Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment is the name given to a naval military experiment which was supposedly carried out at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, sometime around October 28, 1943. It is alleged that the U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was to be rendered invisible (or "cloaked") to enemy devices. The experiment is also referred to as Project Rainbow.
The story is widely regarded as a hoax. The U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment occurred, and details of the story contradict well-established facts about the Eldridge, as well as the known laws of physics. Nonetheless, the story has captured imaginations in conspiracy theory circles, and elements of the Philadelphia Experiment are featured in other government conspiracy theories.
Synopsis of the Experiment
Several different, at times conflicting, versions of the purported experiment have circulated over the years. The following synopsis serves to illustrate key story points common to the majority of accounts.
The experiment was conducted by a Dr. Franklin Reno (or Rinehart) as a military application of a Unified Field Theory. The theory, briefly, postulates the interrelated nature of the forces that comprise electromagnetic radiation and gravity. Through a special application of the theory, it was thought possible, with specialized equipment and sufficient energy, to bend light around an object in such a way as to render it essentially invisible to observers. The Navy considered this application of the theory to be of obvious military value (especially as the United States was engaged in World War II at the time) and both approved and sponsored the experiment. A navy destroyer escort, the USS Eldridge, was fitted with the required equipment at the naval yards in Philadelphia.
Testing began in summer 1943, and was successful to a limited degree. One test, on July 22, resulted in the Eldridge being rendered almost completely invisible, with some witnesses reporting a Ògreenish fogÓ in its place. However, crew members complained of severe nausea afterwards. At that point, the experiment was altered at the request of the Navy, with the new objective being invisible to radar only.
Equipment was not properly recalibrated to this end, but in spite of this, the experiment was performed again on October 28. This time, Eldridge not only became almost entirely invisible to the naked eye, but actually vanished from the area in a flash of blue light. Simultaneously, the US naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, just over 600 km (375 miles) away, reported sighting the Eldridge offshore for several minutes, whereupon the Eldridge vanished from their sight and reappeared in Philadelphia, at the site it had originally occupied in an apparent case of accidental teleportation.
The physiological effects on the crew were profound. Almost all of the crew were violently ill. Some suffered from mental illness as a result of their experience; behavior consistent with schizophrenia is described in other accounts. Still other members were physically unaccounted for or supposedly vanished, and five of the crew were allegedly fused to the metal bulkhead or deck of the ship. Still others were said to fade in and out of sight. Horrified by these results, Navy officials immediately cancelled the experiment. All of the surviving crew involved were discharged; in some accounts, brainwashing techniques were employed in an attempt to make the remaining crew members lose their memories concerning the details of their experience.
In 1955, Morris K. Jessup, an amateur astronomer and former graduate-level researcher, published The Case for the UFO, a book about unidentified flying objects which contained some theorizing about the means of propulsion that flying-saucer-style UFOs might use. Jessup speculated that anti-gravity and/or manipulation of electromagnetism may have been responsible for the observed flight behavior of UFOs. He lamented, both in the book and the publicity tour which followed, that space flight research was concentrated in the area of rocketry, and that little attention was paid to these other theoretical means of flight, which he felt would ultimately be more fruitful.
On January 13, 1955, Jessup received a letter from a man identifying himself as Carlos Allende. In the letter, Allende informed Jessup of the Philadelphia Experiment, alluding to poorly sourced contemporary newspaper articles as proof. Allende also said that he had witnessed the Eldridge disappear and reappear while serving aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth, a nearby merchant ship. Allende further named other crew with which he served aboard the Andrew Furuseth, and claimed to know of the fates of some of the crew members of the Eldridge after the experiment, including one whom he witnessed disappear during a chaotic fight in a bar. Jessup replied to Allende by postcard, asking for further evidence and corroboration for the story.
The reply came months later; however, this time the correspondent identified himself as Carl M Allen. Allen said that he could not provide the details for which Jessup was asking, but implied that he might be able to recall by means of hypnosis. Suspecting that Allende/Allen was a crank, Jessup decided to discontinue the correspondence.
