Brian Sigley (13:05)

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McLeod Andrews (15:06)

They kept me away from Rye after that. Months of not knowing if he was alive or if he was still even himself. But I couldn't just sit there and do nothing. I had to know what happened that day. What they did to those men. What they did to Ry. So I started digging through files at Naval Intelligence. I wasn't supposed to, of course, but I still had clearance. And people still thought of me as, you know, just the camera guy. It's amazing what you can find when people think you're harmless. The first week, I found nothing. Second week, same thing. But in the third week, I discovered this file tucked away in the wrong cabinet. Like someone had misfiled it on purpose. Inside was a single sheet with a reference to something called Project Rainbow and a memo about electromagnetic field generation tests written by a Dr. Franklin Reno. Of course, I couldn't find anything about this Dr. Reno anywhere. Nor could I find anything official about what happened on the Eldritch that day. Instead, I had to rely on rumors. And, boy, were there rumors. At first they were just whispers. Sailors talking in bars, civilians who lived near the shipyard. But they all said the same thing. The Eldritch hadn't just vanished. It had showed up in Norfolk. Just appeared out of nowhere in the Navy yard there. Stayed visible for just a few minutes, then disappeared again before materializing back in Philadelphia. I even heard a story about two sailors from the Eldritch who appeared out of nowhere in this bar on the waterfront the same time the ship had disappeared. And one of them apparently kept trying to pick up a beer, but his hand kept passing right through the glass. Then a fight broke out, and in the middle of it, they both just up and vanished. And hearing all this, I mean, you try to make sense of it all, but you can't. Your whole understanding of reality just breaks. But I kept pushing, kept asking questions. And I finally learned that they were keeping the survivors at Bethesda Naval Hospital, all of them, including Ry, complete isolation. No visitors allowed. I had this friend in ONI who. Well, let's just say he owed me a favor. So he got me a pass that would get me inside. It took some convincing. He'd heard rumors about what happened to people who asked too many questions about the Eldritch. But, you know, in the end, he came through. And there in Bethesda was where I found him. God, his arm. The whole thing was this strange gray color, just hanging there, useless. And the things he told me about the other men there, what they were going through. It was worse than I imagined. Some of them seeing double. But not just double images. They'd see two different realities at once. One even said he saw another world that wasn't our own. One with geometry that didn't make sense, with creatures while we were talking. This other patient walked by in the hall. Young guy, couldn't have been more than 20. And suddenly, he just stopped. Frozen mid step, eyes wide open, terrified. So I started to get up to maybe help him, but Ry grabbed my arm. He said to leave him, because that happens sometimes. It was called freezing or getting stuck, and it usually passed quick. But if someone stayed in deep freeze for more than a day, well. He didn't finish the sentence. Eventually, I asked Rye about project Rainbow and Dr. Reno, and he just shook his head. He said he was just following orders like everyone else and had been told it was all just some kind of radar test. He'd heard the words project Rainbow, and Dr. Reno whispered here and there, but he stayed out of it. He just wanted to go home. And I wanted to help him, of course, to get him out of there. I told him we could run, find somewhere safe, but he said he couldn't because he still needed help. So I swore I'd find answers, find a way to fix what they'd done to him. Come hell or high water, I'd do it. More months passed, and I felt like I was spinning my wheels. Then one day, out of nowhere, this call came in. Just a voice telling me to be at this bar in two hours. No explanation, no name, and. I know, I know. Sounds like a trap, right? But I was desperate. I found the guy in the back booth. And he looked homeless, almost ragged. Clothes unshaven, but his eyes. His eyes were sharp, alert. He said he'd been an officer on the Eldritch. Said when the ship phased out, he ended up in Florida somehow. Just materialized on a beach near Pensacola. And he'd been off the grid ever since. And while he was talking, I noticed his hand. It kept fading, becoming transparent, then solid again. Like what happened to the sailors that day was still happening to him. He didn't know much, but what he did know was this. Project Rainbow was military tech, possibly related to cloaking technology. They were using Einstein's research somehow. And this Dr. Reno, he'd taken it further than anyone thought possible. I must have looked shocked when he mentioned Reno, because he smiled. Then he pushed this brown paper bag across the table and left. Just got up and walked away. Inside was a handgun and an address for one Dr. Franklin Reno. And I figured you'd have thought I'd just jump in my car and go right there, right then, but I didn't. And that gun has sat on my nightstand for the last eight days, just waiting for me to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with it. And then last night, my doorbell rang. I didn't want to answer it until I heard the voice on the other side. It was Ry. He said they'd released them all. Every survivor from the Eldritch, regardless of the condition they were in. All deemed unfit for duty, given pensions and sworn to secrecy. I tried to cook something for him. He looked so thin. But when I turned around from the stove, he was gone. Then he faded back in a few minutes. Minutes later, looking more exhausted than ever. He said it was happening more frequently now. And he told me he couldn't take it anymore. Sometimes he wasn't even sure if he was really there, really alive, or if he'd just died that day and this was some kind of hell. So here I am, recording this now. Just in case something happens to me or in case things don't go as planned. Because I'm going to that address tonight, and I'm taking that gun with me. I'm going to find Dr. Franklin Reno. I'm going to get answers, and I'm going to find a way to fix what they did to Ry, or I'm going to die trying. Maybe none of this matters anymore. Maybe I'm too late. But I have to try. Because every time I close my eyes, I see Rai fading away piece by piece. And I can't. I can't just let that happen. So wish me luck.

