Paranormal Pioneers and Other Strange Phenomena

Camp Hero and the Montauk Project

Camp Hero (also known as Fort Hero or the Montauk Air Force Station) was a military base at Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. It was decommissioned in the 1980s and is now owned by the New York State Department of Parks as Camp Hero State Park. The park offers a beach, fishing, hiking, a bridle path, biking, and cross-country skiing. Despite rumors to the contrary, there is no concrete evidence of any secret underground facility. The supposed Montauk Project or Philadelphia Experiment which supposedly occurred at the base are widely regarded as hoaxes or urban legends. But are they?

The eastern tip of Long Island has always had strategic significance, even in the days of the American Revolution. When the Montauk Lighthouse was first authorized in 1792, part of its mission was to keep a lookout for British ships sailing for New York or Boston, and as such was the first military installation at Montauk. Montauk was always considered a prime location for a possible invasion because of its remoteness and prime location midway between two major American cities. During World War I, the Army stationed reconnaissance dirigibles, an airplane, troops and Coast Guard personnel at Montauk.

Based on its history and location, it was not surprising that the government established Fort Hero in 1942 on the point just south of the lighthouse. They built docks, seaplane hangars, barracks, and other buildings in the area. There was also a huge torpedo testing facility. The 278 acres facility was officially known as the "US Military Reservation", but the locals just called it "Camp Hero".

When World War II ended, the base was temporarily shut down and used as a training facility by the Army Reserves. The naval facilities were largely abandoned, and the gun emplacements were dismantled in 1949.

In 1984 the General Services Administration attempted to sell the entire facility to real estate developers. Local environmental activists protested, claiming that the site had many unique ecosystems and animal habitats. The remaining portions of the military reservation at Montauk were decommissioned and most of the facility, including Camp Hero, was donated to the National Park Service, which then turned it over to the New York State Department of Parks. Portions not deemed environmentally sensitive were sold off.

In 1992, Preston Nichols and Peter Moon wrote a book called "The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time" (ISBN 0-9631889-0-9) in which they alleged that secret experiments were carried out at the Camp Hero site. The book proved quite popular with conspiracy theorists, and spawned several sequels

The Montauk Project was supposed to be a series of top-secret United States government projects conducted at Camp Hero. The purpose of the experiments was to develop psychological warfare techniques and unusual research including time travel. UFO researcher Jacques Vallée believed the rumors of the Montauk Project was an extension or a continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment, alleged to have taken place in 1943, where according to proponents, scientists tried to render the USS Eldridge invisible to radar detection with disastrous results. The Montauk Project was begun when surviving researchers from the Philadelphia Experiment met in 1952-1953 with the aim of continuing their earlier work on manipulating the "electromagnetic shielding" that had been used to make the USS Eldridge invisible to radar. It is claimed that they went much further than this and began working on time travel and was actually able to bring objects here from different dimensions. Whether or not these stories are true is anyone’s guess, but if you talk to people who have visited Camp Hero, a supposedly decommissioned and abandoned base turned park, they will tell you that they’ve seen all kinds of strange things, including the radar tower still turning as if it were still working.

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945)

Although strictly not a paranormal researcher or a medium, Edgar Cayce, is said to have demonstrated an ability to channel answers to questions on various subjects while in a self-induced trance and to accurately diagnose diseases and cures for subject who were not present at the time. For this unusual ability, I decided to include a chapter dedicated to him in this book.

Edgar Cayce was born into a farming family on March 18, 1877 near Beverly, seven miles south of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His education stopped with the ninth grade because his family could not afford the costs involved. However, a ninth-grade education was often considered more than sufficient for working-class children. Unfortunately, what this meant was that much of Cayce's younger years would be taken up by a search for both employment and money.

Throughout his life Cayce was drawn to church as a member of the Disciples of Christ. He read the Bible once for every year of his life, taught at Sunday school, recruited missionaries, and is said to have been tortured over the issue of whether his supposed psychic abilities - and the teachings which resulted - were spiritually legitimate and acceptable to a person who professed a Christian faith.

In 1900 he formed a business partnership with his father to sell Woodmen of the World Insurance but was struck by severe laryngitis that resulted in a complete loss of speech. Unable to work, he lived at home with his parents for almost a year. Casey then made the decision to take up the trade of photography, a profession that would cause less strain on his voice. He began an apprenticeship at the photography studio of W.R. Bowles in Hopkinsville.