In the spring of 1957, Jessup was contacted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. and asked to study the contents of a parcel that they had received. Upon arrival, a curious Jessup was astonished to find that a paperback copy of his UFO book had been mailed to ONR in a manila envelope marked "Happy Easter". Further, the book had been extensively annotated by hand in its margins, and an ONR officer asked Jessup if he had any idea as to who had done so.
The lengthy annotations were written in three different colors of ink, and appeared to detail a correspondence between three individuals, only one of which is given a name: "Jemi". The ONR labeled the other two "Mr A" and "Mr B". The annotators refer to each other as "Gypsies", and discuss two different types of "people" living in outer space. Their text contained nonstandard use of capitalization and punctuation, and detailed a lengthy discussion of the merits of various suppositions that Jessup makes throughout his book, with oblique references to the Philadelphia Experiment, in a way that suggested prior or superior knowledge.
Based on the handwriting style and subject matter, Jessup identified "Mr A" as Allende/Allen. Others have suggested that the three annotations are actually from the same person, using three pens.
A transcription of the annotated "Varo edition" is available online, complete with three-color notes.
Later, the ONR contacted Jessup, claiming that the return address on AllendeÕs letter to Jessup was an abandoned farmhouse. They also informed Jessup that the Varo Corporation, a research firm, was preparing a print copy of the annotated version of The Case for the UFO, complete with both letters he had received. About a hundred copies of the Varo Edition were printed and distributed within the Navy. Jessup was also sent three for his own use.
Jessup attempted to make a living writing on the topic, but his follow-up book did not sell well and his publisher rejected several other manuscripts. In 1958 his wife left him, and friends described him as being depressed and somewhat unstable when he travelled to New York. After returning to Florida he was involved in a serious car accident and was slow to recover, apparently increasing his despondency. Morris Jessup committed suicide in 1959.
In 1965, Vincent Gaddis published Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea, in which the story of the experiment from the Varo annotation is recounted. Later, in 1977, Charles Berlitz, an author of several books on paranormal phenomena, included a chapter on the experiment in his book Without a Trace: New Information from the Triangle.
In 1978, a novel, Thin Air by George E Simpson and Neal R Burger was released. This was a dramatic fictional account, clearly inspired by the foregoing works, of a conspiracy to cover up an horrific experiment gone wrong on board the Eldridge in 1943. In 1979, Berlitz and a co-author, William L. Moore, published
The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, the best known and most cited source of information about the experiment to date.
In 1984, the story was eventually adapted into a motion picture, The Philadelphia Experiment directed by Stewart Rafill. Though based only loosely on prior accounts of the experiment, it served to bring the core elements of the original story into mainstream scrutiny.
In 1990, Alfred Bielek, a self-claimed former crew-member of the Eldridge and alleged witness of the experiment, supported the version as it was portrayed in the movie, adding embellishments which were disseminated via the internet, eventually to surface in various mainstream outlets. In 2003, Bielek's version of his participation in the Philadelphia Experiment was debunked by a small team of investigators, and the general consensus now is that he was nowhere near the ship at the proposed time of the experiment.
Many observers argue it inappropriate to put much credence in an unusual story put forward by one individual, in the absence of more conclusive corroborating evidence. An article written by Robert Goerman for Fate in 1980, claimed that Carlos Allende aka Carl Allen was in fact Carl Meredith Allen of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, who had an established psychiatric history and may have fabricated the primary history of the experiment as a result of his illness.
Dash, in particular, is stark in illustrating the near-total lack of research by those who eventually publicized the story; others speculating that much of the key literature has more emphasis on dramatic embellishment rather than pertinent research. Though Berlitz and Moore's famous account of the story (
The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility) contained much supposedly factual information, such as transcripts of an interview with a scientist involved in the experiment, it has also been criticized for plagiarizing key story elements from the fictitious novel Thin Air published a year earlier, which, it is argued, undermines the credibility of the text as a whole.
