The Montauk
Project
At the eastern tip of Long Island, a giant radar dish stands over the trees, rusting. The Air Force base it belonged to closed in 1981. According to a book published eleven years later, what happened under it was far stranger than radar: mind control, missing boys, and .12
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Six things people say about Montauk and Camp Hero. Some are on the record. Some are rumor, and one is a bit of both. Sort them, then see what the record says.
A fort dressed as a village
The Army built Camp Hero in 1942 on the point just south of the Montauk lighthouse, to guard the sea approaches to New York. To fool enemy bombers and spies, the whole base was built to look like a New England fishing village. Behind the disguise were four 16-inch naval guns in concrete bunkers.23
After the war, the guns gave way to radar. The base joined the SAGE air defense network in 1958, and in December 1960 a huge AN/FPS-35 radar went into operation, watching for Soviet bombers.2
The Air Force shut the station down on January 31, 1981. Much of the land went to New York State, and Camp Hero State Park opened on September 18, 2002.23 The radar tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places that year.5
The book
In 1992, Preston Nichols and Peter Moon published The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time. The authors said it was based on memories of abduction and experiments that had been repressed and later recovered.1
The book's claims grew wilder page by page. It describes runaway boys taken to the base for mind control, people exposed to heavy radiation, time travel to change history, and a monster that came through a time tunnel and destroyed the equipment.1
The book itself hedged: "Whether you read this as science fiction or non-fiction you are in for an amazing story."1 Four sequels followed by 1998.1
The ship from 1943
The Montauk story grew out of an older legend. The Philadelphia Experiment says that around October 28, 1943, the Navy made the destroyer escort USS Eldridge invisible, or teleported it, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.7
That legend traces back to letters a man named Carl Allen wrote in 1956, signing some "Carlos Miguel Allende." In 1996, the Office of Naval Research said it "has never conducted investigations on radar invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time."7
In the Montauk version, two men, Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron, said they jumped from the Eldridge's deck in 1943 and landed at Camp Hero in 1983.1
Almost Montauk
The legend found its biggest audience by accident. When the Duffer brothers created Stranger Things, they first planned to set it in Montauk. Matt Duffer said they liked it "because we liked the coastal setting, and Montauk was the basis for Amity," the beach town in Jaws.8
Cast member Shannon Purser put it more simply: "Before it was Stranger Things, it was called Montauk."8 Filming on Long Island in winter looked too hard, so the show moved to an invented town in Indiana, with its own secret lab.8
Host"They hid it in plain sight once already"
Start with what nobody disputes. The military built an entire fake fishing village at Montauk so no one would know what was really there.2 Then it kept a giant radar running at the end of Long Island until 1981, decades into the space age.2 This is a place that was designed to fool people.
Now add the people. Nichols and Moon wrote down what they said they remembered.1 Two men said they'd been on the Eldridge and ended up at Camp Hero.1 You can call that fantasy. But the government built a disguise here, and more than one person says the disguise hid something worse than radar.
Host"One book, no records"
Every road in this story leads back to one book, built on memories its authors said they recovered years later.14 The book doesn't even ask you to believe it: it says you can read it "as science fiction."1
Meanwhile, the real base has a paper trail. Its radar dates, its squadrons and its closing day are all on the record.26 The ship at the root of the legend wasn't commissioned until August 1943, and the Navy says the experiment never happened.7 And a hidden base many levels deep would have to be dug into porous glacial soil with water just below.4
Rex and June are characters written for this site and appear in every file. They are not real people. Their arguments come from the sources listed below.
Then a monster washed up
In July 2008, a strange animal carcass was found on Ditch Plains beach in Montauk. A local paper ran it as "The Hound of Bonacville," and the website Gawker spread it widely as the Montauk Monster. People online linked it to the government animal disease lab on nearby Plum Island.9
Zoologist Darren Naish studied the photos and said it was a partially decomposed raccoon. "There is no doubt about this identification whatsoever," he wrote.10 The body was taken away and never tested.9
What happened at Camp Hero?
On film
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The file
Common questions
Was the Montauk Project real?
There's no evidence it was. The story comes from a 1992 book by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, which said it was based on recovered memories. The base itself, Camp Hero, was a real coastal fort and Air Force radar station.
What is Camp Hero?
A former military base at Montauk Point, New York. It opened in 1942 as a coastal defense fort disguised as a fishing village, later became an Air Force radar station, closed in 1981 and is now a state park.
Is Stranger Things based on the Montauk Project?
The show was first planned to be set in Montauk, and one cast member said its early title was "Montauk." Its creators have pointed to the coastal setting and Jaws, and the show moved to a fictional town in Indiana.
Can you visit Camp Hero?
Yes. Camp Hero State Park opened in 2002. The radar tower can be seen from the park, but parts of the old base are fenced off.
Other open files
Sources
- The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time (Wikipedia)
- Montauk Air Force Station (Wikipedia)
- Camp Hero State Park (Wikipedia)
- Episode 757: The Montauk Project (Skeptoid)
- Throwback Thursday: Montauk Tower No Mirage (Montauk Library, 2022)
- Montauk Air Force Station historical marker (Historical Marker Database)
- Philadelphia Experiment (Wikipedia)
- How Stranger Things got its title (Hawkins and Amity) (Inverse, 2017)
- The Montauk Monster legend endures 10 years after it broke the internet (Dan's Papers, 2018)
- Alien investigations and the Montauk Monster (Scientific American blogs)