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Stranger Things' true story is based on a mind-blowing CIA experiment

Grab some Eggos and settle in.

Grab yourself a slurpee and settle in for a weird conspiracy story that will blow your curiosity door wide open.

Back when Stranger Things first flipped our worlds with its Netflix debut in 2016, show creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained to Rolling Stone : "We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way."

To achieve this, they threaded a real government project called MKUltra into the storyline of season one, which formed the basis of Dr Brenner's experiments on Eleven.

On the show, Eleven's mother is actually one of the MKUltra test subjects and while she was pregnant, Brenner used LSD and sensory deprivation to experiment on her, unwittingly imbuing Eleven with psychic gifts.

In real life, the MKUltra project was created by the CIA in 1953 with the aim of developing mind-control techniques that could give America an advantage against Russia in the Cold War. Yes, really. Some details were later revealed in declassified CIA documents .

What started out as a volunteer-based program soon evolved into something far more sinister: unwitting participants were subjected to physical and mental abuse via psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation and other experimental means.

One particular experiment, Operation Midnight Climax, even surreptitiously tested the effects of LSD on men who visited brothels set up within agency safehouses in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Stranger things, indeed.

The dangerous nature of this research eventually led to the project's shutdown in 1965, and although many of the relevant documents were later destroyed, enough information leaked out to later inspire the shady going-ons at Stranger Things ' Hawkins National Laboratory.

As if that wasn't crazy enough, the Duffer Brothers also drew inspiration from a government conspiracy called the Montauk Project that's wilder than Steve's hair and Billy's mullet combined.

While there's far less proof to suggest that this particular line of research was even real, the show's creators still took the stories surrounding it to heart. In fact, Stranger Things was even going to be called 'Montauk' at one point, and in hindsight, it's easy to see how the show directly lifts a number of its crazier ideas from this project.

Grab some Eggos and settle down, because this is where things get really weird.

According to the conspiracy, a number of questionable experiments were conducted in the Montauk, New York area during the 1980s.

Reports from a man named Alfred Bielek who was apparently involved suggest that these experiments accidentally opened a hole in hyperspace between Montauk in 1983 and the year 1943 – which, he alleges , threatened to "engulf part of the planet". Only by destroying all of the equipment could Bielek and his brother Duncan save the world. (Some of his account picks up the story of the speculative sci-fi conspiracy movie The Philadelphia Experiment ).

As bizarre as that sounds, it's easy to see the parallels between the conspiracy theory and Stranger Things . While time travel hasn't been incorporated into the show, the experiments on Eleven rip a hole in space which goes on to infect the town of Hawkins. To stop this, El and her new-found friends close the gate to save Hawkins from destruction.

That's not all, though.

Bielek went on to claim that his brother began to age rapidly thanks to the accident somehow. Only by travelling back in time to convince their parents to have another son could they keep Duncan alive, transferring his soul into the new brother's body.

He also claims he can recall memories of life in the 28th century , so make of that what you will.

Following this 'procedure', Duncan began to exhibit incredible psychic powers, because, well, it's never really explained why.

However, Preston B Nichols – who claims to have repressed memories of the Montauk Project – has since written a book called The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time , which discusses this phenomena in more detail.

According to him, Duncan used a device known as the Montauk Chair to strengthen his abilities to the point where he could even materialise objects out of thin air.

While Eleven isn't quite that strong on Stranger Things , she has a number of parallels with Nichols' account of Duncan and the Montauk Chair, including the ability to visit other planes of existence through sensory deprivation and even open inter-dimensional portals.

And just like Eleven, Nichols' account claims Duncan supposedly brought a monster into our world, too.

Referred to as the "Beast" by Nichols, the alien creature appeared after he and other colleagues "decided we'd had enough of the whole experiment". At this moment, according to Nichols, Duncan "let loose a monster from his subconscious," which could only be defeated once all of the equipment in Camp Hero was destroyed.

Sound familiar? This idea has cropped up in Stranger Things more often than the Demogorgon itself, so it's no wonder that the Duffer Brothers originally wanted to name the show after Montauk.

While it's been confirmed that the MKUltra project did exist, plenty of experts have their doubts still when it comes to the Montauk Project.

Whether these reports are true or not, it's fascinating to see how much they inspired Stranger Things . Just don't expect Eleven to time travel or head off into space anytime soon. Hawkins still needs her .

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Stranger Things is based on a terrifying real-life CIA experiment

8 July 2022, 12:05

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By Sam Prance

Ever heard of Project MKUltra or The Montauk Project? There's actually more truth to Stranger Things than you may think.

Stranger Things might be a supernatural drama but the beloved series is based on a CIA experiment that actually happened.

There's no denying that Stranger Things is one of the biggest series in the entire world right now. Ever since the first season came out in 2016, fans haven't been able to get enough of Hawkins and the supernatural antics that happen there. In fact, the show is so popular that Stranger Things 4 is responsible for sending Kate Bush to the top of the charts in 2022.

READ MORE: Stranger Things creators confirm Max is now braindead and blind

However, what fans may not realise, is that there's an element of truth to the show and the real story behind it is horrifying.

Is Stranger Things based on a true story?

Don't worry! Vecna isn't real and there's no chance of you being sent to The Upside Down...as far as we know. However, the show does take inspiration from a real-life CIA experiment. Chatting to Rolling Stone in 2016, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained: "We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way."

The brothers then confirmed that Dr. Brenner's experiments on Eleven were inspired by a real, illegal human experimentation program named Project MKUltra. Project MKUltra was conducted by the CIA between the 1950s and the 1970s in a bid to develop mind control techniques to help the Americans beat the Russians during the Cold War.

People originally volunteered to take part in the program. However, as time passed, people were taken into it without their consent and abused both mentally and physically. Participants were often deprived of sleep and forced to take drugs like LSD. It goes without saying that the experiments violated multiple human rights.

MKUltra was officially shut down in 1973 but it was brought to public attention in 1975 after declassified CIA documents began leaking. In other words, while the Project MKUltra experiments didn't give anyone real powers of telekinesis like Eleven, the origins behind the story of Stranger Things aren't so farfetched.

In fact, in season 1 we learn that Eleven's mother was actually an MKUltra test subject when she was pregnant with her. Brenner's experiments on her mother, unwittingly gave Eleven her powers.

The series is also partly inspired by another government conspiracy called The Montauk Project. While there's less physical proof to support it, many people believe that the government held human experiments, similar to those shown in Stranger Things , at a military base called Camp Hero in Montauk, Long Island in the 1980s.

Over the years there have been several books and documentaries inspired The Montauk Project. In 2011, a documentary called Montauk Chronicles was released and it featured interviews with three men who say they were brainwashed and forced into secret government experiments at Camp Hero in Montauk.

