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Carlos Allende has been variously portrayed as a mystical gypsy, a US Navy sailor who knew too much, an insider who found out too much, or an uneducated man who simply saw too much and later tried to tell his story as best he could.
Carlos Miguel Allende was Carl Meredith Allen. He had actually been in the Merchant Marine at one point but never in the U.S. Navy. He seems to have read voraciously anything to do with the occult and outer space, from mysterious disappearances to UFOs, teleportation and spontaneous human combustion, all of which find their way into the “Allende Letters” to M.K.  Jessup. These topics were staples of the occult in the 1950s, finding repeat expression in the little niche tabloid publication called Fate Magazine.
Examples of Fate. Below, right, “Radio to Other Worlds,” “Religion and the Saucers.” Even before the publication of his first book, Jessup had written Gray Barker: “The extension of the motive power theme to include some jolts to religion are rather obvious. This space race could be our GOD. They could have left the Earth millennia ago. Our book will hint at how Sun-worship may be connected with the space denizens.” Jessup banked much on proving UFO motive power, and Allende catered to this cornerstone with the Philadelphia Experiment.
As noted in the previous page The Legend, proof of the existence of the occult world was devoutly sought by its adherents. Just as a bleeding statue or faith healing would be proof to a believer in an established religion, so were certain manifestations proof to the adherents of the occult of the invisible and vital world behind the fabric of the physical universe. Apports, sudden appearances, were one such proof. They indicated time warps, other dimensions, and higher planes of existence. Topics such as these were long the staples of occult literature, from Ambrose Bierce stories to anything Fortean. When UFOs were added to the chronicle of unexplained events, such stories became intermingled in Fate Magazine. Occult adherents aren’t necessarily religious. They seek a physical bridge between levels of existence, and UFOs may have been proof such manipulation between time and dimensions was possible.
Allende was a man who indulged in such reading. And M.K. Jessup’s The Case for the UFO was surprisingly largely based on Fate Magazine as a source. There is a reason. Fate became a focal point for old tales and a clearing house for new ones. Seeking past oddities? There was one handy compilation. Prior to publication, Jessup had informed his friend Gray Barker that his upcoming book would be based more on history. “It is rather conservative,” he wrote to him, “as compared to some wild things so far printed, but I have tried to keep it factual, and have confined it to phenomena in the pre-Arnold era— particularly around 1875-1885. Altogether it makes quite a formidable array of proof and background.” Classic stories like the Oliver Lerch disappearance, the Devil’s footprints, the apports or sudden falls of rocks, fish, snails, and other organic material from a clear sky, were pillars of Jessup’s case. He explained them via UFOs operating long before pilot Ken Arnold first reported them in the summer of 1947. These incidents proved that something was using antigravity, levitating and drawing people into other dimensions or . . . into UFOs.
Allende wrote to Jessup.
Most everybody has heard about the “Allende Letters.” They are the foundation of the whole matter of the Philadelphia Experiment, and they have been reproduced in toto quite often. Believers pick out what they want. Skeptics mock. We must restrain ourselves here and proceed carefully. Jessup’s Part III (Case for the UFO), which had delved into history, using disappearing ships, planes, and the crews from derelict ships, plus apports and falls of organic matter, had especially set off Allende. Jessup was seeking to make his case scientifically? Allende had a story for him. For science, it is not science until an effect is reproducible. Perhaps without explicitly knowing it, this is what his story was giving Jessup. This would mean more than any collection of oddities and enigmas from the past.
The Navy had done it, Allende had written, as we read in the previous page The Legend. They had made a ship disappear during an experiment in Philadelphia Naval Yard, the year 1943. It had to do with Einstein’s Unified Field Theory, which had postulated an interaction could be found between an electric, magnetic, and gravitational field (yet undiscovered). The experiment had discovered the interaction and proved Einstein’s theory, Allende basically had said. The experiment heavily manipulated the interaction of electromagnetic energy and thereby affected gravity, the invisible energy of our physical universe. The test created a field around the ship which made it invisible.
Allende wrote in a strange grammar, punctuation, bad spelling, and mixed capital letters.
