The Project Pegasus Jump Room

The Project Pegasus Jump Room is one of the most elaborate portal claims in modern conspiracy culture. In its strongest form, it refers to a teleportation chamber that allegedly operated in El Segundo, California, and was used during the early 1980s to transport selected participants to Mars.

The story sits at the intersection of several overlapping myths:

Project Pegasus, the alleged DARPA-linked time-travel program that Andrew D. Basiago says he joined as a child in the late 1960s and early 1970s
the later CIA Mars visitation program that Basiago says followed it
the broader secret space program narrative
and the recurring esoteric idea that governments developed hidden portal technologies decades before the public was told anything remotely comparable was possible

Within this mythology, the jump room is not simply a device. It is a threshold chamber: a room or elevator-like compartment that changes shape, activates, and opens direct transport to another world.

That is why it belongs in an archive of alleged portals.

Quick claim summary

In the standard version of the claim:

Andrew Basiago says he first participated in Project Pegasus, a DARPA- and CIA-linked time-space program, as a child in the late 1960s and early 1970s
he later says he was recruited into a second, related program in the early 1980s involving teleportation to Mars
the transport system was allegedly a “jump room” located in or near a Hughes Aircraft building in El Segundo, California
participants allegedly trained in 1980 at the College of the Siskiyous under Major Ed Dames
missions then allegedly took place from roughly 1981 to 1984
Basiago and allied witnesses later claimed that some of the participants or trainees included William Stillings, Bernard Mendez, Regina Dugan, and even Barack Obama under the name “Barry Soetoro”
the purpose of the program was variously described as Mars acclimatization, establishing a human foothold, defense planning, and even helping create a basis for future U.S. sovereignty claims on Mars

That is the core portal claim.

Why this entry is different from a general Project Pegasus article

The term Project Pegasus is often used too broadly.

In Basiago’s own storytelling, there is an important distinction between:

the earlier time-travel and chronovision experiments he says he experienced as a child
and the later Mars jump room program he says took place in the early 1980s

That distinction matters because the jump room is not just another time-viewing technology. It is presented as a human transport portal.

Project Pegasus, in the broader sense, is the umbrella myth. The jump room is one of its most specific and concrete alleged gateway technologies.

Where the jump room story comes from

The jump room narrative is centered overwhelmingly on the testimony of Andrew D. Basiago and the network of alternative media, exopolitics writers, and fellow claimants who amplified his account.

The main streams of the story come from:

Basiago’s official Project Pegasus site
Exopolitics articles and interviews, especially those by Michael Salla
secondary retellings by Alfred Lambremont Webre and similar writers
podcasts, lectures, conference talks, and radio appearances
and later community discussion on forums and secret-space-program sites

The central pattern is consistent even when details vary:

Basiago claims child participation in a secret U.S. time program
he later claims adult or late-teen involvement in a Mars visitation program
the transport mechanism is identified as a jump room
the launch point is placed in El Segundo
and the destination is said to be Mars, not metaphorically but physically

This is what gives the story its unusual force. It is not vague. It is attached to a name, a city, a building type, a training site, a chronology, and a mission profile.

What was the jump room supposed to be?

In the lore, the jump room was a teleportation chamber capable of transporting people from Earth to Mars almost instantly.

It is often described in strikingly simple terms. According to one recurring version, participants would enter what looked like an ordinary room, elevator, or box-like enclosure inside a secure facility. During activation, the interior or enclosure would reportedly change state, sometimes described as morphing from a box into a cylinder, after which the travelers would emerge on Mars.

This simple image is one of the reasons the story became so memorable.

A lot of alleged portal technologies sound overcomplicated. The jump room sounds almost banal: enter a room, activate the device, step out somewhere else.

That banality makes it powerful as folklore. It feels like hidden infrastructure rather than mystical ritual.

Why it is called a “jump room”

The phrase jump room is itself revealing.

Unlike a “wormhole generator,” “stargate,” or “teleporter,” the term sounds almost casual, even bureaucratic. It suggests:

a practical device
a classified transport room
a technology used by insiders who treated extraordinary things as normal

That tone fits perfectly with black-project mythology. The portal is not wrapped in sacred language. It is hidden behind a drab internal label, like a piece of ordinary infrastructure in an intelligence or aerospace environment.

This is one reason the phrase has lasted so well in conspiracy culture.