As it happens, a traveling stage hypnotist and entertainer called "Hart - The Laugh Man" was performing at the Hopkinsville Opera House in 1901. He heard about Cayce's affliction and offered to attempt a cure. Cayce accepted and the experiment took place on stage in front of an audience. Remarkably, Cayce's voice returned while in a hypnotic trance but supposedly disappeared on awakening.

Hart tried a post-hypnotic suggestion that the voice would continue to function after the trance, but this did not work either. Eventually Cayce’s voice did return, but not because of Hart. A local hypnotist named Al Layne treated Cayce. Layne suggested that Cayce try to describe the nature of his condition and cure while in a hypnotic trance. Oddly enough, Cayce described his own ailment from a first-person plural point of view ("we") instead of the singular ("I"). In further readings he would generally start off with "We have the body” as if it were some other person looking at an external physical body. According to Cayce, his loss of voice was due to a psychological paralysis and could be corrected by increasing the blood flow to the voice box. With Cayce still in a trance, Layne suggested that the blood flow be increased, and Cayce's face supposedly became flushed and his chest area and the throat turned bright red. After 20 minutes Cayce, while still in a trance, declared the treatment over. After he woke up his voice was said to have remained normal, although relapses occasionally occurred and were corrected by Layne in the same way. Eventually the cure was said to be permanent.

Layne had read of similar hypnotic self-cures and asked Cayce to describe his (Layne's) own ailments and suggest cures, and reportedly found the results accurate and effective. Layne suggested that Cayce offer his trance healing to the public, but Cayce was reluctant and only finally agreed on the condition that there would be no charge for the readings.

As he became more well-known, he began to be called "The Miracle Worker of Virginia Beach." Reports of Cayce's work were described in the newspapers, and soon he began receiving many requests via the post office. Cayce said he was able to work just as efficiently using a letter from the individual and having only person's name and location and could diagnose the physical and/or mental conditions and provide a remedy. Eventually he began receiving correspondence from around the world seeking his advice.

Cayce's methods involved lying down and entering a trance state. The subject’s questions would then be given to Cayce and he would proceed with a reading. When out of the trance, Cayce said he generally didn’t remember what he had said during the reading. Cayce claimed the unconscious mind, had access to information which the conscious mind did not — a common belief about hypnosis in Cayce's time.

Cayce said that his trance statements should be considered only to the extent that they led to a better life for the recipient. Moreover, he invited his audience to test his suggestions rather than accept them on faith. Clearly, there is no way to prove that Cayce used psychic powers even on those cases where there is no doubt that he was helpful in the cure. It is true that many people considered themselves cured by Cayce and that's enough evidence for true believers.

Nevertheless, Dr. J. B. Rhine, famous for his ESP experiments at Duke University, was not impressed with Cayce. Rhine felt that a psychic reading done for his daughter did not fit the facts. Defenders of Cayce claimed that if a patient had any doubts, the diagnosis will not be a good one. Sounds like a weak defense, to me. Other skeptics of Cayce said that the evidence for his powers came from newspaper articles, affidavits, anecdotes, and testimonials, which are were not scientifically thorough.

In the spring of 1944, Edgar began to grow weak and collapsed from exhaustion, and just as he gave his first reading for himself, he gave his last reading for himself in September of 1944. The reading told him he had to rest. When his wife asked, "How long?" the response was "until he is well or dead." Shortly afterwards, he had a stroke and became partially paralyzed and died on January 3, 1945.

Mina Crandon (Margery) (1888–1941)

Mina, also known as Margery, grew up on a farm in Canada but moved to Boston as a young woman. While working as a secretary of a local church in Boston, she met and married Earl Rand, a grocer. They had one son. It was when she entered a Dorchester, Massachusetts hospital for what has been reported to be an appendectomy that she met Dr. Crandon, who was her surgeon. She and Dr. Crandon came in contact again later that year when he served as head of surgical staff in a New England Naval hospital during the First World War and Mina served as a civilian volunteer ambulance driver. Mina filed for divorce from Earl P. Rand in January 1918 and became Dr. Crandon's third wife a few months later.

Mina first began experimenting with séances as a hobby, possibly to amuse her older husband from a morbid obsession with death, and specifically the coming to an end of his own life.

She showed a surprising talent for mediumship and on July 23, 1924 her name was submitted as a candidate for a prize offered by the Scientific American magazine to any medium who could demonstrate telekinetic ability under scientific controls. With a doctor as husband, Mina was well prepared for the challenge, and her charm and lack of interest in personal monetary compensation made her seem honest to the public eye - but not to everyone.