The official synopsis of the film reads: " Alfred Bielek, Stewart Swerdlow, And Preston Nichols all tell tales of experiments that were conducted on nearly one hundred thousand people over the course of about ten years. Kidnappings, murder, torture, time travel, mind control, and extra terrestrial contact are all said to have occurred at Camp Hero."

Stranger Things was actually originally titled Montauk and set around Camp Hero but the Duffer Brothers later relocated it to Hawkins, Indiana. So, while there may not have actually been any children with telekinetic powers like Eleven in the 1980s, there is an element of truth behind Stranger Things .

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‘Stranger Things’: The Secret CIA Programs That Inspired Hit Series

By Cady Drell

The hit Netflix series Stranger Things was clearly influenced by Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, with a heaping helping of The X-Files and Twin Peaks thrown in for good measure. But some of its creepiest source material comes from the real world. Past the plot points about the Upside-Down and the slime monsters among us are references to government mind-control programs and covert experiments in telepathy that actually took place in the U.S. throughout the 20th century – like MKUltra and Stargate Project.

In an interview with Rolling Stone , Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers behind the show, mentioned some of this inspiration:  “We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way,” Matt says. “As ridiculous as it is, the monster [in the alternate dimension] doesn’t come from a spiritual domain and it’s not connected to any religion. It made it scarier. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I believe in aliens and alternate dimensions.”

But which elements are more fact than fiction? Here are five examples from the show that had real-life equivalents – some of them freaky enough to make monsters look like an appealing alternative. Obviously spoilers abound, so come back later if you’re not done with the show yet.

Government-Funded Drug Experiments When Chief Hopper tracks down Terry Ives, the woman who attempted to sue the government for abuse after what happened to her at Hawkins, he and Ives’ sister talk about “Project MKUltra.” Though it sounds like what conspiracy theorists’ wet dreams are made of, MKUltra was a real government program funded by the CIA that went on from the 1950s to the early 1970s. It tested countless subjects at over 80 institutions, many of which were fronts funded by the government and filtered to schools, private hospitals and even a couple jails.

Most of the documents relating to the project were destroyed by the CIA in 1973 because of course they were, but what we know comes from witness testimony, a couple congressional investigations and a cache of 20,000 incorrectly-filed budgetary documents found during a Freedom of Information Act request in 1977. It’s enough to paint a terrifying picture of a wide-ranging government project that sought to capitalize on mind-control techniques that could, theoretically, be used against enemies during the Cold War.

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Of particular interest to the government were the drugs that could be used to extract sensitive information, especially LSD. Researchers tried to see if hallucinogens had the power to control minds, erase memories and even work as truth serum. It’s hard to know exactly how far-reaching the experiments were or who knew about them (even some of the researchers involved had no idea they were participating in a government-funded project), but the transcript of the 1977 Select Committee on Intelligence is a fascinating read – and not only for the reference to the MKUltra subproject that studied “magicians’ arts as applied to covert operations.”

Were any of these experiments performed on women who didn’t know they were pregnant? Did those pregnancies then yield psychokinetic children that could be used as secret government weapons? For some reason, that doesn’t appear in the transcript, so let’s rule it a solid “maybe.”

Sensory Deprivation When not being used to coerce testimony out of suspected terrorists at government black sites, sensory deprivation can be a relaxing and meditative experience probably happening at a spa near you. In Stranger Things , sensory deprivation tanks are used to trigger Eleven’s powers to help her listen in on far-away conversations and sneak up on the monster from the Upside Down. In real life, they mostly trigger hallucinations.

First invented in the 1950s by neuroscientist and dolphin enthusiast John C. Lilly, the isolation tank (like the saltwater kiddie pool seen on the show) was developed as a means of sensory deprivation. Lilly was nice enough to test it on himself first, but sensory deprivation didn’t stay nice for long. While working on a subproject of MKUltra, psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron used a combination of hallucinatory drugs like LSD, electroshock therapy and sensory deprivation on unwitting patients, many of whom came in for things as innocuous as anxiety treatment. Though it’s not clear whether he was using a tank or some other form of sensory deprivation – like earplugs and blindfolds – some of the patients who underwent his experiments ended up permanently comatose. That hasn’t stopped sensory deprivation’s proliferation or use by the government, nor has the long-standing debate over whether it constitutes torture .

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Child Test Subjects There’s no evidence to suggest MKUltra experiments were actually performed on kids, but Cathy O’Brien sure thinks they were. O’Brien has written two books about her experiences in a government-funded program called Project Monarch, which involved testing mind-control techniques on children. According to the project’s truthers (of which there are quite a few ), the government’s goal in recruiting children for mind-control experiments was to hopefully create the perfect super-soldier – which sounds a lot like Stranger Things , actually. There are also claims that it involved child sexual abuse and experiments based on the work of Heinrich Himmler during the Third Reich. Again, there is absolutely no evidence that Project Monarch existed but the conspiracy-minded among us still want to believe .

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Telepathy Experiments Sure, Project MKUltra gets the shout-out in Stranger Things , but the tests on Eleven’s abilities actually seem to hearken back to something called Stargate Project. After all, MKUltra was supposedly over by the 1983 setting of the show, but Stargate was just getting warmed up. Funded by the U.S. Army, the project aimed to research paranormal phenomena that could be of use to the military, including but not limited to psychokinesis, mind-reading, and “remote viewings” of events and conversations – like when Eleven listens in on a Russian man’s conversation. The government even hired a psychic headhunter to recruit candidates. The 2004 book-turned-movie The Men Who Stare at Goats is about the Stargate experiments that tested telekinetic ability by having men do just what the title suggests in an attempt to kill the animals with their mind. Eleven is part of a similar experiment at Hawkins Lab when she’s asked to kill a cat by staring it, though that’s much less funny than goats for some reason.

Death Cover-Ups The government researchers of Hawkins rack up quite a body count in Stranger Things ( #JusticeForBarb ), but there was a death toll in real-life too. The most famous case of an MKUltra-related death is that of Frank Olson. In 1953, Olson was a biochemist at a lab that was conducting LSD experiments for the government. The government’s account that he knowingly ingested the drug is contest by his family, but either way, a short time after he partook in one experiment, he quit his job in the government, checked into a thirteenth-floor New York City hotel room and fell to his death from the window. The official government report suggests that Olson knew he was taking the LSD and it exacerbated his nascent suicidal tendencies, but his family maintained that he was murdered for knowing too much. They received a $750,000 settlement from the government in 1975. Then, in 1994, his body was exhumed and a coroner noticed head injuries that suggested Olson had been knocked unconscious before his death. The medical examiner thought his injuries were consistent with a homicide and the family sued for wrongful death in 2012, but a judge later dismissed it . 

