July 8, 2026 • 65 mins
Here's the story: In October of 1943, hundreds of people watched a top secret experiment go horribly wrong. The US Navy, attempting to create a kind of invisibility cloak for ships, accidentally transported the USS Eldridge through time and space, with disastrous consequences for the crew. It's a thrilling tale, but how much of it is true? Tune in as the guys explore the origin of this bizarre legend (and bust some myths about cream cheese along the way) in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Philip conspiracy realist. You remember Philadelphia cream cheese? We sure did,
and we wanted to figure out where it came from,
so we did it in this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right, that's what this entire episode is about, Baby
taking them cows and milking them for all that sweet, sweet, white, milky.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Gold big Dary.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, that's right. No, this is about a really weird
experiment that maybe didn't happen, probably didn't happen, allegedly happened
about time travel.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The USS Eldridge traveling through time and space with disastrous consequence.
It is a thrilling tale. But how much of it,
you know, is straight poop and how much of it
is just whipped cream cheese? We're going to find out
in this recording from UFOs to Psychic Powers and government Conspiracies.
(00:57):
History is riddled with unexplained events. Can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is not.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff They don't
want you to know. Today's episode is a weird one
on many levels. First, it's weird that we have not
done a podcast on this before. We've had a lot
(01:43):
of people ask us about it over the years. Secondly,
it concerns something that has always fascinated us, allegations of
hidden technology. Now you know these stories or you know
the rough tropes. They come and go throughout the world
of conspiratorial lore, but they will never really go away,
(02:03):
just because there are way too many known proven cases
of suppress technology we've explored on the show, and there's
way too much other weird, somewhat sinister, circumstantial, very true
stuff floating around, like the Invention Secrecy Act of what
(02:23):
was it, nineteen fifty one. That's a real thing. I've
still boggled by that you can invent something in the
United States and do everything right, and the government can
totally not just steal your invention, but also legally prevent
you from ever talking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Do the rest of you imagine getting that visit or
that call what You're so stoked you've patented your first
like Gangbuster's genius idea, and then you get a call
from the g men saying sorry, but we're going to
suppress the hell out of this and you can never
speak of it again.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
You know, it's not the government's fault. They were just
there two decades before and already patented the thing, and
then just you know, they didn't have to tell anybody.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So it's parallel thinking with the government.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I spend a little too much time, I think, whenever
we get close to these topics, just imagining what sort
of stuff could have been pulled by the Invention Secrecy Act.
I hope it's not all weapons. I hope it's some
things that are like ridiculous, like a regenitative dentifice, a
toothpaste you can use that actually removes cavities. And someone
(03:29):
was like, no, this the world's not ready.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Lock him just a way a way too advanced bidet now,
Like we just we can't have this, We cannot let
this fly.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, an actually everlasting gob stopper.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yes, wallpaper where the snosberries actually taste likensbery, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Or a pill that means you'll never have to sleep again.
That's my personal favorite. Anyway, this stuff happens all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
They have that that's called meth no if there's a
trailer dropping for a show on the day we record
this about a very very pill. It's actually more of
a mind app but it's all good.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Nice. Can you disclose more sure?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
It's called Tomorrow's Monsters. It's brought to you by the
Flynn Picture Company and Dan Bush and Psycopia Pictures and
myself and my team.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's documentary, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's a documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, very o Matt Frederick. Yeah, that's an exciting one
and we're not blowing smoke. Do check it out. I
think we'll have the trailer for that show in our
own feed in a little while, but stay stay tuned.
So suppress technology. Let's start today's story with a little
bit of background on the US Navy. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So we could start with the rumors. I suppose we
don't necessarily need to lead off with saying the rumors
are true. But there are rumors, tons of them in fact,
about the US Navy and classified space age experiments. These
rumors don't exist in a vacuum. They don't come from
absolute whole cloth. The Navy has, of course done tons
of secret experiments. It's a thing. It's a known thing
(05:07):
that the Navy does experiments that we'll probably never hear
about or at the very least the full extent of
this research. But the stuff that has been declassified is
really really really cool.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh yeah, and one of the first things we can
look at is this amazing piece of tech called the
Sea Shadow.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Not to be confused with the sea shanties that are
very popular on TikTok right now, just putting that out there.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not a sea shant tea, it's a Sea Shadow.
It's it's a stealth warship. It will remind you of
if you took one of the stealth bombers or the
stealth jet fighter that we've talked about before on the
show that you've seen that made their appearances during the
Gulf War. I believe, like an yeah F one to
(05:50):
seventeen Nighthawk, very similar to that. But you took that
thing then you kind of crunched it down, turned its
wings kind of on its side and downwards a bit,
and then put it in the water. That's kind of
what it looks.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Like a little bit like the X or the X
Men like plane. Sort of.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, we're a B two bomber or I'm gonna be
completely honest, A real kick ass toy from the g I.
Joe toy line. It looks like you could buy it
at Target and put your little figures in it.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I remember when they used to make toys and then
everything else was just based on the toy. Now it's
the other way around. Yeah, I missed those days.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I love it. I love all the I love the
ridiculous extents that we'll go to to make a storyline
around a toy line, you know what I mean. So,
the Sea Shadow is a real thing, and it's created
in partnership with Lockheed and DARPA. DARPA again, if you're listening,
get at me. Where's the sleep tech? Not meth. I'm
(06:48):
not asking for meth. I just want to stay awake.
So the Sea Shadow, it was a project that spanned
from like nineteen eighty four to its public data and
confirmation of existence in nineteen ninety three. It looks super cool.
It had some really smart technology a board and in
(07:11):
its DNA, you could say, But ultimately it was never commissioned.
In fact, it was gutted and sold by Uncle Sam
after they had spent a while trying to get a
museum to take it. No museum would take it, so
they sold it to a private company with a very
weird condition. And so we're selling this to you and
(07:31):
you have to destroy it, you know, to take it apart.
You can never use it or sale it, just sell
it for scrap.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And typically we're not going to hear about this kind
of stuff unless the military decides they no longer have
any use for it, or it's more or less considered
a failed experiment.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Right, right, that's a good point. So there are two
ways that there are number of ways militaries will disclose
this kind of bleeding edge tech. First if it doesn't
work and they feel like maybe another intel elegency agency
has already compromised the research. That's why, you know, when
enough time passes, that's when you start hearing about stuff
(08:07):
like we tried to use bats as explosive devices in
World War two, things.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Like that, or those hover platforms. Remember those hover platforms
with the like propellers on the bottom. That was a
real cool idea. Clearly it was super wonky, impossible to steer,
more so than like a segue, and that came out.
You know, you can see you can see drawings of
these on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
One of those was actually mistaken for a UFO in
Mexico a few years back. Actually, I don't think mistaken
is right, because it was an r phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I think that's what you know, that's sort of the
old story of where a lot of sightings of of
UFOs come from is veiled government technology that no one
knows about. So therefore it must be if we don't
know about it, it must be, you know, from another galaxy.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Absolutely. Another reason that government might disclose bleeding edge t
is to send an intimidation signal to a geopolitical rival.
And that's I mean, that's that's a powerful statement. And
then there are of course legit leaks like the assages
and snowed ends of the world. But but what's interesting
(09:17):
about this is although the Sea Shadow is long gone,
you can see its influence, its legacy and other ships
today like the USNS Impeccable, an ocean surveillance ship that
was recently or a few years back, I should say,
in the news for some ratcheting tensions in the Pacific theater,
(09:39):
mainly China and interacting with US and the Philippines. But
so the Sea Shadow, it's a real thing. It looks
like a spaceship on the water.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
And just to be clear here, the USNS Impeccable looks
like that build that we were discussing where it's got
It looks like it's got too parts of it on
the bottom that go into the.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Water and are submerged really deeply and then kind of
goes up in an arc almost like almost like the
underside of a bridge tunnel or something. Great example, Yeah,
beneath the ship so that other things can go in there.
I guess pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I want one. I want to live on one. But
so the Navy also did other wild stuff back in
the day, just to show you how long ago this
process was, so Sea Shadow fair comparatively recent. But the
Navy also experimented with airborne aircraft carriers. This is something
we covered in an old episode of car Stuff. For
(10:41):
a while, they Okay, this idea is going to sound crazy,
and it's going to sound like it's a conversation that
a bunch of coked up eighties movie producers would have.
But here's what happened. They said, blimps are cool. We
like airships. Let's build airships that we can put tiny
(11:03):
planes in. And then we can have these tiny planes
fly out of the airships and then guys, guys, we're
gonna put the planes back in the blimps.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Bro. I love that idea, and I will love you
so much.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Guys. This is the best carry okay, n'd ever blimps.
But yeah, they did the USS Akron the USS making.
They were lighter than air craft, uh, and they were huge.
They were eight hundred feet long. They had built in
hangars and they could take these tiny tiny planes and
(11:41):
deploy them, and then the pilots could in theory, and
they did this successfully a few times. They could also
return to the airship dock and be taken back up
into the blimp. But it's like anybody with anxiety, your
heart will already start racing when you hear about how
they connected back. They had to like fly up under
(12:03):
the airship at this match at speed, and they had
a little hook on this tiny plane and they had
to kind of like like at a carnival gamer an
arcade game. They had to kind of like position the
hook onto this bar that was just hanging down from
the blimp. They had to hope it connected and then
have perfect timing so that they didn't destroy the whole
(12:27):
house of airborne cards, no surprise. Eventually they eventually, Uncle
Sam decided this was kind of a wild, unreliable idea
for a number of reasons. And we know the Navy
also experiments with armament, right I remember.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Wait, wait, we can't. We can't leave uss Akron yet
because we know it exploded, right yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it didn't fly for very long, but in
nineteen thirty three, that's when its final flight occurred. At
(13:04):
least the the Akron version that we spoke.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Of, it had a number of accidents. Yeah, but with
work in progress, work in progress. So we also know
the Navy experiments extensively with new types of armament, you know,
mortarshells and so on. Probably one of the coolest things
to hit the public sphere is the rail gun, which
has been fascinating us for a number of years. Shout out,
(13:31):
shout out to the railgun cruise because that stuff is
supposed to be ready in twenty twenty one to twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Was that quake?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I think it was quake.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yes, I was just I was like, am I crazy?
Like I thought that was a weapon in doom or quake.
Pretty sure it's quake. But this is not a handheld device.
This is like a massive ordinance cannon.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, correct, Yeah, it's not something you can carry around
with you yet. And a handheld version we don't know,
we don't know what they're up to. Yeah, okay, let's
put that it's not something we can carry around handtel version.
And the Navy has done tons of other stuff. The
drawing board is filled with mistakes and triumphs. Of course,
(14:17):
you know, Matt, I thought of you specifically with this one.
It's maybe a story for another day. But there's a
lot of research into unmanned maritime vehicles like lockeeds. Is
building those prototypes now.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Like seed drones?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, cool, of course they are. Oh man,
I just haven't seen it. I haven't looked into it,
but yeah, find me in a week. I'll be very
very into this.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I always picture oh what was that film? I always
picture the guys from Step Brothers looking at an unmanned
ship of this sort and saying like, wow, once you
take the people out, there's so much room for activities.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yeah, I suppose, But isn't the idea the same way
that like laptops now don't have desk drives in them anymore.
Aren't they trying to make the smallest possible package. I
guess when you say activities, we're like using that as
a stand in for features and like tech and weaponry, right.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yep, fuel more communications equipment. You also don't have to
worry so much about various safety mechanisms you would put
in to keep the meat bags going safely port to ports.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Almost as though people are going to one day become
an afterthought and all of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Maybe maybe, But we are giving you these examples again,
these very real examples, to establish this fact. Yes, the
US military constantly engages in classified research, experimentation and design
and so on and so on and so on. A
ton of it ends up never working. But it's also
(15:55):
safe to assume, I would say, it's crucial to assume
that all competent, world class militaries are doing the same thing.
