I’m guessing quite a few of you have heard of the Philadelphia Experiment, an urban legend that won’t die. I wanted to bring up the story because I think it’s sort of like technology ideas in Star Trek, not being that off the possibilities in the near future. Fantasy, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s concepts for a helicopter or a robot, becomes tomorrow’s fact.
Here’s the concept for the Philadelphia Experiment:
The legend revolves around a supposed 1943 experiment led by the Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on a ship called the USS Eldridge. According to the tale, this was an attempt at trying out the unified field theory laid out by Albert Einstein. The idea was to find a way to bend light around an object so it becomes invisible, thus making an ideal warship in dealing with the enemy during WWII. The ship was reported to be rigged with four immense generators along with Tesla coils, electron tubes and many miles of inch-thick cable running throughout the ship’s cables.
The ship took off from Philly to Norfolk, turning on this equipment, whereupon it was shrouded in a green fog and then disappeared. This resulted in an accidental teleportation back to Philly from Norfolk. When the ship arrived, accounts say that the men were in agony, sick, mentally crippled, and many were dead, some even fused to the hull of the ship!
Although it made for a fantastic movie (a must see), the Philadelphia Experiment is regarded by the military as a bunch of hooey. There’s still conspiracy folks who hang onto it and, why not? After all, aren’t we the folks who sent chimps into space? Had our own astronauts burn on a launch pad? Tested nuclear weapons with visitors gazing upon the glory on the New Mexico sands? Dropped bombs on Japan that caused huge devastation? Built a secret base in Nevada? It doesn’t seem our government/military has a lot of boundaries when it comes to our individual welfare, only our welfare as a conglomerate(save our country), screw the individuals (people are expendable, countries are not). So, there is that excuse for people to hang onto the notion of such an horrendous experiment.
For me, it’s more about the experiment of working for antigravity or teleportation or cloaking. From what I’ve been learning about haunted sites and sites with lots of paranormal activity, it always seems to come back to geomagnetic energy. When we talk UFOs and their odd flying habits and ability to hover, we often contemplate they follow Earth’s ley lines or use our earth’s magnetism to its advantage to do maneuvers we have yet to do with any efficiency of fuel.
Experiments similar to this were reported to be done by a scientist called John Hutchison (Wikipedia). This Canadian man supposedly put together a great deal of EMF-emitting equipment and was able to bend metal, make things levitate, and create all kinds of phenomenon associated with hauntings. There’s been no proof that this man actually achieved any of these tests, but he certainly has a following of believers.
Whether or not Hutchison was successful, the question seems to plague man: What would happen if we did tests using high EMF emissions?
It amazes me that something like the legend of the Philadelphia Experiment, the recent findings of EMF correlations amongst hauntings by more truth-based hunters, and the boasts of Hutchison aren’t being taken more seriously as potential research. I have absolutely no doubt the government has and probably does fiddle with EMF. An interesting government experiment in Alaska called "HAARP" has many wondering what the effects of so many antennae can have on the earth's weather conditions. This is a supposed experiment in ionospheric science and radiowaves. As humans, we seem to understand the gravity of just tinkering with such things and yet we have no idea what our government does behind our backs and sometimes out in the open (such as HAARP).
Although these supposed experiments by the navy and Hutchison are not verified, should a town of people become plagued by madness, I would not be surprised that a government station was nearby doing covert testing. In fact, that’s such a good idea, I might use it for the next novel…