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Stranger Things' True Story Is Based on a Mind-Blowing CIA Experiment

These days, it sometimes feels like the whole world is upside-down, but what if we told you that the Upside-Down in Stranger Things is actually real? While that's clearly not true, other elements of the show are apparently based on real-life events.

Grab yourself a slurpee and settle in for a weird conspiracy story that will blow your curiosity door wide open.

Back when Stranger Things first flipped our worlds with its Netflix debut in 2016, show creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained to Rolling Stone : "We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way."

To achieve this, they threaded a real government project called MKUltra into the storyline of season one, which formed the basis of Dr Brenner's experiments on Eleven.

On the show, Eleven's mother is actually one of the MKUltra test subjects and while she was pregnant, Brenner used LSD and sensory deprivation to experiment on her, unwittingly imbuing Eleven with psychic gifts.

In real life, the MKUltra project was created by the CIA in 1953 with the aim of developing mind-control techniques that could give America an advantage against Russia in the Cold War. Yes, really. Some details were later revealed in declassified CIA documents .

What started out as a volunteer-based program soon evolved into something far more sinister: unwitting participants were subjected to physical and mental abuse via psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation and other experimental means.

One particular experiment, Operation Midnight Climax, even surreptitiously tested the effects of LSD on men who visited brothels set up within agency safehouses in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Stranger things, indeed.

The dangerous nature of this research eventually led to the project's shutdown in 1965, and although many of the relevant documents were later destroyed, enough information leaked out to later inspire the shady going-ons at Stranger Things ' Hawkins National Laboratory.

As if that wasn't crazy enough, the Duffer Brothers also drew inspiration from a government conspiracy called the Montauk Project that's wilder than Steve's hair and Billy's mullet combined.

While there's far less proof to suggest that this particular line of research was even real, the show's creators still took the stories surrounding it to heart. In fact, Stranger Things was even going to be called 'Montauk' at one point, and in hindsight, it's easy to see how the show directly lifts a number of its crazier ideas from this project.

Grab some Eggos and settle down, because this is where things get really weird.

According to the conspiracy, a number of questionable experiments were conducted in the Montauk, New York area during the 1980s.

Reports from a man named Alfred Bielek who was apparently involved suggest that these experiments accidentally opened a hole in hyperspace between Montauk in 1983 and the year 1943 – which, he alleges , threatened to "engulf part of the planet". Only by destroying all of the equipment could Bielek and his brother Duncan save the world. (Some of his account picks up the story of the speculative sci-fi conspiracy movie The Philadelphia Experiment ).

As bizarre as that sounds, it's easy to see the parallels between the conspiracy theory and Stranger Things . While time travel hasn't been incorporated into the show, the experiments on Eleven rip a hole in space which goes on to infect the town of Hawkins. To stop this, El and her new-found friends close the gate to save Hawkins from destruction.

That's not all, though.

Bielek went on to claim that his brother began to age rapidly thanks to the accident somehow. Only by traveling back in time to convince their parents to have another son could they keep Duncan alive, transferring his soul into the new brother's body.

He also claims he can recall memories of life in the 28th century , so make of that what you will.

Following this 'procedure', Duncan began to exhibit incredible psychic powers, because, well, it's never really explained why.

However, Preston B Nichols – who claims to have repressed memories of the Montauk Project – has since written a book called The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time , which discusses this phenomena in more detail.

According to him, Duncan used a device known as the Montauk Chair to strengthen his abilities to the point where he could even materialize objects out of thin air.

While Eleven isn't quite that strong on Stranger Things , she has a number of parallels with Nichols' account of Duncan and the Montauk Chair, including the ability to visit other planes of existence through sensory deprivation and even open inter-dimensional portals.

And just like Eleven, Nichols' account claims Duncan supposedly brought a monster into our world, too.

Referred to as the "Beast" by Nichols, the alien creature appeared after he and other colleagues "decided we'd had enough of the whole experiment". At this moment, according to Nichols, Duncan "let loose a monster from his subconscious," which could only be defeated once all of the equipment in Camp Hero was destroyed.

Sound familiar? This idea has cropped up in Stranger Things more often than the Demogorgon itself, so it's no wonder that the Duffer Brothers originally wanted to name the show after Montauk.

While it's been confirmed that the MKUltra project did exist, plenty of experts have their doubts still when it comes to the Montauk Project.

Whether these reports are true or not, it's fascinating to see how much they inspired Stranger Things . Just don't expect Eleven to time travel or head off into space anytime soon. Hawkins still needs her .

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Meet the man who inspired Stranger Things

Hosted by filmmaker Chris Garetano, The Dark Files is the story of alleged US Military funded human experimentation also known as the Montauk Project. Along with former CIA operative Barry Eisler, award-winning journalist Steve Volk, Chris investigates the rumours that inspired the Netflix series Stranger Things. We spoke to Chris to find out what we can expect from the show.

Can you tell us a bit about the Montauk Project?

Chris Garetano: The Montauk Project is a series of secret United States projects that took place in New Jersey, Mountak New York. We know of a base called the Camp Hero Air Force Station, but, according to survivors of the Montauk Project, there was an enormous facility hidden underneath the ground. What occurred there was a variety of experiments. One resulted in the kidnapping of runaway kids for an experiment called the Montauk Boys Programme. This saw teenagers being given large amounts of hallucinogenic drugs and being put through a series of tests that would heighten their psychic abilities and turn them into subliminal Manchurian candidate type assassins. Then there are other people who claim that there was everything from time travel to reverse engineering alien technology. There is such a variety of things that were said by those who say they're survivors.

My focus has been on the human experiments. We know these things happened elsewhere so why not also under Montauk? At this point, I truly believe that there were human experiments there.

It sounds so dark and mysterious?

Very much so, but it has happened before, we've been able to prove it with MK Ultra.

Incredible that it leads all the way to the top of American government...

Sure, that's what is most terrifying. It also says that this could still be happening and begs the question what has happened that we don't know about? We had to work hard to get the information on these other things and so the imagination runs wild once you find out these things happened. it's like wow, these people do these things full time, what else have they done?

Did you always believe the stories on the Montauk Project?

At first, the Montauk Project allegations was followed by a small cult group of people. I always thought it was quite ridiculous. The first book that came out on it, in the 90s, read like a science fiction story. A little while later I found out about the Montauk voice experiment, that's when I wondered if all of the other stuff was true.

How was it working with former CIA operative Barry Eisler and award-winning journalist Steve Volk on Dark Files?

