Continued from Hoaxes From Space: The Montauk Project
Is there any chance the Philadelphia Experiment really happened, and that a lot of dumb-a** hoaxes have become attached to it?
Not really. Given the amount of time and money that the military-industrial complex devoted (and still devotes) to nature’s version of invisibility – plain ol‘ camouflage – they haven’t been able to make big stuff literally disappear yet. They’re working on small-scale invisibility with groovy metamaterials, though.
The only eyewitnesses to the supposed disappearance of the USS Eldridge are lifelong pranksters and hoaxsters fascinated with UFOs, alternative energy, and mind control.
There is one tantalizing possibility concerning the experiment, but I’m sorry to say it still doesn’t involve a disappearing ship. In the early ’40s, some of the greatest names in American sci-fi literature were serving in or working for the Navy, and were stationed at the Naval Air Experimental Station at the Philadelphia Navy Yard: Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague DeCamp, and Robert Heinlein (as a civilian engineer). L. Ron Hubbard was also there for a time, before heading off to California to do other stuff. It’s tempting to speculate that some of these guys were chatting about their fiction one day, and were overheard by a young merchant marine sailor with a penchant for tall tales, one Carl Allen…
But as for anything really happening? Naval records, as well as the recollections of sailors known to have actually served on the Eldridge, show that it never even docked in Philly during WWII. No one has identified even one of the sailors who went insane and ended up in mental institutions. No record of the Cameron brothers and their sinister father exist. And Aleister Crowley never mentioned anything about meeting Preston Nichols, a traveler from the future.
If it was all such an obvious hoax, why is the story still believable to so many people?
First of all, it’s a pretty good story. It’s spooky, it’s science-fictiony, and it’s a hell of a lot more intriguing than Bigfoot poop. Secondly, the Navy’s initial interest in the story lent it a great deal of credibility – even though the officers who commissioned the Varo Edition were merely acting on their personal fascination with flying saucers. Then several mass market paperbacks lent the tale some more credibility. Thirdly, while nearly everyone has heard of the Philly Experiment, who knows the name of Carl Allen, an obscure Pennsylvania drifter and prankster? As Swift put it, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after.”
I’m happy to report that the truth is finally putting on its pants, though. The History Channel program History’s Mysteries did a show on the Philly Experiment, and included the full background of Carl Allen and his hoaxes.
Who is this Al Bielek, anyway?
The funniest, saddest aspect of the entire Philly Experiment/Montauk Project hoax is that Bielek, Duncan Cameron, Preston Nichols, and their cohorts have already told us exactly who they are and everything we need to know to realize they’re full of sh**. Cameron freely admits he’s way too young to have been aboard the Eldridge during WWII, and explains that away with a very complex and retarded story about the government using alien technology to capture and store his soul until it could be implanted into his own younger brother.
Bielek admits he was working a day job in California for the duration of the Montauk Project. Lucky for him he had special access to every commuter’s wet dream, a secret high-speed underground magnetic levitation train! But as with Bob Lazar moonlighting as a photo developer while reverse-engineering extraterrestrial craft, I have to wonder why the hell the government didn’t just make Bielek quit his job in Cali, transplant to the East Coast, and take another mundane cover job closer to the Montauk facility. That would have cut down his commute, which was still two hours cross-country.
Some of Bielek’s real history can be found at a site called Bielek Debunked, but be aware that the creator believes the Philly Experiment really happened – Bielek just wasn’t involved in it, in his opinion.
I suspect that Bielek and Nichols hooked up through their involvement in the Psychotronics Association, shared their fascination with all things fringy, and decided to create a personalized sci-fi mythos that could get them some attention, some cash (Nichols’ three books on Montauk, co-authored with Peter Moon, are still in print and available at just about every New Age bookstore), and of course some cheap entertainment. What did they have to lose?
Is there any evidence that mind control and/or time travel experiments were secretly conducted at Camp Hero (Montauk) after it was shut down in 1981?
Aside from the “eyewitness testimony” of Preston Nichols, Stewart Swerdlow, and a few other men, no.
After serving its purpose as a coastal bulwark and a nuclear-detection facility throughout WWII and most of the Cold War, The Montauk Air Force Station was considered borderline obsolete and was shut down. Spy radar had replaced its SAGE radar. By the time it was supposedly serving as headquarters of the Montauk Project, Camp Hero’s old radar system had been disabled and the area was a state park.
