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