Scientific Aspects
Albert Einstein never fully developed his Unified Field Theory, and no consistent UFT or gravity-electromagnetism link has since come forth from the scientific community. Though Nikola Tesla claimed to have completed a Unified Field Theory shortly before his death in 1943, his theories on electromagnetism's power to distort space and time were never published. Conspiracy theorists propose that much of Tesla's research papers were seized by the FBI promptly following his death, and highlight the apparent coincidence between the year of his death and the supposed date of the Philadelphia Experiment.
More recent research, such as at Duke University demonstrates clearly that, even in 2006, the scientific community was far from attaining the level of technology required to render invisible an object the size of a naval destroyer.
Timeline Inconsistencies
The USS Eldridge was not commissioned until August 27, 1943, and remained in port in New York City until September, 1943. The October experiment allegedly took place while the ship was on its first shakedown cruise in the Bahamas.
A reunion of veterans who served aboard the Eldridge told the Philadelphia Inquirer in April 1999 that the ship had never made port in Philadelphia. Further evidence against the Philadelphia experiment timeline comes from the USS EldridgeÕs complete WWII action report, including the remarks section of the 1943 deck log, available on microfilm.
Alternative Explanations
Present day scientists propose that the generators rigged to the ship may not have been designed to warp space/time. Instead they may have been deployed to heat up the air and water around the ship, creating an artificial mirage, thereby rendering the ship ÒinvisibleÓ to the human eye. This would still leave visible the ship's wake, in addition to the greenish colored fog described in some accounts.
Alternatively, researcher Jacques Vallee describes a procedure on board the USS Engstrom, which was docked alongside the Eldridge in 1943. The operation involved the generation of a powerful electromagnetic field on board the ship in order to degauss it, with the goal of rendering the ship undetectable "invisible" to magnetically-triggered torpedoes and mines. This system was invented by a Canadian, and the British used it widely during the Second World War. British ships of the era often included such systems built-in on the upper decks (the conduits are still visible on the deck of the HMS Belfast in London). Degaussing is still used today; however, it has no effect on visible light or radar. Vallee speculates that accounts of the EngstromÕs degaussing may have been garbled in subsequent retellings, and these accounts may have influenced the story of the Philadelphia Experiment.
A veteran who served on board the Engstrom noted that the Eldridge could indeed have travelled from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back again in a single day at a time when merchant ships could not have by use of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which at the time was open only to naval vessels. Use of this channel was kept quiet: German submarines had recently been ravaging East Coast shipping during Operation Drumbeat, and thus military ships unable to protect themselves were secretly moved via canals to avoid this threat. It should be noted that this same veteran claims to be the man whom Allende witnessed ÒdisappearÓ at a bar. He claims that when the fight broke out, friendly barmaids whisked him out the back door of the bar before the police arrived, because he was under age. They then covered for him by claiming that he disappeared.
In a more speculative and strongly paranormal vein, Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron both claim to have leapt from the deck of the Eldridge while it was in ÒhyperspaceÓ between Philadelphia and Norfolk, and ended up, after a period of severe disorientation, at the Air Force station Montauk Point, Long Island in 1983, having experienced not only teleportation but time travel. They claim John von Neumann met them there (although officially he died in 1957). This story is part of a continuum involving another alleged secret US Government experiment into the paranormal known as the Montauk Project.
Philadelphia Experiment Wikipedia
Meeting the Philadelphia Experiment Crew
My first contact with the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project was in 1989 when a UFO researcher named Bill Knell sent me a video tape. He asked me if I would review it and tell him if I felt the information was valid. He seemed to feel that if the information was true, it could alter the course of history. The tape was an interview made in someone's home in Long Island, featuring 3 men seated in front of a white sheet talking about something called the
Montauk Project. The first person I saw was a man named Preston Nichols.