The field was effective in an oblate spheroidal shape extending one Hundred yards (More or Less due to Lunar position & Latitude) out from each beam of the ship. Any Person Within that field became vague in form BUT He too observed those Persons aboard that ship as though they too were of the same state, yet were walking upon nothing. Any person without that sphere could see Nothing save the clearly Defined shape of the Ships Hull in the Water, PROVIDING of course, that that person was just close enough to see yet, just barely outside of that field. Why tell you Now? Very Simple; If You choose to go Mad, then you will reveal this information. Half of the officers & the crew of that ship are at Present, Mad as Hatters. A few, are even Yet, confined to certain areas where they May receive trained Scientific aid when they, either, “Go Blank” or “Go Blank” & “Get Stuck.” Going-Bland IE an after effect of the Man having been within the field too Much. IS Not at all an unplesant expierence to Healthily Curious Sailors. However, it is when also, they “Get Stuck” that they call it “HELL” INCORPORATED” The Man thusly stricken can Not Move of his own volition unless tow or More of those who are within the field go & touch him, quickly, else he “Freezes.”
Allende does not state openly that he was a member of one of the observer ships (only one mentioned by name is Andrew S. Furuseth), but he closes by giving his serial number, thus implying he was on the ship. He mentions the first mate by name (Mowsley) and gives us other names. It was easy for someone like Jessup to believe that Allende, an unlearned man, embellished and expanded upon things he saw from a distance.
If a man Freezes, His position Must be Marked out carefully and then the Field cut off. Everyone but that “Frozen” Man is able to Move; to appreciate apparent Solidity again. Then, the Newest Member of the crew Must approach the Spot, where he will find the “Frozen” Mans face or Bare skin, that is Not covered by the usual uniform Clothing. Sometimes, It takes only an hour or so Sometimes all Night & Day Long & Worse. It once took 6 months- to get The Man “Unfrozen.” This “Deep Freeze” was not psycological. It is the result of a Hyper-Field that is set up, within the field of the Body. While the “Scorch” Field is turned on & this at Length or upon an Old Hand.
Allende had a fondness for coming back to insanity. “Usually a “Deep Freeze Man goes Mad, Stark Raving, Gibbering, Running MAD if His “freeze” is far More than a Day in our time.”
What was the purpose of the letter? He tells Jessup these things so that he’ll “choke” on his own “tongue.” All this was prompted because Jessup wanted antigravity to be pursued and was encouraging research into Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. This was Allende’s way, apparently, of discouraging him, claiming the “Philadelphia Experiment” was based on trying to harness this Unified Field Theory and it was a disaster. He ends the letter with “Very Disrespectfully Yours CARL M. ALLEN” but then adds a Post Scriptum “Will Help More if you see Where I can.” This is hardly a novel contradiction both mentally, emotionally or logically in the letters. His letters are, in fact, ramblings.
In his last letter to Jessup, Allende refers to some nifty gadgetry which is, quite frankly, inspired by TV Sci-Fi genre. He says: “HOW WOULD YOU ACTUALLY LIKE TO SPEAK TO (or some of THE MEN) A MAN WHO WAS ONCE AN INVISIBLE HUMAN BEING? (MAY BECOME SO IN FRONT OF YOUR VERY EYES IF HE TURNS OFF HIS HIP SET)”
What a very Captain Video invention! This show was a popular TV space show which debuted in 1950. Allende refers to crewmen still spontaneously vanishing around Philadelphia , but doesn’t seem to realize this is a contradiction to his hip set statement. Apparently these had not been issued the “hip set.”
Here’s another early ‘50s space show, Captain Z-RO. This hero had a patent on machines that could make him appear and disappear anywhere.
I’m not trying to discourage the reader at this point from believing that Allende was witness to something that he then embellished. He did write “DID witness this,” apparently meaning himself while mentioning other names and where they lived so that Jessup should find them. I wish us to remain as contemporary to 1956 as possible and understand why Jessup, unquestionably, believed that Allende was a crackpot but that he had seen something.
