Episode 357 - The Montauk Project

Summary

Two Girls One Ghost – Episode 357: The Montauk Project

Release Date: January 25, 2026
Hosts: Corinne Vien and Sabrina Deana-Roga
Main Theme: Deep dive into the conspiracy theory of the Montauk Project—the real-life inspiration for Stranger Things—examining the origins, alleged experiments, and contemporary testimonies, while questioning the layers between fact, fiction, and memory manipulation.

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the infamous Montauk Project, a conspiracy theory suggesting that a secret government experiment took place in Montauk, NY, involving mind control, time travel, psychic children, and the creation of monsters—a story which, allegedly, directly inspired Stranger Things. With their characteristic mix of spooky fascination and skeptical wit, Corinne and Sabrina unravel the key historical points, relate the theory’s roots in government experimentation, and share personal and listener stories of telepathy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Paranormal Table: Montauk & Stranger Things (03:15 – 07:48)

• The hosts discuss Stranger Things' origins: The show was initially titled “Montauk” and is steeped in 1980s government paranoia and experiments.
• Sabrina: “But what if we told you Stranger Things wasn’t just born from the imagination of the Duffer Brothers, but inspired by a real place? … That’s right… a conspiracy theory called the Montauk Project.” (04:19)

2. Who is Preston Nichols? The Man Behind the Tale (07:48 – 13:51)

• Preston Nichols, self-described science and electronics expert, allegedly discovers the Montauk Project.
• His life prior to this is almost entirely untraceable—"no verified records," potentially by design.
• In 1971, while working at Airborne Instruments Laboratory (AIL) on Long Island, he receives a grant to study telepathy, a project he initially believes will disprove psychic abilities.

Notable Quote:

“Preston Nichols is the reason we know about or believe this to be a thing that happened.” – Sabrina (07:37)

3. Discovery of the Psychic Block & Hunting the Signal (12:50 – 18:49)

• Preston runs experiments with local psychics and discovers, daily at the same time, their abilities are blocked for 20 minutes.
• Traces the source to a radio signal (410-420 MHz) emanating from the Montauk Air Force Base’s giant radar antenna at Montauk Point.
• Encounter at the base: Security claims the radar is FAA-controlled, inconsistent with its long-range military war-era design.

Memorable Moment:

“He places a modified TV antenna on the roof of his car, grabs a WHF receiver, and drives around Long Island in search of the signal.” – Sabrina (15:30)

4. The Haunting of Camp Hero: Paranormal Encounters (21:35 – 28:52)

• In 1984, Preston accesses the now-abandoned Montauk base, describing it as if suddenly deserted (“abandoned in panic” with valuable equipment left behind).
• Encounters a man who recognizes Preston as his former boss and recounts a failed experiment featuring a beast scaring away everyone.
• Brian, Preston’s psychic colleague, corroborates the “beast” through a psychic reading—“irregular weather, mind control, a vicious beast.”

Notable Quote:

“Preston was this man’s boss. The project went terribly wrong, and a massive beast appeared and frightened everyone away.” – Sabrina (25:38)

5. Montauk’s Documented History vs. Theories (32:33 – 36:38)

• Camp Hero was constructed for WWII coastal defense, mirrored as a small coastal town for secrecy.
• In the Cold War, it became an Air Force radar station; its FPS-35 radar tower is one of the largest built.
• Since decommissioning in 1981, odd phenomena allegedly occurred, including strange weather, animals behaving bizarrely, and claims of missing children.

Memorable Moment:

“It was built to resemble a small coastal town. There were these facades built... like a Hollywood set.” – Sabrina (33:07)

6. Unreliable Memories: Mind Control and Telepathic Tech (41:05 – 54:20)

• Preston and “Montauk Boy” Duncan Cameron discover they share missing time and memories, possibly due to mind control or programming.
• Hypnosis and investigation lead to the “real story”: Between 1971 and 1983, “Phoenix 2,” the Montauk Project, sought to weaponize the human mind and manipulate time, using psychics and children as test subjects.
• Experiments covered telepathy, LSD, remote viewing, memory manipulation, and even “portal creation.”

Notable Quote:

“The Montauk Project was believed to be designed to explore, weaponize and control the human mind. Mind control was the goal, but it was not one single experiment being conducted. There were many.” – Sabrina (47:45)

7. The Montauk Chair & The Incident of ‘83 (54:21 – 69:46)

• The infamous “Montauk Chair” experiment: Test subjects—often unwilling, often children—were placed in a chair that, amplifying psychic abilities, could allegedly turn thought into physical manifestations, open portals, and even warp time.
• “Duncan Cameron” thinks of a monster while in the chair, manifesting a hairy beast—which some frame as an origin of “Bigfoot”—that rampages the base in the project’s final days (August 12, 1983).
• This incident results in the presumed shutdown and mass memory wiping of involved staff.

Notable Quotes:

“If thought powered the system, couldn’t thought also shut it down?” – Sabrina (67:07)
“He literally was connected to you… like you grew him inside your body.” – Sabrina, relating psychic children’s stories to the alleged “Montauk Boys” selection (93:58)

8. The Victims: The Montauk Boys and Disturbing Stats (58:30 – 64:15)

• Claims that 300,000 children (“Montauk Boys”) were kidnapped and killed or tortured during the project—a number that, disturbingly, aligns with a million missing children reported annually during the alleged timeline in the U.S.
• Methods included torture, LSD, sensory deprivation, and psychic programming.

Notable Quote:

“They basically wanted to break the psyche so they could reprogram the brain to their desires.” – Sabrina (61:18)

9. Testimonies: Stuart Swerdlow, Clones, and Alien Abductions (75:23 – 80:47)

• Witness Stuart Swerdlow recounts abduction experiences, time anomalies, and being tasked to obtain ancient DNA to create clones.
• Others from “gifted and talented” school programs come forward with parallel stories; some recall being lured into field trips and tested, bolstering the conspiracy community.

10. Secrets, Declassification, and Open Questions (83:05 – End)

• Extensive debate over whether any of the Montauk accounts are real, suppressed memories, or a combination of both.
• Many elements have the ring of truth, especially considering declassified CIA projects (MK Ultra, Stargate), but true evidence on Montauk remains elusive.
• Sabrina: “If it is true… why isn’t memory control being used more often? Unless we are all being controlled.” (84:13)

11. Listener Stories: Modern Psychic Connections (90:21 – 94:27)

• Corinne reads emails from listeners sharing real-life telepathy experiences between siblings, mothers, and friends, suggesting psychic bonds are not just fiction.
• Sabrina: “I feel like that just proves that the ability to telepathically communicate does exist.” (93:19)

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Notable Quotes

• "What if we told you Stranger Things wasn't just born from the imagination of the Duffer Brothers, but inspired by a real place?" – Sabrina (04:19)

• “The project went terribly wrong, and a massive beast appeared and frightened everyone away. … This is where the first big seed is planted.” – Sabrina (25:38)

• “From 1971 to 1983, there was a secretive government experiment operating at the Montauk Air Base, which is now known as the Montauk Project, but was originally known as Phoenix 2 by officials involved.” – Sabrina (45:16)

• “If thought powered the system, couldn’t thought also shut it down? … In this moment, … fear comes up … literally manifests a terrifying monster.” – Sabrina (67:07)

• “He literally was connected to you ... like you grew him inside your body.” – Sabrina (93:58)

• “Today, Montauk is this sought after beach town. … As for Camp Hero and the Montauk Air Base, it is the Camp Hero State Park… The massive radar tower still dominates the landscape.” – Sabrina (87:11)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [03:15] – Linking Stranger Things and the Montauk Project
• [07:48] – Introduction to Preston Nichols
• [12:50] – Discovering the 20-minute psychic block
• [15:30] – Preston’s “Dustin from Stranger Things” moment: building an antenna contraption
• [21:35] – Entering the abandoned Montauk Air Base
• [25:38] – First mention of “the beast” and memory confusion
• [32:33] – Verified historical info about Camp Hero/Base
• [41:05] – Duncan Cameron’s appearance and programmed assassination plot
• [54:21] – Explanation of the Montauk Chair; creation of physical manifestations
• [67:07] – 1983 Incident: The Montauk Monster
• [83:05] – Discussion: Conspiracy or reality?
• [90:21] – Listener telepathy stories

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Episode Tone & Style

The hosts balance humor, genuine intrigue, and critical skepticism. Their conversational chemistry—as well as pop culture references—make the episode accessible even as it dives deep into unsettling themes.

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Conclusion: Is the Montauk Project Real?

The episode ends without definitive answers, but the hosts highlight:

• The eerie links between government-documented experiments (MK Ultra etc.) and the Montauk legend.
• Ongoing questions about unreleased classified experiments.
• The notion that even if Montauk isn’t “real,” universal fears about lost time, mind control, and government secrecy remain relevant.

As Sabrina notes:
“The question isn’t whether secret government experiments happened. The question is how many are there that we still don’t fully understand?” (88:11)

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Next week: Corinne covers the Philadelphia Experiment—a further deep dive into government time-warp conspiracies.

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Listener Call to Action:
The hosts invite listeners to share their own stories and theories about the Montauk Project and psychic events. Email: twogirlsmyghostpodcastmail.com

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Transcript

[Corinne]

A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor. The colonel made his $10 Tuesday bucket so full with eight pieces of juicy, crispy chicken or tenders that it might just last you till Wednesday if you've got that kind of self control. I mean, some people want leftovers, others are more into right nowers. The Colonel lived so we could chicken. 10 bucks, 8 pieces. One big deal with KFC. $10 Tuesdays.

[Sabrina]

Prices and participation may vary.

[Corinne]

Taxes, tips and fees extra.

[Sabrina]

Oh, such a clutch off season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant those blackout motorized shades.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

Hard to install. No, it's easy.

[Corinne]

I installed these and then got some from my mom.

[Sabrina]

She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of fame son.

[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

Hello, Hello.

[Sabrina]

What's up, everyone?

[Corinne]

This is. Hey, hey, what's up? Hello, Hello. This is ladies and tangents, Jerry and Sierra.

[Sabrina]

I wonder if they'll ever know that we did this. Someone will tell them.

[Corinne]

I'm so excited for Jerry's new podcast.

[Sabrina]

Wait, Jerry has a new podcast?

[Corinne]

Yes, I texted her the other day and I was like, wait, what's new in your life? I haven't caught up with you in a while. And she was like, oh, well, the new podcast and blah, blah. I was like, what? She has a new podcast? It's a podcast that. Wait, is it coming out tomorrow? This would be later for everyone else. Okay. The first episode is January 9th, so in a couple days from when we're recording now.

[Sabrina]

So it already came out if you're listening to this episode.

[Corinne]

Yes. It's with her friend Rachel Rach, who had a podcast already that existed called For Better or for Worse. It was like with someone else. So there's like a back catalog from a few years ago, but they took a few years break.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And now Jerry is taking the place of the other host that is no longer involved. And so it's going to be Jerry and Rachel and it's about like relationships and divorce and stuff like that.

[Sabrina]

Wow. I'm gonna listen.

[Corinne]

How fun, right? So Jerry's like the divorced one, Rachel's the remarried one, even though Jerry's about to be remarried too soon.

[Sabrina]

Wait, I love that.