Harry Houdini was determined to discredit Mina and made this a part of his stage act. He reproduced her feats to audiences, as well as published a pamphlet that described how she managed some of her more basic effects. She was later review by Dr. J.B. Rhine who provided further insight into Mina's performances. Dr. Rhine was able to observe some of Mina's trickery in the dark when she used glowing objects. However, Mina continued to conduct séances and improve upon the production of her special effects. On June 30, 1925, a Harvard investigator saw Mina draw three objects from her lap. One object was shaped like a glove; one resembled a baby's hand, and third was not described. Soon, an investigation was held by a committee of Harvard scholars who pronounced Mina as a fake

The Society for Psychical Research wanted an additional investigation and a committee of three professors was sent to Boston. Mina had a luminous star attached to her forehead, which would identify the location of her face in the dark. After a few minutes a narrow, dark rod appeared over a glowing checkerboard which had been placed on the table opposite Mina. It moved from side to side and picked up an object. As it passed in front of one of the scientists, he lightly touched it with the tip of his finger and followed it back to a spot very near Mina's mouth. He took hold of the tip and very quietly pinched it. He reported that it felt like a knitting needle covered with one or two layers of soft leather. At the end of the sitting the events were dictated to the stenographer and then read back to Mina. Upon hearing the report, Mina gave a shriek and fainted. She was carried out of the room and the committee was asked to leave.

At another of the sittings Mina showed an extremely unusual manifestation that made her even more famous in Spiritualist circles. On the table in front of her during a séance would be placed two dishes, one containing hot water and the other cold. In the first dish was a piece of dental wax. When the wax was softened, it was claimed that her brother Walter, who was also her “spirit guide” would make an imprint of his thumb on it and then put into cold water to harden. While it could not be proved that the prints were those of Mina’s dead brother, it was proven that they did not belong to anyone present at the séance. Believers were fascinated by this new demonstration. However, the suspicion of fraud never left her, and many became disillusioned when the thumbprints that appeared in the dental wax were shown to be exact matches of the thumbprints of Dr. Crandon’s dentist

However, despite all of the evidence of fraud, there were still some who thought she was genuinely gifted. And perhaps she was gifted. But she was also under constant pressure to produce more and more phenomena, and it is likely that cause her to feel she had no choice but to fake some of her sittings. In any case, her followers claimed that she was one of the greatest mediums who ever lived, while her critics called her a fraud and blamed her for almost bringing paranormal research in America to an end.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

Aleister Crowley was born on October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His parents, Edward and Emily, were the embodiment of respectability, being devout Christians and members of the Quaker Plymouth Brethren. At age eleven, after the death of his father, Crowley inherited the family fortune and went on to be educated at Trinity College Cambridge. There he wrote and studied poetry and because of his love of the outdoor life, he became a capable mountain climber.

It was while he was at Trinity that Crowley became interested in the occult and with his roommate Allan Bennett, they began to study whatever they could. One of the books he read was by the author Arthur Edward Waite, entitled “The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts”. It implied knowledge of a secret group of occultists and after reading this Crowley became even more intrigued. He wrote to Waite for more information and was referred to "The Cloud upon the Sanctuary” by Karl von Exkartshausen. On the 18th of November 1898, he and Bennett joined the 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn', the elusive Great White Brotherhood.

In 1899 Crowley is reported to have become a member of one of “Old George Pickingill’s” covens situated in the New Forrest, although he was not welcome for long. It is said that he obtained his Second Degree and shortly after this he was thrown out of the coven. The reasons given were his contemptuous attitude toward women, failure to attend rituals with regularity and his personal ego and sexual perversion. It seemed Crowley was partial to homosexuality and the bizarre, which during his time was considered shocking even amongst witches. The priestess of his coven is quoted as saying he was “a dirty-minded, evilly-disposed and vicious little monster!” After this Crowley moved out of Trinity Collage without earning his degree and taken a flat in Chancery Lane, London.

Crowley had a natural gift for magic and advanced rapidly through the ranks of the Golden Dawn, but the London lodge leaders thought he was unsuitable for advancement into the second order. But Crowley would not take ‘no’ for an answer and went to Paris in 1899 to see S.L. MacGregor Mathers, the head of the Order, insisting that he be initiated into the Second Order. Mathers was experiencing growing discord to his absolute rule from London and sensed in Crowley an ally. To the dismay of the London lodge he agreed to Crowley's request and initiated him into the Second Order.

Crowley began to travel, mostly in the East studying Eastern occult systems, 'Tantric Yoga, Buddhism' and the I Ching. For a time, he lived in a remote place near Loch Ness in Scotland and in 1903 he met and then married Rose Edith Kelly. She eventually bore him two children.

