Carl M. Allen / 'Carlos Allende' (Philadelphia hoax origin).
documentedsource_actorBlack-Project Lore
Troubled ex-merchant-mariner whose ~1955 annotated-book letters to the Navy originated the Philadelphia Experiment hoax; repeatedly confessed it.
Carl Meredith Allen of New Kensington, PA -- with a documented psychiatric history -- wrote the Philadelphia Experiment tale in the margins of Morris Jessup's 'The Case for the UFO' and mailed it to the Office of Naval Research (~1955) under the alias 'Carlos Allende,' claiming Einstein personally tutored him on invisibility. He had a habit of asserting the story then declaring it a hoax. Robert Goerman identified him after a few phone calls (Fate, 1980), and he told William Moore his confession was made expecting financial gain. He is the single origin point of the legend.