The story goes that in 1955, Allen read a copy of Morris K. Jessup’s book “The Case for the UFO: Unidentified Flying Object,” a case study on real-life UFO encounters. Allen evidently wrote notes in the margins of the book, referring to multiple people he had been talking with (one was named “Jemi”) about alien propulsion technologies. The notes alleged that Jessup was really close to discovering the truth about aliens. The notes also talked about various alien species that had come into contact with humans.
Some of the notes alluded to the disappearing ship back in 1943, when Allen was stationed on board the S.S. Andrew Furuseth. Allen says he witnessed the Eldridge disappear for several moments before reappearing. He alleged that the ship had not merely turned invisible, but was temporarily teleported to Norfolk, Virginia. The part of Allen’s papers that bears the closest resemblance to “Død Kalm” was the claim that the sailors on board the Eldridge began suffering from eerie side effects after having been teleported. Some of them, he said, had become frozen in time, while others remained slightly “faded” out of reality.
Allen mailed his marked-up copy of Jessup’s book to the Office of Naval Research. In 1957, Jessup was invited to look at the book, and he recognized the handwriting. It seems he had been getting UFO-related letters for years from a man named “Carlos Miguel Allende,” alleging similar things as the notes in his book. Allende was an alias adopted by Allen. It seems obvious now, right?
The book might have been dismissed, but a nascent mimeographic company started making copies, and the conspiracy began to proliferate. Prior to mimeographing, copies had to be re-typed or re-printed. Now, Allen’s handwritten notes could be easily duplicated.