Even if you found Preston Nichols’ stories of Drano-chugging lizard men believable, the fact that he represents them as repressed memories is problematic. Sure, the military could use some of its cool alien technology to wipe his memory banks, but how did he recover those memories such a short time later?
Swerdlow now makes his living giving workshops on how to overcome and combat mind control.
Is time travel even possible?
Technically, surprisingly, yes. Check out Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible. Or watch Lost: The mechanism that transports islanders to Tunisia in the blink of an eye probably creates a wormhole through space/time, as the island has both a sufficiently enormous electromagnetic force and a natural Casimir Effect, which generates the exotic matter needed to stabilize a wormhole.
How about age-regression technology?
I sometimes doubt that age-regression technology of the kind described by Bielek will ever be perfected, but then I look at Sarah Brightman and reconsider.
Swallowing The Camel 
I need a Riddle ASAP! i know this sounds extreamly werid but i need a riddle. Dont ask why just give me something!! thanks![url=http://www.thedaytheearthstoodstill.org/]the day the earth stood still[/url]
What is greater than God, the dead eat it, and if the living eat it, they die? Hows that?
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it.
Have you ever heard about "Project Blue Beam"? I can't find anything about it on your blog and it's so weird and twisted theory that it can compete with "Lizard people are taking over the world".You can spread the word about it, so that more and more people would be aware of stratospheric projections that come directly into your mind! It really IS a great danger that people aren't aware of!Great blog, keep up the good work!
I have indeed. That's something I've considered posting about, and probably will.
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I used to subscribe to the weekly magazine "Aviation Week & Space Technology" in the 1980s. Around 1985, I read an article about the Camp Hero SAGE radar base that was being decomissioned. (I had never heard of the Montauk Project then.) The base was being shut down because OTH radars had been replaced by satellites. But something strange was in that article. The SAGE radar was going to continue to be operated for some period of time. No reasons for given. I just thought it was to back-up the satellites until the latter were deemed fully operational. Now I wonder if "other uses" (not necessarily time-travel but perhaps MK-ULTRA) were being investigated. For what it's worth …http://www.stealthskater.com
I think you have made some very interesting points concerning the bogus Philadelphia Experiment and the even more ridiculous and fantastical Montauk Project. Both Alfred Bielek and Preston Nichols did indeed become friends through the Psychotronics Association. After both Bielek and Nichols had met on only three occasions, they conceived the crappola disinformation phenomena that became the Montauk Point AFB mythos. However they never called that conspiracy the ‘Montauk Project’. That name was made up by Stewart Swerdlow and was then later used by Peter Moon (Vincent Barbarick). What is also not known is the homosexual liaisons between certain people that conceived what became the Montauk Project. When Stewart Swerdlow confronted Alfred Bielek in front of Duncan Roads, the Nexus Magazine editor, at the Global Sciences Congress (GSC), in February 1999, in Daytona, Florida, he knew that the Philadelphia Experiment was a total lie made up by Bielek and told him so. Because Swerdlow wanted fame and attention, he had conceived the idea of what he called the ‘Montauk Project’ based upon the Montauk Point AFB as the location where time travel, aliens and sexual abuse would go on.
Now Stewart Swerdlow, being the complete charlatan, liar, con artist and scammer of epic proportions, then suggested to Al Bielek about connecting the fake Philadelphia Experiment to his fake Montauk Project. Swerdlow knew this could bring him fame and make him look mysterious and important. As a side note, how many people know that Duncan Cameron is actually called Duncan Campbell? Interestingly that little gimmick became used in the Montauk Project scam, as Swerdlow was called Stan Campbell. All of it suddenly becomes clear, doesn’t it? Each piece of the charade that Bielek, Nichols and the supreme con man, scammer and liar Stewart Swerdlow put together, is clear for all to see. There were real government projects in bases during the 1970s and 1980s, but not like the highly bogus Montauk Project. Now that Alfred Bielek has gone and so has Preston Nichols, the Montauk Project Mythos is rapidly fading. Only Swerdlow the Scammer remains and he knows that he must maintain the total lie that the Montauk Project was real. The problem with Stewart Swerdlow is he has completely messed up, because of his continual contradictions in his own backstory which have revealed how fake he really is and has destroyed any trace of credibility he may have had. Swerdlow tells people he sodomized to death 300 boys on the Montauk Project, talked with Reptilians onboard spaceships and then tells people he took a phial of Jesus Christ’s blood. Stewart Swerdlow is seriously mentally disturbed and one of the most evil disinformers within the New Age Movement.