I started on the Dark Files project without them, but as production developed we had to find co-hosts and we chose these guys. Before Barry, I'd never met anyone from the CIA. He's a really kind, honest and balanced gentleman who has seen quite a few things. His experience at the CIA revealed some things to him, so it was great to hear, even off camera, his perspective on things. I don't see him as a sceptic, but I see him as a very careful person who bases his decisions on what he was taught and what he has seen. I think he felt that a lot of these things were quite possible.

On Steve, another great guy, we made great friends along the way, but he comes from a different angle but I respect it. At times I feel like coming in a sceptic is a strong perspective, sometimes a little too strong for your own good... Can be narrow. But I don't think Steve has that perspective all the time. He does always give things a chance and cares enough to look into things where most sceptics wouldn't. Sometimes we'd argue about things... I think the three of us are a great combination which reflects the variety of the audience.

What is a Sceptic? and if you're not one, what are you?

As sceptics go, I think it's someone who launches from a position of non-belief. Now I've met sceptics who say, this is impossible, and yet those same sceptics haven't heard of MK Ultra. Sceptics shut down opportunities to learn about true history... They come on very strong as if they have it figured out, and I think that's a very unhealthy way to be. I also think the opposite is unhealthy, where your just a true believer in everything.

Me, I'm an observer, I am a student and I'm learning. I know what I believe once it's confirmed. For instance, I'll tell you that I strongly believe that the Montauk Project happened, not everything that people say happened, but at least the voice programme because I can find almost identical situations that happened around the same time in the United States. I also know when to doubt things, especially when someone is telling me they met a six foot tall intelligent reptilian creature and he talked to me. I'm not going to believe you unless I find some evidence!

Do you like the term "Conspiracy Theory" or do you find it puts people off your work?

No offence to anyone out there... But a lot of the time, if it's putting people off it's because of their lack of knowledge on that subject matter. If they were further informed about things we have been able to prove I think it would open their mind further.

Finally, on the Netflix hit Stranger Things, was it weird seeing this story move into mainstream culture?

Yes! It was strange... It confirmed my obsession with this whole thing. I guess I just had my finger on something for while way before the series came out. Certainly, a slight influence for the programme came from my film. It's really exciting though, it's great that Strangers Things happened, it opens doors for interest in the subject matter and certainly more people came to look at my stuff because of the show.

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Inside the two real-life experiments ‘stranger things’ is actually based on.

By Alma Fabiani

Published jul 17, 2022 at 09:15 am, reading time: 4 minutes.

As soon as its first season launched on Netflix in July 2016, the American science fiction horror drama series Stranger Things instantly turned into a global phenomenon. Viewers fell in love with Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas, and the 31 October of that same year saw most of us dressed in a baby pink smock dress and a beaten-up pair of white Converse—all the while sporting the now-iconic Eleven bloody nose.

More recently, with the release of its fourth season—which, as I’m sure most of you know already, was split into two parts— Stranger Things ’ popularity only grew stronger. Some may say it was due to the Duffer brothers’ groundbreaking vision for the story’s plot, but we all know it really all came down to the show’s incredibly handsome holy trinity: Joe Keery (who plays Steve Harrington), Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Creel/001/Vecna).

Long story short, it’s safe to say that we’re all obsessed with Stranger Things —and looking at my TikTok FYP, it certainly shows. But while you might have recently heard that Eddie’s character was inspired by Damien Echols—one of the ‘West Memphis Three’, three Arkansas teenagers who were convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys in 1993—did you know that the TV series is partially based on real-life experiments as well as on the long-time debated Montauk Project conspiracy theory?

Project MKUltra inspired season one

In a 2016 Rolling Stone interview, Matt and Ross Duffer revealed that although they were technically born in the 80s, they only had a vague recollection of the decade—which could have proved to be an issue considering the fact that the series is an “Eighties nostalgiafest” as the publication described it.

Though they first started working on Stranger Things as a “missing-person story,” the producers quickly felt the need to add something else to it. That’s when they began talking about what Matt described as “bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War,” specifically Project MKUltra (or MK-ULTRA), a mind-control programme the CIA led from the 50s through the 60s.

During the early period of the Cold War, the CIA became convinced that communists had discovered a way to control human minds—potentially through a drug or technique. In response, the agency began its own secret project, MKUltra, to search for a mind control drug that could be weaponised against the country’s many enemies, most pressingly against Russians.

According to NPR , MKUltra was created and run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. Journalist Stephen Kinzer, who spent several years investigating the programme, called the operation the “most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control.”

And according to Kinzer’s research, many of Gottlieb’s unwitting subjects endured psychological torture ranging from electroshock to high doses of LSD, “Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people’s minds, and he realised it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. We didn’t get too far on number two, but he did a lot of work on number one.”

In Stranger Things ’ first season, viewers get a somewhat clear understanding—and confirmation in season two—that Eleven’s mother was a test subject who, while she was pregnant, was given LSD by Doctor Martin Brenner, aka ‘Papa’. It is also later on confirmed that Eleven got her psychic gifts from these experiments.

But the Duffer brothers didn’t even stop there—they dug deeper into the most spine-chilling theories they could find and finally came across the Montauk Project conspiracy theory.

What is the Montauk Project?

Let me first state that although MKUltra was as real as it gets, the same cannot be confirmed when it comes to what most people call the ‘Montauk Project’. What is for sure, however, is the part it played in the creation of Stranger Things . In fact, the original iteration of the Netflix hit was titled Montauk .

The conspiracy theory was first triggered into existence back in 1992 through a self-published book written by Preston B. Nichols titled The Montauk Project: Experiments In Time —which is, to this day, available for free as a PDF.

Allegedly, the Montauk Project was a secret and very dodgy US military programme that took place among military installations on the far reaches of Long Island and consisted of a hub of illicit, chilling research into the paranormal.

Reports from a man named Alfred Bielek—who was apparently involved in the project—suggest that these experiments accidentally opened a hole in hyperspace between Montauk in 1983 and the year 1943. This, Bielek alleged, threatened to “engulf part of the planet.” Only by destroying all of the equipment could Bielek and his brother Duncan save the world. Strangely, some of his accounts pick up the story of the speculative sci-fi conspiracy movie The Philadelphia Experiment .

As reported by All That’s Interesting , “both Camp Hero and the Montauk Air Force Station—the Army transferred a portion of Camp Hero to the Air Force after World War II—were said to be the hubs of this paranormal research.” In his book, Nichols claims that he recovered memories of his time as a researcher for the project and then went on to give an account detailing the interior of the facilities, its procedures, advanced technologies, and numerous paranormal incidents he witnessed.

But that’s not all when it comes to spooky (and questionable) declarations. Bielek also stated that his brother began to age rapidly, thanks to the accident that happened in Long Island. Only by travelling back in time to convince their parents to have another son could they keep Duncan alive, transferring his soul into the new brother’s body.

