On Tuesday, July 14,1942, six weeks after his seventeenth birthday, he left a life of farm work and odd jobs to join the Marine Corps. He had served only ten months, however, when he was discharged on Friday, May 21, 1943, at Charleston, South Carolina, 'upon report of medical survey for disability.' Following a brief visit home, he went to Philadelphia, where he enlisted in the Merchant Marine in July of that same year. A few days later he received orders to proceed immediately to Seamen's Training School at Hoffman Island, New York.
His first assignment, and the one we are interested in. was serving under Ship's Master W. S. Dodge as a member of the deck crew of the S.S. Andrew Furuseth, a Liberty Ship which sailed from Norfolk bound for Casablanca, North Africa, on August 16, 1943. He was to stay with that ship for a little over five months, until late January 1944, when he left the Furuseth to sign on as a crewman on the S.S. Newton D. Baker (thus clearly placing the date of the Philadelphia Experiment project within this time frame).
Allende served on some twenty-seven different ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific until October 1952, when, having become disgruntled by Seamen's Union disputes which seemed to be denying him further ship assignments, he left the sea for good in search of better fortune elsewhere.
Beyond this, his life is pretty much a mystery save for what has already been written concerning his involvement with Dr Jessup and his subsequent 'confession' to A.P.R.O. He proceeded to wander about the country and the world in true gypsy fashion, seeking, as he put it, 'odd jobs and education' from whatever opportunities came his way. He succeeded in obtaining both while seeing a great deal of the world in the process. We find he spent considerable time in the middle 1950s working haphazardly for a number of well-drilling outfits throughout western Texas and eastern New Mexico. He was indeed in Seminole, Texas, when the stranee annotated book was mailed from there to Admiral Furth, and he was also in the Gainesville, Texas, vicinity at about the time the second Allende letter was received by Dr Jessup - substantiating his connection with both documents.
A drifter, he nonetheless apparently became worried when the Navy and others began taking an interest in him following his contacts with Dr Jessup, and he 'went into hiding' for a number of years. He finally ended up in the Los Altos region of south-central Mexico (interestingly in about the same general area where Jessup's mysterious craters were located), and eventually he came to consider the region his home. He had been to the area before during the course of his wanderings, and claims that in fact it was the gypsies of this region who 'Mexicanized' Carl Allen into Carlos Miguel Allende. At the time of this writing he is still living there.
As for his story, this might all be very well and one might have been inclined to believe it without question had not a remarkable series of circumstances intervened to cast an entirely new light on the matter.
Some years ago, during the course of some research, Moore managed to stumble quite by accident upon the fact that there was indeed an Allende family living in western Pennsylvania during the period of the early and middle 1950s at about the same time that Carlos Allende was giving his home address as New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Since the name Allende is not an especially common one in Pennsylvania, a closer examination of this strange coincidence seemed almost essential and was undertaken immediately. The results are revealing in light of Carlos' own story.
It seems that sometime following World War IT, two brothers named Allende came to America from Puerto Rico seeking work. The exact story in unclear, but somehow or other the elder brother, Pedro, who had settled for a time in Clairton, Pa., happened to hear that a certain Mrs Block-son, a lady from his home town in Puerto Rico, had made her home in the suburban Pittsburgh community of Sewickley. Believing that this lady might be able to help him obtain work, he sought her out and explained his circumstances. Mrs Blockson immediately asked to see his hands, and upon discovering the hard and calloused hands of a man accustomed to work, agreed to try to obtain a job for him. Arrangements were soon made, and Pedro took up residence with his wife and small children (one of whom, coincidentally, is living today under the name of Allen) in a small two-storey frame home which was located in a rural area of Aleppo Township, Glenfield,
Pennsylvania. A few months later, he had accumulated enough to make a small downpayment on the property.
It is the appearance on the scene of the second brother, Felicito, or Filo, Allende, that begins a series of most bizarre coincidences. According to Mrs Blockson, both brothers had come originally from the town of Hato Rey in Puerto Rico, where their father had been employed by the first big power plant on that island, located at the falls of the Comerio River. Filo was quite a few years junior to Pedro, but, although he had quit school 'in his ninth year' (third grade), spoke better English because he had served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. He came to Glen-field only briefly in the early 1950s to visit his brother, and is described as a drifter type who couldn't stay put. He spoke both Spanish and English (as does Carlos Allende), was strictly self-educated and very well read. Obviously there is no further need to go on underlining the points of similarity, since they must already be more than apparent by this time. But to continue:
Mrs Blockson goes on to characterize Filo as a character who 'generally didn't talk much, but when he did would go off on some seemingly unimportant issue and speak at great lengths on it. He was a loner who didn't work much but who would habitually go off to parts unknown, frequently without even bothering to tell anyone he was going, and would be gone for days, weeks or months at a time without word. His attitude towards humanity and God seemed 'rather negative.' Also, he may have 'used names other than his own.'