[Corinne]

Yeah, I'm really excited for that.

[Sabrina]

So Go check that out. We are not ladies on tangents.

[Corinne]

No, we're two girls, one ghost.

[Sabrina]

Two girls, one ghost. And we are your ghost sisters. That is Corinne, and I'm Sabrina, and we are a podcast about the paranormal and weird shit. And this week, we're gonna put tinfoil hats on, so we really should make some. I honestly, last night was going to. And I also had such bad insomnia last night, but it was one of those, like, really frustrating ones where I just, like, kept wanting to fall asleep, but every time I consciously was like, I'm not falling asleep, I was like, should I go make tinfoil hats? And I did not.

[Corinne]

We need a prop corner where we can just, like, grab what we need.

[Sabrina]

We do need a prop corner. Like the little, like, photo booth things. Yeah. Imagine we have tinfoil hats on for this episode. Last week, in episode 356, Corinne and I talked a lot about Stranger Things.

[Corinne]

Because I had a lot of anger in my body, and we all know I'm better now. We're recording the same day. It's like 10 minutes later.

[Sabrina]

10 minutes later, you got it off your chest. But we all know Stranger Things. Even if you didn't watch it, it was impossible to ignore. This is like a show that has just become so part of pop culture and the zeitgeist in the last 10 years. 1980s small town Indiana. A secret government facility hiding in plain sight children with strange abilities, experiments that go too far, and a gate accidentally opened up into a strange, twisted alternate universe. The Upside Down. But what if we told you that Stranger Things wasn't just born from the imagination of the Duffer Brothers, but inspired by a real place? Inspired by a real secret government experiment that the government tried to cover up through mind control, memory wiping, and by eliminating those who knew too much. That's right, because Stranger Things was inspired by a very real conspiracy theory called the Montauk Project.

[Corinne]

Ayo.

[Sabrina]

And today we are talking all about the Montauk Project, which is why we're putting on our tinfoil hats. The Montauk Project is an alleged secret government experiment that involved psychics, mind control, time travel, kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of children. An experiment that effectively ripped open a hole in the space time continuum.

[Corinne]

I was trying to explain it to Brian the other day because I was like, oh, Sabrina's gonna do an episode on the Montauk Project. And he was like, what's the Montauk Project? And I was like, what's the Montauk Project?

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And I attempted to explain it to Him. And then I was like, hold on, I actually can't, because I don't actually know what is conspiracy and what's not. So I was like, I don't know how much of this I'm telling you, that's like, is the tinfoil hat and what has been released as fact.

[Sabrina]

Well, I'll tell you this, literally none of it has been released as fact. Mm. So this is.

[Corinne]

What the heck? Then it's all real.

[Sabrina]

This is all conjecture and alleged, but the people who have shared these stories believe it to be true. Okay, there has been. No, it's not. Like how the government has released documents about MK Ultra and Stargate and Gateway Project, like, things like that. There's no released documents, but I got the documents.

[Corinne]

But I thought the Gateway project was related to the Montauk project. Oh, interesting.

[Sabrina]

Not.

[Corinne]

I thought that they were like sisters. Also, I will say, after last week, when I was poo pooing a lot of season five of Stranger Things, one. One thing I did really appreciate was, and this is a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen the finale, was when Hopper mentioned buying property in Montauk, I was like, oh, such a good nod to what inspired this whole series.

[Sabrina]

Well, so the series was originally titled Montauk.

[Corinne]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. And then I think Stranger Things is way better. But, yeah, it ends with Hopper's going Montauk, which sounds like a really hard place to police.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Well, then his house is gonna be worth millions of dollars in the next few decades. He's going to be doing great. That's true. It's going to be a tough decade. And then he's going to be a rich man.

[Sabrina]

And then he's going to be a rich man. Okay, today we are diving into the origins of this conspiracy, and we're going to let you decide. Is this real, or is it an elaborate story that has evolved into mass delusion? Before Stranger Things and before the discovery of the alleged Montauk Project, there is a man. His name is Preston Nichols. And there are so many different ways that people tell the Montauk Project conspiracy. I think the most crucial, like, from all my research, I was like, this is the only way you can tell it, because it is. Preston Nichols is the reason we know about or believe this to be a thing that happened. And I think the way in which he came to find it is, even if it's not real, it's the most magical, crazy story I know.

[Corinne]

Now this is. I'm like, he's the only Reason there's not other people that came forward since.

[Sabrina]

He published his book. Yes, but. Okay, Preston Nichols. And when you Google his name and photos, the photos are not kind to him in any way. But. So I found an older photo. Preston Nichols was a very science minded, technical man. He worked with electronics, radio systems and engineering concepts. He's the type of person who. It reminds me of my brother when he was little. Like he had to take apart everything to see how it worked. And then he would put it back together like, this is Preston Nichols. He just wanted to know how everything worked. And despite his infamy, now it's really hard to find any information on his life before, like, the beginnings of the story. I'm not sure where he was born or when he was born. There are no verified records regarding his early career or life, which feels a little strange, but maybe that's on purpose. And strange is exactly the way I would describe this entire story.

[Corinne]

This is. So I'm already like on the edge of my seat because I, I thought I'd be going into this whole thing being like, yeah, all of this is real. But already from the start, I'm like, this is reminding me of some of the stories of like these people who come back and they're. They live in another planet and they're a time traveler and it's this whole thing. And then it's like it was a hoax at the end.

[Sabrina]

Well, I will say when this story first started coming out, like in the 80s. Since then, no one has changed their story. So Preston's story, at least the part of the story that is pertinent to the Montauk project in today's episode, begins in 1971. In 1971, Preston Nichols began working for a company called AIL, which is airborne Instruments Laboratory, which is a very well known defense contractor on Long Island. Preston was a specialist in electromagnetic phenomena. Basically, he deeply understood how electricity, magnetism and electromagnetic waves behave and interact with materials and living systems. Nerd.

[Corinne]

Nerd.

[Sabrina]

No. And I say that in the sense of, like, it's physics and science that I just, no matter what my brain cannot conceptualize. It feels so otherworldly. But he understood it, was an expert in it. And it's here at AIL that Preston received a grant to study mental telepathy and to determine whether it was real or not. And it's important to note that Preston himself didn't have much interest in this field. So it's. Right away, it's like, it's odd. Why would he be given a grant for this if he has no interest in it? I think the company probably got the grant and he was assigned to do the study. So he.

[Corinne]

But it's not like he was just assigned to figure out like what is happening with these people and then concluded telepathy.

[Sabrina]

So he goes into this project, pretty certain he's going to disprove that mental telepathy exists. Like he's like, I don't think that's real. But he was in for a surprise. Not only did Preston come to determine that mental telepathy was in fact possible, he learned it did exist. And he uncovered something much deeper, much darker, something he himself was never supposed to recall. But we'll get back to that reveal in a bit.

[Corinne]

What? Oh my God.

[Sabrina]

Okay, so this is probably a good place to state that in this episode about a conspiracy theory. Some of the information in this episode has been confirmed, like details of origins of military bases and things like that. But a lot of it is alleged. It doesn't mean it's not true. After all, what are conspiracies if not conjecture and hypotheses and theories that have yet to be proven right? My research does mostly come from the book that was written by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon called the Montauk Experiments in Time, the Silver anniversary edition, because it's been like details have been added into it. But this is the story. So it's 1971. Preston is assigned to this project studying mental telepathy. He ran a series of studies. The specifics here are vague, but he determined multiple things. One, telepathic communication is real. Two, it operates on principles strikingly similar to radio waves that he called a telepathic wave. Three, the telepathic wave propagates in a similar fashion to that of electromagnetic waves. So the same way like radio waves work, like he's seeing that telepathy kind of like operates on. On a similar wave.

[Corinne]

It's a little bit like Pluribus again.

[Sabrina]

Yes, yes. So this discovery cemented a new path for Preston. He's now officially obsessed with metaphysics. And even after his work for this project was completed, again, the completion of this project and the project itself, pretty vague. But after this is completed, he now seeks further discovery and starts running his own test in his own spare time. By 1974, Preston is now running his own research. He had gathered a group of self proclaimed psychics and he's continuing to do tests again.

[Corinne]

So this is outside of the grant. This is like underground research in his home lab? Yeah. Can you imagine having a home Lab.

[Sabrina]

This is like we were working full time jobs and our podcast was like our side hustle hobby. This is. This is his garage. This is his podcast. Yeah, he's doing tests on psychics. Again, specifics are very vague, but these tests led to a strange discovery, a accidental discovery. So according to Preston, as he's running these tests with psychics, he's doing this on a daily basis. And he starts to realize every single day at the exact same time, every single psychic experiences a block. What? And it's for 20 minutes at a time. Every day, same time. I'm just making up what the time is to say it's like 12pm at 12pm Exactly. Every single psychic all of a sudden has like a psychic block. They can no longer tap in, they can no longer access it for 20 minutes. And the second the 20 minutes is over, they cannot access it again. So he's like, huh?

[Corinne]

It's like, what's happening? And is there someone else in control who is manipulating something for 20 minutes every day?

[Sabrina]

Well, he's like, because of the consistency of it, like there's something that is causing this blockage. Right? And being the guy that he is, Preston's like, I gotta find out what this blockage is. And based on his knowledge and the way that, like, he felt like it was operating on this, the psychic waves similar to radio waves, he's like, there's gotta be some kind of signal, interference, something that is blocking the waves.

[Corinne]

And this was just. This wasn't like every psychic ever. This was just the people who he.

[Sabrina]

Was studying locally that were in Long Island.

[Corinne]

So at least, like, there was a block in Long island.

[Sabrina]

Right. So he figures out that during that time there is a frequency being transmitted through radio waves. And this frequency was specifically a 4, 10-4, 20 MHz cycle. So for 20 minutes every day, this frequency was being put out onto radio waves and it's cutting off, blocking psychic abilities. So I think my first instinct would be to be like, okay, well, what is it about this frequency that is blocking psychics? But Preston's like, what? I know this frequency's gotta be local because it's impacting people here. I'm gonna go find it. He's like, I'm gonna go track down the location, the source of this frequency. And this is where. I mean, there are gonna be so many themes and moments in this episode that you, if you are a Stranger Things fan, you're gonna be like, oh, my God, that reminds me of Stranger Things. This moment reminds me so much of Dustin He Jerry rigs a contraption to find it, and he places a modified TV antenna on the roof of his car, grabs a WHF receiver, and drives around Long island in search of the signal.

[Corinne]

Barry Henderson.

[Sabrina]

Right.

[Corinne]

Who was your favorite character?

[Sabrina]

I mean, I think 11. I felt I honestly, that was my one qualm. I feel like she disappeared a little bit from the story and she was so pertinent. But then dipshit Derek just won me over this last season.

[Corinne]

Yeah, he was so good. I feel like Dustin was my consistent for day one.

[Sabrina]

Favorite.

[Corinne]

I like it.

[Sabrina]

You said kinsistant. Like your kinspirit and consistent love.

[Corinne]

Yeah. But I feel like a lot of people feel this way. Steve Harrington had the biggest turnaround. Like, I loved all of the characters and I would have probably cried with most of them if there were deaths. But I will say the only ones that would have liked destroyed me would have been those two.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people felt the same. I loved Robyn. I. I mean, I like all the characters.