In a stroke of ‘uncanny coincidence’, Duncan also happened to have substantial psychic abilities, including the ability to manifest objects with his mind using the device. Sounds familiar? Oh, and he also claims he can recall memories of life in the 28th century.

Just like Eleven, Nichols’ account claims Duncan supposedly brought a monster into our world too. Referred to as the “Beast” by Nichols, the alien creature appeared after he and other colleagues “decided we’d had enough of the whole experiment.” It is in this moment, according to Nichols, that Duncan “let loose a monster from his subconscious” which could only be defeated once all of the equipment in Camp Hero was destroyed. How convenient.

According to Nichols’ book, the basement levels of Camp Hero were also flooded with cement once the project was shut down, with anyone involved in the project having their memories of the project suppressed using MK-Ultra techniques.

From experiments in mind control and telepathy, the opening of space-time portals to other dimensions to contact with alien life and the abduction of runaway children—all under the authority of a US programme financed by Nazi gold—it’s not hard to see why this story remains, at least for now, nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

What is ‘Stranger Things’ also inspired by?

It should also be noted that the popular TV series takes inspiration from a wide range of other sci-fi adventures from the 80s such as The Goonies , Halloween and Stephen King’s terrifying book It , which was adapted into a movie in 2017.

Amores Perros , Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street are also on the list.

Is Hawkins a real place?

Stranger Things takes place in Hawkins, Indiana, a fictional Midwestern town where Eleven and the gang fight off bigger and bigger monsters each season. Though Hawkins is a fictional town, many of its street and neighbourhood names are based on real places. The Duffer brothers once revealed that the names were inspired by their memories from growing up in Durham, North Carolina.

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The crazy government conspiracy theory that inspired 'Stranger Things'

The deep dive on our favorite summer show isn’t done yet.

It turns out that Netflix’s sci-fi hit “Stranger Things” resembles very closely an alleged real-life government experiment known as “The Montauk Project.”

As Thrillist reports , The Montauk Project is claimed to have been a series of government experiments that were done at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station in Montauk, Long Island. Stories of the experiments have circulated since the 1980s, saying they focused on psychological-warfare techniques and things like time travel, teleportation, and mind control. (Though the stories, many of which come from supposed repressed memories, are not at all confirmed and should be taken with a grain of salt.)

As for "Stranger Things"? Well, the show was originally titled "Montauk" when it was picked up by Netflix, and the synopsis (reported by Slash Film ) makes it pretty clear the creators were inspired by those repressed memories:

"Described as a love letter to the ’80s classics that captivated a generation, the series is set in 1980 Montauk, Long Island, where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl."

Thrillist highlights a man named Preston Nichols, who claims to have memories of being involved in a specific experiment known as the “Montauk Chair,” which amplifies psychic powers.

See if this description of an experiment from Nichols' book “ The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time ” sounds familiar:

“The first experiment was called ‘The Seeing Eye.’ With a lock of person's hair or other appropriate object in his hand, Duncan [Cameron, supposed psychic] could concentrate on the person and be able to see as if he was seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and feeling through their body. He could actually see through other people anywhere on the planet.”

Kind of sounds like the experiment being done on Eleven before she opens the Upside Down portal on "Stranger Things."

And in this excerpt from Nichols’ book he writes about how Duncan summoned a monster while on the chair:

“We finally decided we’d had enough of the whole experiment. The contingency program was activated by someone approaching Duncan while he was in the chair and simply whispering ‘The time is now.’ At this moment, he let loose a monster from his subconscious. And the transmitter actually portrayed a hairy monster. It was big, hairy, hungry and nasty. But it didn’t appear underground in the null point. It showed up somewhere on the base. It would eat anything it could find. And it smashed everything in sight. Several different people saw it, but almost everyone described a different beast.”

We've had fun naming all the movies that "Stranger Things" is paying homage to, but it's equally fascinating to see how it's playing with decades-old government conspiracy theories.

And that's not quite all. "Stranger Things" also echoes another real project known as  Project MK-ULTRA, the CIA's  covert, illegal program doing scientific research on human subjects. During the Cold War, the CIA subjected people to experiments with drugs including LSD, and some argue the program was for the purposes of mind control, as Time reports .

However, the creators of “Stranger Things,” Matt and Ross Duffer, have been coy about the connection to the Montauk Project (or any other potential government experiment). They've only said that ditching the “Montauk” title was “ very painful. ” 

Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.

Watch: All the details you missed in the 'Stranger Things' season 3 trailer

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You Might Lose Sleep Over the Insane Conspiracy Theory That Inspired Stranger Things

With two seasons under its belt, Stranger Things is bigger than ever. It's not just that the series delivers heavy doses of nostalgia and horror in one fell swoop. The real magic of Stranger Things is that it builds a conspiracy-filled universe that's so intricate, it almost feels real. Well, here's the thing: it's actually inspired by a real-life conspiracy theory that's so wild and detailed, you'll almost want to believe it. We're not talking about Project MK-Ultra , though the Duffer brothers (who created Stranger Things ) have admitted that they incorporated aspects of that conspiracy theory into the show as well. But this story is much darker, deeper, and more sinister.

We're talking about The Montauk Project. One little-known secret about Stranger Things is that it was originally titled Montauk , and it was supposed to take place in New York. For the geographically uninformed, Montauk is at the very end of Long Island. And at the very tip of Montauk is Camp Hero State Park . This is where the unbelievable story of The Montauk Project takes place.

According to a mind-blowing conspiracy theory , Camp Hero allegedly housed an underground government facility that conducted a wide range of questionable scientific experiments. While the Duffer brothers didn't lift the entire story of The Montauk Experiment for their sci-fi series, there are a handful of aspects of the show that seem to draw direct inspiration. Let's uncover the mysteries.

Portals to Other Dimensions

In order to understand The Montauk Project, you need to hear about The Philadelphia Experiment . According to the stories, the Navy was conducting experiments in 1943. The goal was to render a military vessel invisible so that enemies could not detect it by radar or other means. These experiments yielded an unexpected result: not only did they purportedly figure out how to make the ships invisible, but they also accidentally sent one ship, The Eldridge, through a portal to another dimension and another time.

This government legend was so well-known that it was adapted into a 1984 film called The Philadelphia Experiment . The trailer for the film itself rehashes the story we've just gone over: the government experiences, the invisibility, even the time travel. Here's where things connect: a man named Alfred Bielek saw the film and experienced the strangest sense of déjà vu. In a 1997 interview with a reporter named Kenneth Burke , Bielek said the film "re-stimulated memories, which were close to the surface anyway."

