The Navy Once Tested ‘Invisible’ Ships. Now, One Man Sits at the Center of the ‘Philadelphia Experiment’ Conspiracy.

Late in the summer of 1943, the USS Eldridge was drydocked at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Crewmembers were reportedly disfigured in this horrendous teleportation and time travel experiment, and—so the story goes—the U.S. military has kept this incident classified for decades. These ravings came from the annotations of a UFO book written by amateur astronomer Morris Jessup, and for reasons never explained, ONR published more than 100 copies of this book—annotations included—planting the seeds of the “Philadelphia Experiment” conspiracy. Despite being thoroughly debunked, the urban myth of the Philadelphia Experiment remains, and one expert who studied the hoax believes its lasting power might rely on its incredible specificity. “Thus for a hoax to reach mythic proportions, as the Philadelphia Experiment does, it must be truly amazing by the boldness of its claims, and it must have a well-defined localization in time and space.”