[Corinne]

Robin, the first season that she came forward, she had such good one liners.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

When they were working the, like, ahoy, whatever.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, yeah.

[Corinne]

Hers were so good.

[Sabrina]

They were all good. I actually loved Nancy and Jonathan's breakup scene. And I think so many people complain about it. Cause they're like, wait, really? Yeah. Oh, on TikTok, everyone was like, I had no idea they broke up. Like, I was so confused. And then some of the comments were like, it's because it was a healthy breakup. That's why so many people didn't understand was like what a healthy relationship looks like. And we're full of toxic relationships in our world.

[Corinne]

Well, and also I feel like it was nice because it was almost like they were. I feel like so much of like Henry and Vecna and like that sort of lore was like finding the truth and telling the truth and like being authentic and like, that sort of thing was hard for him because he's all about, like, manipulation. And it was them finally, like revealing their truth and then they get to be set free, like, literally from their own.

[Sabrina]

Ends up with no one. That's my favorite. I love when that.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

I love when no one's dating. I love when there's no love.

[Corinne]

Single everyone, single, no love. But Max and Lucas were the best.

[Sabrina]

I know. I did love it.

[Corinne]

Watching them in the background, just like constantly, like all over each other. Just so happy to be together. I loved them.

[Sabrina]

Okay, so Preston Nichols is very destined right now. He's like driving away around in, like, the WSQX van, searching for the signal. It led him directly to Montauk Point and the red and white radar antenna on the Air Force base. And this antenna is ginormous. It is, like, one description said, the size of a football field. It's big. Massive.

[Corinne]

Damn. How could you not see that through, like, the whole. This isn't a super hilly spot. Oh, I guess it's.

[Sabrina]

I mean, Montauk's spacious. It's like, this is at the very tip of Montauk.

[Corinne]

Yeah, I know, but it's not, like, mountainous. Like, I feel like you'd be able. In my mind, I was thinking of, like, a giant, tall antenna.

[Sabrina]

Oh, no, it's.

[Corinne]

This is girthy.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. It's not like a. It's not a Stranger Things antenna. So he arrives to this base, and he's at the exterior, Right. This isn't active military base. And he sees the radar antenna, but it's at a distance behind the heavily secured, active Air Force. Air Force. Air Force base.

[Corinne]

Air Force.

[Sabrina]

Air Force. So he assumes either this is an accidental transmission or it's something related to the air base. So he goes up to security at the front gate and is like, hey, what's that radar being used for? Which Love that for him. But also, like, I would not trust any answer that's given to me.

[Corinne]

Right. And also, like, if we take a page from Stranger Things again, most of the people who are there probably don't know what something actually is is.

[Sabrina]

Right. So.

[Corinne]

Which I did feel bad for all of the soldier deaths in Stranger Things where I was like, these guys literally thought that they were, like, tending to a crack in the earth.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. But some of them also knew what they were doing.

[Corinne]

Some of them. But a lot of them that got. The ones that knew mostly lived for a while, and the ones that didn't got killed quick.

[Sabrina]

I feel like 11, like, got her vengeance at the end there. Okay. So he asks, and whoever's at the security gate. I don't know how the conversation went, if there was pressing or what, but, like, he tells Preston that it's being used for a project run by the faa. The FAA is the Federal Aviation Administration, which. This does not make any sense at all. I didn't know this, but. Because Preston knows things and researched. But this does not make sense. The FAA tracks civilian aircrafts. This radar. And I'll talk about the specifics of it a little bit more later. This was built during World War II. It's a radar defense system designed to detect Enemy aircraft and missiles at vast distances. This is not scanning local airspace, and.

[Corinne]

It'S on the very edge of Montauk.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. So this is not adding up. And also in my mind, I'm like. Like, we just talked about what does the security guard really know? Did he misspeak? Did he just, like, make. Pull something out of his ass? Is that what he was told?

[Corinne]

Probably.

[Sabrina]

Either way, while Preston knows this is sus, he's at a dead end. It's an active air base, and he's not gonna be able to get more information. So for 10 years, this is 1974. For 10 years, this frequency that's being emitted and into the radio waves for 20 minutes every day is just a mystery. And Preston continues with his own metaphysical research, but the question just remained this constant itch in the back of his brain, Right. He's like, what is this?

[Corinne]

In my mind, I'm like, they're trying to transmit a message into space every single day.

[Sabrina]

It's crazier. Ten years, this just. It's a mystery to him because he can't get answers until 1984. And a friend of his gives him a call and is like, hey, Preston, guess what? That military base, it's actually no longer operating, and it's abandoned now.

[Corinne]

You can go investigate.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Naturally, Preston and his friend are like, let's go check out that abandoned air base and break in. And it is here that they make multiple odd discoveries. The base doesn't look like it was shut down. It looks like it was truly abandoned in a panic. Like, files and debris are strewn about. High tech equipment is just left behind.

[Corinne]

That's bizarre, because it's probably worth a lot of money.

[Sabrina]

Well, so Preston's first instinct, he's this technical guy. He loves. He loves equipment.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

He sees all this valuable stuff and he's like, me, what? And so he reaches out to, I guess there's this agency called the surplus disposal agency in Michigan. And it's an agency that would be able to, like, track down the ownership of this equipment so that he could then speak to the right agency about purchasing said equipment.

[Corinne]

So he wasn't just. Yeah, he wasn't just going in and being like, oh, I'm going to take it because it's abandoned. I'm going to potentially steal government property.

[Sabrina]

He doesn't want to do that. Yeah. He's going about it the right way. I mean, he works for a.

[Corinne]

He knows what to do.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Contractor company. But oddly, this agency cannot track down ownership. The military does not take ownership of it like, they're like, this is not ours. General Services Admin also says we don't know anything about it, which is weird because this isn't. This was an Air Force base, like the military, so we are led to believe operated here. How is there no record of it? Literally no one would claim ownership of it. Which in a way meant that the equipment had literally been abandoned. Meaning Preston could just go take it.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

So Preston called up a friend of his named Brian. And Brian was also a psychic that had helped Preston in his years of metaphysical research. So together, Preston and Brian.

[Corinne]

I love that Preston went in originally being like, I'm going to discredit psychics and telepathy. And now he's like, I gotta call my psychic friend to figure out what's going on.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. Preston and Brian together go to the abandoned base to retrieve as much equipment as possible. When they arrive, they decide to split up and tackle more ground. Preston heads in one direction and Brian in another. It's around 7pm the base is shrouded in darkness as Preston approaches a large and abandoned building. He pushes the door open, and it swings with a loud creak that reverberates off the walls and floors. He clicks on his flashlight and marches down the long corridor in search of equipment for his own research. He scans one room that from its remains seems to have once housed a receptionist. He continues on, looking room to room. As he's about halfway down the hallway, his flashlight suddenly sputters out, sending him into darkness. He clicks his on and off again.

[Corinne]

No luck.

[Sabrina]

He tries again, and again.

[Corinne]

Bang.

[Sabrina]

Preston spins around, searching for the source of the sound, but it's entirely too dark. His eyes not yet adjusted. And then he hears another sound. This time more like footsteps, heavy and deliberate, moving toward him. He's desperately trying to turn the flashlight on while simultaneously calling out Brian. But there's no response. Just the steady sound of footsteps getting closer and closer. His heart rate quickens. His breath shortens. The footsteps are mere steps away now. He tries once more to turn on his flashlight, and just as the shadow rounds the corner. Click. His flashlight shines brightly, illuminating a man. The man covers his eyes, blinded by the light. Preston lowers it, and the two men stand there for a moment, staring. Preston doesn't recognize this man, but something in the way the man's expression changes makes Preston think the man recognizes hate him.

[Corinne]

Ooh, creepy.

[Sabrina]

And sure enough, he does. This man introduces himself, which is a name that has been kept anonymous. But he tells Preston that he moved into this building after it Became abandoned that a year prior. So in 1983, there was a big experiment that went wrong, but Preston should remember, because Preston was this man's boss. What?

[Corinne]

Wait, I'm flabbergasted.

[Sabrina]

Preston, obviously confused, is like, huh?

[Corinne]

Was this Preston's equipment? Was he the one leading this project? What the fuck?

[Sabrina]

So this is where the first big seed is planted. That's something. I mean, already there's, like, mysterious things happening, but, like, it's even weirder now.

[Corinne]

Ooh, I. Yeah, this is creepy.

[Sabrina]

So this is what the man tells Preston. Apparently, this man, who is now living in this abandoned building was a technician on the base. Preston was his boss on the project. The project went terribly wrong, and a massive beast appeared and frightened everyone away. Of course, Preston's like, okay, this is a man who's just, like, living in an abandoned building. Maybe he's just an unhoused man. He's probably a little bit delusional, like, making this up. How could Preston have been the stranger's boss in a place that he had never before been inside? And a massive beast disappearing. That feels like fiction. Yeah. So Preston does, like, what he can to leave this man behind. He's like, I feel I don't want to be here anymore. So he goes.

[Corinne]

Preston's also, like. It sounds like he's supposed to be this very, like, black and white logical guy, and he's being challenged constantly in the world by what's in the gray. But, like, his default is, like, it's this or this.

[Sabrina]

Well, it's interesting because the introduction to the book talks about hard facts and soft facts in living in the gray.

[Corinne]

Oh, really?

[Sabrina]

And, like, they present this whole thing as soft facts and a story that lives in the gray. So I like that you brought that up. But. So he goes to find Brian. Remember, Brian is off the site. Yeah.

[Corinne]

Wandering around.

[Sabrina]

And when he finds Brian, before he can tell Brian, like, what just happened and what he just encountered, he realizes something is wrong with Brian. Brian, like, looks like just pale. Oh, and Brian's a psychic. Right. So he's like, are you good? And Brian's like, something is wrong with this place. He psychically was feeling very off. So Preston asks Brian if he can do a reading of the place. And keep in mind, Preston has not had the chance to tell Brian anything of what he just encountered with this, like, man living in the building.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

But what Brian shares during his reading is eerily similar to the story that the man had just told him. Irregular weather patterns, mind control, a vicious beast. Preston and Brian agree that something very strange happened on this base. The evidence is piling up. The frequency emitted from the tower that interfered with the psychics. False information as to what the radar was being used for, the base being abandoned, equipment unclaimed. And now this. A beast. Mind control. And somehow Preston was involved.

[Corinne]

It's also like, there's other people that live in Montauk. Like, how is the community? How are the neighbors? How is no one else? How does this just exist in this little bubble? Or how does one person remember being involved in the project but Preston doesn't?

[Sabrina]

No. There's so many questions. There's so many questions. So Preston and Brian are like, we need to get out of here as quick as possible. Like, there's just weird vibes. They pack up as much equipment as possible and they leave the base. They're trying to make sense of it all. They're like, something has definitely happened. But I think the thing that sticks with me, and probably Preston too, is like, how could he be involved? He has no memory of being there in his life. So they agree that.

[Corinne]

Right. And don't other people have. Like, aren't they able to account for his life, like, what he did last year and being with him and. Yep. So how was he two places at once?

