Merchant mariner who, writing as 'Carlos Allende'/'Carlos Miguel Allende', sent letters to astronomer Morris K. Jessup in 1955-56 describing an alleged Navy invisibility and teleportation experiment. His account, and annotations in matching handwriting mailed to the Office of Naval Research, became the basis of Philadelphia Experiment lore; he admitted fabricating the material more than once, then retracted the admissions.
Carl Meredith Allen was born in 1925 in Springdale, Pennsylvania, served briefly in the U.S. Marine Corps, then in the U.S. Merchant Marine from 1942 to 1952, including aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth. In 1955-56, writing under aliases including Carlos Miguel Allende, he sent Morris K. Jessup a series of letters claiming to have witnessed a 1943 Navy experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard that rendered a destroyer escort invisible and briefly teleported it to Norfolk, Virginia, describing severe effects on the crew. A copy of Jessup's book annotated in matching handwriting was separately mailed to the Office of Naval Research and later reproduced as the 'Varo edition,' which became foundational to Philadelphia Experiment literature. Allen told researchers in 1969 that he wrote the letters and annotations 'to scare the hell out of Jessup,' then later retracted that admission. He died in Greeley, Colorado, in 1994; a 1980 FATE magazine investigation by Robert Goerman documented a history of psychiatric hospitalization predating the correspondence.