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PSA: I dropped $80 on a book about the 'Philadelphia Experiment' and it's wild
I found this old paperback at a used bookstore in Tacoma last weekend, and the stuff it claims is nuts. It goes into detail about the USS Eldridge supposedly disappearing in 1943, with specific dates and officer names I'd never heard before. Honestly, it was a fun read but I'm not sure I believe any of it. Has anyone else dug into this one and found any solid proof it's all made up?
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taraw163mo ago
Remember reading about that book a while back. Uma_nelson is right about the main guy taking back his story, but the part people often miss is that the original story came from a sailor who was mixing up a different, real navy project about making ships invisible to magnetic mines. So it wasn't all made up from nothing, just a huge mix-up that got turned into a sci-fi tale. The specific names and dates in those books are usually added later to make it sound real. It's a cool story, but you definitely paid for the fun, not the facts.
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bettyk531mo ago
Oh boy, here we go again with this one. I mean, come on people, is it really that serious? You dropped 80 bucks on a book about a navy ship that supposedly vanished in a puff of smoke and you're worried about proof? I've seen this story bounce around for years and it always cracks me up how folks get all worked up looking for solid proof. The navy says it never happened, the main guy recanted, and the whole thing is basically a tall tale that got passed around like a bad cold. You paid for a fun read, so just enjoy the ride and stop trying to fact check a campfire story. It's like getting mad that a magician doesn't really saw his assistant in half.
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uma_nelson3mo ago
Spent way too much time down that rabbit hole myself. I even tried explaining the whole invisibility and teleportation thing to my cat once, and he just walked away, which felt like a pretty solid review. The book you found sounds like the deep cut stuff, but every "official" record I could dig up just falls apart. The navy says it never happened, and the main guy who pushed the story later admitted he made a lot of it up. It's a fun campfire tale, but my wallet learned the same lesson after I bought a "classified" document at a flea market that was just bad photocopies of a sci-fi magazine.
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