Brian Sigley (22:28)

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McLeod Andrews (23:02)

Good evening, everybody. And my name is Adam. And my name's Matt.

Brian Sigley (23:07)

And we are graveyard tapes. And we talk about haunted places, UAP sightings, cryptid encounters, strange mysteries, bizarre phenomena. You name it, we'll talk about it and put our own little spin on it.

McLeod Andrews (23:26)

And you can find us anywhere you get your podcast. You can find us on YouTube, audible rumble. And you can follow us on Instagram X or Facebook. And you can join our Facebook group, too. See you soon. Welcome back to Sightings, everybody. I am so excited to discuss this story because it was just a really cool story. It was like an action movie kind of. Yeah, yeah, we had. I was like, on this mission with that fella.

Brian Sigley (24:07)

Yeah. And we got people embedded in a boat.

McLeod Andrews (24:09)

People embed in a boat, which Is freaky. So is that what. What. What goods do we have on this to. Is any of this real?

Brian Sigley (24:17)

Okay, you got to start with that question, don't you? So, yeah, so this is kind of a unique one in that there. There is a legend that this has happened. There's almost no proof to back it up. So in this discussion, we're probably going to be leaning a lot more skeptical gecko than usual listeners. If you happen to be someone who really diehard believes that this happened. We're sorry in advance, but. But there's not on here. So in terms of what happened and with the boat and it disappearing and it showing up in Norfolk, Virginia, and then it coming back and people getting stuck in the ship, all that stuff allegedly happened. The main character, though, and his journey to save his friend, that was kind of a framework that I put on the story.

McLeod Andrews (24:59)

Okay.

Brian Sigley (24:59)

Yeah.

McLeod Andrews (24:59)

Okay. So those characters were sort of. You made up those characters.

Brian Sigley (25:02)

I made up those people because we don't actually know who the sailors were, if they were on the boat. We know the boat existed, but we don't know if it was in Philadelphia at the time. There's a lot we don't know, I guess, is the point of this.

McLeod Andrews (25:13)

Yeah, it's a wild story that I just want to. I'm looking forward to, you know, whether it's. I don't care if it's true or not. It's just fun to talk about and to think about the possibilities behind it. I mean. But since the story came from the perspective of someone on, you know, the outside of the whole thing. Can you walk me through it a bit from the inside?

Brian Sigley (25:37)

Yeah. Let me put you inside the perspective of these sailors who may or may not have existed.

McLeod Andrews (25:41)

Right.

Brian Sigley (25:42)

You know, but this is the story as it's been told. Allegedly, During World War II, the military took an interest in Albert Einstein's unified field theory, which. All right, let me try this. It is apparently the aim of the unified field theory is to describe the interrelated nature of the forces of electromagnetism and gravity and unite them into one single field. Are you with me?

McLeod Andrews (26:10)

Yeah, sure.

Brian Sigley (26:11)

Yeah. So physics, magic, and the military put those together, and you got this program called Project Rainbow.

McLeod Andrews (26:17)

Great name.

Brian Sigley (26:18)

Great name. Exactly. Headed by this guy called Dr. Franklin Reno, also a great name. The objective of Project Rainbow ostensibly was to create a force field that could render a naval destroyer and its crew completely invisible while at sea.

McLeod Andrews (26:34)

Awesome. I mean, why wouldn't you want to figure that out?

Brian Sigley (26:37)

I think it sounds awesome. That makes a lot More sense than the whole gravity and electromagnetism thing. Just force fields and invisibility. I get it. I'm there 100%. So the subject that they chose was this brand new cannon class destroyer called the USS Eldridge. And this was in 1943. Remember, this boat was 1600 tons, 216 crew, and it was sitting at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard with all this strange equipment and the people on the boat. And when they turned it on, this greenish force field type thing developed around the boat and then just disappeared entirely. And what's kind of cool, and I hinted at in the story was like when the boat disappeared, allegedly, you could still see like the outline of the boat in the water, like the displacement of the water. You know, it's like there's just like this big empty space there, basically where a boat should be, but no one can see, which seems neat to me.