[Sabrina]

That's a good question. That's the question. So they leave. Being like that mystery man probably confused Preston for someone else. It was a dark hallway. Maybe he thought he saw the man that was his boss. Yeah, that's just what they leave with, cuz like they're trying to think rationally. But then a few weeks later, Preston is in his lab at the back of his house, when all of a sudden he hears his front door, like, fly open. And someone marches through his house all the way back to his lab and confronts Preston. This is a man Preston has never seen in his life. But this man, who's just willy nilly breaking in at his home, knows Preston. And he confronts Preston saying that he. He was his boss at Montac base. And he basically starts corroborating the same details that the other man at the abandoned building did. Unprompted, unrelated, different man claims Preston was his boss.

[Corinne]

Wait, this is so freaky. To, like, wake. Basically, like be woken up in waking life to you maybe having amnesia. And all these random people, like, you have to discover not only the mystery of what's happening, but, like, the mystery of yourself.

[Sabrina]

Of you. Yeah, like everything you believe is now not.

[Corinne]

How can you.

[Sabrina]

I would think that I was going crazy.

[Corinne]

Experiencing schizophrenia.

[Sabrina]

Oh, 100.

[Corinne]

Yeah, man.

[Sabrina]

Like, I literally wrote, can you imagine multiple people approaching you claiming to know you, stating you were their boss at an air base, but you have zero recollection? It's not like a doppelganger situation or like, oh, someone looks like you're always alone. That's true. But. So Preston is so puzzled by this. But naturally, he is the type of person who's like, well, I need answers. I need to figure out what's going on. So he is like, I'm diving deeper. I'm doing a further investigation. Hey, it's Brooklyn Adams, and I'm partnering with Abercrombie to tell you about the newest drop from their active brand. Your personal best. YPB leggings are made with buttery, soft fabrics that hug you in all the right places. And common Abercrombie's viral clothes curve Love fit designed to eliminate waist gap. Paired with sports bras and super soft sweatshirts, it's activewear that supports every part of my busy lifestyle and gives me my best butt ever. Head into the new year feeling your personal best Shop Active by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores. Okay, so my mom, in the last, like, two years has been. Every time I'm with her, she wants me to do her makeup. And so finally for Christmas, I bought her all the makeup I've been using on her for over the years so she can do it herself at home. And Thrive Cosmetics is like my go to the essential. And the one product that she's always like, what is this? When I do her makeup is the Thrive brilliant eye brightener that I. I would just put, like, a little dab in the corner. In the corner eyes. And she's like, I look so much younger and awake and alive.

[Corinne]

It does make such a difference. Yeah, I usually put it in the corner of my eyes too, but you can do it. Sometimes I do over my brow.

[Sabrina]

Or you can do it, like, as a shadow. Yeah, you can do a little.

[Corinne]

You can, like, use it as a highlighter. You can do whatever you want.

[Sabrina]

They have 32 different shades. They're all so amazing.

[Corinne]

And Thrive Cosmetics also gives back to communities. So with over $150 million in product and cash donations to over 600 giving partners, you can know that your purchase makes a real impact. And that's beauty with purpose.

[Sabrina]

You do good while looking good.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Amplify your everyday. Go to thrivecosmetics.com TGOG for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's 30 Thrive Cosmetics C-A U S E M E T-I C S.com TGOG.

[Sabrina]

And what better way to investigate than with what is publicly available? So the following information is factual and documented information about the history of Montauk Air Base. Montauk Air Base or Camp Hero, dates back to World War II. It was built to defend the eastern seaboard and was equipped with coastal gun batteries, bunkers and underground tunnels. But it was built, and I love this, to resemble a small coastal town. So there were these like facades built. It almost was like a Hollywood set. There are facades built onto the exterior of all these military bases.

[Corinne]

I like how you said Hollywood. My mind immediately went to North Korea.

[Sabrina]

Or North Korea, yeah. But so it's like right after Pearl harbor basically and the US joining World War II and like fighting against Japan. They're like, we need to protect our country. So they decide to build what is Camp Hero on Long Island. It was meant to be an unassuming base so that like someone from the outside, a enemy would look at it and be like, oh, that's just a little town. That's not a military base. But it was to protect New York City and Long island from German naval or air attacks. And also there's like the U boats if you keep, if you remember those, like which there's also a whole show called Das Boot on Hulu. So good about U boats. But that's the plan. That's what this is built for from the get go though. It's built to be secretive. Hmm. And Montauk was the perfect place for this because of its location. Montauk is the easternmost point of Long Island, New York. Basically the edge of land before vast ocean. So if you look at it on a map, well, you can't really see, but yeah, it's the perfect location for a base. Right then isolated.

[Corinne]

The point of the satellite signal or.

[Sabrina]

The whatever radio, radar, radar.

[Corinne]

I'm like, who were they trying to monitor?

[Sabrina]

So that comes later. So that's not built at first, but so it's a perfect location because it's isolated, it's not inaccessible. It's surrounded by water on all three sides with only one main road in and out. So in terms of like military prime location. And Montauk is a small fishing village, especially when this was built with a very small year round population.

[Corinne]

So not the multimillion dollar vacation homes that people have today.

[Sabrina]

And even still like it's pretty isolated. Like there's still a very small year round population. So this is like a perfect place for a military base. But also, think about it, perfect place for secret government experiments because less people equals less questions. So in the beginning, it was a military base. That did make a lot of sense. And then after World War II, the government repurposed Camp Hero for the Cold War. It became a place to detect air and missile threats. In the 1950s Cold War era, the site became the Montauk Air Force Station again to detect Soviet bombers or missiles and protect the us. As technology evolved, the government built the most important structure at Montauk Air base around the 1960s. The radar tower. It is specifically called an. An FPS 35 radar, which was a part of the US's Sage defense system, which stood for semi automatic ground environment. So basically it was computerized, and there were multiple of these radars, like, all throughout the US that could basically communicate with one another.

[Corinne]

Oh, interesting.

[Sabrina]

Which is why they're so massive.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And they can detect like, the airspace at vast distances.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Which I don't. Not like. Like, I want to know if there's something sketchy flying towards us.

[Sabrina]

This is one of the largest radar systems ever built. And like stated earlier, it was designed for long range detection and had an extremely powerful electromagnetic output.

[Corinne]

But it's like, how does. How is something that's probably so expensive and feels so important just abandoned?

[Sabrina]

Well, also, this is the only radar of this kind that's still standing.

[Corinne]

Why.

[Sabrina]

Why keep it if it's no longer something that the government used?

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

Adds to the conspiracy.

[Corinne]

Wait, so question about Preston for one second. So was he in Montauk or was he just somewhere else in Long Island?

[Sabrina]

Unclear. I don't know where Long island is. Big. Yeah, he's close enough to Montauk that in a day he's driving and.

[Corinne]

And finding them. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Okay. After the Cold War era, the base continued to operate until 1981 when it was shut down. Apparently that's like when they. The like military says they no longer operated this, but the building itself and everything was left standing and abandoned in 1983. Preston's research and initial investigation found zero evidence of government research or experimentation on the surface publicly. This was a military base that evolved with the years until suddenly it was closed. So everything I just shared is public information. It's documented, and none of it answers Preston's questions or the mystery that was unfolding before him. So he has to go one step further in his investigation. And that meant speaking to the locals. Preston sets up camp on the beach for, I think a week by the abandoned base. And during his Time he speaks with as many locals as possible, and, oh, goodness, did they have stories to tell. Over the years, there were countless reports of strange happenings, the wildest being related to weather. It snowed in August, which I tried to find reports of that weather phenomena because, like, you would think if this happened in the 70s or 80s, like, there would be an article. I couldn't find anything.

[Corinne]

Oh, interesting.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Because there have been, like, freak things like that that have happened in the past where, like, it is recorded, where there are photos of people in July and, like, the month that was dark forever and there's snow on the ground.

[Sabrina]

There is a declassified experiment about these, like, weather things that were used around this time in a different experiment. So, like, adding to, like, why are we okay?

[Corinne]

Like, are humans okay? Right. Why do we need to do these things?

[Sabrina]

There would be hurricanes and electrical storms that came out of nowhere. Meteorologists had predicted perfect weather. And all of a sudden a storm would strike, and somehow it would avoid specifically the air base. So there was, like, this bubble over it. There were stories of animals behaving oddly. Like, all of a sudden, a hoard of. I'm just going to use deer as an example. Would, like, come crashing through town, like, literally breaking through windows of buildings and then, like, acting erratically.

[Corinne]

Well. Cause what are they hearing that we can't Exactly.

[Sabrina]

Locals told Preston of kids going missing and of rumors of experiments going on at the Montauk air base. And again, these are all rumors. And locals are, you know, they're like, ooh, what's happening over at that air base? And the rumors that spread through town from the 1970s through the 1980s were that they were studying mind control and time travel there. Again, this is all hearsay. Preston has yet to find any physical documentation or evidence to back up these claims. And then in 1984, it is wild how many people just walk into his life and seem to give him answers. But I think it's because they're all actually tied together because of the real reality that he's not supposed to remember. In 1984, a man named Duncan Cameron knocks at Preston Nichols front door. He has this, like, piece of equipment with him that's not working. And he's like, I heard you're the man to go to for help with machinery. And Preston and Brian are both very suspicious of this sudden arrival, because Duncan Cameron doesn't just get his machine fixed and go. He's like, ooh, what you doing here? Like, I want to stay and befriend you. And they're kind of like, this is just, like, weird timing.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And his.

[Corinne]

Although, like, that's so something my dad would do.

[Sabrina]

But I think it's the combination of, like, what Duncan's interested in and the timing of his showing up while Preston is, like, unraveling all of this. And he has a good ingling, because sure enough, he is like, I have a weird feeling. And he's curious because, again, he feels like this feels convenient. So according to his book, Preston and Brian were dubious and suspicious of Duncan. So they take Duncan to Camp Hero to walk the abandoned buildings of Montauk Air Base. And almost immediately, Duncan starts, like, talking about the buildings. He knows all of the buildings. He knows what they were used for. He has knowledge that he shouldn't have.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

And when they enter the transmitter building, Duncan goes into a trance like state that Preston has to, like, repeatedly shake him out of. So they take Duncan back to his lab, and it is there that they use techniques that he learned over the years to help unblock Duncan's memories. And it is there that they learn so many things, namely, that Duncan had been programmed to befriend Preston, discover everything he knew, then kill him and destroy the lab and all of his findings. So someone is trying to prevent him from doing this investigation.

[Corinne]

This is so tough because I just keep thinking about the movie A Beautiful.

[Sabrina]

Mind, which is also a very trippy movie.

[Corinne]

Yes.

[Sabrina]

So now Duncan becomes a major part of this unraveling of what will later and now become known as the Montauk Project. But he's also a major part of the Philadelphia Experiment, which we might be hearing on soon. So Duncan and his brother had served aboard the USS Eldridge and were members of the crew. Yes. More on that. Soon as Duncan's mission came forward, Preston was able to deprogram him. And Duncan's like, I guess how I think, like, hypnosis.

[Corinne]

This isn't you. Yeah, right. But come back to the base.

[Sabrina]

Well, so I think going back to the base did, like, snap something in Duncan. Like, he probably shouldn't have gone back.

[Corinne]

So everyone that steps on the base remembers something but Preston.