Anyhow, Filo's occasional visits to his brother's home continued in this manner until about mid-1954, when tragedy struck the family in the form of a freak accident. Pedro, while up on a ladder doing some repair work on the house, chanced to miss a step and fell heavily to the ground, striking his head. Although the external wounds healed normally, severe internal damage had been done.
Pedro was forced to quit work indefinitely. The family, which had never been more than a hair's breadth ahead of poverty in the best of times, soon began to feel the pinch. And to make matters worse, Filo, whose help might have made the difference in these circumstances, was off on another of his extended 'travels' and knew nothing of the affair. Pedro, unable to afford adequate medical care, lived on at home, becoming increasingly deranged as time went on.
And so it went for some months until 2.15 A.M. on the morning of Thursday, May 19, 1955, when Burgess R. W. Cook of Glenfield received a call for police from a neighbour of the Allendes' who reported that Pedro Allende was chasing his wife with a hammer. Cook immediately alerted the Allegheny County Police, and a car was dispatched to the scene. Before it could arrive, however, Cook received an second urgent call from the same neighbour, this reporting that the Allende house was on fire. Poor Pedro, now completely out of his senses, had set fire to the curtains.
The Allendes had lost virtually all they owned. Mrs Allende was taken to Sewickley Valley Hospital suffering from shock. The four children, the youngest barely two years old, were split among neighbours and friends, and Pedro was taken to the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the M>, tally Insane at Woodville. He died soon afterwards, allegedly from the effects of another fall - this time in a bathtub.
Meanwhile, Mrs Allende had succeeded in reuniting herself with her children, and had moved to a modest apartment in another town.
The story, however, is not yet over. Within days after the funeral, the errant Filo appeared on the scene. He had been away for nearly a year (it was now mid-June 1955), and he was totally unaware of what had happened in his absence. Greatly disturbed at finding charred ruins where his brother's house should have been, and unable to learn anything but the barest of details from the neighbours, he made his way to Mrs Blockson's home in nearby Sewickley to seek an explanation. It was there that he learned the details of the tragic event. He rema
ined in the area only a day or two, visibly upset and keeping to himself the whole time, and then, without warning or word, quietly vanished without a trace - never to be heard from by family or friends again. Only a few short months later Morris Jessup received the first of a series of three letters from a man calling himself Carlos Miguel Allende.
Are Carlos and Filo Allende the same person? No one but Carlos knows for sure, and he isn't telling. Mrs Block-son, who knew Filo reasonably well by sight, did examine the photo of Carlos Allende that appears in this book, but was unable to state with any degree of certainty whether the man in the photo is Filo Allende. Carlos himself, when asked the question directly, made an uncharacteristically brief reply: 'I do not choose to answer that question at this time.' In light of this, we are
left with nothing more than an intriguing series of coincidences and some rather tantalizing similarities in dates and places.
One researcher has even gone so far as to suggest, quite seriously, that Filo Allende met and befriended a real Carl Allen while in the Merchant Marine. Later, when this Allen met with an accident of some sort, Filo simply assumed his identity for reasons known only to himself. Admittedly this is sheer speculation; but in the absence of clear facts, it's as good an explanation as any other.
In any event, regardless of Allende's real identity, the point of supreme importance in all this still remains: What can this individual tell us about the alleged Philadelphia Experiment that can help us solve the mystery? Alas, to the complete dismay of all the earlier researchers who have pinned their hopes for a solution upon finding him, he actually knows pitifully little beyond what he has already written on the topic in his letters to Jessup.
The truth is that Allende was not a scientist, nor even a trained observer, but merely a deckhand who happened to be in the right for wrong?) place at the proper time to view a sight which he was (and still is) totally at a loss to explain. Did he see a ship vanish? According to his own testimony, he did. How was it done? He doesn't know exactly, but it had to do with forcefields of some sort. 'There was plenty of static electricity associated with it.' Could he name the ship? Yes, he could: 'It was the DE 173.' Did he see it vanish more than once? No, he didn't. 'But it did,' he adds knowingly. Where did he obtain his information on Einstein, Russell, and Admiral Bennett? 'From friends in high places who shall go nameless.' Dr Einstein, he maintains, actually witnessed parts of the experiment. Also, Allende says he saw a man 'vanish' from sight while standing on a loading dock, but he can't recall the date or what dock it was.
A part of his own account to Moore of some of these events follows in his own words:
So you want to know about Einstein's great experiment. Eh? Do you know ... I actually shoved my hand, up to the elbow, into this unique force field as that field flowed, surging powerfully in a counterclockwise direction around the little experimental Navy ship, the DE 173. I felt the ... push of that force field against the solidness of my arm and hand outstretched into its humming-pushing-propelling flow.
I watched the air all around die ship ... turn slightly, ever so slightly, darker than all the other air—I saw, after a few minutes, a foggy green mist arise like a thin cloud.* [I think] this must have been a mist of atomic particles. I watched as thereafter the DE 173 became rapidly invisible to human eyes. And yet, the precise shape of the keel and underhull of that... ship remained impressed into the ocean water as it and my own ship sped along somewhat side by side and close to
inboards. Yes, today I can tell it, but then, who cares?......in trying to describe
the sounds that [the] force field made as it circled around the DE 173 ... it began as a humming sound, quickly built up ... to a humming whispering sound, and then increased to a strongly sizzling buzz - [like a] rushing torrent....