The US is not alone in this regard. It's not
a matter of like, we're beyond good and evil. These
are just the rules of the road for these organizations.
But in the case of the US Navy specifically, there
(16:16):
is one project, gentlemen, one rumor of a test that
has obsessed thousands of people for decades. That's our episode today.
What is the Philadelphia Experiment.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We'll tell you about it in just a moment.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Here's where it gets crazy. We're back. We don't have
to spend a lot of time on this, but we've
researched extensively and the facts are there. The Philadelphia Experiment
was the original name for what we call cream cheese.
It was invented by the US Navy back in the
nineteen fifties, shortly after World War Two, to address growing
and urgent concerns about the lack of cream and wartime
(16:59):
chae supplies.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Those maniacs, they were so preoccupied with whether they could
do this, they never considered whether they should.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yep, and we made a whole video about it. If
you head over to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff,
you can watch that video. And really it's just the
lack of cream in that video is astounding, and it's
really what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
The best part of the video is when they start
getting into different flavors. That's when it really they cracked
the egg wide open.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The cream cheese arm race. Yeah, the flavor arm race.
It was a harrowing time, you know, and I think
I think we can all agree that the world got
very close to ending, So thank you. That's cream cheese
is also, you know, the cream cheese conflict is also
where we see the origins of mutually assured destruction or
(17:48):
mad policy, which later you might recognize from nuclear weapons.
We're kidding, this is something different. We think we're kidding.
I don't know, Big Cream, don't shut us down. What
we're really talking about is something that I believe could
now be described as an urban legend. It's been around
(18:11):
long enough that it's reached legend status, and we have
a story for you, folks, strap.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
In legendary to the point that, you know, kind of
like we were talking about earlier, with that room of
Navy tech people getting a little excited big upping each
other on weird ideas, there was a room full of
Hollywood executives doing something very similar, saying the Philadelphia Experiment
brilliant idea for a sci fi film of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
That's right. Now, cast your mind back to nineteen forty
three October. At the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, government scientists are
conducting an experiment aboard a US Navy Canon class destroyer
escort called the USS Eldridge. It's number d E one
(19:01):
seventy three.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
There are some notable people in attendance at this momentous occasion,
one of whom is Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was making
the rounds according to this story, because you see, the
eggheads working for the Navy had reached some fascinating conclusions
about the application of Einstein's theory of the unified field,
(19:26):
and they were hoping to create a real life invisibility cloak,
a field of energy that would render the Eldridge invisible
both to the human eye and to radar, which was
the more important part.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
This is sort of like a science y tech version
of like, you know, D and D Cloak of invisibility.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Basically, right, Harry Potter, Cloak of invisibility? What have you?
Just a ship? It's on a ship instead of a
person or a level three warlock. And this this gets
love Craftian pretty quick. And it's a story that I think,
you know, if you consider yourself a conspiracy realist, this
is probably one of your favorite stories when you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Ben. Is it any accident that the ship was named
the USS Eldridge.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
It's great, good story.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
It really works, it really works.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And this is a real ship. By the way, we'll
get into this too.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
That part's spelled differently. It's spelled e L dri DG Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Good points. So according to this story, this experiment is
unusual in comparison to other declassified experiments because it is
witnessed by hundreds, possibly thousands of sailors who are at
the port or who are on other nearby ships. The
(20:43):
testing was a series of events, and it began, as
Matt said, in the summer of forty three. At first
it seemed successful to a limited extent. One test allegedly
resulted in the Eldridge mean kind of translucent, you know,
somewhat obscured, almost invisible. And then some witnesses reported a
(21:07):
quote greenish fog or later described as a green glow
appearing in place of where the ship used to be.
Crew Members allegedly complained of severe nausea and then disaster.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Struck and just you know, while we're here. If that
is true, it sounds like nuclear stuff to me, a
greenish people are getting dosed by radiation and feeling a
little sick. That's what it sounds like.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
It also reminds me a lot of when David Copperfield
made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television, minus
the radiation and the greenish glow. Apparently he just pulled
a giant like curtain up and then dropped it. But
that was a big deal at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I vaguely remember that. Yeah, yeah, I always wondered how
he did that, And also related, I always wonder how
people get into those words of gigs, you know, like
just from a infrastructure equipment materials.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Practice, practice practice, same way you get to Carnegie Hall,
you know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Start with a spoon and you end up with the
Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
You just pick a real specific niche and just go
with it, lean into it hard.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I'm a magician, but I only disappear statues.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
That's like paltic, guys, I'm big serious here. I mean,
think about the fog even, like what could that be? Oh,
I don't know. If someone trying to figure out how
to make a piece of uranium go into water and
then I don't know, use the steam that's coming off
of it to make some experiment happen, but they don't
(22:40):
understand exactly what's happening. Yet with all that steam.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And we know now from what was soon to follow,
radioactive energy creation is all about steam, and we know
that the water and all of that stuff that is
used to generate radioactive energy is absolutely toxic.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yes, but we're not saying that that's what was happening here.
This is Matt's a little silly put theory.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
This has been Matt's silly pet theory. Corners.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I think it's I think it's either little nor silly.
There are another there's there's other couple of possibilities.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
It is a corner, though, can we at least agree
on that.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
I think it's a corner. Yeah, we're in your corner
in multiple levels. So one of the things that could
have happened is if there were some sort of energy
field or distortion that affected perception. The Eldridge probably had
lights on it, right, so those lights may have been
somehow distorted, producing what appeared to be a greenish gloe. Anyhow,
(23:37):
it said disaster struck. We'll get into the details of
the legend, but here's the general gist of what happened.
The crew had severe side effects, some died. These side
effects were much more than just an upset stomach. Some
were allegedly found materialized part way into the hull of
(24:00):
the ship fuse into it. Like phasing that went wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I'm sorry, man, I can't get over every time you
say the eldritch I'm just picturing Cthulhu esque hulking monsters
coming out of the sea.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Way for it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
And also I perhaps unfairly primed us by immediately saying
love crafting.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh no, it was completely fair.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It's okay. Well, the other thing is just so everybody
understands phasing, just so we're all on the same page here.
Phasing is when you have a creature on the board
and they're in play for turn one basically, let's say,
and then it comes to your turn again after your
opponent has played, and then they would phase out so
you'd flip them over. Then on the next your next turn,
(24:46):
they would phase back in, so you'd flip it back
over and they could attack and block and things.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Like that, which is based on the Philadelphia experiments. Yeah so,
and also, of course, for any fans of comics, we
know that is the primary power of Kitty Pride and
is one of the many powers of Vision, who is
a synthesoid what was.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Kitty Pride's sexual superhero name?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Was that it shadow Cat?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Shadow Cat? Thank you just making sure so.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
This we're making light of this, But if true, this
is an enormous tragedy because it means hundreds of people
saw multiple folks die in a way that appeared to
be physically impossible. Some simply disappeared and were never seen again,
and still others, how love crafting is this, were driven
mad by the experience, by whatever they saw on the
(25:37):
inside of that energy field, where they were plagued for
years by mysterious cases of quote phasing in and out
of existence. The Navy disavowed all knowledge of this. You
can read their statement about it, which is low key hilarious.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
No, Doug, that didn't happen, right.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
But since the mid fifties, not nineteen forty three. Since
about the mid fifties, the story grew legs in the
public sphere. More and more authors came forward claiming to
have either second or first hand knowledge of the event,
and at times there are various different stories about what
happened in nineteen forty three contradict one another in numerous ways.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, in nineteen fifty six is when a ufologist by
the name of Morris Jessup got letters from a person
identifying himself as Carlos Miguel Allende or Carl m. Allen.
And let's just really quickly remind everyone that this was
about twelve years after the experiment allegedly took place.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh man, these letters, Oh boy. Okay. So if you
have ever just to make this human and relatable, if
you have ever been in a situation where you have
published a book, or you've created art or music or
something where is something that people respond to, then you
might be familiar with the out of the blue extraordinary
(26:59):
correspond sets. So we'll call it extraordinary correspondence. We get
it here at this show, and for the most part,
we love it, and we're very fortunate to receive these letters.
But here's what Carlos slash. Carl claims in his letters.
His government name is Carl Allen, by the way, he
just goes by Carlos Allende. So Carl says that he
(27:22):
witnessed this secret experiment in nineteen forty three World War
Two at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. He was not on
the Eldridge. He says he was on a nearby ship,
the Furuseth, and he was watching the Eldridge, and he
had learned through this experience and through his own later
investigations that the ship didn't just disappear, didn't just become
(27:46):
invisible for a little bit, but it got teleported to
New York in a way that was physically impossible given
what we understand about ship propulsion at the time. And
then it got teleported to another dimension where in the
crew encountered sincient non human life. Then it got teleported
through time. This is a dangerous journey and that's what
(28:07):
led to the deaths of several men. And Carlos Slash
carl as the one who claimed, you know, and they
saw the greenish glow people refuse this ship. He also
said he saw a guy, a survivor of the Eldridge
later in a bar, and as he watched the man,
the man vanished from existence.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
And really quickly. I'm certain that these accounts are the
inspiration for the nineteen eighty four sci fi film The
Philadelphia Experiment, where some sailors who were on board when
this experiment took place get teleported to the Nevada Desert
and then things get weird and Carl.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's important to say. Carl, as we'll learn, was a
guy who was a fan of sending letters. But it
made sense for him to reach out to this guy,
Jessop because Jessop had just published a book called The
Case for the UFO. It's kind of like a primer
and speculation examining UFO phenomenon in general and then speculating
(29:07):
on things like what their propulsion system could be, like
how could they be so nimble to physics? Basically right, yeah,
just so eventually Carl would end up sending Jessup more
than fifty letters, and Jessup at first. So here's the
thing you might think, Okay, Jessup just automatically dismisses this
(29:29):
guy out of hand because he makes some crazy claims.
He also, by the way, I can't remember if we
mentioned this, he also, by the way, told Jessop in
the course of these letters that he had personally spent
several weeks with Albert Einstein, and Albert Einstein was explaining
in person the truth about the unified field and various
(29:49):
other bleeding edge of physics kind of subjects.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
God sucks, because how cool would that be? I mean,
it sounds amazing. But everyone out there listening, you know,
we've encountered stories like this before where you have to
be you have to remain skeptical enough, right and we
have to we're all doing that right now. It doesn't
(30:12):
mean we completely disbelieve all of us at least, but
it does mean that we're venturing into some choppy waters here.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Right, Well, said yeah, Jessup. Jessup is taking the same tack. Initially,
he says, Okay, I'm going to try to seriously investigate
these these claims, these ideas in good faith. But he
becomes frustrated because this Carl guy, this person he knows
only through letters, seems unable to or unwilling to produce
(30:44):
physical evidence. Eventually, Jessup dismisses all all all these missives
as the work of a crackpot or someone who as
having some cognitive stability issues, and he goes about his
day that was in what was that nineteen fifty five,
fifty six, He's fine, He's like, okay, well that was weird.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
But then but.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Dead nineteen fifty seven, he gets another weird piece of correspondence.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, not from a UFO guy, crackpot, like from the
office of Naval Research in Washington, DC. They reach out
to him and they're a little bit annoyed. They'd gotten
a package containing a paperback version of the Case for
the UFO. It was in a Mandila envelope marked Happy Easter.
(31:33):
Oh and the book had been marked up extensively. Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yes, it reminds me of something, honestly, my grandfather would do.