[Sabrina]

But he even had, like, a. He was drawn to it. He. He kept being drawn to it.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

I think Duncan, similar to Preston is like, wait, there's a part of me that I don't remember. Like, someone somewhere told me to befriend you and kill you. And I didn't even know I was operating on those commands. Like, he's scared of his own thoughts now, too.

[Corinne]

This also reminds me a Little bit of the movie Arrival where it's like she played a part and set up things without knowing she did, and then was told later that she did. And it's like, well, how is this?

[Sabrina]

How is that possible?

[Corinne]

How is that possible? How am I here?

[Sabrina]

What?

[Corinne]

Just Time found this out. Like, yeah, what is reality? So trippy.

[Sabrina]

It's so trippy. And there are a lot more details. I mean, the book is, like, 300 pages, so you can read more. I'm trying to, like, make it one podcast episode. Yeah, it's still 26 pages, my research, but, yeah, not 300. And there's also, like, countless of Reddit threads and other documents and documentaries and whatnot. So there's a lot of information if you want more. But somehow, Duncan and Preston, with a series of things, deprogram him. And Duncan feels grateful for Preston's help, and he's like, I want to help you solve this, because he, too, is missing memories.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

So it is with Duncan's assistance that Preston is finally able to uncover what happened at the Montauk Air Base and how he was possibly involved. So now, at this point in the story, it's 1984, and Preston knows a couple of things are true. Something strange went on at the Montauk Air Base. Something was being kept secret. And in his research, and with the assistance of a senator, he was informed that the Montauk Air Base had actually been decommissioned in 1969 and then listed as a property held by the General Services Administration since 1970. So then why was security pretending it was still an active military base? Lots of lies, lots of secrets.

[Corinne]

Like, if they cared about what was in the building, they would just remove the item. So it's not about.

[Sabrina]

No, something is happening. Property, somehow. Also, Preston knows that he himself was involved, but he had no memory of it, meaning that somehow mind control or mind tampering was taking place. Or. And he starts to be like, am I living in different timelines? Like, are there two versions of me that exist? Either way, he's confused as hell, and he wants answers.

[Corinne]

He's masterminded one and the victim in.

[Sabrina]

The other through a series of techniques in combination of hypnosis, investigation and studying of technology and electromagnetism. A lot of this is unclear because I'm like, did he fully recover the memories, or is, like, some of this, like, hypothesis? I don't know.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Is he Vecna in this story?

[Sabrina]

No, he's not. And he's not Papa either. You are like Papa again. I'm truncating. The timeline here. But it took him from 1984 to 1989 to truly put the pieces together. And keep in mind his interest in this matter began in 1971 when he was given that grant to study metaphysics. But here's a summary of what he garnered over the years. From 1971 to 1983, there was a secretive government experiment operating at the Montauk Air Base, which is now known as the Montauk Project, but was originally known as Phoenix 2 by officials involved. Two interesting. Meaning it's not the first time. Right at its core. And again, like, all of this is the conspiracy theory that is the Montauk Project. There is no documentation that proves its existence. But at its core. Wait.

[Corinne]

Sorry. I need to do one thing really fast.

[Sabrina]

What?

[Corinne]

This is reminding me of a TikTok and I just cannot find it because of course, like, I watched the whole TikTok and then I didn't like it or save it.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

But there was this woman who. Her mom worked at the Pentagon.

[Sabrina]

Mm.

[Corinne]

And she said that as a child she went. Her mom like, worked on one of like the. Their two basement levels and her mom worked on like one of those floors. And she brought her to work sometimes.

[Sabrina]

So, like she's bring your thing.

[Corinne]

And she said her mom had to grab something one time and she wasn't supposed to be down on that floor, like clearance wise. But she was just a kid. So her mom was like, we're gonna be in and out really quick. I gotta grab something. We'll leave. But she got caught, which, like, wasn't that big of a deal. But she was like, the whole point of this story is I've never for. Got in this strange door that felt weird to me in this room in the basement of the Pentagon that she said had a symbol on it. And I can't remember what the symbol was, but when you said phoenix, I was like, was it the phoenix? Because whatever it was she found out was like maybe some sort of symbol that meant like, secretive government or military experiment. Interesting. But she was like, it's weird that, like, just a door would stand out to me as a kid and I would feel weird about it.

[Sabrina]

Right. Like, there was a lot of people.

[Corinne]

Stop being able to think about it my entire life. And now she's probably. She's like in her 30s and she's like, I still think about that door from when I was like 8. So I don't remember who it was. I can't reference the TikTok, but I.

[Sabrina]

Mean, for sure or what the image was, are weird things happening. And the government is. We know for a fact there are operations and things happening that we do not know.

[Corinne]

Right. But in my mind, I was like, oh, my God, was that Phoenix One?

[Sabrina]

Could have been. Okay, so at its core, the Montauk Project was believed to be designed to explore, weaponize and control the human mind. Mind control was the goal, but it was not one single experiment being conducted. There were many. And while, yes, this is a conspiracy, we know for a fact the government at this time and prior to this absolutely was. There are declassified documents. There's MK Ultra, there's Stargate, there's Gateway projects. Like, all of these things have come out to light. And that's what they were. They were doing remote viewing. They were seeing about mind control. Like they were doing.

[Corinne]

That was part of one of the experiments.

[Sabrina]

I know.

[Corinne]

I remember you saying that my grandma still shushes him when he tries to talk about it. I don't know if it's because she's not supposed to or if she's scared or just like, hates thinking about that time of life, but, you know, you give him enough wine and stick him in a pool on a float on a sunny day and he'll start telling you stories. Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Get your grandpa drunk. Who knows what he knows?

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Sabrina]

But Montauk Project, there were many different experiments being conducted. There were sub projects that included memory manipulation, object impermanence and object creation, torture, lsd, psychic amplification, remote viewing, telepathy, time manipulation, and portal creation.

[Corinne]

The LSD is what my grandpa was part of.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. And these are just a few of the. The experiments or things that they were testing that have been hypothesized or presented by alleged contributors or subjects of the experiments who have since come forward. We will get into some specifics in just a moment, but keep in mind, while Preston Nichols was meant to believe he was working for the defense contractor AIL in 1971. 1971 is also the same year that Project Montauk is believed to have begun. So the timelines line up of 1971. He believes how?

[Corinne]

There's severance.

[Sabrina]

It's so severance. He believes he is testing telepathy. Yes, Mental telepathy.

[Corinne]

So there's like some.

[Sabrina]

It's like they re programmed his memories with hints of truth.

[Corinne]

Yes.

[Sabrina]

And also keep in mind, like, there's so many moments that he's interacting with the Montauk base between 1971 and 1983, the years of its operation. Like, in his mind. Remember I said for 10 years, it was sitting in the back of his mind until 1984 when it's abandoned.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

So for 10 years, it's in the back of his mind because he is. He actually was working at the air base. That's crazy. Doing this experiment.

[Corinne]

Oh, my God.

[Sabrina]

All of his memories had been rewritten from 1971 through August of 1983 because of the incident that shut down the Montauk Project, or at least that location. So what are the real memories again? This is what Preston and Duncan and Brian, like, all the people involved now have, like, unraveled, and these are what they believe are the real memories.

[Corinne]

Okay. Already my mind is like, did someone wipe his memory but just no one else, or did he wipe his own?

[Sabrina]

But Duncan's memory was wiped, too, remember?

[Corinne]

Yeah, but. But some of the other.

[Sabrina]

Brian, the psychic who has been his friend, was a subject in the Montauk Project. He doesn't remember that. He just thinks him and Preston are friends, and they've been working together on Preston's own study.

[Corinne]

But the fact that Preston was like. It seems like he was the one that was conducting a lot of this research and super important makes me wonder if he's.

[Sabrina]

But he's not, actually. That's the story they made him believe.

[Corinne]

Oh, God.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. So 1971, the Montauk Project is believed to have started, and Preston Nichols was brought on as a technical specialist and systems operator. He worked with electromagnetic technology. So he's not in charge. He's conducting orders from others who are in charge and above him. He monitored how the technology interacted with the human mind, observed the effects of the electromagnetic exposure, and assisted in experiments where mental states were. Were in fact, influenced and measured. So he was pressing buttons, which is not too different from what he actually remembers doing in 1971. Just the memory he was led to believe was that he received a grant to study mental telepathy and that he was running that study. But in reality, he's working on this project, pressing buttons, following other people's orders. The more that Preston worked on the projects, the darker the project became and the more nefarious side of the project revealed itself. He began as an unknowing participant, but during his time there, I mean, this is a 12 and a half year period, he became an aware insider, specifically during the Montauk Chair experiment. So the Montauk Chair is the most prominent or one of the most prominent experiments talked about about the Montauk Project and prominent studies that was conducted. It is also where Preston Nichols first Met Duncan Cameron. So prior to Duncan Cameron showing up at Preston Nichols door on 1984, knocking on his door be like, hey, my equipment's broken, I'm actually programmed to kill you. They had met each other in the days of the study. Duncan Cameron was a psychic along with many other unwilling test subjects involved.

[Corinne]

So like everyone's a psychic. Is Preston a psychic too and just doesn't know it?

[Sabrina]

No, but I think the subjects, at first I think they were testing on anyone, but then they realized they could manipulate people who were open psychically more makes sense.

[Corinne]

They're already partway there.

[Sabrina]

So test subjects often, Duncan Cameron himself were placed in this chair that was inside a shielded room. And I have a picture of 11 with her like little like brain things on because it feels similar. But the chair was described as metal, wired into surrounding equipment and connected to a computer or technological system. A lot of the like physics here is very confusing to me, but it makes sense to the people operating it. Right. So once in the chair, this person would be exposed to a strong enough field of radio waves that could influence the brainwaves but not damage it. Or that's what they evolved to. Like at first I think they were just like pumping strong radio waves to see what would happen.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

But the purpose here was to try to amplify human thought. The subject would be asked to concentrate intensely on an image, an idea or an emotion. This thought would then be transmitted to the computers and become data. And the combination and strength of this mental data signal could in turn create a physical manifestation.

[Corinne]

A physical manifestation?

[Sabrina]

Yes. So oh wait, what the hell?

[Corinne]

Because I was just thinking about, I had interviewed, I didn't include it in blank. I think I like maybe said like one line about it, but I interviewed this one doctor who said like they are literally working on being able to like use a like chip in your brain or like some sort of sensor.

[Sabrina]

For people who can't speak and stuff.

[Corinne]

Can't speak or are even like potentially appear unconscious. Yeah, covert consciousness to full on communicate sentences, words. And it's like how do you do that?

[Sabrina]

Apparently that already exists, but this is.

[Corinne]

Going like a step further.

[Sabrina]

Right. And I think like a lot of this evolved like they were truly just throwing pasta noodles at the wall to see what stuck. And when something would stick then they would like tinker with it and evolve it. So throughout the years this is what it evolved to say Duncan was to think of an apple. The power of his thought especially because he was psychic and he was like in this higher state, maybe the power of his thought combined with the technology could produce a physical apple. I think in like a portal type of thing, there would be like a rift in time and space.

[Corinne]

Was it a physical apple or was it the illusion of an apple?

[Sabrina]

There's some question about it.

