Did the Philadelphia Experiment Really Happen?

The World War II-era is notorious for mysterious Nazi experiments involving weapons and strange esoteric technology. But the U.S. also conducted its fair share of tests on new and nefarious weaponry and wartime tactics. Some of the most famous minds of the time, including Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, were even employed to execute the military complex’s will, occasionally leading to some perplexing stories.

One of the more bizarre accounts involves the supposed attempt of the Navy to develop a technology that could make an entire ship invisible to the naked eye. But these experiments had some unintended consequences that led to the project being shut down and buried until a man who claimed to have worked on the project blew the whistle on its cover-up. The stories that ensued became the inspiration for a 1980s, sci-fi movie and the Netflix series, Stranger Things, but could these stories actually have some validity to them?

The Philadelphia Teleportation Experiment

A man named Al Bielek is a central figure in these stories and his account has been ridiculed as simply being contrived nonsense, but the historical context and his detailed narrative are intriguing and possibly part of a true story, shedding light on clandestine government operations, one of which was known as the Philadelphia Experiment.

According to Bielek, in the late 1930s, the Navy was working on a project using electromagnetism to essentially develop an invisibility cloak for its warships. Around that time, Bielek said that Einstein was directing a program of degaussing ships by wrapping them in electromagnetic coils, to protect against magnetic mines planted by the Nazis. Tesla purportedly took this technology and parlayed it into the cloaking experiment, having some initial success with a small boat. After failed attempts with larger ships, Tesla gave up and the project was handed over to Dr. John von Neumann, who also worked on the Manhattan Project.

Von Neumann eventually succeeded in making the U.S.S. Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer escort, invisible for a short period of time on the first occasion. According to Bielek, one of Tesla’s inventions, a Zero Time Reference Generator, lent itself to this success. This device supposedly locks the Earth’s magnetic fields and acts as a cosmological reference with the electromagnetic fields at the center of the galaxy.

The USS Eldridge, involved in the Philadelphia Experiment

Bielek said that Tesla gave von Neumann a cryptic warning about a “personnel problem” that might occur in their experiment, but he continued anyway and the Navy trained a crew specifically for the operation. Then on August 12, 1943, they ran a second test. After being shrouded in a “green, ozone-laden haze” the ship purportedly disappeared for several hours, during which it traveled through time and then rematerialized. Upon its return, sailors were reported to be violently ill, some engulfed in flames, and others molecularly bonded with the ship. Bielek, however, said he and his brother, who was aboard the ship at the time, jumped off during the time warp and remained in 1983 on Montauk, Long Island at another secretive government facility also experimenting with time travel, known as the Montauk Project.

Bielek gives an intriguing explanation for how his time travel was possible, relating to Tesla’s Zero Time Generator. He said that Tesla’s device was the key for the ship to return back to its original location. According to Bielek, we live in a five-dimensional reality, with time being the fourth and fifth dimensions. He said that every human is given a set of locks that lock them in a point of time from which they came, but that the experiment ruptured those time references, upon returning to Philadelphia.

The Montauk Project Conspiracy

Stemming from the Philadelphia Experiment, the military supposedly conducted a program at the Camp Hero Air Force base on Long Island, known as the Phoenix Project. The program funded studies ranging from psychotronics to black hole simulations and weather control. Some point to a company in the area, called the Brookhaven Institute, as being a shadow agency in collusion with the government for these experiments.

The company’s website says it researches an array of studies including nuclear and high energy physics, superconducting magnets, and condensed matter physics; they also have a particle accelerator like the one at CERN. In conjunction with the department of energy, the company has been credited for many successful discoveries and inventions but has also been the subject of class-action lawsuits over radiation contamination of its employees and surrounding neighborhoods.

A man named Preston Nichols, claims to have worked for the Brookhaven Institute when these experiments took place. Nichols has said that during his time at Brookhaven, a plethora of psychic research was carried out with some of the best psychic minds as well as with children. Some of the experiments achieved materialization of objects, teleportation, and black hole creation. These tests were supposedly being used for reality engineering and other insidious means.

Duncan Cameron was one of the subjects whose testimony as a psychic was meant to expose the iniquitous nature of the experiments that were carried out. Through a somewhat convoluted story, Duncan was reincarnated as the brother of Al Bielek after having perished during time travel in the Philadelphia Experiment and was again involved in this corollary project. During his time with the Montauk Project, Cameron was put through tests in the Montauk Chair, a consciousness amplification device, where he could access a fixed time loop between the Montauk Project and the Philadelphia Experiment. Working with Nichols, Cameron used his psychic capabilities for a project called The Seeing Eye, where he used a lock of someone’s hair to directly access their mind, and tap into their sight and other senses, eventually attempting to influence their thought.

The project ended on August 12, 1983 – exactly 40 years after the Philadelphia experiment. At this point, Cameron’s psychic powers unleashed a monster that destroyed much of the base, and the military subsequently shut the project down. There is even a picture that purports to show the beast, or Demogorgon as it was referred to in Stranger Things.

The monster Cameron allegedly created

The members of this project were brainwashed and wiped of their memories, although they claim that they have gained remembrance over time, with this story. While it has made for the premise of a very entertaining movie and television show, could there be a modicum of validity to their claims? Could they have been part of mind control or psychic programs like MKUltra that have distorted reality or did they actually travel through time? The mystery remains and continues to be debated, but those involved swear by their accounts.