There were three different shades of pink. There's been just
all written scribbled throughout there, and it appeared to show
correspondence between three individual people, one of whom is named Jemmy.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
That's j E.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
M I, and the O n R labeled the other
two as simply mister A and mister B.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Gotta call him something, you know what I mean, Let's
not complicate it. I'm sure they had a whole list
of names, and they're like Lancelot, Galahad Mansa, Musa and
someone else said okay, dude, calm down, We'll just we'll
start at A. So these notes are interesting. We believe
that one of the reasons Carl Allen specifically contacted Jessup
(32:22):
originally was because in his book The Case for the UFO,
he mentions Einstein, and he mentions unified field, and Carl
Allen had either spent a lot of time with Einstein
or had thought about him pretty frequently. So in these notes,
and these are heavy notes, by the way, in these
notes there are oblique references to the Philadelphia experiment, and
(32:47):
there are also like, if you look at it the
way they're written, it's almost as if there is a
chat for him. It looks almost as if these people
were passing this book back and forth to one another
and reacting to the things the other people said.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
And then then we get like almost like a hitchcocky
and twist where Jessup notices something and and like I
can picture the editing crossed, you know, like doing a
voiceover from the past, or like a flashback to when
he first noticed this. He recognizes the handwriting.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Of all three people because it's one person. It's that
guy who sent him all those letters. And now now
he's got jammed up by the Navy. This is not
this is not what you imagine happening when you want
to write a cool UFO book.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
So well, this guy jammed himself up by sending it
over to the Navy. No, but it is now jamming
up Jessip yeah, jes Jessup.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Is unfairly jammed here, so he he reckoned, Like Noel says,
he recognizes this handwriting, and he recognizes the subject matter,
the style of writing. He says, Look, this is all
that same guy who's been sending me stuff and naval authorities.
(34:04):
I assure you, I think he's kind of off, he says,
has some interesting things to say. Oh, by the way,
he's also a close friend of Albert Einstein. You know,
why are.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You talking to me? He just died right, This is like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, just about two years ago. Einstein died in fifty
five and this fifty seven, So that's what he says.
He's like, look, I don't know. I'm just trying to
make a living.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
As a writer.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It's tough all around, but I have nothing to do
with this. He probably also went on to say, like,
I'm also not a communist in case that comes up.
And then he goes off and he's still now He's like, Now,
if you think about it from Jessup's perspective, the Navy
calling you up about this story that you originally might
(34:52):
not have believed. That becomes a huge piece of credibility,
does it not, Especially there's another twist here. This is
a twist I think will be a big one.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
The Office of Naval Research itself later funded a very
small republication of Jessop's book through a military contractor called Varo.
Why they I don't know, man, because they they when
they published it, when they republished it, it wasn't just
Jessop's work. They published it with all of those annotations
(35:25):
by those three fake people. Double why right?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Utopia anyone? Still?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (35:33):
God, my mind, Sorry, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Oh and thanks to everybody wrote it, wrote in and
alerted us to the British version being up there being
a very.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Watched both seasons already do it now? Yes, that's all,
that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yes. Do you prefer it to the US version?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
In many ways? In other ways no, And I'm not
going to elaborate.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So don't take our word for it. If you want
to check out Utopia now it's the perfect time to
do it. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors,
and we're going to watch the rest of the seasons.
Then we'll be back and we'll do this. We'll do
the show and we're back this is one heck of
(36:17):
a tail so far. This is I mean, step to
the left rhyme of the ancient mariner. We have a
new legend of the sea. So let's dive further into
these claims. The numerous authors writing about this in later
years link the experiment to other pre existing conspiracy theories
(36:38):
regarding particularly Allied and Axis experimentation on the bleeding edges
of known science during World War Two. And the thing
about that stuff is as crazy as it sounds, there
is a little bit of sand to some of those
World War two conspiracy theories. Shout out to the Horton
h O right, that might have changed the war, and
(37:02):
we really lucked out. This also became the Philadelphia Experiment.
Writers also connected it to later conspiracies such as things
like the Montalk Project, which we still we haven't done
an episode on that, I think, but if we do,
it's it's going to be kind of the part two
of the Philadelphia Experiment.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
And we see something happening here with the story of
the Philadelphia Experiment that we're seeing a lot more of
in modern times, actually extremely recent times, where some of
the authors who were writing about it are willing to
make leaps in logic and almost just assume that certain
stories are real and then find connective tissue between those
(37:44):
two stories in some small way, as Ben was saying,
like to the Montalk project. But it seems as though
a lot of the authors writing about it, we're just
willing to do that. And then there it becomes a
thing where the lore builds up over time, where more
and more people are stating kind of the same thing
that hasn't been proven, but enough people are saying it
(38:07):
that it feels true.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
There's a social aspect to it, a social engineering aspect.
And there were these common story elements, the ones we
outlined in our exploration of the legend. There were plenty
of contradictory claims. Is people got their favorite you know,
pet theory corners stoked. And one thing you'll notice is
(38:31):
that the authors often paint Carlos Allende or carl Allen
has this very mysterious, enigmatic figure, a drifter on the
fringes of the mainstream, a man nearly impossible to contact.
This turned out to be very much not true.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Interesting, I mean, that's certainly the way it seems to
come off in terms of the assembled lore around this story.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Right, Yeah, picture of like he's like the popular mythic
image of this guy would be a lot like the
father in Firestarter, you know, on the run from the
government's mysterious men in black, chasing you for your rare
and dangerous knowledge and or abilities. So this drew the
(39:17):
attention of a paranormal researcher named Robert Gorman. Around nineteen
seventy nine or so, Gorman was looking back through this
stuff and he noticed something weird. The original return address
on that Easter package that was sent to the Office
of Naval Research was from New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Holy smokes,
(39:40):
says Rob that's my hometown. I live here. I can
find this address. And the coincidences got even stranger. This
guy Carlos Ayende, his real name was Carl Allen. He
lived in town. He was the son of a close
family friend of the Gorman. So Gortman was able to
(40:01):
reach Carl Allen with relatively little difficulty. That means something
profoundly change over the course of all those other writer's experience,
or that means that maybe they weren't trying as hard
to contact him as they led their readers to believe.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
But he was known around town. He had a reputation
for being a bit of a loaner with sort of
a wild imagination.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Correct, yes, that is correct. He was an eccentric. He
was infamous for writing on anything and everything around the
family house, and as Skeptoid puts it, he was also
known to send bizarre writing and claims to everyone in
his family or in his circle for any occasion. And
(40:47):
there's a word for this. It's called hypergraphia, a behavioral
condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Ben This instantly makes me think of love crafty and
stuff where someone who has lost their mind hold up
in some sort of ramshackled abandoned mansion scrawls weird cuthulhusque
cryptograms all over the wall, does it not.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
That's a good point. I didn't think of that. Yeah, yeah,
I think we're well on the way to making our
own version of the Philadelphia Experiment as a feature film,
maybe a serious of YouTube videos. All right, welcome of it.
We'll work shopping. So look, Gorman, he's tracking Carl down,
but at the same time he's looking into the facts
(41:31):
surrounding the uss Eldridge.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
And really what he was finding appeared to illustrate a
very different picture than what he was being given by
old Carl. He found a lot of the stuff fully
disproved the statements that Carl was making. And perhaps in
another way, if you listening are fully convinced that this
(41:55):
was a true story, that Carl knew the truth and
everyone else was keeping it quiet, it kind of it
might lead you down the road of oh, this is
a full cover up and it was effective. It worked,
and the loan person that knew the truth was seen
as a crackpot.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Typical for these sorts of tales, right, yeah, yeah. The
absence of evidence can be treated as evidence, you know,
which is tough tough to get around. Gorman found the
following based on US Naval records. The ship the Eldridge
was nowhere near Philadelphia at the time this experiment was
(42:35):
said to have occurred. Not only were they not there,
but they had evidence, corroborated evidence of the routine stuff
they were doing and where they were at the time.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
They could fake all that if they wanted to just say, yes.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, that's true, that's true. We have to pursue both
lines of thought here. It could be faked, right, You
can change history. It's just a matter of changing records
and eliminating witnesses. Oh, so he reaches out to people
who would have been first hand witnesses. Who was a
crew member on the Eldridge in forty three? He thinks
(43:11):
who was on board afterwards or even before, if I
could find someone still alive. Every single person crew member
that he spoke to who was on board the ship
there none recalled anything about any such experiment. And Matt,
this is where we have to say. They could have
been intimidated.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
That's exactly. They could have been intimidated, or maybe they
lost consciousness. They don't actually remember it. And the horror
stories are you know of people who didn't make it anyway,
and we have to say that.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
We have to say it. We have to say it.
It's the fair thing to acknowledge. And so, long story short,
every claim that Gorman looked into, it appeared that the
vast majority of them came from one source, Carl Allen,
and the rest of it was rephrased or embellished afterwards.
And additionally, all of these claims that he looked into
(44:05):
seemed to be easily disproven by multiple other sources, which
again would have to be compromised or faked for this
to be real at this point. But there are other
troubling facts. Let's go back to the bar Carl Allen,
Remember he says, I saw this guy, a survivor of
those tragic events in forty three. He was in a
(44:26):
bar with me, and then poof, he just kaiser, so said,
or a nightcrawler banfed teleported something. There's more news on
that though.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, there were quite a few people that came forward
claiming to be this person, and not just regular people,
veterans of the Eldritch and the uss Angstrom which was
moored alongside the Eldridge in nineteen forty three. We have
to know that these kinds of claims were made well
after the Philadelphia Experiment became the pop culture phenomenon that
it is today, and in more than one case it
(44:58):
actually turned out that these guys we're not really veterans
at all. So it really kind of throws a wrench
into the works here and doesn't necessarily fully debunk Carl
Allen's initial story because it seems like the people that
are coming forward making these claims are also being a
little dishonest themselves, right.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, And it's a phenomenon that you see whenever a
story takes a takes gets a grip on the national consciousness.
Like whenever there is a suspected or acknowledged serial killer
in operating in a city, often law enforcement gets inundated
(45:38):
with calls from people who are, for one reason or another,
either falsely claiming to be the killer, falsely claiming to
know who it is, et cetera, et cetera. And some
of these folks are pranksters. Some of these folks are
maybe a little more detached from reality. But there's another
huge badger in the bag here. It's the one we
(45:58):
have to keep going back to the missing piece of
the puzzle. Why on Earth did the Office of Naval
Research called Jessop in the first place? Why did they
Why did they go to him and not just toss
this in the rubbish bin. There are a couple of
possibilities too. I would say, you're pretty mundane, and one
(46:18):
I would say is that's all I say, it's.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I'll go with you down this this route. So I
would say the first one is that whatever individuals from
that office that ended up making it to see Jessup,
we're just doing it because they wanted to do it,
they were interested. They got this weird correspondence, and they're like,
I kind of want to know more. I mean, I
wonder if this guy's like annotating his own book and
sending it to us. Let's let's go talk to him.
(46:48):
This will be this will be fun. Come on, come on, Bill,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
That's a really good point because, like the fact that
it's a government agency, your mind immediately goes toward this
is some sort of giant initiative. But these people have
pretty unilateral abilities to pursue their own stuff, right. I mean,
that's that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
I love the idea for this one. I love the
idea of uh of Jessup going to meet them and
they're like, actually, we're not meeting in the office, where
you just come meet me at this coffee shop.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
But we're really just fans.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
We're really just just just want to ask if you
would sign this.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Uh yeah, deciding if we're thinking about doing a small run, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Would you be option this Because we're actually deciding we're
gonna pivot careers, We're gonna be like producers.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Now, a lot of people, you know, have this stereotype
of us as these uptight guys. But we're just we
you know, we like to kick back, fire a few
rail guns, work on some alien tech, and and pursue pictures.
