jessup dismissed Allende's claims until he was approached by two officers from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with a copy of his book, The Case for UFOs, that they'd received anonymously. The book was heavily annotated with comments about the nature of UFOs, methods of propulsion and alien cultureand Jessup recognized that it was Allende's handwriting filling the margins of the book.
The Military's Official Story
In response to a constant stream of questions from the public about the alleged experiment, both the Naval History and Heritage Command and the ONR have addressed the conspiracy theory in statements on their websites.
The ONR said the two officers took it upon themselves to have the annotated version of the book published and have long since left the office. They also say the detailed war diary of the USS Eldridge shows that the ship was never docked in Philadelphia during the time of the experiments.
USS EldridgeThe office suggests the theory may have developed from misunderstandings about the wartime procedure know as degaussing, in which electrical cables in a ship's hull cancelled out its magnetic field to make it "invisible" to magnetic land mines.
The Naval History and Heritage Command said in a statement that "the use of force fields to make a ship and her crew invisible does not conform to known physical laws."
And while Einstein was involved in theoretical research on explosives and explosions as a consultant for the Navy from 1943 to 1944, the Navy said he was never involved in research about invisibility or teleportation.
During a reunion in 1999, former crewmen of the USS Eldridge told a newspaper that they found the conspiracy theory comical because they were never in Philadelphia.
The Doubters
Paranormal researcher Robert Goerman said he discovered that Allende was actually Carl Allen, a wandering loner known for involved pranks, annotating whatever he could lay his hands on and sending bizarre missives to his family and others. Goerman published a story in the paranormal and UFO research magazine, FATE, claiming that Allen created the hoax and it was more successful than he'd probably ever expected.
Ufologist Jacques Vallee published a 1994 paper entitled "Anatomy of a Hoax" in the Journal of Scientific Exploration about Allen, the pervasiveness of the Philadelphia Experiment story and guidelines for detecting false stories of the paranormal.
Skeptics say the theory has too many holes in it to float. Allen is not a credible witness and he never presented verifiable evidence about a single one of his claims. Some wonder why the Navy would opt to conduct a highly charged, top-secret experiment on a massive boat in broad daylight.
But despite the lack of additional witnesses and hard evidence, the story has had long sea legs, showing no signs of waning after more than 50 years. It has spawned scores of books, conspiracy websites and a 1984 movie, The Philadelphia Experiment, produced by legendary horror director John Carpenter.
The story was bolstered by the rogue investigation by the two naval officers into Allen's writing in the UFO book, and by the Navy's official response about their activities. Also, when Morris Jessup committed suicide in 1959, some conspiracy theorists suggested that he was murdered to keep him from revealing secrets. If the teleportation was true, of course, it is unlikely that the Navy would acknowledge its existence.
The teleportation tale also planted the seeds for an offshoot conspiracy theory that makes the mind-boggling claims of the Philadelphia Experiment seem borderline credible in comparison.
Project Montauk: Teleportation, Time Travel and Psychic Manipulation
The Montauk Project is believed by conspiracy theorists to be a series of top-secret experiments conducted in a vast, multilevel subterranean laboratory built beneath the Montauk Air Force Station on the eastern tip of Long Island.
According to some, scientists involved in the Philadelphia Experiment believed the unexpected teleportation and psychological trauma were important discoveries and should have led to an expansion of the research project rather than its complete shut-down.
With the secret support of the Department of Defence, researchers used the Montauk facility to study magnetic manipulation for teleportation, time travel and psychic manipulation.
Project Montauk stories began circulating in the early 1980s when a man named Preston Nichols claimed to have recovered suppressed memories of his involvement with the laboratory. He was joined by an elderly man named Al Bielek, who began giving talks in paranormal circles about recovered memories of his own that linked the Philadelphia Experiment and the secret Montauk laboratory.
Bielek's complex claims involve his being aboard the USS Eldridge, but as another man named Edward Cameron. When the ship was teleported, he said he travelled forward in time 40 years with his brother, Duncan Cameron, to the Montauk lab where they worked as psychics and consultants.
According to Bielek, the lab's lead researcher was Nikola Tesla, the visionary scientist who developed the alternating-current electric transformers that light the world today. Though the eccentric Tesla did say in his later years that he was researching ways to communicate with extra terrestrials, he also died in 1967 before the alleged lab was built.
Nikola Tesla (Getty Images)
Conspiracy wonks say achievements of the lab include the creation of a "time tunnel" that allowed experiment subjects and researchers to travel to Philadelphia, circa 1943, to alien planets and far into the future. Al Bielek's website includes a time-line of his travels.
Conspiracy theorists claim the massive Surface Air Ground Environment (SAGE) radar on the Montauk site was used for mind-control tests on teenagers, many of whom were abducted for use in the experiments. A special chair was supposedly used to draw out the dormant psychic powers of some test subjects.
There has been no documented evidence that an underground laboratory exists beneath the decommissioned base in Montauk, and there are no official records of the lab's research.
The base is now home to Camp Hero State Park and visitors can hike the peaceful, wooded grounds around the huge SAGE radar installation. A chain-link fence still surrounds the tower to protect the public. And conspiracy theorists undoubtedly wonder—from what?
Replies