[Corinne]

Can you touch the apple?

[Sabrina]

I don't know. And maybe there's more information about it. I don't know.

[Corinne]

And are you actually seeing the apple or is this everyone's brain syncing up and seeing the same thing or believing in the same thing being shown?

[Sabrina]

I don't have an answer. But eventually it does become. It interacts with our world. So Duncan was especially good at producing the physical manifestations, but the tech could not work without a human. Over time, apparently this chair and its techniques were used for bending time and even time travel. And it was around this time that Preston started to see the truth, because he started to see that the people who were being placed in the chair were not willing participants. And they were often like, bruised, battered, scared, terrified. And then he starts to unravel a much more horrific truth. I am so in love with revolve. This whole winter I've been like, I want to give off New York grandmother and I want a faux fur long coat and enter Revolve. I'm so stoked. I ordered the Vincent faux fur coat in golden brown. I finally am living my dreams.

[Corinne]

You're so good at shopping and I feel like every time I ask you what you're wearing, you're like, where did you get that dress that you wore to that wedding? It's always Revolve. I understand why you do so well.

[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

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[Corinne]

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[Sabrina]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feel. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And this is content warning for, like, violence against children. Again, it's not verified or documented, but when I give you the stats, I won't be so surprised. Yeah.

[Corinne]

And knowing some of the stuff that has come out that is true, we can assume that there's some truth to some things.

[Sabrina]

So the subjects in the Montauk Project were often children, often kidnapped and tortured in horrific manners.

[Corinne]

Oh, I hate that.

[Sabrina]

So there is this. It's called the Montauk Boys, and I think it's like a name that they've given themselves. They were the victims of the Montauk Project. And I think they.

[Corinne]

It was all boys.

[Sabrina]

It was mostly boys. Like, there's very few reports of women. Like, I think there was like, I. In all of my research, there was like one little sentence of girls and women who were taken to be a part of this were, like, manipulated to be like, spies. So I don't know why it was men specifically, but some of these supposed torture tactics have come forth in the years since Preston's discovery and reports. And it is said that between January of 1971 and in August of 1983, a 12 and a half year period, some 300,000 children were kidnapped, tested, and tortured. And only 1% of these children survived.

[Corinne]

Hmm.

[Sabrina]

I do get more into the stats in a minute, but I looked it up because I was like, that's a lot of kids.

[Corinne]

I know. That makes me feel like I don't.

[Sabrina]

Believe it now, but guess how many kids were reported missing every year during this time? One million. Between 1971 and 1983. Every year. So 1971, a million kids are reported missing around in America. In America, just in the US Some of these are runaways. Some of them, like, would be found later. But a million abducted by a parent children reports.

[Corinne]

Oh, my God, this is horrifying. Oh, this is gonna, like, trigger so much parent anxiety in me.

[Sabrina]

I know, but like a lot of people, when they hear that number, they do think, like, it's not true. But when you look at how many missing children Then you look at the.

[Corinne]

Actual real stats and you're like, oh.

[Sabrina]

My God, like, 300,000 is actually nothing in compared to the numbers of missing children every year.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

So they are what are today known as the Montauk Boys. And a lot of information that follows is from a documentary called the Montauk Chronicles that came out in 2014. According to various sources and whistleblowers who have since come forward claiming knowledge of the Montauk Project, those in charge knew that they needed subjects for their studies. So they began picking up boys and men off the streets in Long island and New York, mostly runaways, addicts, or people on the fringes of society because they were less likely to be looked for. They would take these boys to a secret facility that operated beneath the Montauk Air Base, and they would run various experiments on them, all in an attempt to achieve and study mind control. They would be thrown into cement rooms and basically tortured. They were starved, drowned, brought to near death because the goal was to shatter the mind and split it from the soul. So, like, bringing these people to the verge of death would make them more vulnerable and more easily manipulated.

[Corinne]

Like the oa.

[Sabrina]

Yes. They basically wanted to break the psyche so they could reprogram the brain to their desires. Apparently, over time, the experiments evolved, and so too did their understanding of what kind of subject worked best, which led them to, like, wanting kids with, like, psychic abilities or certain DNA and genetics, which meant that they had a more calculated desire and would kidnap specific children and take them to the base. Yeah, and I looked it up. So between 1971 and 1983, unfortunately, an exact number doesn't exist because comprehensive tracking systems didn't exist until the early 1980s. And I think, honestly, there's like, the, like, main missing children's system was created in 1984, which is like, the year after this project is said to have ended. I just think the timing is interesting, but, yeah, 1 million missing children annually in the United States. So with these new subjects came new studies and techniques. There was use of lsd, torture, the chair. Some claimed a sort of possession where it felt like another person was taking control of their body. There was one test that had one bring the subject to ultimate fear and then kill them. To extract what was reported as the adrenochrome from the penal gland, apparently created a psychedelic drug that could be used for mind control. But this is a conspiracy within a conspiracy, because those don't really line up as scientific terms. Yes, there's an adrenochrome, but that forms Naturally after like exposure to air. And it can be mass produced synthetically.

[Corinne]

Like that's what I was just thinking.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

It's like you can't. You have to kill someone to extract it. Like it doesn't just exist and then either you can't create a synthetically or like a version of it doesn't exist in like some place plant somewhere.

[Sabrina]

Right. And then the penal gland in reality is responsible for producing melatonin, which regulates the sleep wake cycle. But it is also in some traditions known as the third eye because it's like even though it's in our brain, it's sensitive to light the way our eyes are. So like maybe they were actually doing something else with that. I don't know.

[Corinne]

I feel like we could have saved a lot of time by introducing them.

[Sabrina]

To ayahuasca when they were doing LSD too. But either way, this part, it's like this is one of the like least considered true parts of the conspiracy. Apparently it's like a made up thing in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas too. So like people are like sus what's real. But of the upwards of 300,000 unwilling and unconsensing test subject, it is said that only 1% of the Montauk boys survived. The rest were either killed or died during these studies slash tortures. Bodies were said to have be cremated, decomposed with lime or dumped in the ocean. And then there was like. There's a claim that if we were to actually dig up beneath the Montauk air base, they would find the equivalent of like Paris catacombs. Damn. Researchers claim that they were trying to control mankind and keep it safe for humanity. And apparently over the years they ran mood altering tests on people in nearby areas. They also.

[Corinne]

Oh, sorry, I need to interrupt. No one's tried to do lidar in the area to see. Like I feel like that would be like proof of if there actually is tunnels. If there are tunnels or like people burying tunnels.

[Sabrina]

I mean this was an air base with tunnels.

[Corinne]

But like I'm thinking about like when we did all the research on the conjuring and they did the lidar and they could see like literally caskets and like stuff like that.

[Sabrina]

I wonder if it's. Well, so this land is now a state park. Like you have the pay admission, it's monitored heavily. Like I don't, like, I don't think.

[Corinne]

You could just like bring your machine.

[Sabrina]

Bring your, bring your LIDAR scanner which is also very expensive equipment. But yeah, so like over the years all this is, like, unraveling. While Preston is uncovering these memories in 1984, apparently during the real experience, he's realizing there's dark things happening at this project. By 1983, he had really learned the truth of Ongoings. And there are other people he mentions that were involved, like a man named Al Bialik. He'll come in more with other stories, but apparently Preston tried to shut the program down, but he was silenced and even threatened and held at gunpoint. Like, he's not in charge.

[Corinne]

He is following who is in charge. The government, but who.

[Sabrina]

So it got to a point where he and a group of other members ultimately decided to take matters in their own hands and come up with, like, a contingency plan. Like, should things go awry, they were going to shut it down from within. So Preston, Duncan, Al Bialich and some other members met at, like, a motel and came up with a plan. And on August 5, 1983, the team was given a directive to run their transmitter nonstop. And something wild happened on August 12th. Again, like, there's. It's hard to, like, imagine this. So I'm just picturing Stranger Things, but. So they're in this lab, their transmitter is running. I imagine there's like, the little, like, black holey, like, entrance to the Upside down that exists in season five of Stranger Things. And all of a sudden, something appears in this portal. A ship, the USS Eldridge from the Philadelphia Experiment from 40 years prior. So something from 1943 shows up in the image of this portal, and they can literally see somewhere Duncan Cameron, because he was a member of the crew, and his brother in this portal. Again, I can only visualize it. Oh, my gosh.

[Corinne]

They were stolen from the ship in their time period.

[Sabrina]

So according to Nichols, this wasn't the ship physically entering Montauk, but an image or manifestation appearing through what he described as a temporal rift. And as this is happening, he's like, we are fucking with space, time continuum. Yeah, this is not okay. On top of the multitude of people being tortured and, like, your own military.

[Corinne]

Too, like, your own, right? An entire ship. Ship.

[Sabrina]

And Duncan from 1943, they can, like, see him on the ship, But Duncan in 1983 is sitting in the chair connected to the machinery. And Duncan is a part of the contingency plan. Actually, he is the crux of the contingency plan. And they all are like, it's time do this plan. Basically, the belief was that if thought powered the system, couldn't thought also shut it down. So they were planning to have Duncan use his thought to shut the whole thing down. But in this moment, when Duncan is realizing his self from the past is in this fucking rift, fear comes up. So it combines, like, this fear with this thought of shutting it down literally manifests a terrifying monster. And it was in this moment, on August 12, 1983, that Duncan Cameron produced a monster from thought that turned into a physical manifestation. This monster was covered in thick, matted hair. Legend says it was somewhere between 9 and 30ft tall, though Preston, when he saw it, believes it was, like, 9 to 10ft tall. It was covered in hair. It was hungry, and it was nasty. And this thing starts wreaking havoc in the buildings. It is destroying things. It is breaking things. It is like. Like a demodog or demagorgan, like, literally destroying the lab. Preston allegedly went up to his higher up and was like, we need to shut it down. We need to shut it down. And his higher up, like, took out a gun and was like, you fix this without ruining our equipment. So Preston. And again, like, there's more details on, like, the science of this, but basically, they try to, like, get things under control. They do everything they can to turn off the power and in the past, when they would, like, shut things down, because, again, the chair works with the machinery to create the physical manifestation. And in the past, when they would shut the equipment down, the physical manifestation would disappear. But the energy that Duncan Cameron was putting out and creating this monster, when they turned the machine off, this monster continued to wreak havoc.

[Corinne]

He didn't need his sensory deprivation tank.

[Sabrina]

No, he didn't. Exactly. And it wasn't until Preston went and cut the actual equipment apart that the transmitter turned off and the beast faded back into the ether. But do you want to see what this Montauk monster looked like and is, like, my absolute favorite part of this story. And it's a conspiracy within a conspiracy. What does this remind you of?

[Corinne]

Bigfoot. Oh, my God. You know what? When you were saying that he was hairy, immediately I was like, well, it was bigfoot, because he's an interdimensional being. And that wasn't just a physical manifestation. It was just opening up, like, literally.

[Sabrina]

It was a time word.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

To one of the creatures worlds.

[Corinne]

That is Bigfoot. That is literally Bigfoot.

[Sabrina]

Literally Bigfoot. People have, like, added a conspiracy that, like, Bigfoot came to earth through the Montauk project.

[Corinne]

No, he was seen far before.

[Sabrina]

I know, but then there's.