This is gonna be big for us. Jessup or should
I say Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
And then he's just like, I don't know what you're
talking about.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
L is a euphemism for doing cocaine. I'm sorry from
earlier that never mind rail guy.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Oh boy, that's another hit in the history. Uh So
that's the first possibility, and it may be mundane, but
it is totally possible.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
The second is that it could have literally just been
these guys' job. It was a small I think it
was a couple of people. It's a couple officials, so
maybe they're maybe they're remit was to follow up on
any and all correspondence, no matter how weird it was,
no matter how innocuous, no matter how unimportant. It might
(48:37):
seem like. Maybe they were treating this with the same
kind of due diligence they would treat a letter from
a six year old about Santa Claus. Maybe they just
had to reply to everything and investigate it if it
merited for further investigation, so they may not have had
any personal interest I could see.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
That, or or what else could be hmmm.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Oh gosh, okay, so what if okay, what if they
had to read this, they had to read the whole book,
and there was something in those notes. There was something
in those notes that was somehow similar to actual classified
research Uncle Sam was conducting. Think about that. That's not
(49:26):
as impossible as it sounds, because there are a ton
of notes there, and depending on what they're talking about,
if there's even one note that seems like a legit
hint that someone outside of the company knows what the
Navy's up to.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Ooh yeah, And we have to be real about this.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Even if let's say Carlyonde, his writing, his notes, his theories,
all that stuff was complete bunk. But in that writing
he he like hit upon as Ben is saying something
that's close enough to what was occurring somewhere. Maybe if
it wasn't even there, but just through a conceptualized science
(50:10):
fiction story, he got close enough they would I can
imagine that being dangerous in them having to go like
you said and follow up.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Wow, I mean, look at how much science fiction is
so prescient of like future technology, you know. I mean
that's where a lot of like the idea of futurism
comes from, is like thought experiments that ultimately become possible.
And then this is the part. I'm sorry. There's so
many beats in this story that are just so lovecrafty.
And I know you primed the pump then. But on
April thirtieth, Jessup took his own life, presumably after succumbing
(50:41):
to Eldritch madness or potentially considering himself a failure as
a writer.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, this story haunted him, and he did die by
his own hand, just two years after that initial contact
with the Navy.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Much, I have to say it. He died two years
after this interaction with the ONR. There's potential for something
to feel fishy there. No, it doesn't mean that it is,
but it definitely feels weird.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, we have to put it in much much later.
The story continues. The nineteen eighty four film The Philadelphia
Experiment is released, and in nineteen eighty eight a man
named al Blick bi Lick sees the film and it
shakes some things loose in his head. He goes public
(51:33):
and says, I was there. I was on the Aldridge.
I was part of that experiment. I have been brainwashed
to forget it, and seeing this film jogged those memories.
Loose interesting not the same thing as proof interesting. Carlos
Ayende Carl Allen lived until nineteen ninety four. He would
(51:54):
send letters to any number of people every so often
about the Philadelphia Experiment, further exploring the story and the legend.
And the same year that Carl passes away, a French
writer named Jacques F. Vallei v al Ee publishes this
(52:16):
article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration called Anatomy of
a Hoax the Philadelphia Experiment. Fifty years later and he
receives this letter from a guy named Edward Dudgeon Edward
dudgen Us Navy vet. Nineteen forty two nineteen forty five.
He has a story that relates to the Eldridge.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Kind of similarly to one of the other stories we
heard earlier, as someone being on board a near ship.
That's the one that Carlos Allende and initially put forward.
He was on this other ship, he observed some of
this and then went down the rabbit hole. Well, this person,
Edward Dujan, says that he served aboard the Engstrom the
uss Engstrom. It was dry docked in Philadelphia Naval Yard.
(53:02):
If the Philadelphia experiment is to be true, that's also
where the Eldritch was.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
And that he is.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Saying that both ships, while they were there and docked
and preparing to operate, had some kind of classified tech
on board. But according to his story, he wasn't saying
that this was some kind of invisibility experiment like some
kind of cloaking device, nor some kind of teleportation device
or something designed by extra terrestrials.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah, exactly. Instead he said they were attempting to scramble
magnetic signatures of ships using something called degaussing. Degassing is
this is a way of counteracting a ship's magnetic field
to establish a condition making the ship seem invisible to
(53:57):
certain devices.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Stradar and things like that, not to the eye right.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Right right, to protect it from magnetic torpedoes, for instance.
But god, you'll still see the ship if you're in
line of sight. So what he says is they wrapped
the ship with large cables and zapped it with high
voltage charges, so the ship, again it wouldn't be invisible
to quick clarification, would not be invisible to line of
(54:23):
sight witnesses. It wouldn't be invisible to radar, but it
would appear to be invisible to magnetic torpedoes. The pines
that were used by U boats.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
Interesting, So what about the green glow that was such
an interesting feature of the early reports of this experiment.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
So Dungeons says, it's either Saint Elmo's fire or an
electric storm. But Saint Elmo's fire is kind of weird.
It's a glow that occasionally appears around pointy objects during storms.
From what I understand, that glow is supposed to be
(55:03):
blue in color, not green.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, again, if the original account is true, right, because
the green glow is just a part of the story,
the lore there. And then you know, this person is
coming forward and saying, well I was actually there, and
yeah there was tech and it was for this. So
that's really all he's confirming.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Yeah, he has a good and interesting explanation about that
apparently impossible time that the Eldridge allegedly took to go
to Norfolk and then return to Philadelphia. He says the
Navy was using inland canals that are off limits to
civilian vessels, and that allowed them to make the trip
(55:45):
in six hours instead of two days. But anyway, what
we're saying is there are other people who are proposing
more grounded explanations to these alleged events what happened to
the ship? Though we've been pretty clear the ship is real.
The ship did exist, and people were crude on it.
(56:06):
It was commissioned, it was nacked a vessel in the
Navy until eventually it was sold for scrap, just like
the Sea Shadow in the nineteen nineties. Doesn't that seem weird?
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Though?
Speaker 1 (56:16):
I get yep, what am I being too sentimental? You guys?
I would feel like maybe it's the improv mentality coming out,
But like if we built some awesome super secret technology,
even if it was outdated, I would be like, come on, guys,
this is more than a war machine. Now. It's like
a testament to our friendship and all the cool work
(56:38):
we did traveling dimensions.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
And maybes, and there's no reason we should destroy this. Yes,
and what let's put it on display, right.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
I do have to point out really quickly, my dear friend,
who I believe both of you have met, Peyton Fisher
of Brooklyn, New York. He pointed out that the Wikipedia
intro for the Philadelphia experiment. He describes it as stinging.
He says, I love the stinging Wikipedia intro quote. The
alleged claims do not conform to known physical laws.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, out, she goes, it's true.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
It's true. It's gonna say sometimes they don't, guys, that's
when that's when it gets excited.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Great.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Well, I think there's also a there's a real cool
thing you can do on Wikipedia, especially if you're looking
at a subject you feel as controversial. Hop on over
to the talk tab. Right. Every article starts with one
tab that just has article, but to the direct right
of that you'll see the tab that says talk And
if you get into the right thing, you will find
(57:47):
these amazing arguments by very dedicated people. Oddly enough, you
would think the geopolitical stuff would have more involved acrimonious
kind of exchanges, But the fan fiction things are where
you see people packing a lot of rhetorical heat. But yeah,
(58:08):
you're right, stinging accusation and the ship is gone. It
was scrapped in nineteen nineties as of this recording. If
you check with the Office of Naval Research today, they
will tell you they have never conducted experiments on invisibility,
and that this sort of technology remains squarely in the
realm of science fiction. However, this is not entirely true.
(58:32):
Something like invisibility tech is currently being researched by various
outfits around the planet. We just don't know of anything
good enough to do what Carl Allen claimed Uncle Sam
did back in the forties. But google quantum stealth invisibility.
It's a cool read.
Speaker 3 (58:48):
Or the kind of weird like functional painting version of
invisibility called dazzle camouflage, where ships were painted with these
like weird angular stripes that supposedly made them harder to
see on the horizon line.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Yeah, that was cool to do. Check that out. And
as we get to the end of the show, we
know there is one huge piece of the puzzle. It's
a piece you cannot ignore. It's one that's definitely, doubtlessly
been on all of our minds for most of this episode.
It's the real question, where the hell does Philadelphia cream
cheese actually come from? It is not Philadelphia. What it's
(59:27):
not Philadelphia? We don't know. There may be consequences for
us disclosing this on air, but cream cheese was invented
in the eighteen seventies by a guy in Chester, New York.
Or he's the first to mass produce it, at least
his name's William Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (59:41):
Yeah, but Philadelphia, they're the ones that got really good
at it, and you know, figured out how to make
it taste like strawberries, right.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
You know, I'm not going to take that one from
you know, I'm gonna let you have that out. The
The funny thing is, it's just so unrelated to anything.
He called it Philadelphia cream cheese because he thought it
sounded classier and fancier because at the time Philadelphia was
well known for the quality of its dairy industry.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Sure, but it's still something that Philly residents sort of
hold on to as like a point of pride. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
I think it only really checks out if he had
a Southern accent, because Philadelphia, it really is lovely.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
So that's our show. Unfortunately, at this point, it does
appear that the majority of the really out there claims
linked to the Philadelphia experiment can be traced to a
single man, Carl Allen. Additionally, the majority of his claims
do not seem to hold up to scrutiny, and they
can either be disproven or they just can't be corroborated.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Yeah, and as we record today, multiple government agencies do
continue classified research across a wide range of disciplines. Just
last week, it was reported that the Navy has gone
public about several of these classified patents.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, it's true, and you can read about this right now.
A great resource we found was on the drive. They've
got a I guess it's kind of an imprint within
whatever the drive is called the war Zone, And there's
just some great articles coming out of there, Brett Tingly
(01:01:18):
or Tingeley and Tyler Rogaway or two authors that we've
been reading a ton off of that website lately. And
you can even find like there are great helpful things
here in these articles, like a Google patent search with
specifically the Salvator pays guy on here. It's a key
name that you can look up as you're doing your
(01:01:38):
own research. You can see all of the actual patents
for crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
I still want to see the patent for the E
meter that Mike Render told us about.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
There's something very interesting of foot here with these patents.
That's why we shout out the Invention Secrecy Act of
fifty one, which remains in effect today. Essentially, the folks
that the journalists are talking to over at the war
zone have confirmed that the US government spent more than
a half million dollars over three years specifically to test
(01:02:16):
some theories that every other physicist says our pseudoscience. So
what is the truth here? And when do we find out? Ah?
And still, why was the ONR so interested in this story?
We have no idea? What do you think? Please let
us know. We try to be easy to find online.
(01:02:36):
We're on Facebook. Go over to Here's where it gets
Crazy to meet the best part of the show, your
fellow listeners. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram,
not just as a show, but as individuals.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
If you would like, you can find me on Instagram
where I am at how Now, Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Matt Underscore, Jimbay Dash, Frederick Overscore.
Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Bongo Boy, ak Cornkid dot org yep. So you can
also find me at Ben bull and hsw on Twitter.
You can reach out to me directly at Ben Bullen
on Instagram. I hate social media, you're saying, shaking your
fist into the sky, but I have a story I
need to tell you. We have good news for you.
(01:03:18):
My friends.
Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
That's right. You can call one eight three three std
WYTK and leave a message at the sound of Ben's
dulcet tones.
Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
That is correct. We very much look forward to hearing
from you. We are a bit behind. Hey, look, hey,
we're catching up and we're getting there quickly. Please try
and limit it to one message if you can, and
keep it as brief as you can. Give us all
that important information right up front. Hammer it home, and
we will hopefully get you on the air on one
of our listener mail episodes. Just let us know if
(01:03:47):
you don't want us to play your voice or you
don't want us to say your name on the air.
One other thing here, we don't have much, if any
Wikipedia presence as a s oh yeah, what's that about? Well?
I think we have one mention on an old house
stuff Works entry? Yes, how Stuff Works podcast. I'm just
(01:04:08):
putting this out there. Hey, are you listening to this?
And a Wiki editor?
Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I don't know, put something on there. We we'd love
to see even a like a silly entry.
Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Now. I don't am I incorrectly assume that a lot
of Wikipedia entries are done by the parties involved themselves.
Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
I think that's true, or maybe a pr agency some
people higher, but I don't. I don't feel like it's ethical.
Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
We don't play that way, do we.
Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
No, And I'm surprised, Matt. I'm surprised that you bring
this up because some doors don't close.
Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
So yeah, situation we're gonna live forever on the wiki.
Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
But please no stinging opening lines.
Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
If you would, If none of that white sends your
the ship of your mind hurdling through dimensions in time,
there is one other way. You can always contact us,
regardless of where you're at, what you think about the
Philadelphia Experiment or every other little thing under and beyond
(01:05:12):
the sun, as our good old fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Philip conspiracy realist. You remember Philadelphia cream cheese? We sure did,
and we wanted to figure out where it came from,
so we did it in this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right, that's what this entire episode is about, Baby
taking them cows and milking them for all that sweet, sweet, white, milky.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Gold big Dary.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, that's right. No, this is about a really weird
experiment that maybe didn't happen, probably didn't happen, allegedly happened
about time travel.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
The USS Eldridge traveling through time and space with disastrous consequence.
It is a thrilling tale. But how much of it,
you know, is straight poop and how much of it
is just whipped cream cheese? We're going to find out
in this recording from UFOs to Psychic Powers and government Conspiracies.
(00:57):
History is riddled with unexplained events. Can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is not.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff They don't
want you to know. Today's episode is a weird one
on many levels. First, it's weird that we have not
done a podcast on this before. We've had a lot
(01:43):
of people ask us about it over the years. Secondly,
it concerns something that has always fascinated us, allegations of
hidden technology. Now you know these stories or you know
the rough tropes. They come and go throughout the world
of conspiratorial lore, but they will never really go away,
(02:03):
just because there are way too many known proven cases
of suppress technology we've explored on the show, and there's
way too much other weird, somewhat sinister, circumstantial, very true
stuff floating around, like the Invention Secrecy Act of what
(02:23):
was it, nineteen fifty one. That's a real thing. I've
still boggled by that you can invent something in the
United States and do everything right, and the government can
totally not just steal your invention, but also legally prevent
you from ever talking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Do the rest of you imagine getting that visit or
that call what You're so stoked you've patented your first
like Gangbuster's genius idea, and then you get a call
from the g men saying sorry, but we're going to
suppress the hell out of this and you can never
speak of it again.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
You know, it's not the government's fault. They were just
there two decades before and already patented the thing, and
then just you know, they didn't have to tell anybody.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So it's parallel thinking with the government.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I spend a little too much time, I think, whenever
we get close to these topics, just imagining what sort
of stuff could have been pulled by the Invention Secrecy Act.
I hope it's not all weapons. I hope it's some
things that are like ridiculous, like a regenitative dentifice, a
toothpaste you can use that actually removes cavities. And someone
(03:29):
was like, no, this the world's not ready.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Lock him just a way a way too advanced bidet now,
Like we just we can't have this, We cannot let
this fly.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, an actually everlasting gob stopper.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yes, wallpaper where the snosberries actually taste likensbery, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Or a pill that means you'll never have to sleep again.
That's my personal favorite. Anyway, this stuff happens all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
They have that that's called meth no if there's a
trailer dropping for a show on the day we record
this about a very very pill. It's actually more of
a mind app but it's all good.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Nice. Can you disclose more sure?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
It's called Tomorrow's Monsters. It's brought to you by the
Flynn Picture Company and Dan Bush and Psycopia Pictures and
myself and my team.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's documentary, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's a documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, very o Matt Frederick. Yeah, that's an exciting one
and we're not blowing smoke. Do check it out. I
think we'll have the trailer for that show in our
own feed in a little while, but stay stay tuned.
So suppress technology. Let's start today's story with a little
bit of background on the US Navy. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So we could start with the rumors. I suppose we
don't necessarily need to lead off with saying the rumors
are true. But there are rumors, tons of them in fact,
about the US Navy and classified space age experiments. These
rumors don't exist in a vacuum. They don't come from
absolute whole cloth. The Navy has, of course done tons
of secret experiments. It's a thing. It's a known thing
(05:07):
that the Navy does experiments that we'll probably never hear
about or at the very least the full extent of
this research. But the stuff that has been declassified is
really really really cool.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh yeah, and one of the first things we can
look at is this amazing piece of tech called the
Sea Shadow.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Not to be confused with the sea shanties that are
very popular on TikTok right now, just putting that out there.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not a sea shant tea, it's a Sea Shadow.
It's it's a stealth warship. It will remind you of
if you took one of the stealth bombers or the
stealth jet fighter that we've talked about before on the
show that you've seen that made their appearances during the
Gulf War. I believe, like an yeah F one to
(05:50):
seventeen Nighthawk, very similar to that. But you took that
thing then you kind of crunched it down, turned its
wings kind of on its side and downwards a bit,
and then put it in the water. That's kind of
what it looks.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Like a little bit like the X or the X
Men like plane. Sort of.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, we're a B two bomber or I'm gonna be
completely honest, A real kick ass toy from the g I.
Joe toy line. It looks like you could buy it
at Target and put your little figures in it.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I remember when they used to make toys and then
everything else was just based on the toy. Now it's
the other way around. Yeah, I missed those days.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I love it. I love all the I love the
ridiculous extents that we'll go to to make a storyline
around a toy line, you know what I mean. So,
the Sea Shadow is a real thing, and it's created
in partnership with Lockheed and DARPA. DARPA again, if you're listening,
get at me. Where's the sleep tech? Not meth. I'm
(06:48):
not asking for meth. I just want to stay awake.
So the Sea Shadow, it was a project that spanned
from like nineteen eighty four to its public data and
confirmation of existence in nineteen ninety three. It looks super cool.
It had some really smart technology a board and in
(07:11):
its DNA, you could say, But ultimately it was never commissioned.
In fact, it was gutted and sold by Uncle Sam
after they had spent a while trying to get a
museum to take it. No museum would take it, so
they sold it to a private company with a very
weird condition. And so we're selling this to you and
(07:31):
you have to destroy it, you know, to take it apart.
You can never use it or sale it, just sell
it for scrap.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And typically we're not going to hear about this kind
of stuff unless the military decides they no longer have
any use for it, or it's more or less considered
a failed experiment.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Right, right, that's a good point. So there are two
ways that there are number of ways militaries will disclose
this kind of bleeding edge tech. First if it doesn't
work and they feel like maybe another intel elegency agency
has already compromised the research. That's why, you know, when
enough time passes, that's when you start hearing about stuff
(08:07):
like we tried to use bats as explosive devices in
World War two, things.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Like that, or those hover platforms. Remember those hover platforms
with the like propellers on the bottom. That was a
real cool idea. Clearly it was super wonky, impossible to steer,
more so than like a segue, and that came out.
You know, you can see you can see drawings of
these on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
One of those was actually mistaken for a UFO in
Mexico a few years back. Actually, I don't think mistaken
is right, because it was an r phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I think that's what you know, that's sort of the
old story of where a lot of sightings of of
UFOs come from is veiled government technology that no one
knows about. So therefore it must be if we don't
know about it, it must be, you know, from another galaxy.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Absolutely. Another reason that government might disclose bleeding edge t
is to send an intimidation signal to a geopolitical rival.
And that's I mean, that's that's a powerful statement. And
then there are of course legit leaks like the assages
and snowed ends of the world. But but what's interesting
(09:17):
about this is although the Sea Shadow is long gone,
you can see its influence, its legacy and other ships
today like the USNS Impeccable, an ocean surveillance ship that
was recently or a few years back, I should say,
in the news for some ratcheting tensions in the Pacific theater,
(09:39):
mainly China and interacting with US and the Philippines. But
so the Sea Shadow, it's a real thing. It looks
like a spaceship on the water.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
And just to be clear here, the USNS Impeccable looks
like that build that we were discussing where it's got
It looks like it's got too parts of it on
the bottom that go into the.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Water and are submerged really deeply and then kind of
goes up in an arc almost like almost like the
underside of a bridge tunnel or something. Great example, Yeah,
beneath the ship so that other things can go in there.
I guess pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I want one. I want to live on one. But
so the Navy also did other wild stuff back in
the day, just to show you how long ago this
process was, so Sea Shadow fair comparatively recent. But the
Navy also experimented with airborne aircraft carriers. This is something
we covered in an old episode of car Stuff. For
(10:41):
a while, they Okay, this idea is going to sound crazy,
and it's going to sound like it's a conversation that
a bunch of coked up eighties movie producers would have.
But here's what happened. They said, blimps are cool. We
like airships. Let's build airships that we can put tiny
(11:03):
planes in. And then we can have these tiny planes
fly out of the airships and then guys, guys, we're
gonna put the planes back in the blimps.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Bro. I love that idea, and I will love you
so much.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Guys. This is the best carry okay, n'd ever blimps.
But yeah, they did the USS Akron the USS making.
They were lighter than air craft, uh, and they were huge.
They were eight hundred feet long. They had built in
hangars and they could take these tiny tiny planes and
(11:41):
deploy them, and then the pilots could in theory, and
they did this successfully a few times. They could also
return to the airship dock and be taken back up
into the blimp. But it's like anybody with anxiety, your
heart will already start racing when you hear about how
they connected back. They had to like fly up under
(12:03):
the airship at this match at speed, and they had
a little hook on this tiny plane and they had
to kind of like like at a carnival gamer an
arcade game. They had to kind of like position the
hook onto this bar that was just hanging down from
the blimp. They had to hope it connected and then
have perfect timing so that they didn't destroy the whole
(12:27):
house of airborne cards, no surprise. Eventually they eventually, Uncle
Sam decided this was kind of a wild, unreliable idea
for a number of reasons. And we know the Navy
also experiments with armament, right I remember.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Wait, wait, we can't. We can't leave uss Akron yet
because we know it exploded, right yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it didn't fly for very long, but in
nineteen thirty three, that's when its final flight occurred. At
(13:04):
least the the Akron version that we spoke.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Of, it had a number of accidents. Yeah, but with
work in progress, work in progress. So we also know
the Navy experiments extensively with new types of armament, you know,
mortarshells and so on. Probably one of the coolest things
to hit the public sphere is the rail gun, which
has been fascinating us for a number of years. Shout out,
(13:31):
shout out to the railgun cruise because that stuff is
supposed to be ready in twenty twenty one to twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Was that quake?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I think it was quake.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yes, I was just I was like, am I crazy?
Like I thought that was a weapon in doom or quake.
Pretty sure it's quake. But this is not a handheld device.
This is like a massive ordinance cannon.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, correct, Yeah, it's not something you can carry around
with you yet. And a handheld version we don't know,
we don't know what they're up to. Yeah, okay, let's
put that it's not something we can carry around handtel version.
And the Navy has done tons of other stuff. The
drawing board is filled with mistakes and triumphs. Of course,
(14:17):
you know, Matt, I thought of you specifically with this one.
It's maybe a story for another day. But there's a
lot of research into unmanned maritime vehicles like lockeeds. Is
building those prototypes now.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Like seed drones?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, cool, of course they are. Oh man,
I just haven't seen it. I haven't looked into it,
but yeah, find me in a week. I'll be very
very into this.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I always picture oh what was that film? I always
picture the guys from Step Brothers looking at an unmanned
ship of this sort and saying like, wow, once you
take the people out, there's so much room for activities.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yeah, I suppose, But isn't the idea the same way
that like laptops now don't have desk drives in them anymore.
Aren't they trying to make the smallest possible package. I
guess when you say activities, we're like using that as
a stand in for features and like tech and weaponry, right.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Yep, fuel more communications equipment. You also don't have to
worry so much about various safety mechanisms you would put
in to keep the meat bags going safely port to ports.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Almost as though people are going to one day become
an afterthought and all of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Maybe maybe, But we are giving you these examples again,
these very real examples, to establish this fact. Yes, the
US military constantly engages in classified research, experimentation and design
and so on and so on and so on. A
ton of it ends up never working. But it's also
(15:55):
safe to assume, I would say, it's crucial to assume
that all competent, world class militaries are doing the same thing.
The US is not alone in this regard. It's not
a matter of like, we're beyond good and evil. These
are just the rules of the road for these organizations.
But in the case of the US Navy specifically, there
(16:16):
is one project, gentlemen, one rumor of a test that
has obsessed thousands of people for decades. That's our episode today.
