Famous inventor Nikola Tesla was known for the massive wealth of knowledge he produced in his lifetime with regard to the understanding of electricity. Even today, many still believe that Tesla probably had a potential for knowledge of how electricity and radio work that could rival the best experts living now. But is there evidence that Tesla involved himself in other, even stranger studies?

To describe anything Tesla might have done as “strange” isn’t too great a stride for most, seeing as how conspiracies involving Tesla’s involvement with the infamous Philadelphia Experiment, or even rumors of “death rays” and electric spacecraft have proliferated for decades. With the majority of his notes and work tucked away nicely at the bottom of some unknown Federal file cabinet, it is likely that we’ll never know the complete story. However, as indicated in the Collier’s Weekly periodical in March of 1901, it seems we were indeed made privy to at least one interesting facet of his work which begs further explanation: communication with other planets.

Tesla’s interview reads as follows:

“As I was improving my machines for the production of intense electrical actions, I was also perfecting the means for observing feeble efforts. One of the most interesting results, and also one of great practical importance, was the development of certain contrivances for indicating at a distance of many hundred miles an approaching storm, its direction, speed and distance traveled….

“It was in carrying on this work that for the first time I discovered those mysterious effects which have elicited such unusual interest. I had perfected the apparatus referred to so far that from my laboratory in the Colorado mountains I could feel the pulse of the globe, as it were, noting every electrical change that occurred within a radius of eleven hundred miles.

“I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind. I felt as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth…. My first observations positively terrified me, as there was present in them something mysterious, not to say supernatural, and I was alone in my laboratory at night; but at that time the idea of these disturbances being intelligently controlled signals did not yet present itself to me.

The changes I noted were taking place periodically and with such a clear suggestion of number and order that they were not traceable to any cause known to me. I was familiar, of course, with such electrical disturbances as are produced by the sun, Aurora Borealis, and earth currents, and I was as sure as I could be of any fact that these variations were due to none of these causes. The nature of my experiments precluded the possibility of the changes being produced by atmospheric disturbances, as has been rashly asserted by some.

It was sometime afterward when the thought flashed upon my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to an intelligent control. Although I could not decipher their meaning, it was impossible for me to think of them as having been entirely accidental. The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. A purpose was behind these electrical signals….”

Indeed, Tesla’s discoveries sound fantastic. Had he actually stumbled upon radio transmissions from deep space Initially believing the signals to be Martian in origin, more modern research has suggested that Tesla’s understanding of the new technology he was working with was flawed, or that the signals Tesla observed may have stemmed from a natural radio source like the Jovian plasma torus signals. Regardless, later in life Tesla would postulate other ways in which humans may be capable of communicating with extraterrestrials, or even ultraterrestrials (beings from parallel dimensions). Tesla was said to have held the belief that if one were to stand in close enough proximity to high-voltage Tesla coils, it could present a sort of rent in the fabric of space, which might allow perception of other worlds.

Furthermore, Tesla even supposed that things we might not consider particularly “life-like” at a glance could be traits exhibited by foreign life forms. Along these lines, Tesla stated “I think it quite possible that in a frozen planet, such as our moon is supposed to be, intelligent beings may still dwell, in its interior, if not on its surface.” Do the existing (available) remnants of Tesla’s work, as well as this fascinating account detailed above, indicate that Tesla might have been one of the first to ever communicate regularly with space aliens via technological means?