The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon, published in 1992, is the first book in a series depicting time travel experiments at the Montauk Air Force Base at the eastern tip of Long Island. It is considered the progenitor of the "Montauk Project" conspiracy theory.
Overview The 1992 book and its follow up books are written in a first person style. The real photographs of the base and crude drawings of the project electronics in the book are used for a false sense of reality. Using a time travel theme, the characters alter history with visits to Jesus Christ, as well as altering the outcome of American Civil War and World War II battles. The authors claim the book is based on their recovery of repressed childhood memories of being abducted and experimented on against their will. In the book they also throw doubt on their claims saying ‘Whether you read this as science fiction or non-fiction you are in for an amazing story.’ The book has been looked on as true by followers of the conspiracy theory, some of whom visit Montauk Air Force Base inside Camp Hero State Park. It has also been classified as science fiction.
Book details
The Philadelphia Experiment The book's narrative is centered around the Montauk Project, which is believed to be an extension or continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment (also known as Project Rainbow), which supposedly took place in 1943. Sometime in the 1950s, surviving researchers from the original Project Rainbow began to discuss the project with an eye to continuing the research into technical aspects of manipulating the electromagnetic bottle that had been used to make the USS Eldridge invisible, and the reasons and possible military applications of the psychological effects of the magnetic field. A report was supposedly prepared and presented to the United States Congress, and was soundly rejected as far too dangerous. So a proposal was made directly to the United States Department of Defense promising a powerful new weapon that could drive an enemy insane, inducing the symptoms of schizophrenia at the touch of a button. Without Congressional approval, the project would have to be top secret and secretly funded. The Department of Defense approved. Funding supposedly came from a cache of US$10 billion in Nazi gold recovered from a train found by U.S. soldiers in a train tunnel in France. The train was blown up and all the soldiers involved were killed. When those funds ran out, additional funding was secured from ITT and Krupp AG in Germany.
The experiment comes to Long Island Work was begun at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York under the name Phoenix Project, but it was soon realized that the project required a large radar dish, and installing one at Brookhaven would compromise the security of the project. Luckily, the U.S. Air Force had a decommissioned base at Montauk, New York, not far from Brookhaven, which had a complete Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) radar installation. The site was large and remote (Montauk was not yet a tourist attraction) and water access would allow equipment to be moved in and out undetected. Equipment was moved to Camp Hero at the Montauk base in the late 1960s, and installed in an underground bunker beneath the base. According to conspiracy theorists, to mask the nature of the project the site was closed in 1969 and donated as a wildlife refuge/park, with the provision that everything underground would remain the property of the Air Force (although, in reality, the base remained in operation until the 1980s).
Key parts of the original book Experiments began in earnest in the early 1970s and during this time one, some or all of the following are claimed to have occurred at the site:
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