What is the Philadelphia Experiment.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We'll tell you about it in just a moment.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Here's where it gets crazy. We're back. We don't have
to spend a lot of time on this, but we've
researched extensively and the facts are there. The Philadelphia Experiment
was the original name for what we call cream cheese.
It was invented by the US Navy back in the
nineteen fifties, shortly after World War Two, to address growing
and urgent concerns about the lack of cream and wartime
(16:59):
chae supplies.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Those maniacs, they were so preoccupied with whether they could
do this, they never considered whether they should.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yep, and we made a whole video about it. If
you head over to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff,
you can watch that video. And really it's just the
lack of cream in that video is astounding, and it's
really what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
The best part of the video is when they start
getting into different flavors. That's when it really they cracked
the egg wide open.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The cream cheese arm race. Yeah, the flavor arm race.
It was a harrowing time, you know, and I think
I think we can all agree that the world got
very close to ending, So thank you. That's cream cheese
is also, you know, the cream cheese conflict is also
where we see the origins of mutually assured destruction or
(17:48):
mad policy, which later you might recognize from nuclear weapons.
We're kidding, this is something different. We think we're kidding.
I don't know, Big Cream, don't shut us down. What
we're really talking about is something that I believe could
now be described as an urban legend. It's been around
(18:11):
long enough that it's reached legend status, and we have
a story for you, folks, strap.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
In legendary to the point that, you know, kind of
like we were talking about earlier, with that room of
Navy tech people getting a little excited big upping each
other on weird ideas, there was a room full of
Hollywood executives doing something very similar, saying the Philadelphia Experiment
brilliant idea for a sci fi film of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
That's right. Now, cast your mind back to nineteen forty
three October. At the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, government scientists are
conducting an experiment aboard a US Navy Canon class destroyer
escort called the USS Eldridge. It's number d E one
(19:01):
seventy three.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
There are some notable people in attendance at this momentous occasion,
one of whom is Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was making
the rounds according to this story, because you see, the
eggheads working for the Navy had reached some fascinating conclusions
about the application of Einstein's theory of the unified field,
(19:26):
and they were hoping to create a real life invisibility cloak,
a field of energy that would render the Eldridge invisible
both to the human eye and to radar, which was
the more important part.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
This is sort of like a science y tech version
of like, you know, D and D Cloak of invisibility.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Basically, right, Harry Potter, Cloak of invisibility? What have you?
Just a ship? It's on a ship instead of a
person or a level three warlock. And this this gets
love Craftian pretty quick. And it's a story that I think,
you know, if you consider yourself a conspiracy realist, this
is probably one of your favorite stories when you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Ben. Is it any accident that the ship was named
the USS Eldridge.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
It's great, good story.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
It really works, it really works.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And this is a real ship. By the way, we'll
get into this too.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
That part's spelled differently. It's spelled e L dri DG Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Good points. So according to this story, this experiment is
unusual in comparison to other declassified experiments because it is
witnessed by hundreds, possibly thousands of sailors who are at
the port or who are on other nearby ships. The
(20:43):
testing was a series of events, and it began, as
Matt said, in the summer of forty three. At first
it seemed successful to a limited extent. One test allegedly
resulted in the Eldridge mean kind of translucent, you know,
somewhat obscured, almost invisible. And then some witnesses reported a
(21:07):
quote greenish fog or later described as a green glow
appearing in place of where the ship used to be.
Crew Members allegedly complained of severe nausea and then disaster.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Struck and just you know, while we're here. If that
is true, it sounds like nuclear stuff to me, a
greenish people are getting dosed by radiation and feeling a
little sick. That's what it sounds like.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
It also reminds me a lot of when David Copperfield
made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television, minus
the radiation and the greenish glow. Apparently he just pulled
a giant like curtain up and then dropped it. But
that was a big deal at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I vaguely remember that. Yeah, yeah, I always wondered how
he did that, And also related, I always wonder how
people get into those words of gigs, you know, like
just from a infrastructure equipment materials.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Practice, practice practice, same way you get to Carnegie Hall,
you know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Start with a spoon and you end up with the
Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
You just pick a real specific niche and just go
with it, lean into it hard.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I'm a magician, but I only disappear statues.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
That's like paltic, guys, I'm big serious here. I mean,
think about the fog even, like what could that be? Oh,
I don't know. If someone trying to figure out how
to make a piece of uranium go into water and
then I don't know, use the steam that's coming off
of it to make some experiment happen, but they don't
(22:40):
understand exactly what's happening. Yet with all that steam.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And we know now from what was soon to follow,
radioactive energy creation is all about steam, and we know
that the water and all of that stuff that is
used to generate radioactive energy is absolutely toxic.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yes, but we're not saying that that's what was happening here.
This is Matt's a little silly put theory.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
This has been Matt's silly pet theory. Corners.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I think it's I think it's either little nor silly.
There are another there's there's other couple of possibilities.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
It is a corner, though, can we at least agree
on that.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
I think it's a corner. Yeah, we're in your corner
in multiple levels. So one of the things that could
have happened is if there were some sort of energy
field or distortion that affected perception. The Eldridge probably had
lights on it, right, so those lights may have been
somehow distorted, producing what appeared to be a greenish gloe. Anyhow,
(23:37):
it said disaster struck. We'll get into the details of
the legend, but here's the general gist of what happened.
The crew had severe side effects, some died. These side
effects were much more than just an upset stomach. Some
were allegedly found materialized part way into the hull of
(24:00):
the ship fuse into it. Like phasing that went wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I'm sorry, man, I can't get over every time you
say the eldritch I'm just picturing Cthulhu esque hulking monsters
coming out of the sea.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Way for it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
And also I perhaps unfairly primed us by immediately saying
love crafting.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh no, it was completely fair.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It's okay. Well, the other thing is just so everybody
understands phasing, just so we're all on the same page here.
Phasing is when you have a creature on the board
and they're in play for turn one basically, let's say,
and then it comes to your turn again after your
opponent has played, and then they would phase out so
you'd flip them over. Then on the next your next turn,
(24:46):
they would phase back in, so you'd flip it back
over and they could attack and block and things.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Like that, which is based on the Philadelphia experiments. Yeah so,
and also, of course, for any fans of comics, we
know that is the primary power of Kitty Pride and
is one of the many powers of Vision, who is
a synthesoid what was.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Kitty Pride's sexual superhero name?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Was that it shadow Cat?
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Shadow Cat? Thank you just making sure so.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
This we're making light of this, But if true, this
is an enormous tragedy because it means hundreds of people
saw multiple folks die in a way that appeared to
be physically impossible. Some simply disappeared and were never seen again,
and still others, how love crafting is this, were driven
mad by the experience, by whatever they saw on the
(25:37):
inside of that energy field, where they were plagued for
years by mysterious cases of quote phasing in and out
of existence. The Navy disavowed all knowledge of this. You
can read their statement about it, which is low key hilarious.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
No, Doug, that didn't happen, right.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
But since the mid fifties, not nineteen forty three. Since
about the mid fifties, the story grew legs in the
public sphere. More and more authors came forward claiming to
have either second or first hand knowledge of the event,
and at times there are various different stories about what
happened in nineteen forty three contradict one another in numerous ways.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, in nineteen fifty six is when a ufologist by
the name of Morris Jessup got letters from a person
identifying himself as Carlos Miguel Allende or Carl m. Allen.
And let's just really quickly remind everyone that this was
about twelve years after the experiment allegedly took place.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh man, these letters, Oh boy. Okay. So if you
have ever just to make this human and relatable, if
you have ever been in a situation where you have
published a book, or you've created art or music or
something where is something that people respond to, then you
might be familiar with the out of the blue extraordinary
(26:59):
correspond sets. So we'll call it extraordinary correspondence. We get
it here at this show, and for the most part,
we love it, and we're very fortunate to receive these letters.
But here's what Carlos slash. Carl claims in his letters.
His government name is Carl Allen, by the way, he
just goes by Carlos Allende. So Carl says that he
(27:22):
witnessed this secret experiment in nineteen forty three World War
Two at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. He was not on
the Eldridge. He says he was on a nearby ship,
the Furuseth, and he was watching the Eldridge, and he
had learned through this experience and through his own later
investigations that the ship didn't just disappear, didn't just become
(27:46):
invisible for a little bit, but it got teleported to
New York in a way that was physically impossible given
what we understand about ship propulsion at the time. And
then it got teleported to another dimension where in the
crew encountered sincient non human life. Then it got teleported
through time. This is a dangerous journey and that's what
(28:07):
led to the deaths of several men. And Carlos Slash
carl as the one who claimed, you know, and they
saw the greenish glow people refuse this ship. He also
said he saw a guy, a survivor of the Eldridge
later in a bar, and as he watched the man,
the man vanished from existence.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
And really quickly. I'm certain that these accounts are the
inspiration for the nineteen eighty four sci fi film The
Philadelphia Experiment, where some sailors who were on board when
this experiment took place get teleported to the Nevada Desert
and then things get weird and Carl.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's important to say. Carl, as we'll learn, was a
guy who was a fan of sending letters. But it
made sense for him to reach out to this guy,
Jessop because Jessop had just published a book called The
Case for the UFO. It's kind of like a primer
and speculation examining UFO phenomenon in general and then speculating
(29:07):
on things like what their propulsion system could be, like
how could they be so nimble to physics? Basically right, yeah,
just so eventually Carl would end up sending Jessup more
than fifty letters, and Jessup at first. So here's the
thing you might think, Okay, Jessup just automatically dismisses this
(29:29):
guy out of hand because he makes some crazy claims.
He also, by the way, I can't remember if we
mentioned this, he also, by the way, told Jessop in
the course of these letters that he had personally spent
several weeks with Albert Einstein, and Albert Einstein was explaining
in person the truth about the unified field and various
(29:49):
other bleeding edge of physics kind of subjects.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
God sucks, because how cool would that be? I mean,
it sounds amazing. But everyone out there listening, you know,
we've encountered stories like this before where you have to
be you have to remain skeptical enough, right and we
have to we're all doing that right now. It doesn't
(30:12):
mean we completely disbelieve all of us at least, but
it does mean that we're venturing into some choppy waters here.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Right, Well, said yeah, Jessup. Jessup is taking the same tack. Initially,
he says, Okay, I'm going to try to seriously investigate
these these claims, these ideas in good faith. But he
becomes frustrated because this Carl guy, this person he knows
only through letters, seems unable to or unwilling to produce
(30:44):
physical evidence. Eventually, Jessup dismisses all all all these missives
as the work of a crackpot or someone who as
having some cognitive stability issues, and he goes about his
day that was in what was that nineteen fifty five,
fifty six, He's fine, He's like, okay, well that was weird.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
But then but.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Dead nineteen fifty seven, he gets another weird piece of correspondence.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, not from a UFO guy, crackpot, like from the
office of Naval Research in Washington, DC. They reach out
to him and they're a little bit annoyed. They'd gotten
a package containing a paperback version of the Case for
the UFO. It was in a Mandila envelope marked Happy Easter.
(31:33):
Oh and the book had been marked up extensively. Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yes, it reminds me of something, honestly, my grandfather would do.