When I saw Preston Nichols, my soul shuttered and my entire body went into fear mode. I couldn't believe my soul reaction, as I am rarely a fearful person and I had never seen this man before. I had to stop the tape as I wondered why I had such a violent reaction to him and what he was saying. To this day, I see it as a experiment in time (time loops,
sacred geometry) gone wrong, that is now perfected this time around. It is something I have always known and rides with me in this journey as we come close to
zero point. The person who shares my memories most closely in the man who is the Admin. for Crystalinks. How interesting to discover that the scientist involved is one Dr. Rinehart or
Reno, as both of us having ties to Nevada, in this lifetime and the Old West Grid program. Also there is mention of the Zeeman Effect in science. My guide through this journey on the other side is Z (Zoroaster) who many call Zee Man!
A few minutes later I returned to watch the video and listen to the information about time travel experiments, etc. All of this triggered past life memories I had since my childhood. I have always seen myself as a male physicist during WW II Germany, working in an underground lab with noted scientists of the day, on the time travel experiments. Since age five I have always stated that I was here to do something connected to time travel and the Great Pyramid. Something about seeing this man and hearing his words were triggering soul memories that would process in the weeks and months to follow.
In the course of that time, I would meet with others who had shared memories of working in the labs with me, the experiments we did there, before and during the war, and what we are doing now in this time line. I would also meet and work with the key players in the Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk Project, which somehow link with me, yet we all have different agendas.
From 1991 - 1993 I hosted the television talk show 'The Metaphysical Experience' in New York City. Among my guests were Preston Nichols, Duncan Cameron, and Al Bielek, all of whom claim to be part of the Philadelphia Experiments and Montauk Project. Preston and Duncan also came to my home to teach class and share stories with my students about time travel and other things.
Notes on the Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment, otherwise known as Project Rainbow, has been a subject of long controversy and debate. It was an attempt by the Navy to create a ship that could not be detected by magnetic mines and-or radar.
There was also talk of invisibility projects and mind control experiments. The truth behind this project will never be known to the public. It is just one those triggers that we encounter that propels into awareness as who we are on a soul level.
However, results of these experiments became far different and much more dangerous than the Navy ever expected. Although the story itself seems too bizarre to be true, far too many coincidences have occurred for it to not be based upon some small iota of truth. The technical data that has also been presented upon the subject hold far too much credence to be ignored. Many of the stories associated with this infamous experiment are wild: whispers of men 'freezing' in time for months, rumors of men traveling through time, and horror stories of men becoming stuck in bulkheads or even the floor of the ship itself. (In the movie of the same name, the visual of the men being part above the deck, and part buried in the deck, is amazing. This sort of things has been done on 'X-Files' as well when they did a storyline about temporal anomalies.
In the 1930's Nikola Tesla got involved with a group with was experimenting with moving through the Time/Space continuum. In the early 1930's, the University of Chicago investigated the possibility of invisibility through the use of electricity.
In 1939 this project was moved to Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies, this is not far from Philadelphia. There they were able to make small objects invisible. They presented this technology to the government. The military, because we were at war wanted to pursue it in their direction.
Tesla had come to the same conclusion that Einstein did that this technology if developed would not be used for the benefit of mankind.
In 1943 the government conducted a test using domestic animals on a ship. The ship that was eventually used for the experiment, the USS Eldridge, was commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on August 27, 1943 (Department of the Navy). The animals were placed in metal cages on the USS Eldridge. The ship became invisible but when it materialized many of the animals were missing on had radiation and other burn marks on them. Humans were not to be tested.
Yet on August 12, 1943 the USS Eldridge with a full crew aboard reportedly underwent the Philadelphia Experiment. The men did not know what was to happen. The generators were fired up. The switches were thrown. The ship disappeared and all seemed well.
However, others claim that the experiment took place on October 28, 1943. Substantial evidence points to the October date as being more accurate. The Navy has released the Eldridge's deck log and war diary and at no time was the Eldridge in Philadelphia. However, the records could have easily been changed.
