The Montauk Project is a top-secret, paranormal military research project which was supposedly conducted by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the (also paranormal) Philadelphia Experiment. There are various claims about precisely what kind of research went on at Montauk Air Force Station, Long Island, but most involve some psychic powers, teleportation, and/or time travel.
– Background: The Philadephia Experiment –
According to allegations, the Montauk experiments grew out of a previous military project at the Philadelphia naval yards, known as the Philadelphia Experiment to conspiracy theorists but supposedly classified by the military under the codename Rainbow. According to the theory, U.S. scientists outfitted the destroyer USS Eldridge with secret equipment in 1943 as part of a light-bending experiment, which it was hoped would make the destroyer invisible.
The experiment worked – sort of. Scattered accounts indicate that the ship did disappear and subsequently reappeared, but that there were horrific consequences onboard, including illness in some sailors and strange teleportation of others, who found themselves in different portions of the ship. Some even ended up embedded in the steel structure. The experiment was repeated several months later, with the result being that the Eldridge disappeared in Philadelphia but, when it reappeared, had been teleported to Norfolk, Virginia. It then disappeared again and reappeared in Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Experiment is currently regarded as a hoax based on a very small number of discredited accounts. Naval documents indicate that the Eldridge was not even commissioned until a month after the first, partial test; was initially docked in New York rather than Philadelphia; and was, at the time of its second, teleportation experiment, actually on its shakedown cruise in the Caribbean.
– After Philadelphia: Project Montauk –
Nevertheless, according to conspiracy theory, the experiments which began on the Eldridge were then relocated to Montauk, New York, where researchers reunited and were given covert military funding to continue their research into the 1980s, now involving not only the initial cloaking device installed on the Eldridge but other possibilities for psychic and psychological warfare.
There are varying descriptions of the experiments conducted as part of the Montauk project. These include travel through time, between dimensions, and between space (teleporting). In one experiment, supposedly, the time travel mechanism, based at Camp Hero at Montauk, made contact with the Eldridge during its experiment. The time travel project eventually developed a stable “time tunnel” device which was used to make contact with alien civilizations and to explore underground tunnels left by long-dead Martians on their planet. Other experiments led to teleportation successes, and the massive radar dish at the base may have been part of subliminal mind-control broadcasting experiments. At its peak, the secret Montauk facility housed hundreds of employees on several underground levels, and may have maintained underground networks for communication and travel with other similar underground bases elsewhere in the U.S.
Central to the theories is the one piece of solid evidence about secret military or intelligence activities at Montauk: a massive radar antenna built at Camp Hero in the late 1950s. The 125-foot-long antenna was a massively powerful radar system (at least for the time), and disrupted local broadcasting in its early days until the appropriate calibrations could be made. The Montauk surveillance base definitely did operate until 1981, when it was closed down, ostensibly because satellite surveillance had eliminated the need for many of the old radar sites. Afterward the area became a state park, although conspiracy theorists argue that some of the experimental research continued after the radar site was supposedly shut down.
Beyond the existence of the radar tower, however, incontrovertible evidence of paranormal research at Montauk has not yet been revealed. It must be considered as one of a considerable number of supposed Cold War-era extraterrestrial and paranormal research sites, alongside such other facilities as Dulce Base (not known to be a real facility) and Area 51 (a real facility with uncertain uses).