[Corinne]

As a bigfoot enthusiast and researcher myself, I can. But also, what is time? Because they also Went back in the 1940s and stuff.

[Sabrina]

Exactly.

[Corinne]

But that's wild. Yeah. Also, I'm confused. So they had the biggest radio wave tower, and when that is on, it affects the psychic ability and blocks it out. Why couldn't they just turn that on?

[Sabrina]

That's what's confusing. So I think, like, what they were doing with that frequency was separate. Like that, like 410 to 420 hertz was, like, doing something to help with, like, mind control of the subjects on the base. And there. There is more about it in the book, but, like, I think that frequency makes people more susceptible or something.

[Corinne]

Huh. I don't know.

[Sabrina]

Okay.

[Corinne]

So Bigfoot was in the lab. They destroy, take apart the equipment to make Bigfoot return back to the ether, his other dimension. Yes.

[Sabrina]

The impact of August 12, 1983, did achieve what Preston and his comrades had intended, not in the way that they thought it would happen. But what followed was basically silence. Operations at the Montauk Air Base ceased immediately. It was not like a systematic shutdown. It was abrupt. Buildings were sealed and abandoned. And it must have been at this time that Preston's memories were deliberately altered. In less than one year's time, Preston would show up to the abandoned air base and get drawn back into the truth. What happened to the subjects that were being studied? That's a question that we do not know the answer to. Some believe that they were released back into civilization as a sort of Manchurian Candidate, like secret assassins that could be activated at any time. Others believe the Montauk project never truly ended, but was simply moved elsewhere, which is why the documents have not been released to the public and it has not been declassified because it is still ongoing and operating elsewhere. But between 1986 and 1989, Preston was uncovering the truth and his true memories, and he knew he couldn't stay silent. So In July of 1986, Preston spoke at the United States Psychotronics association in Chicago. And apparently so, like, remember 1984. Duncan Cameron shows up, programmed to kill Preston. And as they're unraveling all these things, like, they all start to believe that they are for sure going to be killed. That if Duncan didn't do his operation, who knows how many others were programmed to find them and kill them. Right? So they're like, we just need to say this and tell someone so that in case, like, we do end up dead or missing, people are like, oh, remember that thing he said?

[Corinne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sabrina]

So he talks about it in 1986, and then I guess he had spoken to A senator who was, like, trying to do his own investigation, but, like, the investigation kept, like, getting shut down or, like, not going anywhere. So the senator is basically like, if you want to go public with the story, go for it. So in 1992, Preston decides to publish a book with everything he believed to be true, even though there is no physical documentation to prove it. So the book was the Montauk Project, the same book I read for the research of this episode. It was co authored by Peter Moon, who Peter Moon really helped frame this story in one, a very digestible way, and two, made it. I think if Preston had done it himself, it probably would have been very convoluted. But Peter Moon was able to cohesively tell the story and shine a light on how this is a much larger part of secret history and government studies. But when it got released, it kind of like, if the government is trying to, like, keep it quiet, they didn't really have to do much because everyone read this book and they're like, preston's a nut. Like, there's no evidence to back it up.

[Corinne]

It could totally read as he's just mental deluded individual.

[Sabrina]

Yes. So they didn't have to do much to, like, make the public believe it was a fake story. It all relied on recovered memories, which.

[Corinne]

Is such a bummer to be. You know what? Just because he saw Bigfoot, I believe, like, duh.

[Sabrina]

I mean, I do think there's a lot of elements here that do exist and are real and did happen, but because there's so many layers of, like, fake memories and recovered memories, I do believe that some of it maybe is not true.

[Corinne]

How do they know what's.

[Sabrina]

How could you possibly.

[Corinne]

Doesn't it all kind of seem like an illusion?

[Sabrina]

Right. So that being said, after it's published.

[Corinne]

And has anyone seen or spoken to the other people?

[Sabrina]

A couple.

[Corinne]

Okay, so after they exist, they're real.

[Sabrina]

They. Well, if you want to believe they exist, they exist. Again, there's no. They have no evidence of their experiences either. And there's one person I'll talk about in a second. But so it's publicized, it's public, this story. And while most people are like, it's fictional, there are many people who come forward with their own memories. People who work near the base who had strange experiences, they start to come forward. Others who have fragmented memories start to come forward. And it led to dozens of other stories giving way to the conspiracy theory that is now today the Montauk Project. One of the most notable witnesses who came forward after the Release of the book is a man named Stuart Swerdlow. And Stuart's story is wild, but it, like, both gives credibility and kind of discredits the theory in ways. But I also understand it because, like, he's deeply traumatized.

[Corinne]

So, yeah.

[Sabrina]

When Stuart Swordlow was young, he started to see shadows on the walls of his room. It always started the same shadows. And then the metal blinds on his windows would start to vibrate, and then he would get this sinking feeling that he was not alone in his room. He couldn't see what was there, but he knew something was there. He would suddenly become paralyzed, unable to move or scream, but he would feel his body being, like, lifted off of his bed and moved and transported out his window.

[Corinne]

It's like an alien abduction.

[Sabrina]

So his experiences are very much alien abduction like. And at first, he tried to forget the experiences, but it happened so often that even as a young child, he was terrified of everything. He. In the documentary Montauk Chronicles, he says that, like, he didn't know happy and happiness as a child. Like, he has no memory of happiness. He was constantly sad.

[Corinne]

That is so sad.

[Sabrina]

And at some point in his childhood, his family moved to Montauk. I think it's 1970. And that summer, his dad's like, let's go drive out to the Montauk lighthouse, which is on, like, the land that Montauk Air base is. So as they're driving there, Stuart gets this overwhelming feeling that he couldn't quite describe, like he had been there before. And as they drive past the entrance to the Montauk Air base, and Stuart's dad goes, oh, there's the Montauk Air Base. Stuart just knows he's been there before, but he knows it doesn't make sense. So he doesn't tell anyone.

[Corinne]

He's like, child, his subconscious.

[Sabrina]

Yes.

[Corinne]

Psychically, he's been there. His consciousness was abducted.

[Sabrina]

Yes. And so he kept quiet. But for years and years of his life, he endured countless abductions. They always began the same shadows, blinds, paralysis, levitating. And then next thing he knew, he would be placed on a table, strapped down, surrounded by what he today thinks are aliens. Although he believes that they were constructs made by humans like, that they weren't actually real. Like, it was, like, what they wanted him to see.

[Corinne]

Oh, interesting.

[Sabrina]

I mean, there's so much mind manipulation here.

[Corinne]

I know it's like, I can't. But, like, how do they control what is seen when the people in the chair are the ones?

[Sabrina]

Or was it rewritten, making things? Was his memory Rewritten again, it all.

[Corinne]

Comes back to who's in charge here, who's calling the shots about who gets mind wiped and who doesn't.

[Sabrina]

I don't know. So he would be placed on this table, strapped down, and he felt like he was naked. And he would feel pressure and, like, needles on his bodies, and he would describe feeling, and this reminds me of a C section. Like, it felt like things were inside his body, touching his organs.

[Corinne]

I hate that.

[Sabrina]

And he knew that whatever they were doing, he was not consenting to it and that others were being tested on as well. He also said every experiment was different. Sometimes he would be put back in his room and hours would have passed. Other times he would be put back and minutes had passed. And when he got older, he realized he would be gone for weeks at a time. But when he would be back, it would be like as if no time passed. And so he knew that whatever was happening, someone was bending time and manipulating time because he knew whatever study and experiment he did was like a week long period, if not more. But when he would go back, it would be like nothing happened. So, like, his parents never see him missing, even though he was missing for weeks. After years of brutal experimentation, Stuart Swordlow swears he was able to time travel. And that was. He was recruited for multiple missions, that he was sent back through time to retrieve DNA samples of historical and biblical figures with the purpose to create clones, which. That part's like.

[Corinne]

That's like, why?

[Sabrina]

I don't know.

[Corinne]

This does, though, make me think of the people who say they go to sleep at night and then suddenly they live an entire half a lifetime somewhere else, and then they wake up and they're like, wait, what just happened? Like, I'm mourning my partner, I'm mourning my family, I'm mourning my kids. I was supposed to pick them up from school, and now I'm just like, in this other life, I just woke up.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. There's so many more questions than answers. But apparently, after all of these years and years of constant experiences from, like, 1970 all the way to August 12th of 1983, all of a sudden, he said it felt like he had been unplugged on August 12, 1983. What happened? On August 12, 1983, the Montauk Monster was released on the base, and Preston and his, like, comrades, like, cut the wires, literally unplugging the system. He never could make any sense of it until he read Preston's book. And that's when he came forward with his experiences and has since developed his own program for others who he believed have been victims of mind control. But this is where things get into the world of, like, not credible. He and his wife believe that this is not just a military experiment, but was an act of the Illuminati, who is trying to create compliant individuals and condition people to accept authority without question. And they're very, very big on the Illuminati proponent.

[Corinne]

That's interesting. I'm not buying into that one.

[Sabrina]

That's why I'm like. But I think it's, like, with so many repressed memories, just not trusting anyone or anything and not knowing what's true and feeling like there has to be something so much bigger.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And it feels impossible for our government to have been doing all of these things by themselves. But I think they have to believe it's something bigger.

[Corinne]

I just don't think it was the Illuminati.

[Sabrina]

Insert the Illuminati.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

There are other testimonies, like a man named Alfred Bielik, who came forward to later claim that the Montauk Project was not the beginning, but it was a continuation of a failed project many years prior. He also claimed that through Project Montauk, he was able to travel to Mars and even traveled in time to see ancient civilizations that live on Mars. Others have come forward anonymously. There's someone in the Montauk Chronicles that's, like, you know, voice altered, no visual appearance, that they call James, who was terrified that the government is going to try to kill him for speaking out. But he details being selected through a gifted program at school and taken on a field trip to the Montauk Lighthouse, but was instead taken into a secret bunker and tested on. And this brought forward because I've been seeing on TikTok, like, do you remember the gifted and talented programs, like, GATE program in school?

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

There's all these people coming forward and being like, I was, like, tested on. And people, like, remote viewing tested on them and, like, all these things. And now people are trying to attach, like, is that part of the Montauk Project where some of these kids then taken on field trips?

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

And James talks about a time where he thought it was his dad telling him to get into a car, but his friend was like, that is not your dad. That is not your dad. That's not your dad. And as they were driving away, he, like, looked back and he realized it wasn't his dad. But, like, he swore it was his dad at first. Like, his mind was being fucked with.

[Corinne]

Ooh, this is so creepy. How many people were a part of the gay program. I don't think we actually had it at my school. But I remember it like being a thing and hearing about it well.

[Sabrina]

And I also think about how easy it would be to do that to children because every parent wants to believe that their child is gifted. And if their child told by this program that came to school like your child is gifted, we want to bring them a part of this program. Like only the select few are accepted into this program. Like you'd be like, oh my child is so special.

[Corinne]

Would you believe it if I told you I actually got put in advanced math in middle school? It was like me and five other kids.

[Sabrina]

I believe it.

[Corinne]

Well, I tapped out at that level.

[Sabrina]

That's that where you peaked.

[Corinne]

We didn't do any remote viewing. We were put in like the stuff storage supply closet and just like giving the next grade up of math in.

