Skip to content
From the High Desert book cover

From the High Desert

A Cultural History of Art Bell

Thumbnail for January 28, 2002: Hutchison Effect - John Hutchison

January 28, 2002: Hutchison Effect - John Hutchison

Jan 28, 2002
1h 50m
0:00 / 0:00
Art Bell speaks with Canadian inventor John Hutchison about the Hutchison Effect, a collection of anomalous phenomena discovered in 1979 while experimenting with Nikola Tesla's longitudinal wave technology. Using Tesla coils, Van de Graaff generators producing up to two million volts, and RF generators at 455 kilohertz, Hutchison produced effects including the levitation of objects up to 1,500 pounds, metals turning transparent or jelly-like, and the spontaneous fracturing of steel from the inside out.

Video footage on Art's website shows wrenches rocketing off tables, water being pulled upward from dishes, and a knife fused partway into a solid metal slab. Hutchison explains that the combined electromagnetic fields appear to open an interdimensional gateway disrupting gravity and possibly time. The effects were documented by Boeing scientists, analyzed at Los Alamos National Laboratory where the footage was confirmed authentic, and studied by Germany's Max Planck Institute. Background radiation reportedly dropped to near zero during active experiments.

Hutchison recounts how the Canadian government seized his equipment under the pretense of PCB contamination when he attempted to ship it to European researchers. Colonel John Alexander confirmed the phenomena on television, and Jane's Defence Weekly aviation editor Nick Cook revealed in his book on black budget programs that Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works had obtained Hutchison Effect documentation.

Key Moments

  1. The whole building disappeared: Hutchison says that in 1987, while running fine-tuned Philadelphia-Experiment-style frequencies, an insurance agent arrived and reported the laboratory simply was not there - only an empty lot.

  2. Wrenches that fly straight off the table: Hutchison and Bell discuss the laboratory video where a solid metal wrench rockets straight up out of camera range, alongside other heavy objects, in a sub-basement target zone.

  3. 22 tons of scrapyard Tesla gear: Hutchison details the lab: a million-volt Tesla coil, two million-volt electrostatic unit, Army-surplus radar, magnetron - totaling 22 tons of equipment built largely from Canadian scrapyard donations.

  4. Shaking a telephone pole from inside the lab: A fast blast prompts Hutchison to confirm a story: while warming up his rig in Burnaby, he saw an outside telephone pole moving three feet side to side; killing the breakers stopped it.

  5. Los Alamos, Star Wars, and 'Bad Bob': Hutchison's collaborator describes a Pentagon-tied evaluation tied to Reagan's Star Wars; one general wanted to brief the President while a security-obsessed 'Bad Bob' Freiburg pushed to shut the project down.