Christopher Garetano interview: What lies beneath Strange World

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Host Christopher Garetano looking at camera, background in the image shows Palm Springs with mountains, as seen on Travel Channel’s Strange World. /

Christopher Garetano is the host and creator of Strange World on Travel Channel. We sat down with him at 1428 Elm to delve into all the weirdness that lies just beneath the surface. Join us.

Christopher Garetano is an independent filmmaker who is renowned for his coverage on the ominously mysterious Montauk Project. Currently, he is the host and the creator of Travel Channel’s Strange World. A triple threat, writer/producer/director, Garetano is not afraid to explore the fringe.

We had been looking forward to chatting with the host about all things weird and what lies beneath our seemingly normal existence. Join us as we enter his Strange World…

It All Began on Montauk

1428 Elm: In 2005, you had a very successful documentary, Horror Business where you chronicled the lives of 5 indie horror professionals including the legendary Herschell Gordon Lewis, Joe Bob Briggs and Sid Haig. Then a decade later, you struck gold with Montauk Chronicles. This film was ground zero so to speak in terms of your career. What fascinated you about Camp Hero?

Christopher Garetano: My family would go to Montauk for summer vacation. We spent two weeks there so we would go to the beach or we would go camping. I was a little kid just collecting shells on Montauk Point walking down the shore and I ran into a military guard. Then all of these barrier things that resembled WWII structures.

The guard came up to me and told me I had to go the other way. That weird object in the middle of a pleasant summer town where everyone was just on the beach having fun, going to restaurants or the movie theater, then all of a sudden there’s this major mystery!

This was way before the books came out, way before I heard of Preston Nichols. I was a little kid who was confronted by a guard so that stayed in my mind always. And then much later when the book came out, I started to recall that memory. Thinking back to it and realizing there was a base there.

I didn’t really think much about it after that and when we went to Montauk, I knew it was there and I knew it was restricted so I kept away.

1428 Elm: Not everyone was aware of what allegedly went on at Camp Hero. Did anything strange happen to you when you were filming Montauk Chronicles?

Christopher Garetano: In terms of somebody trying to hush me? Prevent me from going any further?

1428 Elm: Yes.

Christopher Garetano: Odd behavior would occur at the base every time I tried to conduct a new investigation. So, when I was making Montauk Chronicles, I was by myself. I was very covert. I was there at 2 in the morning in February in the snow, shooting sometimes.

They didn’t really notice me. However, when we brought the crew over from the History Channel and Dark Files, and we brought astrophysicists there that’s when they started to notice.

We actually had equipment that could see underneath the ground. That’s when some really weird stuff started happening. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers after 13 years of not conducting any operations there showed up on a cold, winter day in droves. 40 different scientists and engineers, everybody’s just there doing something like drilling.

This weird operation just happened to be on the same exact day that we had our permit set for us to look at the ground. It was too coincidental.

1428 Elm: Well, definitely!

Christopher Garetano: There was always this weird distraction on the part of the gentleman who runs the parks over there. He was nervous, pulling up in his car, yelling at us…this is a professional outfit, a network that has permits to just talk about this idea and he’s nervous! We have to question those things.

I do believe something happened there and I do believe people are trying to cover it up. I suspect they’re very nervous because I have said many times on the radio and in interviews the only way to go forward on this is to bring geophysical equipment there that can see underneath the ground and prove first that there is a base.

A giant structure underneath the ground that has been denied for many years. Start there.

Brian Minnick’s evidence of the acid houses that he had from when he was a kid walking around goofing off at the base, that stuff’s priceless as well because those structures aren’t there anymore. And his footage of a lot of the entrances to the underground tunnels…you know those things might be normal protocol. But the acid houses…the way those rooms are painted were very curious.

We even brought them up to some of the people who worked with Timothy Leary. One of the scientists did confirm that some of those patterns were in line with some of their experiments.

Leary did work with MKUltra scientists. There’s video of him chumming it up with those guys, reminiscing about different experiments they worked on.

I believe Leary may have been a plant to bring LSD to the “Love Generation” and shatter that resistance. There is a lot of speculation about that.

1428 Elm: Weren’t the experiments with LSD trying to create super soldiers? What do you think the objective was at Camp Hero?

Christopher Garetano: It was a variety of psychedelic drugs that they used but I think that was a method to break down the mind of the subject. Shatter the mind of the subject and during those sessions they could plant suggested ideas and triggering mechanisms.

This was proven by Alan Hornblum who wrote Acres of Skin. He proved that there were pharmaceutical tests done on prisoners at Holmesburg State Prison as well as mind control tests. This has been documented and proven.

If a person doubts that these things happened, please do some research and understand that they have already been proven.

If they were happening in other places it was very likely it was happening in Montauk. To deny it is presumptuous and ignorant to what has happened throughout history.