[Sabrina]

The storage supply closet.

[Corinne]

It was really stuffy.

[Sabrina]

So now is where we talk about whether this was real or not. Is this a conspiracy? Is this a real government secret? I mean I feel like there's multiple thoughts here. Like yes, it's all true. I mean like the gov. We know the government has done tests very similar to this. Why not? Why couldn't this be true? Apparently Duncan Cameron has had like various brain scans on his brain and he's the one who like got all this like electro.

[Corinne]

He did the manifestation the best.

[Sabrina]

Apparently in brain scans it appears like there's no oxygen going to his brain and he appears brain dead on all scans from like the waves basically damaging his brain tissue. But he's you know, doing his thing.

[Corinne]

We really don't know as much as we think we do about the human brain.

[Sabrina]

No, they do not. And if this is true, maybe it hasn't been publicized or declassified yet because it is ongoing. People are still being put through tests in other places. Just. Just because the Montauk base was shut down does not mean that others were. Maybe it exists in the basement of the Pentagon.

[Corinne]

I know need to find that video.

[Sabrina]

But if it is true, that means hundreds, if not thousands of people's memories were wiped. And if that's true, why isn't memory like why aren't people using that memory control more often? Unless we are all being controlled.

[Corinne]

But also if we go based on Duncan and him seeing himself and his brother on the ship from 40 years prior, are all of the test subjects from modern day or are they pulled from many, many different decades? So it's almost impossible to piece everything together because they don't live at the same time, or they're just, you know, one person's eight and the other person's 56 now. But they were both being tested on when they were seven.

[Sabrina]

Yeah. It's just, like, confusing. And there's no way for us to know. Like, I don't think because of the, like, mass size of the supposed experiment. It's not like MK Ultra, which was. Yes, it was used. Like, like, not. It wasn't a great experiment, but, like, I feel like it was contained and wrapped up that, like, documents were declassified. But this feels massive and ongoing. I don't know, it just feels like.

[Corinne]

Again, who was in charge? Who's calling the shots?

[Sabrina]

There's also the belief that it's entirely made up that Preston, who loved electromagnetics and, like, radio waves, like, told a story. But if it is made up, then shouldn't he get credit for Stranger Things? Because he basically wrote Stranger Things before Stranger Things was made up.

[Corinne]

Yeah. He needs a. Some sort of kickback.

[Sabrina]

Right. In the documentary Montauk Chronicles, like, the end of it. He's like, I don't necessarily care if other people believe me. I believe what I am saying is true. Like, I. I'm not lying. And I believe he believes what he's saying is true. But also, with so many layers of memory wiping, how do we know that what he thinks is true is true?

[Corinne]

Right. It's weird because it's like, even if you. Even if all of this is true, what is the warning here? How do you stop anything? How do you. Like, how do you even know what's going on when it's going on? Like, there's. It feels like there's no, like, protection. There's no, like, we have to do this to stop this or to control this or whatever. It's just like, oh, my God, this is happening. And then I'm also thinking back to my grandpa's own experience being tested on with lsd. And when he talks about it and when he talks about what happened to him, even though he knows he was on LSD when he describes it, it's as if it actually happened. Like, and then I did this, and then I saw this and it's like, but you didn't actually become an ant and crawl under the rug.

[Sabrina]

You were drugged.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

You were on drugs.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

Which is the power of the mind. So, like, is mind control possible? Probably. That is a version of mind control where, like, you make someone believe something that didn't actually, like, really happen.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

But today, Montauk Is this sought after beach town. Its population shifts drastically with the season. Quiet in winter, packed in the summer. It's the location of one of my personal favorite Bravo shows, Summer House. As for Camp Hero and the Montauk Air Base, it is the Camp Hero State Park, a place where you can visit today. I think it's like $8 admission, but a lot of the standing structures are closed off and off limits. The massive radar tower still dominates the landscape. I don't know. I don't have the technology to tell if it's putting out sound waves still. Regardless, it remains a fricking mystery. And as we come to the end of this episode, I think it's very clear how this conspiracy, whether true or not, inspired the show Stranger Things. And it was fun to, like, research and, like, learn more about the origins, all the connections.

[Corinne]

It reminds me of so many different shows too. I feel like it's hard. It's like, do all these shows pull inspiration from something like this? Or do those thoughts.

[Sabrina]

The idea of universal consciousness.

[Corinne]

Right.

[Sabrina]

I do for sure believe that this, I mean, it literally was originally called Mondo.

[Corinne]

This one is changing things. But I'm thinking about, like the OA and like, some of. Some of those sort of things.

[Sabrina]

What I can say for a fact is this. Leading up to the supposed Montauk project, there are very real and now declassified studies that the government was in fact running, like MK Ultra and Stargate. The government has admitted to these decades after the fact. So the question isn't whether secret government experiments happened. The question is how many are there that we still don't fully understand. And as Al Bialik said, Orbialik Montauk wasn't the beginning. It was the continuation of another failed experiment. An experiment that happened many years earlier. An experiment that involved a ship, a vanished crew, and an even deeper conspiracy of time travel, teleportation, and secrecy. The Philadelphia Project, which Corinne will cover next week.

[Corinne]

Dun dun, dun.

[Sabrina]

It's crazy.

[Corinne]

Ooh, it is so crazy. And it's also like tinfoil hat not trusting the government. I don't need a tinfoil hat to say that I don't trust.

[Sabrina]

Well, that was like in.

[Corinne]

In the.

[Sabrina]

In the documentary Montauk Chronicles. Like, that's like kind of the message that the filmmaker wants to, like, portray is that we should always be questioning our government. We have evidence of our government's throughout history, not just the U.S. like, literally every government has lied to its people.

[Corinne]

Right. And it's like these are just what they're admitting to. Exactly. The declassified is what they're willing to share. They're giving crumbs to the people to be like, oh, look, see, we'll eventually find out everything.

[Sabrina]

But will we?

[Corinne]

No.

[Sabrina]

Unless we're taken beneath the Montauk Air Base into the secret bunkers and strapped into the Montauk chair and travel through time and get all the answers.

[Corinne]

And then Bigfoot comes through and saves you and says, I won't let them experiment on you anymore. Let me return you to your body.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And we'll go garden in your backyard when you wake up.

[Sabrina]

Bigfoot was destroying the base because it was bad.

[Corinne]

Yes.

[Sabrina]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

So upset with what he was seeing. Yeah, I would be too.

[Sabrina]

Same.

[Corinne]

Okay, so I have two short emails to read because I was like, there's so much telepathy and everything like that involved that I was like, I want to find, like, a couple examples of people today who have kids experiencing potentially some telepathic communication. Okay. This first one's from Chelsea. I have a three and a half year old daughter, and my son is turning one in two days. They're the best of friends, and I swear they're traveling souls. They definitely have been brother and sister in many lifetimes.

[Sabrina]

Very sweet.

[Corinne]

Today I was giving my daughter Charlotte a bath while Malcolm, my son, was napping in the other room. The house was silent other than the sound of bath time. I was plucking my chin hairs. Thanks, kids. While Charlotte played mermaid tail. When she looks up at me and says, mama, Malcolm is awake. I didn't hear him crying, which he always does when he wakes up. So I check the monitor and sure enough, he's awake. He's just sitting on the floor bed, looking around. After we finished our routine, I was sitting with them in the living room, and I asked Charlotte how she knew Malcolm was awake. She responds without hesitation. I saw a picture in my head. A picture in her head was that Clairvoyance thought you would enjoy this much more.

[Sabrina]

They're just so attached. And this is another sign that, like, as a child. And this is also, sadly, why I think they targeted so many children in the believed Montauk project, is because they're way more open. Right.

[Corinne]

Okay. And I have one more, one more to share. Hello, girls, Ghouls, Leah, and the extended podcast family. My name is Christine, and you can use my name. I have a weird ability to connect with certain people, and I've done it since I was a child. The first instance that I know of was when I was really young, maybe four or five. It was Christmas time, and my mom was thinking about what to get me for Christmas. She'd seen a chair of some sort and was wondering in her head what color I would want. From the backseat of the car, I say, I want a purple one.

[Sabrina]

Oh, chills.

[Corinne]

We have a very strong connection, which can be a real pain sometimes, especially when I would try to get away with things when I was younger. It still happens frequently, even, like, showing up wearing similar outfits or the same color shirt, even though we don't live in the same house anymore. Another connection I have is with my best friend. We can read each other like crazy. She lives in another state, and we've only met, like, three times in person, and two of those were just for a few hours as she's incarcerated. She's called me when I'm in the middle of a really bad day, knowing something's wrong, when she would have no way of knowing. I can tell her mood before she even speaks on the phone. And one big instance in particular is when my ex broke up with me. She called me shortly after it happened and just knew. And neither of us can really lie to the other, as we always just know with spooky vibes.

[Sabrina]

Christine, I mean, I. I wonder if you have this with, like, Brian or, like, people in your life. I feel like you and I could even have it, but, like, when you're sitting next to someone and you can hear their thoughts, you can't hear specifically what they're thinking, but you were like, it's so loud. Like, the energy is so loud. Like, I feel like that just proves that the ability to telepathically communicate does exist.

[Corinne]

Or, like, even when the conversation. Like a conversation pivots, or like, just a subject so incredibly unrelated to anything else that was being talked about is brought up and you just were thinking the exact same thing. Like a.

[Sabrina]

Like, how does that happen?

[Corinne]

Yeah, that I feel like happens a lot. I also feel like, you know, people always say, like, mother's intuition or whatever, even when I'm not in the same place. There's been, like, only twice where we. Brian and I have gone away for weddings, and my parents have watched Noah, and I wake up 30 seconds before Noah does. I always wake up before he does.

[Sabrina]

It also makes so much sense because he literally was connected to you.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Sabrina]

Like, you grew him inside of his body.

[Corinne]

Although, like, the other thing is, like, with my dad, who didn't grow me inside of his body.

[Sabrina]

Sure.

[Corinne]

Like, when my dad taught. Like, my dad is the king of out of context. Picking up in a sentence in the middle of what would have been a conversation that's been happening in his head, but not out loud. And it just says the most random thing or talks about the most random person. And my mom and my brother are always like, what are you talking about? But I am right there.

[Sabrina]

You're there.

[Corinne]

I'm in the same conversation.

[Sabrina]

Well, you and your dad are like twins, so that's true.

[Corinne]

We look exactly the same. I'm Bill with a wig. If you want to see what I'm going to look like in my 60s, just look up Bill Piano.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, because you're going to shave your head.

[Corinne]

Maybe. I don't know. We'll see.

[Sabrina]

Damn. Well, you tell us you believe in the Montauk Project and is it still ongoing? Email [e-mail] with all of your paranormal stories and spooky happenings and we'll read them. Join us on Patreon YouTube. All the things. We love you.

[Corinne]

I'm like so lost in thought about this whole subject. It's hard. We need to decompress.

[Sabrina]

Yes, we love you all.

[Corinne]

Shout out to Jamie for editing and producing our podcast and Emma for producing and helping with socials and everything else. Thank you to our team and we love all of you and we will see you on the other side.

[Sabrina]

Very spooky. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time, 50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month. Plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy.

[Corinne]

See terms.