In 1990, Bielek made the connection between The Philadelphia Experiment and The Montauk Project during a speech at a conference in Dallas . Bielek says he and his brother were both on the ship during this experiment. He says they were teleported from 1943 to 1983 . . . and they landed at Montauk. According to Bielek, they were intercepted by a man named Dr. von Neumann, whom they had also worked with in 1943. Dr. von Neumann told Bielek that they had inadvertently created a hole in hyperspace. Bielek recounted the doctor's explanation: "this hyperspace bubble is expanding, and is going to create some very serious problems; we don't know how far it will go if it's not shut down. It could engulf part of the planet." Basically, Bielek and his brother had to destroy all the equipment on the ship to "fix" this hole in hyperspace.

Stranger Things carries tons of echoes of this story. In fact, the experiments with Eleven are the initial cause for the gate that connects the Upside Down to our reality. Eleven has essentially torn the fabric of reality in the same way The Eldridge did. Season two further carries along a similar story: it becomes clear that the Upside Down has more or less "infected" Hawkins, and it's continuing to spread. The only way to stop the Upside Down from leaking further into reality is to close the gate.

The "Gifted One"

OK, bear with me. It gets weirder. After that whole crazy 1943/1983 accident, Bielek says his brother stayed in 1983. But because of the whole fiasco, his brother began to age rapidly. A year per hour, as he describes it. The scientists were desperate to somehow keep him alive, so here was their plan: back in the past, in the same timeline, Bielek convinced his parents to have another son:

"Whether you will accept the metaphysical point of view or not, it was arranged. I was allowed to help arrange it. Because I was back in '43 and there was some transit back and forth because of Montauk, which was still on line for a period of time. To go back to the father and say, 'Hey man, get busy; we need another son, something has happened to Duncan.' So a new son, the last of the line, was born in 1951, and he from '83 was a walk-in, as a soul into the body in 1963, August 12."

So, basically, the scientists somehow transferred his brother's soul from 1983 to the body of his new brother in 1963. (Don't ask me, I can't even begin to justify the science behind this.) Anyway, this new version of Duncan demonstrated incredible psychic abilities.

How did the scientists at Camp Hero exploit these powers? They built something called "the Montauk Chair." At this point, we meet Preston Nichols, who came into the picture after Bielek's stories began to circulate on a broader scale. Nichols would go on to write his own account of The Montauk Project . According to the text, the Montauk Chair was a chair that had been enhanced with unimaginable technology: it could manifest whatever its subject was imagining. Basically, the chair would purportedly read the seated person's mind and make their thoughts a reality.

In the chair, Duncan did an experiment called "The Seeing Eye." Nichols writes: "With a lock of person's hair or other appropriate object in his hand, Duncan could concentrate on the person and be able to see as if he was seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and feeling through their body. He could actually see through other people anywhere on the planet." This sounds eerily like the experiments conducted with Eleven in Hawkins Lab. If you recall, season one shows Eleven attempting to hear words spoken in other rooms.

Duncan allegedly demonstrated other abilities that sound a lot like Eleven's. Some of Duncan's powers, though, were entirely different. For instance, and this is important, Duncan could imagine objects and they would materialize elsewhere on the base. Nichols also describes how Duncan went into an "altered form of consciousness" when doing these kinds of experiments, much like Eleven is more or less incapacitated once she descends into that dark water world of hers. Nichols also claims Duncan could manipulate time and space and open dimensional portals, much like Eleven.

The Kidnapped Children

As we know, Eleven is, well, likely the 11th child to be a test subject at Hawkins Lab. We can therefore deduce that there were at least 10 other children involved in these experiments, maybe more. The introduction of Kali in season two basically confirms this theory. And, I mean, it's possible Chief Hopper's daughter is in the mix , too. But that's another theory for another time.

In seasons one and two, we find out that Eleven was basically abducted by the scientists, stolen right from under her mother's nose. This exact thing happened in Montauk, according to Nichols:

"But there was one kid at Montauk who would go out and get other kids and bring them to the project. He was like a 'tractor beam.' He lived in Montauk and would circulate around very effectively . . . Some kids returned home, some didn't. The kids chosen were between 10 and 16. Or maybe 18 at the oldest and nine at the youngest. Most were just about to reach puberty or had just finished it . . . we know a lot of people were shoved somewhere into the Future — maybe 200 or 300 years ahead. Estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 people that were eventually abandoned. We have no idea for what purpose."

So, yeah. If you think it's bad that the Hawkins Lab scientists may have taken a dozen or so kids, imagine a situation in which thousands and thousands of children vanish, and some never return home. Bleak. Obviously, the experiments in Stranger Things have less to do with time travel and more to do with developing supernatural abilities. At this point, that's all we've got. Maybe we'll find out more in season three?

An Interdimensional Monster

Perhaps the creepiest part of Nichols's account is that of the "Beast." Finally, in 1983 (when everything came full circle and The Eldridge arrived), the crew decided to pull the plug on everything. In that moment, Duncan conjured an otherworldly creature:

"The contingency program was activated by someone approaching Duncan while he was in the chair and simply whispering 'The time is now.' At this moment, he let loose a monster from his subconscious. And the transmitter actually portrayed a hairy monster. It was big, hairy, hungry and nasty. But it didn't appear underground in the null point. It showed up somewhere on the base. It would eat anything it could find. And it smashed everything in sight. Several different people saw it, but almost everyone described a different beast. It was either 9 feet tall or 30 feet tall depending on who saw it. I personally believe it was about nine or 10 feet in height. Fright does strange things to people, and no one was sure of what the exact physical constitution of this monster was. No one was in any frame of mind to calmly and collectively analyze its exact nature."

According to Nichols, there was really only one way to defeat the monster. They destroyed all of the Montauk Chair equipment, and once everything was shut down, it vanished into thin air. It's pretty wild to see the connections: Duncan basically created the monster in The Montauk Project, and Eleven is the one who unleashes the demogorgon unto our reality in the tiny town of Hawkins.

Of course, there isn't really any evidence to support anything pertaining to The Philadelphia Experiment or The Montauk Project. Then again, it's not really a matter of whether or not the accounts are true, anyway. The fact is, this entangled conspiracy mystery is a fascinating and riveting story. It's hard to ignore the parallels between that and the wonder of Stranger Things .

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Warning! SPOILERS ahead for Stranger Things season 4. Everyone knows about Eleven and (more infamously) Eight, but there are eight other test subjects that were experimented on at Hawkins National Laboratory in Stranger Things – and here’s everything that we know about them. The series has taken its time introducing test subjects besides Eleven, with the latest season adding in Two and Ten. Not only that, but the Stranger Things Expanded Universe has also given more insight into the Hawkins Lab children.