McLeod Andrews (27:36)

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it did, but then it disappears. So it's like they succeeded in making it invisible for a second, but then as a side effect, it teleported, which.

Brian Sigley (27:46)

Is kind of wild. And not only was the boat going to random places, it sounds like some of the crew members on the boat also were just popping up in random places.

McLeod Andrews (27:55)

Right. I mean, it seems. It's weird that they would show up at another naval base. That makes me think that that was kind of the point somehow. Like that they were testing some sort of tele device where they had a node at Norfolk, Virginia.

Brian Sigley (28:08)

I hadn't thought of it like that before, but it does make sense that, you know, if you're going to do invisibility, you know, teleportation sounds pretty cool too. Now what's kind of interesting is that when the ship did reappear, the clocks were 10 minutes out of sync with the actual time. And of course, as we heard in the story, the crew was a mess. You know, they'd been driven mad. Many of the sailors were fused with the metal of the ship.

McLeod Andrews (28:33)

Fused into the metal of the ship. So, I mean, it has to be that this ship dematerialized and reconstituted, but, you know, there was some jumbling up along the way.

Brian Sigley (28:46)

If any of this is true at all, it's absolutely horrifying.

McLeod Andrews (28:49)

Yeah, I mean, the chaos of it feels truthy to me that like, well, you know, we haven't got quite a handle on this. And so some guys end up in a bar, some guys end up as a metal railing.

Brian Sigley (29:02)

Yeah. And the fusing wasn't the only crazy part of this. You know, some of the men claimed that they, during those four hours, I guess, ventured into some other world and saw and talked to strange alien beings. And then afterwards, in the aftermath of this whole thing, the effects didn't end after those four hours. Like, allegedly, these men were still dealing with problems. Like, one guy walked through a wall one day and never came back.

McLeod Andrews (29:26)

Whoa.

Brian Sigley (29:27)

So I think the gist of it is, like, this messed a lot of people up. And one chilling line that I read is, the experiment itself was a complete success, but the men were complete failures.

McLeod Andrews (29:39)

Wow. That's horrifying. So you mentioned all these sailors saying this happened to them, saying that. How do we know about any of this?

Brian Sigley (29:46)

Well, there was a book written in 1979 by this guy named Charles Berlitz, who, before I go into this at all, I will say he is a pretty infamous peddler of paranormal theories.

McLeod Andrews (29:58)

It's his thing.

Brian Sigley (29:58)

Y. The book tells the story of how the author caught wind of this conversation that was happening between this scientist named Morris Jessup and this other dude named Carlos Allende. So Jessup was a astronomer, a scientist, a physicist, and one of the first proponents of the ancient astronauts theory, or ancient aliens theory, basically. Okay. Which is kind of cool.

McLeod Andrews (30:21)

Yeah, I'm totally into ancient aliens.

Brian Sigley (30:23)

Yeah. In 1955, he published a book called the Case for the UFO. And apparently this book caught the attention of this guy named Carlos Allende, who reached out to Jessup in a letter and said that he had witnessed the Philadelphia Experiment in 1943. Cause until then, and this is at least after 1955, so for those 12 years, no mention of this happening anywhere ever.

McLeod Andrews (30:47)

Gotcha.

Brian Sigley (30:47)

So Jessup and this Carlos Allende guy start exchanging letters. And in these letters, things start getting a little bit stranger than normal. Like Allende's name starts changing between the letters. Like, he's Carlos Allende in the first letter. In the second letter, he's Carl Allen. There are always variations on Carl or Carlos and Allen or Allende, but it's not consistent necessarily. And the contents of the letters themselves are, I'll say, fantastical, to say the least. He's using different ink. He's underlining everything, like, three or four times in these letters. I know the original letter is lost to the world. I believe the second ones exist in some form somewhere. I think if you really go digging, you can find them.

McLeod Andrews (31:30)

So all of this comes through the conduit of this Carl, Allen, or Carlos.

Brian Sigley (31:35)

There isn't really much else to go on than that in terms of proof.

McLeod Andrews (31:39)

So if not, you know, Proof. Is there any potentially corroborating evidence?

Brian Sigley (31:45)

Some kind of. Okay, so in 1943, Albert Einstein actually was employed by the Navy as a scientific consultant. Theoretically, he was working on explosives and munitions and things like that. So that's one thing that could potentially corroborate this story. But records of the ship, most of the records seem to have kind of disappeared mostly. But what does seem to be known is that the USS Eldridge, which is the ship, was probably not in Philadelphia, at least when Carlos Allende said that the Philadelphia experiment happened, it was apparently elsewhere. In fact, the USS Eldridge has allegedly never been in Philadelphia. The closest it's been was Newark, where it was built. Another check mark in the skeptical gecko category might be that no crew members have come forward publicly at least, or gone on the record about what happened to them in Philadelphia then or ever or since.