The alleged El Segundo location

One of the strongest features of the jump room myth is that it is tied to a specific real-world area: El Segundo, California, near Los Angeles International Airport.

Basiago’s official site says he discussed trips taken to Mars from a jump room in El Segundo during 1981–83. Secondary retellings sharpen the claim by identifying a Hughes Aircraft building, often linked in fringe sources to 999 N. Sepulveda Boulevard.

That location matters because it gives the story a physical anchor.

Hughes Aircraft was a real and historically significant defense contractor, and Hughes did in fact operate major facilities in El Segundo for decades. Public historical material and environmental records confirm Hughes Aircraft’s substantial presence there. That does not validate the jump-room claim, but it does explain why El Segundo became so attractive to portal folklore.

A real aerospace-defense landscape gives the myth a convincing stage.

Hughes Aircraft and the site context

A good encyclopedia entry has to separate the documented location context from the portal claim.

The documented part is straightforward:

Hughes Aircraft was a major aerospace and defense contractor
it maintained facilities in El Segundo
those facilities were part of a wider Southern California defense and electronics landscape
and the area’s association with aerospace secrecy made it a natural magnet for later conspiracy storytelling

The jump room claim sits on top of that real industrial background.

This is a common pattern in black-project lore. The presence of a real defense contractor does not prove secret teleportation. But it supplies exactly the kind of atmosphere needed for a portal myth to thrive: restricted buildings, technical prestige, military contracts, and the sense that far more happened inside than the public ever knew.

How the jump room allegedly worked

Descriptions vary, but the claim usually contains several recurring elements.

1. Entry into a controlled chamber

Participants allegedly entered a room, chamber, or elevator-like compartment inside a secured facility.

2. Dimensional or energetic transformation

The chamber is sometimes described as changing geometrically, energetically, or perceptually. Some accounts describe a box becoming a cylinder or the room entering a different state before arrival.

3. Instant translation

Travel was allegedly not conventional spaceflight. Participants did not ride a rocket. They were said to be translated directly from Earth to Mars.

4. Surface exit on Mars

Travelers allegedly exited into a built environment or sheltered transfer area on Mars, often described as a crude or rudimentary U.S. facility or portal endpoint.

5. Repeat access

The system was supposedly used multiple times, making it feel less like a one-off anomaly and more like a hidden transportation network.

This is why the jump room is best understood as a portal chamber rather than just a teleportation theory in the abstract.

The 1980 training story

One of the most repeated parts of the lore is that future jump-room participants were trained in 1980 at the College of the Siskiyous near Mt. Shasta, California.

According to the Basiago-Stillings-Webre line of the story:

a group of teenagers underwent a factual seminar about Mars
the course was taught by Major Ed Dames
the purpose was to prepare them psychologically and practically for later visits
and some of those trained later used the jump room during missions from 1981 to 1983 or 1984

This training phase matters because it makes the jump room feel embedded in a system.

The story is not: someone discovered a magic portal. The story is: the U.S. government identified participants, trained them, briefed them, sent them, and monitored them.

That bureaucratic structure is one of the main reasons the myth feels so developed.

The alleged participants

The list of alleged jump-room participants varies by source, and this is one of the most contested parts of the story.

Names that recur in the lore include:

Andrew D. Basiago
William B. Stillings
Bernard Mendez
Regina Dugan
Barack Obama under the name “Barry Soetoro”
and, in some retellings, VIPs such as Admiral Stansfield Turner and Mary Jean Eisenhower

These claims became especially famous when alternative media framed the story as evidence that future political and intelligence elites had been selected or groomed through secret off-world programs.

This is where the jump-room myth became culturally explosive. It stopped being just about Mars and started becoming a theory of hidden elite formation.

Barack Obama and the jump room claim

No aspect of the story spread faster than the claim that Barack Obama was one of the Mars trainees or travelers.

This allegation entered broader internet culture through Basiago, Stillings, Exopolitics, and media reactions from outlets like Wired and Universe Today, which treated the idea as a spectacular conspiracy claim. In the lore, Obama supposedly appeared in the 1980 training cohort and was later encountered on Mars.

Historically, this matters less because it is credible and more because it reveals how portal folklore expands.

The jump room was no longer merely a secret device. It became a machine through which future presidents, intelligence figures, and national-security elites were supposedly shaped.

That escalation is a hallmark of modern conspiracy mythology.

What the missions were supposed to accomplish

The lore gives several different purposes for the jump-room missions.