The carrot before Jessup’s face was two-sided. Allende was providing a single source that could explain everything— apports, UFO propulsion, disappearances, all from a harnessing of the Unified Field Theory. The other side of the carrot was that it liberated Jessup from trying to wrap his head around the occult elements he dabbled with— the psychic world of his numerous new friends. Allende was declaring a purely physical solution to apparently every supernatural story Jessup had gleaned from and believed in Fate Magazine.
M.K. Jessup had written back, of course, asking for proof. It would be natural to do so, but there was another reason. Anyone knowing the 10 Process Skills of Scientific Inquiry knows the one shortcut to the expensive final 2 steps— Experiment and Model Building (i.e. reproducing an effect)— is uncovering someone else had proved the point and then you use it to justify an adjunct theory all your own. Jessup desperately needed proof. Unlike other UFO writers, Jessup did have scientific training and had once held established positions. He wasn’t like Major Donald Keyhoe, who was essentially a gadfly of a contemporary phenomenon relating the current sightings and theories. He was trying to prove— “make the case”— for the longtime existence of UFO visitation to Earth. His book hadn’t succeeded. He needed proof there was such a gravity drive to justify UFO presence and everything contained in Fate Magazine.  He was being ridiculed, not for believing in UFOs, but for using folkloric stories as sources without being able to prove UFOs could even do such things. Scientists who did believe in UFOs thought they were from Mars or Venus, using somewhat understandable propulsion.
Fate, left — “Do You Hear Colors?” “Jewels from Atlantis.” “The Secret Wisdom Behind Religion.” Before publication, Jessup had admitted in a short article written for Barker’s Saucerian Press (Motive Power of the UFO): “It is high time we stop spending the tax-payer’s money for impractical rocket development, and invest in basic research to uncover the secret of gravitational drive which was known even to ante-deluvian civilizations.” This was one step from Edgar Cayce’s Atlantis.
But behind-the-scenes Jessup had long critically accepted Edgar Cayce’s readings on Atlantis. He firmly believed UFOs used the antigravity drives the clairvoyant had tried to relate. Once again, Jessup had seen proof of this in the stupendous early constructions in South America. Therefore this did justify accepting the stories in folklore that spoke of levitation and disappearances.
For instance, of the the famous Oliver Lerch disappearance, he had written in The Case for the UFO: “But what are you going to do with apports, or appearances? It seems to me that they are a sort of second order phenomenon, unless they can be connected somehow with corresponding disappearances, someplace. Shall we settle for a kidnapping by UFO’s?” He continues:
“Help, help! It’s got me!” This pitiful plea ending in a piercing scream brought friends running to Oliver Lerch’s home, into the bright moonlit night. But he was not to be seen, although they could hear his voice, growing fainter, calling for help from a hundred feet or more above their heads. “Help me, help...”
Oliver Lerch was never seen again on the face of this earth; and thus was recorded one of the most amazing disappearances ever to confront our modern age — the disappearance of a man into thin air!
Allende’s “Freeze” as a result of Unified Field experiments in Philadelphia seemed tailored to explain this now. The UFO was pulling him into another dimension.
Carl M. Allen or Allende must have grown disinterested with Jessup, a man who demanded “proof.” However, he had not grown disinterested in explaining the occult via UFOs. In April 1956, as we know, an annotated paperback copy of Jessup’s The Case for the UFO, had arrived at the Office of Naval Research. This was covered in the previous page, The Legend. I am not repeating per se for the sake of it. Here we deal with fact. It is a fact they read it and invited Jessup to visit them. Captain Sidney Sherby and Commander George Hoover saw some value here. They then showed him the copy. He looked at it. One of his most fundamental and popular chapters Part III “History Speaks” dealt with disappearance of ship’s and their crews. One annotation read:
Tried that with Mosley & I on Board Furnseth
and he XXXXXX was drunk enough to slip out
of the “Freeze” & He Made them know it in No
uncertain terms. They put us down & Then
unfroze the crew who to this day Do Not
remember of it. THEY CAN’T. (Mr. M. was
Chief Mate, “Hatteras” 1943)
Perhaps they detected “FIELD” Activity of
Navy D-E WHICH WAS CLOSE BY,
(BEFORE) TESTING AN INVISIBILITY
EXPERIMENTAL “gadget.”