There were three different shades of pink. There's been just
all written scribbled throughout there, and it appeared to show
correspondence between three individual people, one of whom is named Jemmy.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
That's j E.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
M I, and the O n R labeled the other
two as simply mister A and mister B.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Gotta call him something, you know what I mean, Let's
not complicate it. I'm sure they had a whole list
of names, and they're like Lancelot, Galahad Mansa, Musa and
someone else said okay, dude, calm down, We'll just we'll
start at A. So these notes are interesting. We believe
that one of the reasons Carl Allen specifically contacted Jessup
(32:22):
originally was because in his book The Case for the UFO,
he mentions Einstein, and he mentions unified field, and Carl
Allen had either spent a lot of time with Einstein
or had thought about him pretty frequently. So in these notes,
and these are heavy notes, by the way, in these
notes there are oblique references to the Philadelphia experiment, and
(32:47):
there are also like, if you look at it the
way they're written, it's almost as if there is a
chat for him. It looks almost as if these people
were passing this book back and forth to one another
and reacting to the things the other people said.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
And then then we get like almost like a hitchcocky
and twist where Jessup notices something and and like I
can picture the editing crossed, you know, like doing a
voiceover from the past, or like a flashback to when
he first noticed this. He recognizes the handwriting.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Of all three people because it's one person. It's that
guy who sent him all those letters. And now now
he's got jammed up by the Navy. This is not
this is not what you imagine happening when you want
to write a cool UFO book.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
So well, this guy jammed himself up by sending it
over to the Navy. No, but it is now jamming
up Jessip yeah, jes Jessup.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Is unfairly jammed here, so he he reckoned, Like Noel says,
he recognizes this handwriting, and he recognizes the subject matter,
the style of writing. He says, Look, this is all
that same guy who's been sending me stuff and naval authorities.
(34:04):
I assure you, I think he's kind of off, he says,
has some interesting things to say. Oh, by the way,
he's also a close friend of Albert Einstein. You know,
why are.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You talking to me? He just died right, This is like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, just about two years ago. Einstein died in fifty
five and this fifty seven, So that's what he says.
He's like, look, I don't know. I'm just trying to
make a living.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
As a writer.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It's tough all around, but I have nothing to do
with this. He probably also went on to say, like,
I'm also not a communist in case that comes up.
And then he goes off and he's still now He's like, Now,
if you think about it from Jessup's perspective, the Navy
calling you up about this story that you originally might
(34:52):
not have believed. That becomes a huge piece of credibility,
does it not, Especially there's another twist here. This is
a twist I think will be a big one.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
The Office of Naval Research itself later funded a very
small republication of Jessop's book through a military contractor called Varo.
Why they I don't know, man, because they they when
they published it, when they republished it, it wasn't just
Jessop's work. They published it with all of those annotations
(35:25):
by those three fake people. Double why right?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Utopia anyone? Still?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (35:33):
God, my mind, Sorry, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Oh and thanks to everybody wrote it, wrote in and
alerted us to the British version being up there being
a very.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Watched both seasons already do it now? Yes, that's all,
that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yes. Do you prefer it to the US version?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
In many ways? In other ways no, And I'm not
going to elaborate.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
So don't take our word for it. If you want
to check out Utopia now it's the perfect time to
do it. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors,
and we're going to watch the rest of the seasons.
Then we'll be back and we'll do this. We'll do
the show and we're back this is one heck of
(36:17):
a tail so far. This is I mean, step to
the left rhyme of the ancient mariner. We have a
new legend of the sea. So let's dive further into
these claims. The numerous authors writing about this in later
years link the experiment to other pre existing conspiracy theories
(36:38):
regarding particularly Allied and Axis experimentation on the bleeding edges
of known science during World War Two. And the thing
about that stuff is as crazy as it sounds, there
is a little bit of sand to some of those
World War two conspiracy theories. Shout out to the Horton
h O right, that might have changed the war, and
(37:02):
we really lucked out. This also became the Philadelphia Experiment.
Writers also connected it to later conspiracies such as things
like the Montalk Project, which we still we haven't done
an episode on that, I think, but if we do,
it's it's going to be kind of the part two
of the Philadelphia Experiment.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
And we see something happening here with the story of
the Philadelphia Experiment that we're seeing a lot more of
in modern times, actually extremely recent times, where some of
the authors who were writing about it are willing to
make leaps in logic and almost just assume that certain
stories are real and then find connective tissue between those
(37:44):
two stories in some small way, as Ben was saying,
like to the Montalk project. But it seems as though
a lot of the authors writing about it, we're just
willing to do that. And then there it becomes a
thing where the lore builds up over time, where more
and more people are stating kind of the same thing
that hasn't been proven, but enough people are saying it
(38:07):
that it feels true.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
There's a social aspect to it, a social engineering aspect.
And there were these common story elements, the ones we
outlined in our exploration of the legend. There were plenty
of contradictory claims. Is people got their favorite you know,
pet theory corners stoked. And one thing you'll notice is
(38:31):
that the authors often paint Carlos Allende or carl Allen
has this very mysterious, enigmatic figure, a drifter on the
fringes of the mainstream, a man nearly impossible to contact.
This turned out to be very much not true.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Interesting, I mean, that's certainly the way it seems to
come off in terms of the assembled lore around this story.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Right, Yeah, picture of like he's like the popular mythic
image of this guy would be a lot like the
father in Firestarter, you know, on the run from the
government's mysterious men in black, chasing you for your rare
and dangerous knowledge and or abilities. So this drew the
(39:17):
attention of a paranormal researcher named Robert Gorman. Around nineteen
seventy nine or so, Gorman was looking back through this
stuff and he noticed something weird. The original return address
on that Easter package that was sent to the Office
of Naval Research was from New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Holy smokes,
(39:40):
says Rob that's my hometown. I live here. I can
find this address. And the coincidences got even stranger. This
guy Carlos Ayende, his real name was Carl Allen. He
lived in town. He was the son of a close
family friend of the Gorman. So Gortman was able to
(40:01):
reach Carl Allen with relatively little difficulty. That means something
profoundly change over the course of all those other writer's experience,
or that means that maybe they weren't trying as hard
to contact him as they led their readers to believe.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
But he was known around town. He had a reputation
for being a bit of a loaner with sort of
a wild imagination.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Correct, yes, that is correct. He was an eccentric. He
was infamous for writing on anything and everything around the
family house, and as Skeptoid puts it, he was also
known to send bizarre writing and claims to everyone in
his family or in his circle for any occasion. And
(40:47):
there's a word for this. It's called hypergraphia, a behavioral
condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Ben This instantly makes me think of love crafty and
stuff where someone who has lost their mind hold up
in some sort of ramshackled abandoned mansion scrawls weird cuthulhusque
cryptograms all over the wall, does it not.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
That's a good point. I didn't think of that. Yeah, yeah,
I think we're well on the way to making our
own version of the Philadelphia Experiment as a feature film,
maybe a serious of YouTube videos. All right, welcome of it.
We'll work shopping. So look, Gorman, he's tracking Carl down,
but at the same time he's looking into the facts
(41:31):
surrounding the uss Eldridge.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
And really what he was finding appeared to illustrate a
very different picture than what he was being given by
old Carl. He found a lot of the stuff fully
disproved the statements that Carl was making. And perhaps in
another way, if you listening are fully convinced that this
(41:55):
was a true story, that Carl knew the truth and
everyone else was keeping it quiet, it kind of it
might lead you down the road of oh, this is
a full cover up and it was effective. It worked,
and the loan person that knew the truth was seen
as a crackpot.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Typical for these sorts of tales, right, yeah, yeah. The
absence of evidence can be treated as evidence, you know,
which is tough tough to get around. Gorman found the
following based on US Naval records. The ship the Eldridge
was nowhere near Philadelphia at the time this experiment was
(42:35):
said to have occurred. Not only were they not there,
but they had evidence, corroborated evidence of the routine stuff
they were doing and where they were at the time.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
They could fake all that if they wanted to just say, yes.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, that's true, that's true. We have to pursue both
lines of thought here. It could be faked, right, You
can change history. It's just a matter of changing records
and eliminating witnesses. Oh, so he reaches out to people
who would have been first hand witnesses. Who was a
crew member on the Eldridge in forty three? He thinks
(43:11):
who was on board afterwards or even before, if I
could find someone still alive. Every single person crew member
that he spoke to who was on board the ship
there none recalled anything about any such experiment. And Matt,
this is where we have to say. They could have
been intimidated.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
That's exactly. They could have been intimidated, or maybe they
lost consciousness. They don't actually remember it. And the horror
stories are you know of people who didn't make it anyway,
and we have to say that.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
We have to say it. We have to say it.
It's the fair thing to acknowledge. And so, long story short,
every claim that Gorman looked into, it appeared that the
vast majority of them came from one source, Carl Allen,
and the rest of it was rephrased or embellished afterwards.
And additionally, all of these claims that he looked into
(44:05):
seemed to be easily disproven by multiple other sources, which
again would have to be compromised or faked for this
to be real at this point. But there are other
troubling facts. Let's go back to the bar Carl Allen,
Remember he says, I saw this guy, a survivor of
those tragic events in forty three. He was in a
(44:26):
bar with me, and then poof, he just kaiser, so said,
or a nightcrawler banfed teleported something. There's more news on
that though.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, there were quite a few people that came forward
claiming to be this person, and not just regular people,
veterans of the Eldritch and the uss Angstrom which was
moored alongside the Eldridge in nineteen forty three. We have
to know that these kinds of claims were made well
after the Philadelphia Experiment became the pop culture phenomenon that
it is today, and in more than one case it
(44:58):
actually turned out that these guys we're not really veterans
at all. So it really kind of throws a wrench
into the works here and doesn't necessarily fully debunk Carl
Allen's initial story because it seems like the people that
are coming forward making these claims are also being a
little dishonest themselves, right.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, And it's a phenomenon that you see whenever a
story takes a takes gets a grip on the national consciousness.
Like whenever there is a suspected or acknowledged serial killer
in operating in a city, often law enforcement gets inundated
(45:38):
with calls from people who are, for one reason or another,
either falsely claiming to be the killer, falsely claiming to
know who it is, et cetera, et cetera. And some
of these folks are pranksters. Some of these folks are
maybe a little more detached from reality. But there's another
huge badger in the bag here. It's the one we
(45:58):
have to keep going back to the missing piece of
the puzzle. Why on Earth did the Office of Naval
Research called Jessop in the first place? Why did they
Why did they go to him and not just toss
this in the rubbish bin. There are a couple of
possibilities too. I would say, you're pretty mundane, and one
(46:18):
I would say is that's all I say, it's.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I'll go with you down this this route. So I
would say the first one is that whatever individuals from
that office that ended up making it to see Jessup,
we're just doing it because they wanted to do it,
they were interested. They got this weird correspondence, and they're like,
I kind of want to know more. I mean, I
wonder if this guy's like annotating his own book and
sending it to us. Let's let's go talk to him.
(46:48):
This will be this will be fun. Come on, come on, Bill,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
That's a really good point because, like the fact that
it's a government agency, your mind immediately goes toward this
is some sort of giant initiative. But these people have
pretty unilateral abilities to pursue their own stuff, right. I mean,
that's that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
I love the idea for this one. I love the
idea of uh of Jessup going to meet them and
they're like, actually, we're not meeting in the office, where
you just come meet me at this coffee shop.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
But we're really just fans.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
We're really just just just want to ask if you
would sign this.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Uh yeah, deciding if we're thinking about doing a small run, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Would you be option this Because we're actually deciding we're
gonna pivot careers, We're gonna be like producers.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Now, a lot of people, you know, have this stereotype
of us as these uptight guys. But we're just we
you know, we like to kick back, fire a few
rail guns, work on some alien tech, and and pursue pictures.
This is gonna be big for us. Jessup or should
I say Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
And then he's just like, I don't know what you're
talking about.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
L is a euphemism for doing cocaine. I'm sorry from
earlier that never mind rail guy.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Oh boy, that's another hit in the history. Uh So
that's the first possibility, and it may be mundane, but
it is totally possible.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
The second is that it could have literally just been
these guys' job. It was a small I think it
was a couple of people. It's a couple officials, so
maybe they're maybe they're remit was to follow up on
any and all correspondence, no matter how weird it was,
no matter how innocuous, no matter how unimportant. It might
(48:37):
seem like. Maybe they were treating this with the same
kind of due diligence they would treat a letter from
a six year old about Santa Claus. Maybe they just
had to reply to everything and investigate it if it
merited for further investigation, so they may not have had
any personal interest I could see.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
That, or or what else could be hmmm.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Oh gosh, okay, so what if okay, what if they
had to read this, they had to read the whole book,
and there was something in those notes. There was something
in those notes that was somehow similar to actual classified
research Uncle Sam was conducting. Think about that. That's not
(49:26):
as impossible as it sounds, because there are a ton
of notes there, and depending on what they're talking about,
if there's even one note that seems like a legit
hint that someone outside of the company knows what the
Navy's up to.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Ooh yeah, And we have to be real about this.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Even if let's say Carlyonde, his writing, his notes, his theories,
all that stuff was complete bunk. But in that writing
he he like hit upon as Ben is saying something
that's close enough to what was occurring somewhere. Maybe if
it wasn't even there, but just through a conceptualized science
(50:10):
fiction story, he got close enough they would I can
imagine that being dangerous in them having to go like
you said and follow up.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Wow, I mean, look at how much science fiction is
so prescient of like future technology, you know. I mean
that's where a lot of like the idea of futurism
comes from, is like thought experiments that ultimately become possible.