While on vacation in Egypt the following year, he and Rose took part in a magical ritual during which he claims to have received a message from the gods and because of this communication he wrote down the first three chapters of his most famous book “Liber Legis, the Book of Law”. It is in this book we find his oft-quoted saying: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”, upon which Crowley based the rest of his life and teachings.

In 1909 Crowley began to explore levels of the astral plane and believed he crossed the Abyss and united his consciousness with the universal consciousness. He describes the astral journeys in “The Vision and the Voice”, which was published in his periodical “The Equinox” and then after his death in 1949.

By now Crowley was well-known as an infamous Black magician and Satanist, openly identifying himself with the number 666, the biblical number for the antichrist. He also kept with him a progression of women. Together they would indulge in drinking sessions, drugs and sexual magic and it is believed that Crowley made several attempts with several of these women to father a Magical child, none of which worked. Instead he fictionalized his attempts in a book called “Moonchild” which was published in 1929.

In 1912 Crowley became involved with the British section of the O.T.O. (the Ordo Temple Orientis), a German occult order practicing magic. He then moved and lived in America and from there moved to Sicily where he established the notorious Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu.

In Sicily he involved himself in Italian occultism and in 1922 became the head of the Ordo Temple Orientis. However, he began to attract more bad publicity. The press denounced him as “The Wickedest Man in the World” because of the alleged satanic goings on in the Abbey and in 1923 Mussolini, the then ruler of Italy, stepped in and expelled him from Sicily. It has now emerged that many of the allegations were false and were no more than press sensationalism.

In 1946, a year before his death, a friend introduced Crowley to Gerald B. Gardner. His meetings with Gardner would later lead to disagreement over the authorship of Gardner’s 'Book of Shadows'. While it did contain some of Crowley’s writings, Gardner said it was the result of his discussions with Crowley where they compared notes on rituals used in the covens in the New Forrest.

By this time Crowley was a frail old man living in a private hotel in Hastings, kept alive by the use of drugs. It was here that, on December 1, 1947 he passed on to the next world. Unrepentant and still proud and with a final snub at society, he left instructions that he was to be cremated and instead of the customary religious service, his 'Hymn to Pan' and other things from his writings was to be read from the pulpit and his ashes sent to his disciples in America.

Pearl Curran (Patience Worth) (1883-1937)

Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran. This symbiotic relationship produced several novels, poetry and prose which Pearl Curran claimed was delivered to her through channeling the spirit, Patience Worth.

Curran was born in Mound City, Illinois. The family moved to Texas when she was eight months old and she started school when she was six. Her family moved twice more, eventually ending up in Palmer, Missouri when Curran was a teenager.

She was an average but indifferent student, and eventually dropped out of her first high school year, later stating she had a nervous breakdown due to the demanding academics. She admitted to having a poor imagination and few ambitions, except to be successful as a singer. She had a short attention span and read very little during her formative years. In fact, by today’s standards she probably would be diagnosed as having Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

As Curran's musical talents grew, she was sent to Kanakee, Illinois for voice training, before moving to Chicago to be tutored by J.C. Cooper. She worked at the McKinley Music Company addressing envelopes for six dollars a week and then at the Thompson Music Company selling music. From the age of 18 to 24 she worked at assorted jobs in Chicago during winter months, and during the summer she taught music at home in Missouri.

Pearl was married at age twenty-four, and though her husband, John Howard Curran, was by no means wealthy, they lived a lifestyle which gave Pearl free time for going to the movies or playing cards with her husband or neighbors. The Currans had an average education for that time and owned a less than average number of books; neither of them had traveled to a great extent. The first seven years of their marriage were uneventful. But that wasn’t to last long.

Beginning in July 1912 Pearl Curran and her friend Emily Grant Hutchings began visiting a neighbor who had acquired a Ouija board. During one of their sessions with the board a spirit came which was supposed to be related to Mrs. Hutchings. Mrs. Hutchings then bought a Ouija board and took it to Mrs. Curran's house to continue the communications. Pearl really didn’t care whether or not the communication using the Board continued or not and had to be persuaded to participate. On June 22, 1913 a communication from "Pat-C" began to come through. Then on July 8, 1913 supposed communications from Patience Worth began. The spirit called Patience Worth said:

"Many moons ago I lived. Again, I come. Patience Worth my name. Wait, I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then so shall I. I make my bread at thy hearth. Good friends, let us be merrie. The time for work is past. Let the tabby drowse and blink her wisdom to the firelog."

