Weird Tales of Area 51

Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies

The U.S. government working to weaponize occult and supernatural phenomena right in the heart of Area 51? If you think it’s too far out, you just might be wrong. It all began in the latter part of the 1960s with one Dr.

Sydney Gottlieb. Having secured a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in the 1940s, Gottleib, in 1951, was offered the position of head of the Chemical Division of the CIA’s Technical Services Staff. Mind control, hypnosis, manipulation of the human mind, and nurturing of “Manchurian Candidate”-style figures were very much the order of the day. It was work that Gottlieb dedicated himself to for years. In 1968, however, life and work changed significantly for Gottlieb. Welcome to the world of Operation Often.

Without a doubt the brainchild of Gottlieb, Operation Often was kick- started thanks to the then-director of the CIA, Richard Helms. Gottlieb very quickly convinced Helms that the CIA should explore the fields of the paranormal, the demonic, and the occult to determine if, and how, they could be used against the likes of the former Soviet Union and the Chinese. An initial grant of $150,000 was quickly provided. Investigative writer Gordon Thomas says: “Operation Often was intended … to explore the world of black magic and the supernatural.” It did precisely that.

In no time at all, Operation Often became something of a secret order, one that was dominated by disturbing phenomena, the study of ancient and priceless books on the occult, and a long list of notable characters. As evidence of this, the personnel on-board with Operation Often were soon mixing with (among many others) fortune tellers, mediums, psychics, demonologists, astrologers, Satanists, clairvoyants, and even those who practiced sacrificial rituals, such as the followers of Santeria.

In essence, Gottlieb and his team were looking to hit and pummel the Russians and the Chinese with hexes, curses, bad luck, ill health, and even death —all by engaging in Faustian-like pacts with paranormal entities from dark and disturbing dimensions beyond ours. Volunteers on the program were placed into altered states of mind in the hope that doing so might provoke out-of-body experiences that then would allow mind-to-mind contact with anything and everything that might be on the other side, such as demons, devils, and who knows what else.

To what extent the program worked is open to debate not because the data is sketchy but rather because the data and the results of the work of Operation Often remain classified—decades after the program was initiated in the late 1960s. This begs an important question: if Operation Often achieved nothing of significance, why not let us know? Where’s the harm in that? The fact that the CIA flatly refuses to release its files on the project strongly suggests that some success—maybe even a great deal of success—was achieved. Of course, dealing with the Devil always results in a price. Perhaps the nature of that price remains classified, too.

While the official line is that the program fizzled out in the early to mid- 1970s, persistent rumors suggest that having originally operated out of CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, up until 1974, the program was secretly relocated to Area 51 in that same year. Notably, Gottlieb—who died in 1999— had a working relationship with none other than Edward Teller, who, as we have seen, pops up in the story of Area 51 from time to time to a significant degree.

Attempts to secure documents on the Gottlieb–Teller connections under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act have not yielded anything. On more than a few occasions, I have been the recipient of fantastic accounts of a mind-blowing nature. The problem, however, is that no matter how deeply I pursued the relevant story, I reached nothing but an endless brick wall, so I figured that I would share with you one of those cases—right here, right now. Of course, I can’t say for sure that it isn’t the work of nothing but a fantasist or a hoaxer, one with an agenda of the very obscure kind, but by at least putting the data out there, I also figure it may well provoke debate.

It’s a story that was told to me in 2012, which focuses on the not- insignificant matter of immortality. We all want to live forever, right? Well, yes, we do, providing, of course, that we can remain at the age of our choosing and not spend our days forever locked into an extremely elderly, decrepit mode. As for the story, it was all focused on a hush-hush program that was run out of a particular facility in Utah, that is, until 2004, when it was reportedly moved to Area 51.