There it was. Unquestionably, one of the annotators, “Mr. A,” was that lunatic Carlos Allende. He was now claiming he was one of those experimented upon aboard the Furuseth. The destroyer escort was nearby. We can’t get into Jessup’s mind, but knowing the letters written to him it wouldn’t be a leap of logic for him to consider that some test was done and Allende the crackpot might be the result of negative side effects. In any case, he had the Office of Naval Research seeing potential here.
ONR made about 25 retyped copies of his book, along with the annotations, and had them printed by Varo Manufacturing Company in Garland, Texas. Jessup was given a few copies for his study. The official claim for ONR’s interest was that there may be some nugget of information that could assist in unraveling the mystery of gravity. They would pass it around  their people to see if it lit any light bulbs in the head, essentially.
Sacsahuaman. Enchanted by Peruvian ruins, Jessup believed the cyclopean stones had been maneuvered into place by antigravity machines. According to Cayce, Peru started being colonized by Atlanteans as much as 30,000 years ago. (photo courtesy Judith Marx)
It had to be a nugget indeed. Jessup could only presume it had to surround the only claim that could be investigated: the Navy experiment. Everything else was unverifiable occult insights on ancient space battles, Lemuria and Mu, and other occult gibberish.
Now that the Navy took it serious, we can well imagine that Jessup could see Allende might not have been just a crank fan mail writer. He too had taken something seriously about this experiment and believed it too explained all the occult things he and the other annotators were writing about in the margins of Jessup’s book. The annotations of Mr. A throughout the book make that plain. But who were the other 2 annotators? Fate also dealt in stories that explored the possibility Gypsies were an alien people to this Earth. Allende and the other 2 annotators clearly identified as Gypsies and spoke of ancient space battles and prehistoric super civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria as though they had firsthand knowledge. Jessup would have easily recognized this.
At this point, I cannot say how he would have pursued this. Jessup also believed in “Men in Black” and therefore believed that aliens were among us masquerading as Earthlings. Yet we know he thought Allende a crackpot. But at this time Jessup was also spiraling more and more into the psychic world. Could Allende, though the weak link, have been part of a séance crowd that was gleaning information from a psychic control?
I am not reaching by asking the above. Valentine through Berlitz exorcised Jessup’s descending spiral into the occult. The reason is obvious: Berlitz’s book The Bermuda Triangle was a book on tangible disappearances, and the Philadelphia Experiment was being used as an indication that physically through electromagnetism the disappearances, UFOs, the Triangle’s anomalies, etc, were possible and not farfetched claims.
But Jessup was most certainly spiraling headlong into the occult. He may have classified himself as “critically receptive” of the psychic world, but he was playing with a strange crowd. This included Meade Layne (Borderland Sciences Research Associates) and Mark Probert and his spirit entities called the Mark Probert Controls. Layne would write The Coming of the Guardians. In a letter to Layne, Jessup assured him that they were not “working at cross purposes and you will find eventually that I am supporting you.” He then wrote he was interested in the theory that UFOs were non material, using language that indicated a knowledge of Dianetics, quite the rage in the 1950s. He admitted he sought a medium to psychically obtain for him a law for planetary distances beyond Bode-Titius Law.
“The Riddle of the Sphinx” and “Dianetics, one year later.”— quite a spectrum.
Allende was either a very keen prankster with a heavy understanding of occult literature and he therefore knew how to hook Jessup in a hoax, or he was the simple crackpot who had seen something, however vague, and like Jessup believed that the Navy experiment proved dangerously the reality of greater worlds and UFOs. He was on his own quest to impart his occult-gleaned knowledge to Jessup and the Navy. It’s hard to say what the difference between Jessup and Allende was at this time, except for better grammar.
Because of the situation his theories and more so his sources had put him in, we must look at the Scientist now, at Morris Jessup. Next
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