The field had a sheet of pure electricity around it as it flowed. [This] ... flow was strong enough to almost knock me completely off balance and had my entire body been within that field, the flow would of a most absolute certainty [have] knocked me flat... on my own ship's deck. As it was,
*This account closely resembles reports from survivors of observers of disappearances within the Bermuda Triangle, where the aberration may represent a natural (or unnatural) phenomenon on a larger scale.
my entire body was not within that force field when it reached maximum strength-density, repeat, density, and so I was not knocked down but my arm and hand was [sic] only pushed backward with the fields flow.
Why was I not electrocuted the instant my bare hand touched that ... sheet of electricity surrounding the field flow? It must have been because ... [I was wearing] hip-high rubber sailor's boots and sou'wester coat.
... Naval ONR scientists today do not yet understand what took place that day. They say the field was 'reversed.' Scientific history, I later came to realize, was made for the first time that day.
As for lac rest of it, he is totally unshakable in his story concerning the newspaper articles which he says he saw while on leave in Philadelphia, and he admits to only slightly embellishing his tale of the experiment's effects on the sailors - a tale which he says he pieced together mostly from dockside scuttlebutt. He did this, he says, because he was worried that Jessup would succeed in influencing the government to accelerate research into the Unified Field Theory, and he wanted to scare him off if possible. Based on what he had witnessed and heard, he feared the results of such research, which, if placed in the wrong hands, would bring an end to society as we know it.
Nonetheless, all of this boils down to the simple fact that while Carlos may have started the controversy that has raged on over the so-called Philadelphia Experiment* for
* The Navy code name for the alleged Philadelphia Experiment is presently unknown, a good way, of course, of keeping records inaccessible to investigators. The above name, however, was previously rather celebrated in other centuries. Ben Franklin's experiment with his kite and brass key in a thunderstorm, with its attendant implications about the force and harnessing of electricity, was often referred to by contemporary men of letters in England, Europe, and the American colonies as - The Philadelphia Experiment.
more than two decades, he really doesn't appear to have the essential information needed to solve the mystery. Did it really happen? Allende maintains it did, but even he can't prove it.
The possibility that Allende himself might have been -he strange little man who related the bizarre story to airmen Davis and Huse in a Colorado Springs park in 1970 (see Chapter I) seems to be without foundation. In their interviews, both men stated with certainty that they felt they would be able to recognize the man they had met if they were ever to see him again, yet neither of them was able to identify the photograph of Allende as the character in question. If this man wasn't Allende, then the question of who he may have been becomes even more intriguing and may, perhaps, open other doors.
CHAPTER SIX
INVESTIGATIONS CAN BE FATAL
After the initial shock effect of the Allende letters wears off and one takes the time for a closer and more objective evaluation, a number of curious things about their contents begin to come to light. Perhaps the most noticeable of these is the fact that Allende seems to go out of his way to mention a number of people in them -people whom he says can 'verify' his story. In all there are nine such individuals mentioned, although one is not named but only described. Those that are named are as follows:
1. Dr Albert Einstein
2. 'Dr B. Russell'
3. 'my friend Dr Franklin Reno'
4. 'Chief Mate Mowsely' of the S.S. Furuseth
5. Richard 'Splicey' Price, crew member
6. 'Connally,' also a crew member
7. Rear Admiral Rawson Bennet
8. 'the present boss of the Navy Burke'
The first two, Dr Einstein and Dr B. Russell, are widely recognized by their names alone. Dr B. Russell can be none other than Bertrand Russell, the eminent writer, philosopher, humanitarian, and pacifist who, in his later years did
indeed befriend Dr Einstein to the extent that intimate discussions took place between them - which conceivably could have included discussion of how possible misuses of some of Einstein's theories could result in irreparable threats to mankind's very existence. How Carlos Allende might have found out about these discussions, if in fact they did occur, is anybody's guess. Einstein himself and his Unified Field Theory will be the topic of a separate chapter in this book.
Identifying the third man on the list was not quite as simple a matter. A considerable amount of research and investigatory work was required before it could be reliably established that Carlos Allende did indeed have contact with a very real Dr Franklin Reno. The mystery, however, is hardly diminished by the discovery that the name itself is actually a pseudonym. The story surrounding this important discovery and the information subsequently uncovered is, to say the least, a lengthy one and in order to do justice to it must also be deferred to a separate chapter.
Unfortunately similar successes cannot be claimed concerning the next three names, all of whom Carlos Allende claims were sailors aboard the S.S. Furuseth and witnesses to the Philadelphia Experiment. Although the chief mate of the Furuseth was indeed one Arthur Maudsley, a wall of silence has been met in all efforts to obtain any information from this individual concerning his service aboard that ship -a silence that in itself might be construed as most revealing.
The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility Page 7