The so-called Stranger Things Expanded Universe has fleshed out the backstory of Project MKUltra, the real-world secret government plan that involved brainwashing and “personality realignment” – including the little revelation that Eleven and her so-called siblings originate from Project Indigo, a spinoff from MKUltra. While this EU has created more than its fair share of continuity problems with its source material, it still provides a fascinating look at these children, further explores the character of Dr. Martin Brenner, and provides a much more nuanced context for the Netflix series to exist in.

Related: Stranger Things 4's Hawkins Lab Creates A Big Kali Powers Plot Hole

It also potentially sets up one final element for the Stranger Things mythos as a whole: it creates a pretty wide narrative tapestry for the finale to draw upon. While it’s already been well established that Dr. Brenner is still alive , the latest season has introduced almost all the remaining test subjects before the Hawkins Lab massacre. The Expanded Universe of novels, comic books, and video games will serve much the same purpose with future seasons that they did with the recently-released season 4 – making them even better for those in the know. Here's every child in the Hawkins Lab that has been introduced in the Stranger Things universe.

One/Henry Creel

It's revealed during Stranger Things season 4 that Henry Creel, first believed to be an orderly at Hawkins Lab, is actually their first test subject – aka One. Creel, or Vecna, was gifted with exceptional psychokinetic abilities and is able to alter others' perceptions. When Henry Creel was a child, he killed his mother and sister using his powers and was then carted off to Hawkins Lab after framing his father for their murder. Hawkins soon found out that they couldn't fully control their first subject and implanted a chip under his skin that essentially "turned off" his abilities. During Stranger Things season 4, he's shown befriending Eleven and convinces her to take the chip out. After she does, he massacres almost everyone at the lab, causing Eleven to banish him to the Upside Down, where he officially becomes Vecna.

Two is the oldest test subject after Vecna to be experimented on by Hawkins Lab during the 1970s. Arrogant and psychopathic, Two targets Eleven after she beats him in an exercise led by Dr. Brenner and relentlessly bullies her throughout Stranger Things season 4. Like many of the other test subjects, Two has exceptional telekinetic abilities, with only One and Eleven being stronger than him. Using his powers, he consistently attacks Eleven when the cameras are off in the Rainbow Room and even threatens to kill her after he is punished for torturing her.

The teenager named Ricky is the next oldest test subject that audiences have seen in any piece of Stranger Things storytelling – he’s more than likely somewhere around the age of 16 or 17 – and he’s also one of the few male participants in Project Indigo (although Eight was originally written in the TV series to be an older guy). More interesting than all that, however, is his particular power set: he’s apparently able to plant suggestions into other people’s minds – or, as he himself puts it in the Six comic-book miniseries, “Let’s just say… I can be very good with people. Make them like me. Trust me. Open up to me.”

Related: Stranger Things Theory Reveals Eddie Is A Hawkins Lab Massacre Survivor

Where, exactly, his character arc leads is an open mystery, but there is the very real possibility that he won’t make it past the year 1978, which is when Six takes place and when he helps lead a (probably ill-fated) attempt to bust all of his test-subject brethren out of Hawkins National Lab.

Francine has the rare distinction of carrying her own narrative within the Stranger Things universe, getting her very own comic-book miniseries (just as Eleven ostensibly gets her very own television series). The story it paints is not a particularly flattering one for the future Hawkins Lab test subject . However – gifted with the ability to (sometimes, sort of) predict the future, her already-abusive parents demand that she help them use her talents to help them get rich, and when their greed proves to be insatiable, she’s manipulated by her boyfriend into running away from her family and heading for the greener pastures of the Hawkins Lab. That boy she’s dating? He turns out to be test subject Three, sent by Dr. Brenner to lure the teenage Francine into his experimental arms.

Her precognitive nature allows Six to be one of the very first individuals to become aware of the threat that an alternate dimension will one day be present – including the deadly creatures like the Mind Flayer that will emerge into our world. It is a small but potent link to the originating TV show.

Eight was already a part of Project Indigo by the year 1969, when another test subject, Terry Ives (the mother of the future Eleven) would become a subject herself at Hawkins National Laboratory. In fact, during their time together at the facility, five-year-old Kali Prasad and Terry would become friends, with the latter vowing to rescue the super-powered child. Unfortunately, the best she would end up doing is (unwittingly) giving her a baby “sister” to look after instead.

Related: Stranger Things Already Proved Why Kali Can’t Help Eleven Defeat Vecna

Eventually, Eight would use her abilities to project convincing, lifelike illusions against the Indigo personnel and escape, setting up her role in Stranger Things season 2 as an outlaw – and, presumably, the future cavalry for whatever impending hardships Eleven and her newfound family in Hawkins, Indiana will endure.

Nine and Nine-Point-Five

Nine and her twin sister, Nine-Point-Five, were brought aboard Dr. Martin Brenner’s program when they were very young. Nothing definitive has been stated of the circumstances under which they arrived in Hawkins, but, according to Brenner – who may very well be lying – their home background wasn’t too dissimilar from Six’s abusive upbringing (only with the added detail of having their house burn down, killing all the rest of their family).

The only power that Nine has demonstrated thus far in the Stranger Things Expanded Universe is to warm objects up by touching them, including the possibility of autoigniting them, although Dr. Brenner intones that she’s “ so much more than that .”

Ten also appears during Stranger Things season 4. The subject has special abilities outside the regular telekinesis. Similar to Eleven, he has the power of remote viewing and is able to see outside his present location. He uses this ability most often while practicing with Dr. Brenner. Before the Hawkins Lab massacre, he was working on his remote viewing powers with Brenner and was asked to see what was happening in Six's room. After this, Ten became concerned and reported that Six was dead, showing the beginning of the massacre.

Related: Why Eleven Forgot Her Memories Of Number 1 & Hawkins Lab

So much distinguishes Jane Ives from all 10 of her Hawkins Lab siblings : she was the first to be inducted as an infant, and she is quite clearly the most powerful of them all, possessing both telepathy and, more impressively, telekinesis. She also essentially ended the program, having been the last subject that then escaped.

Audiences, obviously, know Eleven's story the best, given her prominence in the television show, but the Stranger Things Expanded Universe still manages to provide a few new nuggets regarding her tenure at Hawkins Lab, mostly regarding her interactions with her fellow test subjects. It turns out she spent most of her tenure with her siblings, which we get a taste of during the flashbacks in season 4 and which is expounded upon in the comics (there are several scenes of her with Eight, Nine, and Nine Point-Five). How much of an impression this will make upon both her character and her ultimate denouement remains to be seen.

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What is 'Stranger Things' based on? Inside the inspirations of the sci-fi hit

Wondering 'what is Stranger Things based on?' You'd be surprised to learn how much of the supernatural series is pulled from real life

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A book, a movie, a true-crime story—exactly what is Stranger Things based on?

