The Montauk Project is believed by conspiracy theorists to be a series of top-secret experiments conducted in a vast, multilevel subterranean laboratory built beneath the Montauk Air Force Station on the eastern tip of Long Island.

According to some, scientists involved in the Philadelphia Experiment believed the unexpected teleportation and psychological trauma were important discoveries and should have led to an expansion of the research project rather than its complete shutdown.

With the secret support of the Department of Defense, researchers used the Montauk facility to study magnetic manipulation for teleportation, time travel and psychic manipulation.

Project Montauk stories began circulating in the early 1980s when a man named Preston Nichols claimed to have recovered suppressed memories of his involvement with the laboratory. He was joined by an elderly man named Al Bielek, who began giving talks in paranormal circles about recovered memories of his own that linked the Philadelphia Experiment and the secret Montauk laboratory.

Bielek’s complex claims involve his being aboard the USS Eldridge, but as another man named Edward Cameron. When the ship was teleported, he said he traveled forward in time 40 years with his brother, Duncan Cameron, to the Montauk lab where they worked as psychics and consultants.

According to Bielek, the lab’s lead researcher was Nikola Tesla, the visionary scientist who developed the alternating-current electric transformers that light the world today. Though the eccentric Tesla did say in his later years that he was researching ways to communicate with extra terrestrials, he also died in 1967 before the alleged lab was built.Nikola Tesla (Getty Images)

Conspiracy wonks say achievements of the lab include the creation of a “time tunnel” that allowed experiment subjects and researchers to travel to Philadelphia, circa 1943, to alien planets and far into the future. Al Bielek’s website includes a timeline of his travels.
Conspiracy theorists claim the massive Surface Air Ground Environment (SAGE) radar on the Montauk site was used for mind-control tests on teenagers, many of whom were abducted for use in the experiments. A special chair was supposedly used to draw out the dormant psychic powers of some test subjects.

There has been no documented evidence that an underground laboratory exists beneath the decommissioned base in Montauk, and there are no official records of the lab’s research.

The base is now home to Camp Hero State Park and visitors can hike the peaceful, wooded grounds around the huge SAGE radar installation. A chain-link fence still surrounds the tower to protect the public. And conspiracy theorists undoubtedly wonder—from what?