The Eldridge's war diary reads as such: The Eldridge remained in New York and the Long Island Sound until September 16, when it left for Bermuda. From September 18 to October 15, it underwent training and sea trials. On October 18, it left in a convoy for New York and remained there until November 1. From November 1 to the 2, it went on a convoy to Norfolk and on November 3 left in a convoy for Casablanca. The Eldridge arrived in Casablanca on November 22 and stayed there until November 29, when it left for New York again in another convoy. The Eldridge arrived in New York on December 17.
From December 17 to December 31, it traveled to Norfolk with four other ships (Department of the Navy). Although this is not the entire war log, it is the log of the ship during the suspected time the experiment took place (October 28, as mentioned above).
It would seem that the Navy never did experiments on the Eldridge at any time, but the government has been known to cover up because of national security before. An example of such a situation would be the Manhattan project. This secret project was the building of the atomic bomb and no word was ever said about it until it was obvious that we had an atomic bomb.
The Navy, in a search for a plausible answer, has suggested that perhaps the Philadelphia Experiment was confused with experiments done attempting invisibility to magnetic mines. This was a process known as degaussing.
But the ship was gone from the harbor for about 4 hours, not just a few minutes. Legend has it that the ship was transported through space and time. It arced through Space/Time.
Four hours later it returned to its original place. There was a greenish haze on deck. Some of the sailors were on fire. Some seemed insane. All were sick. Some had heart attacks. Some were dead. Some were part of the super structure of the ship, buried in the deck or walls of the ship. Some reports said that men just seemed to disappear and were never seen again.
But where had the ship gone for 4 hours? Some witnesses placed it in Norfolk Harbor. Others say it voyaged 40 years into the future and wound up at Montauk, New York.
The Navy denied everything and said the men were lost at sea. Perhaps one day the truth will be known.
The Montauk Experiment purported links several of these sailors to Montauk, New York with a time loop to 1983.
The Navy performed another experiment on the USS Timmerman's generating plant in the 1950's. The experiment tried to obtain 1,000 Hz instead of the standard 400 Hz from the generator (Department of the Navy). It resulted in light discharges. These light discharges may have been witnessed by Carlos Miguel Allende and caused him to start writing letters to prominent men in the scientific community. The Navy believes that Allende mistook the experiment on the Timmerman for the Philadelphia Experiment.
Carlos Miguel Allende, also known as Carl Allen, was an odd man. He was born on May 31, 1925 in a small town outside of Pennsylvania. On July 14, 1942, Allende joined the Marine Corps and was discharged on May 21, 1943 (Taken from the book titled The Philadelphia Experiment, pg 99). He then joined the Merchant Marine and was assigned to the SS Andrew Furuseth. It was upon this ship that he claimed to see the Eldridge in action.
Allende's story was bizarre; he stated that he had witnessed the Eldridge being transported instantaneously to Norfolk from Philadelphia and back again in a matter of minutes. Upon researching the matter further, he learned of extremely odd occurrences associated with the project and wrote a basic summation of his newly learned knowledge in a letter to Dr. Morris K. Jessup. Dr. Jessup was an astronomer and Allende had been in the audience of one of Dr. Jessup's lectures. Apparently having some respect for the man, he decided to entrust Dr. Jessup with his knowledge. The letters were written oddly: with capitalization, punctuation, and underlines located in various places.
The letters were also written in several colors. In his letters, Allende revealed horrifying details of the Philadelphia Experiment to Dr. Jessup. Because Dr. Jessup was something of a believer in odd phenomenon he did not entirely dismiss the ideas presented to him. He wrote back to Allende and requested new information. The return address upon the letter never existed according to the mail service, yet Allende still received Dr. Jessup's reply. Allende responded with more detailed letters but the correspondence eventually discontinued because Dr. Jessup dismissed it as a hoax.
During the time of Dr. Jessup's and Allende's correspondence, Dr. Jessup had just recently published his book titled The Case for UFO's. After Allende had written to Dr. Jessup, this book was sent to the Navy and had hand-written notes inside the book. The notes were in the same writing as in the letters sent to Dr. Jessup and eventually Dr. Jessup was asked by the Navy to view the notes.