These include:

familiarizing humans with Mars
familiarizing Martian life with human visitors
creating a foothold for a secret Mars presence
establishing defense awareness against off-world threats
and laying a civilian legal basis for future U.S. territorial claims

This mix of motives is one of the strangest and most revealing parts of the narrative.

The jump room story is not framed purely as scientific exploration. It is framed as a hybrid of:

intelligence mission
colonization prelude
biological acclimatization
and covert sovereignty planning

That combination makes it feel less like science fiction adventure and more like hidden imperial logistics.

“Be seen and not eaten”

One of the most memorable pieces of jump-room lore is the alleged training instruction that the travelers’ task was essentially to be seen and not eaten.

The phrase survives because it condenses the whole Mars story into something vivid and darkly absurd. In the lore, trainees were allegedly warned about Martian predators, survival conditions, and the risks of operating in a landscape that was already inhabited or at least biologically active.

This detail matters because it shows how the jump room myth differs from sterile teleportation fantasies.

It is not only about crossing the threshold. It is about what waits beyond the threshold.

That makes it a true portal story.

Was it really Mars, or something else?

Even inside believer circles, the jump room story contains an important ambiguity: were participants really going to Mars?

Some retellings suggest a more complicated possibility:

that the travelers truly reached Mars
that they reached a controlled simulation
or that they entered some kind of artificial planetary holographic domain used as cover for another classified operation

This is one of the most interesting features of the myth because it adds a second layer of uncertainty.

The jump room may be:

a portal to Mars
a portal to a fabricated Mars environment
or a portal story designed to hide a deeper portal story

That layered ambiguity helps keep the legend alive.

How the jump room relates to Project Pegasus

The connection between the jump room and Project Pegasus is one of lineage.

In Basiago’s narrative:

Project Pegasus was the earlier DARPA-linked time-space program
the jump room program was a later Mars-transport application
and the second program grew out of the first

That continuity is essential to the overall mythology. It means the jump room is not presented as a random CIA breakthrough. It is presented as the next phase of an already existing secret time-space capability.

In other words, the jump room is the operational, transport-oriented descendant of the experimental portal and chronovision technologies allegedly tested in Pegasus.

Why critics reject the claim

A serious encyclopedia entry has to address the skeptical side directly.

The main objections are substantial:

there is no accepted public evidence that a human teleportation chamber to Mars ever existed
the jump room story depends heavily on whistleblower-style testimony, alternative media, and conspiracy culture
many of the claims involve highly visible public figures and extraordinary events without corroborating documentary proof
public records confirm Hughes facilities in El Segundo, but not a Mars transport chamber
DARPA’s public mission history concerns high-risk defense research, but does not document a public teleportation program of this kind
later testimony summarized in public hearing materials notes that some insiders and researchers regarded Basiago’s claims as exaggerated, delusional, or unsupported

From a skeptical standpoint, the jump room is best understood as an unusually detailed portal myth built on real aerospace geography and a charismatic self-reported witness narrative.

Why the claim still survives

The Project Pegasus Jump Room survives because it delivers something many conspiracy stories only hint at: a usable portal.

It is not just a legend about hidden files, buried hardware, or suppressed research. It gives believers a complete picture:

a recruitment pipeline
a training school
a launch location
a portal chamber
an off-world destination
a mission doctrine
and a cast of future elites

That is an extraordinarily durable myth structure.

The jump room also solves a major imaginative problem in secret-space lore. Rockets are expensive, visible, and slow. A jump room bypasses all of that. It provides instant off-world access while preserving the feeling of government secrecy.

Why this case matters in portal folklore

The Project Pegasus Jump Room is important because it represents a distinctly modern kind of portal mythology.

Older portal stories involve:

caves
fairy mounds
sacred mountains
hidden valleys
and underworld entrances

The jump room updates that pattern for the military-technological age.

Now the portal is:

inside a defense contractor facility
controlled by intelligence-linked personnel
embedded in a bureaucratic program
and used for covert interplanetary logistics

That is a major transformation in the history of threshold myths.

The doorway is no longer a natural mystery. It is classified infrastructure.

Was the jump room really a portal?

That depends on the standard being used.

If “portal” means a publicly verified transport technology that moved human beings from Earth to Mars, there is no accepted evidence for that.

If “portal” means a chamber alleged to open direct threshold passage between one world and another, then the jump room is one of the clearest and most developed examples in all of secret-space folklore.

