Montauk, N.Y., was once home to a radar dish intended to detect Soviet missiles. Computer technology rendered the device obsolete and its use was discontinued in 1969. Authorities fenced off the dish site and made the surrounding area a state park.

The federal government donated the land to New York, with the stipulation that the feds “retain the rights to everything beneath the surface and the right to reoccupy the land if made necessary by a matter of national security.” Conspiracy theorists are adept at filling in the blanks, and putting this one-sentence statement on a page would leave  almost nothing but blanks, so there was plenty of room to scribble away.

Therefore, the Montauk Project became credited with time and interdimensional travel and a psychic ability to manifest objects, which in an extreme case produced an angry Yeti who ran amok, possibly with machetes.

There have also been alien visitors, some of whom were lost and others who were recruited, with there being conflicting reports on whether that’s a euphemism for kidnapped. Then there’s teleportation and a particle accelerator that occupies about one percent of the space that would normally be necessary for a device. Perhaps this is a sign of Montauk’s futuristic technology, much as how computers that once filled a large room can now fit in your hand.

The project has also managed the bending of space, including a large bubble of space-time at the site’s center site. There is also a pyramid of pure titanium constructed for unclear purposes. Some say it was where the moon landing was faked, which seems a supremely underwhelming claim to make considering what else was going on there. It would seem that all this super-advanced and alien technology could easily manage a moon landing, if not continued travel to Pluto or even Andromeda. The project is also responsible for subliminal messaging READ MY BLOG that actually works READ MY BLOG. And it’s all run by Nikolai Tesla, who either rose from the dead or who never died, in either case owing to technology he created. Screw you, Edison

This all began when the United States liberated France and began shuttling away Wernher von Braun and other German scientists in Operation Paperclip. Around the same time, low-ranking U.S. soldiers stumbled upon trainload of Nazi gold in Paris. When their commanders found out, they killed the soldiers, kept the precious metal for themselves, and used it to start funding the Montauk Project. They lobbied Congress for more funds, which was denied. The Department of Defense then secretly diverted money to the project, which means Congress would had to have lost track of billions of dollars. (This is the one part of the tale that seems plausible).

In 1983, Tesla and Co. encountered two men from aboard the USS Eldridge of Philadelphia Experiment fame. When the battleship disappeared, it got stuck in hyperspace and transported Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron to Montauk, where they encountered physicist and mathematician John von Neumann, 26 years after his supposed death. This is according to Bielek and Cameron, although von Neumann has yet to corroborate.

The Eldridge was not the only transport device to get sucked to southern Long Island. Flying saucers observing the Philadelphia Experiment ran into a time warp and endued up at Montauk, where they demanded a large quartz crystal to restart their spaceship’s engine, lest everyone find themselves on the business end of a ray gun. The quartz was obtained by time traveling to another planet.

The facility was expanded to 12 levels and several hundred workers. No person or equipment is ever seen going from the facility, which is either a fatal blow against the conspiracy theory or evidence of that inhabitants have indeed conquered time and interdimensional travel.

They have also engaged in mind control experiments on orphans, spawned an authentic Jersey Devil, and created AIDS. Despite these abominations, that project has not been entirely malevolent. The South won the Civil War, but workers form Montauk traveled back in time to change that. Stonewall Jackson was no match for M1 Abrams, black helicopters, and technology purloined from the 25^th Century.

The story had largely faded from conspiracy lore until an unknown animal or replication thereof washed ashore in 2008, and was dubbed the Montauk Monster. What kind of animal it was, or even if it was real, was never determined. Photos were taken of it, but the carcass/stuffed animal disappeared. The animal was featured on Ancient Aliens despite it being neither of those things.

Some zoologists thought it was fake, though most suspected it was a raccoon whose decidedly un-raccoon appearance was the result of decomposition from prolonged water submersion. To theorists, however, it was an escaped chimera from the Montauk laboratory. Perhaps even a descendant of the psychically-created, machete-wielding Yeti.

Most of this comes from the imagination or repressed memories of Preston Nichols and Peter Moon. The introduction to their book “The Montauk Project: Experiment in Time,” at least admits the claims are not backed by hard evidence. With 90 percent conviction, however, the authors say the book is true. They do add that it can be enjoyed as either fiction or nonfiction, which requires the generous concession that the book would be enjoyed at all.