Dr. Jessup recognized the writing immediately, but he was somewhat astonished, as he had concluded earlier that it was merely a hoax to trick him. The notes in the book were more detailed than in the letters and were highly insightful, so Dr. Jessup eventually believed them and researched the matter. Unfortunately, Dr. Jessup could not find any new leads. Only one tantalizing clue had shown up.
Two crewmen had been walking in a park when a haggard looking man approached them. The man told them a fantastic story about an experiment done in which most of the crew died or suffered terrible side effects. He said that the government then claimed the entire crew was insane so that when they came forward, they would merely be dismissed as a group of crazy people who had merely concocted some fantastic story.
After the conversation, one crew member was convinced while the other was not. Eventually, the member that had been convinced contacted Dr. Jessup and told him the story. Although this was a substantial lead, Dr. Jessup was not getting very far and he found that his reputation in the scientific community was worsening. Faced with overwhelming odds, Dr. Jessup eventually committed suicide on April 20, 1959, believing "another existence of universe being better than this miserable world." (The Philadelphia Experiment, 79). Some believe that his suicide was actually an assassination by government agencies to keep the experiment quiet.
Unfortunately for Dr. Jessup, a major clue in the puzzle turned up shortly after his death. This clue was a man by the name of Alfred D. Bielek.
Bielek's story is even more bizarre than Allende's. He claims that he was transported in time to the future and that here in the future he was brainwashed by the Navy. This brainwashing led him to believe that his name was Alfred Bielek, rather than his true name, Edward Cameron. Upon discovering his true identity, he tracked down his brother who had also participated in the experiment. Bielek claims that his brother time traveled to 1983 and lost his 'time-lock'. As a result, his brother aged one year every hour and eventually died. Bielek then claims that his brother was reborn.
Needless to say, only a small group of people believe Bielek and nearly everyone thinks that his stories are based on some truth, but he's exaggerating the truth for personal reasons. This popular opinion seems to be reinforced when Bielek starts remembering things only after having seen the movie "The Philadelphia Experiment". Bielek has a Ph.D. in Physics, so he does have some technical experience. He is also a retired electrical engineer with thirty years of experience. Because of his obvious intelligence and skill, he cannot be discounted entirely. Bielek stated that the technology used in the Philadelphia Experiment was given to us by aliens. However, the germanium transistor, which was what Bielek said had been used, was invented by Thomas Henry Moray.
Bielek also stated that Dr. Albert Einstein, Dr. John von Neumann, and Dr. Nikola Tesla were involved in the project. Some controversy has arisen as to the participation of Tesla because he died in New York city on January 7, 1943, which was only a two month period of time after the project took place. Einstein, on the other hand, suggested such a project as this to the Navy on several occasions. Because of this, he was probably involved in the project. As for von Neumann, there is no evidence to refute or promote his active participation in the matter. There is evidence that supports the fact that he later continued on the experiment at a different time.
The principle that lay behind the Philadelphia Experiment was the Unified Field Theory. This theory states that gravity and magnetism are connected, just as mass and energy are connected through the formula E=mc2. Einstein never solved the Unified Field Theory, but the very nature of the Philadelphia Experiment suggests otherwise. It is probably that this theory has become a government secret because it is capable of doing many things, possibly even space travel without the assistance of rockets.
In a search for actual technical data on the experiment, not much information can be found that isn't tainted with doubt and speculation. The basic design has two large Tesla coils (electromagnets) placed on each hull of the ship. The coils are turned on in a special sequence and their magnetic force is so powerful that they warp gravity itself. Bielek also says that on August 12 every twenty years, the magnetic field of the Earth reaches a peak and allows the synchronization between the Tesla coils.