That is why it deserves its own entry.

Best internal linking targets

This page should later link strongly to:

/theories/project-pegasus-theory
/places/alleged-portals/montauk-time-tunnel
/places/alleged-portals/project-looking-glass-temporal-window
/technology/esoteric/jumpgate
/technology/esoteric/chronovisor
/technology/esoteric/project-pegasus-teleportation-device
/people/researchers/andrew-basiago
/people/researchers/william-b-stillings
/places/facilities/el-segundo-hughes-aircraft-site
/collections/deep-dives/secret-space-program-portals

Frequently asked questions

What was the Project Pegasus Jump Room?

It was an alleged teleportation chamber said to operate from El Segundo, California, transporting selected participants to Mars in the early 1980s.

Was the jump room part of Project Pegasus?

In Andrew Basiago’s narrative, yes in a broad sense. He presents it as a later Mars-transport phase that grew out of the earlier Project Pegasus time-space work.

Where was the jump room supposed to be located?

Most versions place it in or near a Hughes Aircraft building in El Segundo, California, near LAX.

How was it supposed to work?

Accounts vary, but the common description is that travelers entered an enclosed chamber or elevator-like room that changed state and then delivered them directly to Mars.

Who allegedly used it?

The recurring names in the lore include Andrew Basiago, William Stillings, Bernard Mendez, and, in more controversial retellings, Barack Obama and Regina Dugan.

What was the purpose of the missions?

Believers say the missions involved Mars acclimatization, secret-space-program development, defense planning, and possibly the creation of a legal basis for future U.S. claims on Mars.

Is there evidence a real jump room existed?

There is no accepted public evidence that a real human transport chamber to Mars existed. The story persists through witness testimony, alternative media, and conspiracy culture rather than public documentary confirmation.

Editorial note

This encyclopedia documents the Project Pegasus Jump Room as a major alleged portal claim in modern conspiracy and secret-space-program folklore. The claim is not important because it proves that the U.S. government built a functioning teleportation chamber to Mars. It is important because it provides one of the most complete modern portal myths in circulation: a story in which defense contractors, intelligence services, elite trainees, and off-world logistics are joined together by a hidden room that turns interplanetary travel into classified routine.

References

[1] Project Pegasus. “Project Pegasus – Home.”
https://www.projectpegasus.info/

[2] Project Pegasus official site references to Mars training and trips from a jump room in El Segundo, California.
https://www.projectpegasus.info/

[3] Michael Salla. “Project Pegasus & Time Travel: Interview with Andrew Basiago.” Exopolitics, 6 July 2022.
https://exopolitics.org/project-pegasus-time-travel/

[4] Michael Salla. “Jump Room to Mars – Training, Participants & Purpose.” Exopolitics, 6 September 2022.
https://exopolitics.org/jump-room-to-mars-training-participants-purpose/

[5] Michael Salla. “20 Jumpgate Missions to Mars & Corroborating NASA Images of Martian Life.” Exopolitics, 3 October 2022.
https://exopolitics.org/20-jumpgate-missions-to-mars-corroborating-nasa-images-of-martian-life/

[6] Alfred Lambremont Webre / repost at Golden Age of Gaia. “Mars Visitors Basiago and Stillings Confirm Barack Obama Traveled to Mars.” 10 November 2011.
https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/11/10/alfred-webre-mars-visitors-basiago-and-stillings-confirm-barack-obama-traveled-to-mars/

[7] AngelicView. “Andrew Basiago and the Jump Room To Mars.” 29 August 2013.
https://angelicview.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/andrew-basiago-and-the-jump-room-to-mars/

[8] Spencer Ackerman. “White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars.” Wired, 3 January 2012.
https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/

[9] Jason Major. “Beam Me Up, Obama: Conspiracy Theory Claims President Teleported to Mars.” Universe Today, 4 January 2012.
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/beam-me-up-obama-conspiracy-theory-claims-president-teleported-to-mars

[10] U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Michael Shellenberger, Written Testimony, 13 November 2024.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf

[11] DARPA. “About DARPA.”
https://www.darpa.mil/about

[12] Hughes Historic District. “Hughes Aircraft Company.”
https://www.hugheshistoric.com/hughes-aircraft-company/

[13] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO EL SEGUNDO SOUTH — CERCLA Site Information.”
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0903300