McLeod Andrews (32:41)

Yeah. When it's just to the one guy that's a little.

Brian Sigley (32:44)

Yeah, I feel about the same way also. Franklin Reno, you know, the guy that our main character was trying to find at the end of the story probably was not a real person.

McLeod Andrews (32:54)

Oh.

Brian Sigley (32:54)

Authors managed to track down Franklin Reno, but not in the way you would think. So there's a street sign outside of Franklin, Pennsylvania that says Franklin, 8 miles, Reno 3 miles. Ironically, that street sign is not far from where Carlos Allende theoretically lived. Yeah, I guess the other document that this document actually exists, there is something written by the Navy that says none of this actually happened.

McLeod Andrews (33:19)

Oh, so they actually addressed it?

Brian Sigley (33:20)

Yes, the Navy has said, we have gotten so many requests about this that we are just going to put this to bed right now. Basically. The Navy has never conducted investigations on invisibility. They suspect the foundations of the story may have come from experiments that they did do involving machinery on boats and kind of electromagnetism and stuff like that. From degaussing experiments that were basically used to make ships undetectable to magnetic mines.

McLeod Andrews (33:48)

To make them the hulls non magnetic, kind of to repel magnetic mines, basically.

Brian Sigley (33:53)

Is what they've said and. Oh, okay, so that's where they think it all kind of might have come from there. But beyond that, it's all just a lot of nebulous hearsay without any corroboration. But like you said at the start of this, it is a cool, cool story.

McLeod Andrews (34:08)

Yeah, it is really cool.

Brian Sigley (34:10)

So let me check in with you. You know, I've already made it fairly clear, I think that I'm in the skeptical gecko camp on this one. And I can't imagine you Won't be either.

McLeod Andrews (34:18)

Yeah, I'm skeptical, Gecko.

Brian Sigley (34:19)

So, interestingly, this is the first story where I think the believer Beaver has not made any appearances yet. Can we make a case for him at all?

McLeod Andrews (34:27)

The case is just like, the nature of government coverups and, like, military experimentation. And whether or not I would believe in. I just also question. I mean. And yes, like, I believe the government would have a real vested interest in figuring out something like teleporting a ship or making a ship invisible.

Brian Sigley (34:47)

If this is true and this actually happened, there were at least 216people on that boat who could have squealed about this and didn't. The other thing that kind of sticks with me about this story is it happened at the port. If you're going to make a boat invisible, why are you going to do it when there's witnesses?

McLeod Andrews (35:08)

Yeah, this would not be happening at, like. Oh, just like the. You know, the naval base that everybody knows about.

Brian Sigley (35:16)

Yeah. They would do it in the middle of the ocean where no one would ever know what's going on. I feel like. So that's another thing that kind of jumps for me on it. And let alone the wild stories about what happened to these sailors afterwards. I mean, if this actually happened. And God bless them, because this is terrible.

McLeod Andrews (35:31)

What I'm kind of frustrated is it's a great story, but I can't say I want to believe in it because it's awful. So it's. I enjoy the great story. It fills my imagination. I hope it didn't happen, and I don't think it did.

Brian Sigley (35:47)

There you go. That's the final.

McLeod Andrews (35:50)

But again, we don't understand the physics at play here, so listeners dive in and help us out.

Brian Sigley (35:56)

You can find us on Instagram, itingspod, or hit us up on the comments feature at Spotify. We take a look at all of them, and we love the conversations going on over there.

McLeod Andrews (36:06)

That said, what narrative port are we sailing off to next week, Brian?

Brian Sigley (36:12)

So we're actually kind of staying on the water a little bit. We're going to an island.

McLeod Andrews (36:16)

Oh.

Brian Sigley (36:16)

But this one's on the west coast. So we are heading to a haunted island.

McLeod Andrews (36:20)

A haunted island on the west coast?

Brian Sigley (36:24)

Yeah.

McLeod Andrews (36:24)

Okay, let's see. I'm just thinking of islands on the west coast. We got the Channel Islands, we got Catalina, and that's about all the islands I know of off the west coast.

Brian Sigley (36:34)

Well, one of them's super haunted, and we're gonna go there next week. So get ready, listeners. Same time, same place, right here. On sightings.

McLeod Andrews (36:41)

See you then.

Brian Sigley (36:46)

Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley produced by Brian Sigley, chase Kinzer and McLeod Andrews written by Brian Sigley music by Mitch Bain mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media artwork by Nuno Cernatos. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website@sightingspodcast.com Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.