The oscillator which Bielek claims to have run the coils in a special pattern looks more like an Army field kitchen refrigeration unit than anything else. Many believe that's exactly what it is and Bielek's story is just a hoax. Bielek gave it a technical name however: the "Zero Time Reference Generator". The oscillators would synchronize with the adjustable phase angle and created a scalar type wave (Anderson). Several scientists today have attacked Bielek's testimony on this, as they believe a vector wave would have been more efficient and probable. Bielek also does not make clear if the power used is AC or DC, pulsed or rotating, and what the Microwave and Radar frequencies are. In other words, Bielek provides almost no accurate technical information that can be used.
Rick Anderson however, may be able to shed some light upon the subject. He states that four RF transmitters were phased to produce a rotating field. This field was pulsed at a 10% duty cycle. Instead of two coils, he says that four coils would have been set upon the deck of the ship and would be run by two generators that were pulsed in a counter-clockwise motion. Anderson states that the Tesla coils use a total of 7,500 feet, or 1.42 miles of #16 magnet wire. Because of this enormous quantity, no one has privately undertaken the experiment; the wire would be too expensive and also must to be wound in a special way (Anderson). Other scientists believe that Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the science of the Philadelphia Experiment are connected.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is also known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI. Yet another scientist named Alexander S. Fraser believes that everyone is wrong about the electromagnetic qualities of the experiment. He believes that it was never done with electromagnetism, but with thermal fields. This thermal field could have caused the optical mirage effect which several witnesses reported. Fraser says that Allende had spoken of a 'scorch' field, fire, and optical wavering, all of which are products of a thermal field. As for the part about the Eldridge disappearing in front of their very eyes, certain weather conditions have been known in the ocean to cause islands to disappear as well. These weather conditions were taking place the day of the experiment. Yet another scientist believes that sonic and ultrasonic waves were used.
The sonic waves could have been used to create an 'air blanket' around the ship, which is consistent with reports. There were many experiments done in the 1940's with high power ultrasonic waves, which indicates a high probability of the Philadelphia Experiment being one of them. Strong sonic fields are known for having bad side effects upon humans, which is also consistent with reports. The green haze which was presumably around the ship was caused by "exciting the surrounding sea water with powerful ultrasonics, 'sonoluminescense' and related phenomena."
The ultrasonic field would have caused the crew to pass out and make the journey from Philadelphia to Norfolk seem to last only a couple minutes. Needless to say, the technicalities of the Philadelphia Experiment are a matter of hot debate among scientists and no one seems to be able to provide any solid evidence. As Rick Anderson aptly puts it: "An electronics person knows that, without a detailed, comprehensive theory behind bench set-up, he is not going to know how to set up voltages and currents, power levels, frequencies, wave forms, pulse widths or duty cycles. If there's a chance a circuit won't work, Murphy's Law dictates that it WON'T more often than not."
If the technicalities of the experiment are vague and a matter of controversy, the results of the experiment are just as foggy. One fact which everyone seem to agree on is that a field was extended many yards, up to perhaps one hundred, outside of the ship and into the water (Anonymous). Everything inside of this sphere was vague in form and the only visible shape was the hull of the Eldridge in the water. This field seemed to have a greenish color and was misty. Another fact everyone agrees was that the Eldridge did not function properly after the experiment and became a source of trouble.
The last item everyone believes is that terrible side effects were manifested upon the crew members. However, when one delves deeper into that particular subject, no one agrees on what the specific details are. Some witnesses, Allende and Bielek in particular, state that matter itself was changed and that men were able to walk through physical objects. When the field was shut off, some crew members were found stuck in bulkheads, others in the floor. Some were found with the railings of the ship stuck through their bodies. It was a horrendous sight. The sailors supposedly went crazy after this and raided a bar.
They told the bar maid their story and completely terrified her. According to Allende, a newspaper article was written upon the raid, but no specific date was named, so the article cannot be found. Most crew members went insane, but a few retained their sanity, only to be thrust into worse situations. One man sat down to dinner with his wife and child, but then got up from the table, walked through the wall, and was never seen again. Two others simply disappeared into thin air and were also never seen again. Another crew member vanished in the middle of a fight, much to his opponent's astonishment. All three incidents had several witnesses.