And then this is the part. I'm sorry. There's so
many beats in this story that are just so lovecrafty.
And I know you primed the pump then. But on
April thirtieth, Jessup took his own life, presumably after succumbing
(50:41):
to Eldritch madness or potentially considering himself a failure as
a writer.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, this story haunted him, and he did die by
his own hand, just two years after that initial contact
with the Navy.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Much, I have to say it. He died two years
after this interaction with the ONR. There's potential for something
to feel fishy there. No, it doesn't mean that it is,
but it definitely feels weird.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, we have to put it in much much later.
The story continues. The nineteen eighty four film The Philadelphia
Experiment is released, and in nineteen eighty eight a man
named al Blick bi Lick sees the film and it
shakes some things loose in his head. He goes public
(51:33):
and says, I was there. I was on the Aldridge.
I was part of that experiment. I have been brainwashed
to forget it, and seeing this film jogged those memories.
Loose interesting not the same thing as proof interesting. Carlos
Ayende Carl Allen lived until nineteen ninety four. He would
(51:54):
send letters to any number of people every so often
about the Philadelphia Experiment, further exploring the story and the legend.
And the same year that Carl passes away, a French
writer named Jacques F. Vallei v al Ee publishes this
(52:16):
article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration called Anatomy of
a Hoax the Philadelphia Experiment. Fifty years later and he
receives this letter from a guy named Edward Dudgeon Edward
dudgen Us Navy vet. Nineteen forty two nineteen forty five.
He has a story that relates to the Eldridge.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Kind of similarly to one of the other stories we
heard earlier, as someone being on board a near ship.
That's the one that Carlos Allende and initially put forward.
He was on this other ship, he observed some of
this and then went down the rabbit hole. Well, this person,
Edward Dujan, says that he served aboard the Engstrom the
uss Engstrom. It was dry docked in Philadelphia Naval Yard.
(53:02):
If the Philadelphia experiment is to be true, that's also
where the Eldritch was.
Speaker 3 (53:06):
And that he is.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Saying that both ships, while they were there and docked
and preparing to operate, had some kind of classified tech
on board. But according to his story, he wasn't saying
that this was some kind of invisibility experiment like some
kind of cloaking device, nor some kind of teleportation device
or something designed by extra terrestrials.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah, exactly. Instead he said they were attempting to scramble
magnetic signatures of ships using something called degaussing. Degassing is
this is a way of counteracting a ship's magnetic field
to establish a condition making the ship seem invisible to
(53:57):
certain devices.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Stradar and things like that, not to the eye right.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Right right, to protect it from magnetic torpedoes, for instance.
But god, you'll still see the ship if you're in
line of sight. So what he says is they wrapped
the ship with large cables and zapped it with high
voltage charges, so the ship, again it wouldn't be invisible
to quick clarification, would not be invisible to line of
(54:23):
sight witnesses. It wouldn't be invisible to radar, but it
would appear to be invisible to magnetic torpedoes. The pines
that were used by U boats.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
Interesting, So what about the green glow that was such
an interesting feature of the early reports of this experiment.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
So Dungeons says, it's either Saint Elmo's fire or an
electric storm. But Saint Elmo's fire is kind of weird.
It's a glow that occasionally appears around pointy objects during storms.
From what I understand, that glow is supposed to be
(55:03):
blue in color, not green.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, again, if the original account is true, right, because
the green glow is just a part of the story,
the lore there. And then you know, this person is
coming forward and saying, well I was actually there, and
yeah there was tech and it was for this. So
that's really all he's confirming.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Yeah, he has a good and interesting explanation about that
apparently impossible time that the Eldridge allegedly took to go
to Norfolk and then return to Philadelphia. He says the
Navy was using inland canals that are off limits to
civilian vessels, and that allowed them to make the trip
(55:45):
in six hours instead of two days. But anyway, what
we're saying is there are other people who are proposing
more grounded explanations to these alleged events what happened to
the ship? Though we've been pretty clear the ship is real.
The ship did exist, and people were crude on it.
(56:06):
It was commissioned, it was nacked a vessel in the
Navy until eventually it was sold for scrap, just like
the Sea Shadow in the nineteen nineties. Doesn't that seem weird?
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Though?
Speaker 1 (56:16):
I get yep, what am I being too sentimental? You guys?
I would feel like maybe it's the improv mentality coming out,
But like if we built some awesome super secret technology,
even if it was outdated, I would be like, come on, guys,
this is more than a war machine. Now. It's like
a testament to our friendship and all the cool work
(56:38):
we did traveling dimensions.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
And maybes, and there's no reason we should destroy this. Yes,
and what let's put it on display, right.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
I do have to point out really quickly, my dear friend,
who I believe both of you have met, Peyton Fisher
of Brooklyn, New York. He pointed out that the Wikipedia
intro for the Philadelphia experiment. He describes it as stinging.
He says, I love the stinging Wikipedia intro quote. The
alleged claims do not conform to known physical laws.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, out, she goes, it's true.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
It's true. It's gonna say sometimes they don't, guys, that's
when that's when it gets excited.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Great.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Well, I think there's also a there's a real cool
thing you can do on Wikipedia, especially if you're looking
at a subject you feel as controversial. Hop on over
to the talk tab. Right. Every article starts with one
tab that just has article, but to the direct right
of that you'll see the tab that says talk And
if you get into the right thing, you will find
(57:47):
these amazing arguments by very dedicated people. Oddly enough, you
would think the geopolitical stuff would have more involved acrimonious
kind of exchanges, But the fan fiction things are where
you see people packing a lot of rhetorical heat. But yeah,
(58:08):
you're right, stinging accusation and the ship is gone. It
was scrapped in nineteen nineties as of this recording. If
you check with the Office of Naval Research today, they
will tell you they have never conducted experiments on invisibility,
and that this sort of technology remains squarely in the
realm of science fiction. However, this is not entirely true.
(58:32):
Something like invisibility tech is currently being researched by various
outfits around the planet. We just don't know of anything
good enough to do what Carl Allen claimed Uncle Sam
did back in the forties. But google quantum stealth invisibility.
It's a cool read.
Speaker 3 (58:48):
Or the kind of weird like functional painting version of
invisibility called dazzle camouflage, where ships were painted with these
like weird angular stripes that supposedly made them harder to
see on the horizon line.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Yeah, that was cool to do. Check that out. And
as we get to the end of the show, we
know there is one huge piece of the puzzle. It's
a piece you cannot ignore. It's one that's definitely, doubtlessly
been on all of our minds for most of this episode.
It's the real question, where the hell does Philadelphia cream
cheese actually come from? It is not Philadelphia. What it's
(59:27):
not Philadelphia? We don't know. There may be consequences for
us disclosing this on air, but cream cheese was invented
in the eighteen seventies by a guy in Chester, New York.
Or he's the first to mass produce it, at least
his name's William Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (59:41):
Yeah, but Philadelphia, they're the ones that got really good
at it, and you know, figured out how to make
it taste like strawberries, right.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
You know, I'm not going to take that one from
you know, I'm gonna let you have that out. The
The funny thing is, it's just so unrelated to anything.
He called it Philadelphia cream cheese because he thought it
sounded classier and fancier because at the time Philadelphia was
well known for the quality of its dairy industry.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Sure, but it's still something that Philly residents sort of
hold on to as like a point of pride. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
I think it only really checks out if he had
a Southern accent, because Philadelphia, it really is lovely.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
So that's our show. Unfortunately, at this point, it does
appear that the majority of the really out there claims
linked to the Philadelphia experiment can be traced to a
single man, Carl Allen. Additionally, the majority of his claims
do not seem to hold up to scrutiny, and they
can either be disproven or they just can't be corroborated.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Yeah, and as we record today, multiple government agencies do
continue classified research across a wide range of disciplines. Just
last week, it was reported that the Navy has gone
public about several of these classified patents.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, it's true, and you can read about this right now.
A great resource we found was on the drive. They've
got a I guess it's kind of an imprint within
whatever the drive is called the war Zone, And there's
just some great articles coming out of there, Brett Tingly
(01:01:18):
or Tingeley and Tyler Rogaway or two authors that we've
been reading a ton off of that website lately. And
you can even find like there are great helpful things
here in these articles, like a Google patent search with
specifically the Salvator pays guy on here. It's a key
name that you can look up as you're doing your
(01:01:38):
own research. You can see all of the actual patents
for crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
I still want to see the patent for the E
meter that Mike Render told us about.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
There's something very interesting of foot here with these patents.
That's why we shout out the Invention Secrecy Act of
fifty one, which remains in effect today. Essentially, the folks
that the journalists are talking to over at the war
zone have confirmed that the US government spent more than
a half million dollars over three years specifically to test
(01:02:16):
some theories that every other physicist says our pseudoscience. So
what is the truth here? And when do we find out? Ah?
And still, why was the ONR so interested in this story?
We have no idea? What do you think? Please let
us know. We try to be easy to find online.
(01:02:36):
We're on Facebook. Go over to Here's where it gets
Crazy to meet the best part of the show, your
fellow listeners. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram,
not just as a show, but as individuals.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
If you would like, you can find me on Instagram
where I am at how Now, Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Matt Underscore, Jimbay Dash, Frederick Overscore.
Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Bongo Boy, ak Cornkid dot org yep. So you can
also find me at Ben bull and hsw on Twitter.
You can reach out to me directly at Ben Bullen
on Instagram. I hate social media, you're saying, shaking your
fist into the sky, but I have a story I
need to tell you. We have good news for you.
(01:03:18):
My friends.
Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
That's right. You can call one eight three three std
WYTK and leave a message at the sound of Ben's
dulcet tones.
Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
That is correct. We very much look forward to hearing
from you. We are a bit behind. Hey, look, hey,
we're catching up and we're getting there quickly. Please try
and limit it to one message if you can, and
keep it as brief as you can. Give us all
that important information right up front. Hammer it home, and
we will hopefully get you on the air on one
of our listener mail episodes. Just let us know if
(01:03:47):
you don't want us to play your voice or you
don't want us to say your name on the air.
One other thing here, we don't have much, if any
Wikipedia presence as a s oh yeah, what's that about? Well?
I think we have one mention on an old house
stuff Works entry? Yes, how Stuff Works podcast. I'm just
(01:04:08):
putting this out there. Hey, are you listening to this?
And a Wiki editor?
Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I don't know, put something on there. We we'd love
to see even a like a silly entry.
Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Now. I don't am I incorrectly assume that a lot
of Wikipedia entries are done by the parties involved themselves.
Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
I think that's true, or maybe a pr agency some
people higher, but I don't. I don't feel like it's ethical.
Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
We don't play that way, do we.
Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
No, And I'm surprised, Matt. I'm surprised that you bring
this up because some doors don't close.
Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
So yeah, situation we're gonna live forever on the wiki.
Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
But please no stinging opening lines.
Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
If you would, If none of that white sends your
the ship of your mind hurdling through dimensions in time,
there is one other way. You can always contact us,
regardless of where you're at, what you think about the
Philadelphia Experiment or every other little thing under and beyond
(01:05:12):
the sun, as our good old fashioned email address where.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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