Loki: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 5
By Mike McNulty
USS Eldridge
As part of their desperate plan to attack and kill Alioth, Loki, Kid Loki, Gator Loki, and Classic Loki allow a recently pruned Naval destroyer to be attacked in the hopes this will distract the killer cloud monster. It’s not just any Naval destroyer, though. The ship in question, as we see on the side, is the USS Eldridge, the subject of what some believe is proof of a vast government conspiracy or a colossal hoax.
On October 23, 1943, the Eldridge was supposedly docked in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard when, suddenly, it vanished. Then the Eldridge was spotted in New York, disappeared again, then reappeared back in Philadelphia. Other versions of the story claim that the Eldridge teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, then teleported back moments later. Supposedly, many of the sailors on board the ship became violently ill, or had gone completely insane. Others were literally fused with the ship itself and some were never seen again. Only this wasn’t some bizarre supernatural accident; this was some top secret military experiment gone awry.
Twelve years later, having read a book entitled The Case for the UFO by Morris K. Jessup, a Carlos Miguel Allende, a.k.a. Carl M. Allen, a.k.a. Carl Meredith Allen, wrote to Jessup claiming to have witnessed the disappearance of the Eldridge first hand. According to Allende, the Navy was conducting research into Albert Einstein’s unified field theory for the purposes of creating a cloaking device. However, due to a malfunction, the ship ended up traveling through time and space, encountering hostile aliens along the way. Even Jessup, who investigated and wrote books about UFO sightings, thought the story unbelievable. That is until, in 1957, Jessup received what he claimed were classified documents from the Office of Naval Research about the experiment.
Jessup planned to write a book about what happened to the Eldridge, only he ended up committing suicide. Some, however, believed he was actually murdered as part of a cover-up. And from there, what would become known as the Philadelphia Experiment grew in popularity among ufologists and conspiracy theorists as much Area 51 and the Roswell Incident. It became even more popularized when Hollywood got in on the act with the 1984 science fiction thriller, also called The Philadelphia Experiment. It even got a sequel and a made-for-TV remake.
It didn’t matter that the Navy denied that any such experiment ever took place. Or that no one could corroborate Allande’s testimony, and that Allande himself had a history of mental illness. Or that the both ship’s logs and the crewmembers themselves state that the Eldridge never docked in Philadelphia on the date in question. There’s just no getting rid of a good conspiracy theory or urban legend.