Yet the worse side effects were when men got 'stuck'. Getting stuck consisted of becoming invisible and being unable to move, speak, or interact with other people for a period of time. This was told of by Allende in his letters to Dr. Jessup. Getting stuck by the crew members was known as "Hell Incorporated". (The Philadelphia Experiment, 42). It was also known as the Freeze. A common freeze would last minutes to hours and was damaging psychologically, but did not cause madness. A man would only come out of the Freeze if other crew members laid their hands upon him to give him strength. Unfortunately, in one instance of the "Laying of Hands," two men who attempted to lay hands upon the man burst into flames and burned for eighteen days (The Philadelphia Experiment, 44). The fires could not be stopped, despite multiple attempts to quench the flames. Needless to say, the Laying of Hands was discontinued from that point on. Then, men started going into the Deep Freeze, when a man would be frozen for several days to several months.
During this time, the man is completely aware of others and their actions but was unable to communicate to them or interact with them. Men in the Deep Freeze can only be seen by other crew members. It only takes two days for a man to go completely crazy in the Deep Freeze. The first deep freeze took six months and five million dollars worth of research and equipment to correct (The Philadelphia Experiment, 43).
The man who was stuck for six went completely insane by the time he got out. Carlos Allende wrote: "Usually A Deep Freeze Man goes Mad, Stark raving, Gibbering, Running MAD, if His freeze is far More than a Day in our time." (The Philadelphia Experiment, 42) Rick Anderson uncovered research that states this disappearance or freezing of people is the Zeeman Effect.
"Zeemanising, the
Zeeman Effect is defined as spreading out of the spectral lines of atoms under the influence of a strong magnetic field." (Anderson) The few remaining sailors have a high PSI factor which is intensified by fear or hypnosis. Unfortunately, they have all been discharged from the Navy as mentally unfit.
The Philadelphia Experiment has become a saga of strange occurrences and peculiar coincidences. It should be noted that Allende firmly believes the Navy was completely unaware of the side effects the Philadelphia Experiment would produce on the crew members. Allende is also quoted as saying: "I believe that further experiments would naturally have produced controlled transport of great tonnages at ultra-fast speeds to a desired point the instant it is desired. "(Allende). A full report of the Experiment was given to Congress and the members were so horrified that they disbanded the project immediately. However, research continued at the Montauk Project, a.k.a. the Phoenix Project, which was headed by Dr. John von Neumann, who also directed the Philadelphia Experiment.
The Montauk Project centered mostly on how the mind reacts to interdimensional travel. It took place at the Brookhaven National Laboratories. Von Neumann attempted to link computers with minds and was apparently successful beyond his wildest dreams. Using this computer-human link, Von Neumann could affect others minds and was eventually able to open a time vortex back to 1943 to the Philadelphia Experiment. He even made claims that the mind could created matter at any point in time. He also claimed to have sent a man named Preston B. Nichols through two times lines, a fact which was actually confirmed by Duncan Cameron in 1985 (Montauk). Cameron was trained by the National Security Agency, so his testimony is valid. Many people believe that the Montauk Project is continuing to this day, although much of the information available about it is only rumor.
This entire scenario is filled with questions that will never be answered as the people involved have their own version on the events.
My soul is linked to WW II Germany, an escape from an underground lab after stealing papers with mathematical formulas about time travel, fleeing by ship to Philadelphia and working with others in a lab, hiding the papers in a canister in Philadelphia, then dying in the lab when it blew up.
The Eldridge Today, Some reports say that the ship was dismantled. Others report say to was taken to Greece and renamed the Leon. A man named George N. Pantoulas maintains that the was given as military aid from US to Greece sometime between the late 40's and early 50's where it served in the Greek navy until 1990 and is sea worthy today. It is purported located in the Suda Bay Naval Station in Crete. George says he has visited the ship. He has seen strange wires that go nowhere. He says that men who serve on the ship feel strange energies and have strange illusions.
thanks to
http://www.crystalinks.com/phila.html
