Montauk Phoenix and Rainbow claims
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
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| Type | Conspiracy theory |
|---|---|
| Alleged site | Camp Hero / Montauk Air Force Station, Montauk Point, Long Island, New York |
| "Rainbow" | Claimed code name of the legendary 1943 Philadelphia Experiment aboard USS Eldridge |
| "Phoenix" | Claimed follow-on project, begun at Brookhaven and moved to Montauk in the late 1960s |
| Main sources | Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, The Montauk Project series (from 1992); Al Bielek; Duncan Cameron |
| Real history | Army coastal defence post (1942), then an Air Force radar station; Camp Hero State Park opened 18 September 2002 |
| Status | No supporting documents; characterised as fiction |
| Date | 1983 |
| Topics | Remote viewing & psi (topic), Bases & Area 51 (topic) |
| People | Preston Nichols, Peter Moon |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 96 |
| Year | 1983 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1983 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 8 |
The Montauk Project is a conspiracy theory about Camp Hero, a former military base at Montauk Point on Long Island, New York. It claims that secret U.S. government experiments there used powerful radio and microwave transmitters for mind control and even time travel.[1][2] The programme was supposedly called "Phoenix" and descended from "Rainbow", said to be the code name of the legendary 1943 Philadelphia Experiment.[1][6] No documents support the claims. They stand in sharp contrast to the U.S. government's real, declassified research into psychic phenomena, which was run from Maryland and California rather than Montauk.[1][4]
Origins
Stories of secret experiments at Montauk circulated from the early 1980s.[1] They were popularised by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon (the pen name of Vincent Barbarick) in The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time (1992) and its sequels.[1][3] Local editor Dan Rattiner puts the sales at an estimated 100,000 copies.[2]
- Recovered memories. Nichols and Al Bielek claimed to have recovered repressed memories of their own involvement. Jacques Vallée traced the Montauk stories to their "highly questionable" accounts.[1]
- Further claims. Nichols also said he was periodically abducted to continue taking part. He went on to claim degrees in parapsychology, psychology and electrical engineering.[1]
- Later life. He died in October 2018, still maintaining his claims.[6]
"Rainbow" and "Phoenix"
The books extend the Philadelphia Experiment legend into a story of mind control, contact with extraterrestrials and time travel.[1][6]
- "Rainbow". The legend is the claim that the destroyer escort USS Eldridge was made invisible or teleported in 1943, and that the crew suffered terribly. Rattiner recalls the version in which the ship was teleported "complete with crew" and the crew died, a failure that "had to be covered up".[2]
- "Phoenix". The Montauk activities are framed as developments that followed the 1943 experiment.[1] The earlier version of this article gives the follow-on programme the name "Phoenix" and "Rainbow" as the name of the wartime project.
- The claimed experiments. Over the years the claims included mind control, teleportation, "time tunnels", contact with aliens and staging faked Apollo Moon landings.[1]
- The "Montauk Boys". Nichols said thousands of boys, the "Montauk Boys", were abducted and subjected to mind-controlling frequencies. He also told of a "Montauk chair" that boosted psychic powers.[6]
The theory also mixes in stories of a "Bulgarian Experiment".[1] Both Moon and Nichols encouraged speculation, describing much of their material as "soft facts" and publishing a newsletter of updates.[1]
Camp Hero
The Army commissioned Camp Hero in 1942 as a coastal-defence station disguised as a fishing village, to guard New York against invasion from the sea. It was named after Major General Andrew Hero Jr., the Army's chief of coast artillery, who died that year.[3]
- The batteries. Three batteries were built: Batteries 112 and 113, each with two 16-inch guns, and Battery 216 with two 6-inch guns. Each was essentially a concrete bunker covered with earth, holding magazines and fire-control equipment.
- The radar station. The site later became Montauk Air Force Station, whose large radar tower still stands.[3]
- After the military. In 1984 the General Services Administration tried to sell the whole facility to developers. After local environmental protests, most of it, including Camp Hero, passed through the National Park Service to New York State.
- The park. A 1996 golf-course plan was dropped in 1999 to protect rare salamanders and groundwater. Camp Hero State Park opened on 18 September 2002, and parts of the former base are registered as a National Historic Site.[3]
Rattiner, who explored the abandoned base as a teenager, notes that its gun emplacements, tunnels and hardware can now be seen by any visitor.[2]
Assessment
The work has been characterised as fiction, and there are no documents to support the Phoenix experiments.[1]
- Rattiner's experience. Rattiner, who edited a Hamptons newspaper at the time, wrote that the book's claim that all the animals in the Montauk woods once came into town and had to be rounded up was untrue. The sequel then described him as part of the government cover-up.[2]
- The base was a radar station. Popular accounts note that most of Nichols's book "has been debunked to one extent or another". They also note that the Air Force station operated until its official closure in 1981.[6]
- Influence. The legend nonetheless inspired films and was once the working title of the Netflix series Stranger Things.[1]
A RationalWiki entry on the subject could not be loaded when checked.[5]
Contrast with documented programmes
The U.S. government did run real research into claimed psychic abilities in the same decades. It is documented in declassified files.[4]
- SRI. In the early 1970s the CIA funded "SCANATE" and remote-viewing research at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, led by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.
- Army programmes. The Army started "Gondola Wish" in 1977 and formalised it as "Grill Flame" in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland. It was renamed "Center Lane" in 1983.
- DIA. When Army funding ended in 1985 the Defense Intelligence Agency continued it as "Sun Streak", and in 1991 it became "Stargate".
- Closure. In 1995 a CIA-commissioned review by the American Institutes for Research found that remote viewing had not been shown to work by a psychic mechanism and had never been used operationally. The programme was cancelled and declassified.[4]
The CIA's online Stargate collection was not reachable at the address linked below; the link returned the reading room's home page.[8] A timeline of government interest in the paranormal on Uri Geller's website does not mention Montauk.[7]
People and topics
- Montauk Project — Montauk Project
- Preston Nichols — Engineer who claimed in The Montauk Project that he worked on secret experiments at Camp Hero.
- Peter Moon — Co-author of The Montauk Project books.
- Camp Hero — A former military base at Montauk, New York, linked to the Montauk Project legend.
- Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment — Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Remote viewing — The claimed ability to describe distant places by mental means.
- Stargate Project — The U.S. government's remote-viewing program, which ran from the 1970s until 1995.
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- SRI International — The research institute where the government's remote-viewing studies began.
On the Timeline
- Hutchison Effect (1983) — An Army intelligence group studies the 'Hutchison Effect', claimed to produce antigravity.
- Sarbacher letter (1983) (29 November 1983) — Physicist Robert Sarbacher writes that he heard of recovered UAP materials while consulting for the Pentagon.
See every 1983 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Montauk Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Camp Hero — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
References
- Montauk Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Dan Rattiner, "East End myths: was the Montauk Project real?", Dan's Papers (Oct 2024) · danspapers.com · archived copy
- Camp Hero State Park — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stargate Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Montauk Project — RationalWiki · rationalwiki.org · archived copy
- What some people think happened at Montauk Air Force Station — Grunge · grunge.com · archived copy
- urigeller.com · urigeller.com · archived copy
- cia.gov · cia.gov · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Montauk Project”, “Camp Hero State Park”, “Stargate Project”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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