It is a cheesy B-movie, an iconic X-Files episode, and possibly the best-known World War II legend alongside the Nazi Gold Train. From coded letters and strange deaths to teleportation, the Philadelphia Experiment bursts with mystery and intrigue.
Mysterious letters
Our story begins in 1955. Morris K. Jessup was a jack of all trades — an astrophysicist, mathematician, professor, car parts salesman, photographer, archaeologist, and ufologist. Despite some wild ideas, he was highly respected. His magnum opus, The Case for the UFO, proved popular and drew the attention of readers from all walks of life, including the U.S. government.
In January of 1955, Jessup received some odd letters from a mysterious man named Carl Allen. The unsolicited letters detailed a peculiar incident in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard involving a ship called the USS Eldridge.
The letters were exceedingly strange. They included multiple errors, randomly underlined text, haphazardly capitalized words, and variations of Carl Allen’s name (sometimes referring to himself as Carlos Miguel Allende). Additionally, the letters included a random grouping of letters and numbers with no context. There was a return address:
Road No.1
Box 223
New Kensington
Pennsylvania
Allen closed his letters, rather rudely, “Disrespectfully yours…”
The details
Supposedly, in October 1943, Allen was working on a ship called the SS Andrew Furuseth when he and several others witnessed a strange green glowing fog. The fog enveloped the USS Eldridge and the ship disappeared and reappeared within a span of a few minutes.
Allen wrote that the vessel was rendered invisible and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia (some 480km away) by the U.S. Navy. According to Allen, when the Eldridge disappeared, it looked like something was still floating on the surface of the water. The green glowing fog around the vessel was supposedly a force field that caused it to disappear.
Allen believed that the U.S. government had solved the “unified field theory” and put it into practice. Albert Einstein worked unsuccessfully on the unified field theory for much of his career after the relativity breakthrough. The unified field theory sought to reconcile the four fundamental forces of nature (gravitational force, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force) into one theoretical framework.
Einstein theorized that if you could reconcile these forces, humanity would be able to achieve things we consider science fiction. We’d be able to control matter, control gravity, create wormholes, and manipulate time and space. According to Allen, the U.S. government had achieved this and successfully teleported the ship.
But Allen also heard screams. When he boarded the ship, he discovered many of the crew members had suffered horrific deaths. Others were violently ill, had limbs fused with the ship, or had gone crazy.
Allen claimed this was part of a top-secret experiment called Project Rainbow. However, when Jessup tried to contact Allen for further details, there was no reply.
Another surprise
Later, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) also received a mysterious package from Allen with a note attached saying “Happy Easter.” The package included Jessup’s book The Case for the UFO, cryptic notes, and scribbled math and physics equations.
Unable to track Allen down, the ONR decided to enlist Jessup’s help to solve the mystery since his book was at the center of the case. Jessup and the ONR confirmed that the handwriting from Allen’s letters to Jessup and the package note were a match. But the return address found on Jessup’s letters was a dead end. All the ONR found was an abandoned house.
Yet, for conspiracy theorists, this is evidence that something strange happened in Philadelphia. If the ONR were pursuing this, it had to suggest there was some truth to the story. If it wasn’t true, wouldn’t the Navy have ignored the package?
The U.S. government denies the entire story.
Jessup’s death
Jessup died suddenly in 1959. He was found in his car, having died from inhaling toxic fumes from a hose connected to the car’s exhaust pipe. He was in financial trouble, with his books failing commercially, and his wife had left him. Though relatives and friends deemed him suicidal in his last days, others thought differently.
Some sources state that he was not yet dead when police found him. He was not taken to a hospital, and no official autopsy was performed. His death was ruled a suicide. However, there was no suicide note, prompting conspiracy theorists to suggest he was killed.
Philadelphia Experiment illustration. Photo: Shutterstock AI
A cover-up?
The Philadelphia Experiment story refused to go away. Conspiracy theorists insisted for decades that the U.S. military covered it up. There was enough interest that the ONR published an official report/information sheet in 1996 on the scientific impossibility of what some claimed this unified field theory enabled them to do.
The ONR also stated that the Eldridge was never in Philadelphia and that “the archives has a letter from Lieutenant Junior Grade William S. Dodge, the Master of the Andrew Furuseth in 1943, denying that he or his crew observed any unusual event while in Norfolk.”
The ONR did admit to investigating the package but explained that the investigation was led by two officers who found the case fascinating.
The Eldridge‘s logs say it remained in the New York harbor until November 1, and it was part of a larger convoy. On November 2, it entered the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk. It sailed between Norfolk and New York Harbor until December 31. While it was briefly in Norfolk, it did not teleport there and did not arrive there in October. As for the Andrew Furuseth, it traveled from Norfolk to various locations in October.
If there was any experimentation going on, it might have been the Navy testing a new technology that could cloak or render a vessel invisible to radar. This is called degaussing, which refers to the process used to reduce or eliminate unwanted magnetic fields. With a ship or submarine, degaussing helps mask its presence.
As for the green glowing fog, this could be a case of St Elmo’s Fire (a common occurrence on ships) or green lightning.
The real Carl Allen
Carl Allen was a real person. An article in Fate Magazine by Robert A. Goermen, an investigative writer on the weird and unexplained, revealed that he lived in New Kensington, Pennsylvania (Allen’s return address).
Goermen tracked Allen’s latest address to New Mexico and interviewed relatives who described him as a “master leg-puller.” Allen was a known prankster with a flair for the theatrical. A relative stated that Allen was “a drifter, he reads continually but the information gets all twisted somehow.”
Allen might have had mental problems that could have stemmed from his service in the U.S. Navy during WWII. He was in the Marines but was dismissed in less than a year. In his letters, the random sequence of numbers and letters next to his name turned out to be his ID. He did work for the Navy as a merchant mariner.
Eventually, Allen did make himself known to authors and interviewers. He had a bizarre habit of showing up and relaying the story with conviction before retracting it and declaring it a hoax. He did this several times. According to author Konstantinos Delimpasis with e-telescope.gr, he provided information about the experiment to paranormal authors Ivan Sanderson and Brad Steiger for their books Uninvited Visitors and The Allende Letters, respectively.
However, he later approached the Aerial Phenomena Research Office in Tuscon, Arizona and admitted he had made the story up. He also allowed authors William Moore and Charles Berlitz to interview him in 1979 for their book The Philadelphia Experiment and retracted his confession.
It seems likely that he was wasting everyone’s time. Either Allen wanted attention or had legitimate mental problems.
Photo: Polonio Video
