Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged event claimed to have been witnessed by an ex-merchant mariner named Carl M. Allen at the United States Navy's Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, sometime around October 28, 1943. Allen described an experiment where the U.S. Navy attempted to make a destroyer escort class ship, the , disappear and the bizarre results that followed. The story first surfaced in late 1955 when Allen sent a book full of hand-written annotations referring to the experiment to a U.S. Navy research organization and, a little later, a series of letters making further claims to a UFO book writer. Allen's account of the event is widely understood to be a hoax. Several different—and sometimes contradictory—versions of the alleged experiment have circulated over the years in paranormal literature and popular movies. The U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment was ever conducted, that the details of the story contradict well-established facts about USS Eldridge, and that the physics the experiment is claimed to be based on are non-existent. Origins of the story The story of a "Philadelphia Experiment" originated in late 1955 when Carl M. Allen sent an anonymous package marked "Happy Easter" containing a