When asked when she lived, the dates 1649 - 1694 were given and that her home was "Across the sea."

Although Patience said she was from England, she never named the town or village in which she lived although she did give some indication that she had lived in rural Dorsetshire with her father John and mother Anne. Mrs. Curran had a mental picture of the place in which Patience Worth lived and said that Patience lived in.

"...green rolling country with gentle slopes, not farmed much, with houses here and there. Two or three miles up this country on this road was a small village ---few houses."

Mrs. Curran then saw Patience coming to America on a huge, wood three-masted schooner.

Patience was described by Mrs. Curran as "...probably about thirty years. Her hair was dark red, mahogany, her eyes brown, and large and deep, her mouth firm and set, as though repressing strong feelings. Her hair had been disarranged by her cap, and was in big, glossy, soft waves."

Mrs. Curran also saw Patience, "sitting on a horse, holding a bundle tied in sail-cloth, tied with thongs and wearing a coarse cloth cape, brown-gray, with hood like a cowl, peaked. The face is in shadow. She is small and her feet are small---with coarse square-toed shoes and gray woolen stockings."

After a long voyage, the ship arrives at the coast of America where they could find no landing place for the ship. Several flat boats were launched, and Mrs. Curran saw Patience standing in the prow of her boat, one of the first to reach the shore. Patience Worth was later to indicate that she was eventually killed by the Indians.

Curran said she could anticipate what the Ouija board was going to spell and by 1919 the pointer would just move aimlessly about the board. Patience Worth began to ‘dictate’ poetry and prose to Curran. Curran said,

“I am like a child with a magic picture book. Once I look upon it, all I have to do is to watch its pages open before me, and revel in their beauty and variety and novelty....When the poems come, there also appear before my eyes images of each successive symbol, as the words are given me....When the stories come, the scenes become panoramic, with the characters moving and acting their parts, even speaking in converse. The picture is not confined to the point narrated, but takes in everything else within the circle of vision at the time....If the people talk a foreign language, as in The Sorry Tale, I hear the talk, but over and above is the voice of Patience, either interpreting or giving me the part she wishes to use as story."

Pearl Curran went on to describe her association with Patience Worth as "one of the most beautiful that can be the privilege of a human being to experience." Pearl and Patience together wrote several novels including Telka, The Sorry Tale, Hope Trueblood, The Pot upon the Wheel, Samuel Wheaton, An Elizabethan Mask, as well as several short stories and many poems.

The writer of a book entitled Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery claimed that origin of the language used in the Patience Worth historical novels was 90 percent Anglo-Saxon and 10 percent old French, both languages Pearl Curran did not know.

An investigation of the case was conducted by Dr. Walter Franklin Prince who published in 1927 his book The Case of Patience Worth. A report of 509 pages describing the Patience Worth case from its inception in 1913 to about 1927 when his book was published by the Boston Society for Psychic Research. As part of his investigation Prince wrote an article entitled "The Riddle of Patience Worth," which appeared in the July 1926 issue of Scientific American. In it he requested anyone with information, (presumably discrediting Pearl Curran) bearing on the case, to contact him; no one ever did.

No authenticated documentation has ever been found to indicate that someone named Patience Worth had lived in Dorsetshire England during the later 17th century, nor are there any ship logs from that period with the name Patience Worth. The name Patience Worth does occur in census data of early settlers of the United States but none of them has been linked to the Patience Worth of Pearl Curran.

However, most people agree that Pearl Curran, a woman with an undeveloped education, no imagination and no ambitions could not have written the prose and poetry by herself. So the question remains, did she have help, (I mean help from a living person), and if she did, who was it, or was Pearl Curran actually in touch with a spirit from the 17th century?

Following are two examples of the poetry of Patience Worth.

A MESSAGE

Be there aught sae wondrous

As a cup of communion? as a cup of fellowship?

Be there aught sae wondrous to a wench

As a right to wield her tongue, and good listeners?

Be there aught sae wondrous as the fact

That we may never, never, in the days to come, be separate?

For I have become a part of thee, and thou hast become a part of me!

This is an holy sacrament!

KNOWING THEE

Beloved, I do not believe that I

Might know God's mercy so intimately,

Save that I had known---thee!

I do not believe that my soul

Might have been so deep, so pit-like deep,

Had I not known and contained---thee!

Beloved, I might not hope---

Had I not heard thy pledge!

Nor could I have believed,

Save that I had believed in thee!

I could not believe that I

Might comprehend eternity,

Save that I had known thy limitless love!

Surely, Thou art the symbol of my New Day---

Wherein I might read

The record of my eternity!