Unlike some of our favorite streaming series like Bridgerton and Lupin , the supernatural Netflix hit is surprisingly not based on a book series, though it's clearly inspired by classic horror titles from spine-chilling scribes like Stephen King and R.L. Stine. 

The show's creators, the Duffer Brothers , have been emphatic about how much pop culture has inspired the show, with references to '80s movies, arcade games, comic books and more sprinkled throughout each episode. But you'll be surprised to learn that the sci-fi juggernaut also took inspiration from real-life events. 

Yes, despite regularly dealing with monstrous super-villains like Vecna and alternate dimensions like The Upside Down, there is some reality interwoven in those otherworldly storylines. 

Here are the IRL true-crime events and conspiracy theories that inspired both the series overall and its most recent edition, Stranger Things season 4 . 

What is 'Stranger Things' based on?

1. Project MKUltra

In Stranger Things , Jane " Eleven " Hopper (played by Millie Bobby Brown) is a girl born with psychokinetic and telepathic powers who was raised as a test subject by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) in a laboratory in fictional Hawkins, Indiana. The experiments involve Eleven making contact with alternate dimensions—it is during one such contact that she comes across the Demogorgon and accidentally opens a gateway to the Upside Down.

Eleven's powers are inherited as her mother, Teresa Ives, was herself a test subject for Project MKUltra, a covert CIA operation to develop mind-control techniques using sensory deprivation, psychedelic drugs, and more.

And while that sounds like the stuff of pure science fiction, it's actually partially fact. Project MKUltra was a real-world human experimentation program conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency from the 1950s through the 1970s, where subjects were administered psychoactive drugs, electro-shock therapy, sensory deprivation, hypnosis and forms of psychological torture in efforts of subduing and control the human mind, techniques that would be applied to Soviet spies during the Cold War. 

Project MKUltra was officially halted in 1973 when then-CIA Director Richard Helms had all program-related files destroyed out of fear of a Watergate-style situation. 

2. The Montauk Project

In the original pilot script for Stranger Things , the show was set in Montauk, NY, rather than Hawkins, Indiana. In fact, the series was originally sold to Netflix under the working title Montauk , per Variety . Why? Because of the Montauk Project, a much-conspired-about governmental project alleged to have taken place at an Air Force Station, or Camp Hero, on the eastern tip of New York's Long Island. 

“It’s based on a place in Montauk, New York called Camp Hero,” Stranger Things  star Gaten Matarazzo told Wired . "There was, like, rumors of secret government spies doing human experiments to fight in the Cold War. It’s based on that one government lab."

Legend holds that the military program conducted paranormal experiments on civilians, including children, involving mind control, time travel and more with the aim of developing psychological warfare techniques. One man, Preston Nicols, who claimed to have repressed memories of the project, wrote about the experience in the 1992 book, The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time. The book includes references to post-procedure subjects developing psychic powers, coming into contact with extraterrestrials, and opening up portholes to other time dimensions—sound familiar?

Though the Duffers changed the real-life Montauk setting to fictional Hawkins, to give themselves more creative license, it's clear that the so-called realities of the Montauk Project have greatly influenced Stranger Things . 

3. The West Memphis Three

The story of Eddie, Stranger Things ' new fan favorite played by Joseph Quinn, also had real-world roots. The Hellfire Club leader was "loosely modeled after writer and artist Damien Echols, who was a member of the West Memphis Three," per a recent tweet from the official Netflix Geeked account. 

Like the fictional Eddie Munson, Damien Echols was a longhaired metalhead living in a small town, West Memphis, Arkansas. On May 6, 1993, three eight-year-old children were horrifically found dead in a creek, and Echols, alongside fellow teens Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, was accused and convicted of the murders. The "West Memphis Three," as the teens were known, spent many years in prison, with Echols on death row, but their convictions were overturned after a retrial in 2010 and the trio was released. 

The Duffers were reportedly inspired by the true-crime documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills , which detailed how the era's "satanic panic" (baseless rumors about a rise in satanic cult activity and abuse in the 1980s and early '90s) played into the West Memphis Three case. 

"Something we really wanted to get into this year was the satanic panic. So that brought us back to the Paradise Lost documentary series with the [West] Memphis Three, and it brought us back to Damien Echols," the brothers said in a Tudum interview . "We really wanted that character who’s a metalhead, he’s into Dungeons & Dragons, he’s ultimately a true nerd at heart. But from an outsider’s point of view, they may go, 'This is someone that is scary.' So that’s really where the idea for Eddie came in. 

Actor Joseph Quinn doubled down on the reference point, telling Men's Health : "The satanic panic of the time was definitely at the spine of my character," who spends most of season four on the run for a death he didn't commit. 

"What’s sad about [Eddie's] narrative is that the people who get to know him love him, and the people who don’t have judged him horribly. Just because of the way he dresses and just because of his interests," the Duffers told Tudum.

Part one of Strangers Things season 4 is available for streaming on Netflix. Season 4 part 2 hits the platform on Friday, July 1. 

Christina Izzo is the Deputy Editor of My Imperfect Life. 

More generally, she is a writer-editor covering food and drink, travel, lifestyle and culture in New York City. She was previously the Features Editor at Rachael Ray In Season and Reveal , as well as the Food & Drink Editor and chief restaurant critic at Time Out New York . 

When she’s not doing all that, she can probably be found eating cheese somewhere. 

As a self-proclaimed blush connoisseur, I swear by ILIA's cheek and lip stick and hopefully, when my work is done, you will too.

By Naomi Jamieson Published 28 September 23

If you've been looking for a new, signature hair look for fall, Emma Chamberlain may have just come *through* for you...

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Stranger Things: The Real-Life Conspiracy That Inspired The Netflix Hit Explained

While "Stranger Things" might have seemed like a roll of the 20-sided dice when Netflix first sent it out into the streaming world, after four seasons, the series is one of the biggest shows on the planet. This is largely due to its compelling storyline, likable characters, and shocking plot twists, which are influenced by the likes of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg. But there are also real-life conspiracies that have provided plenty of inspiration for "Stranger Things," including the so-called Montauk Project, which is said to be a series of government experiments conducted on kidnapped children at Camp Hero, a now-decommissioned military base in Montauk, New York.

Matt and Ross Duffer weren't the first to be inspired by the Montauk Project, however. In fact, in 2018, the "Stranger Things" creators were hit with a lawsuit over the show idea by filmmaker Charlie Kessler, who alleges that they stole the idea for the series from his 2011 short film, "Montauk." Being that "Montauk" was the series' original name, there's definitely some cross-pollination between the two, although the suit was dropped just a couple of days before going to trial, which adds even more mystery to the proceedings (via Vanity Fair ). Meanwhile, men like Christopher P. Garetano are more focused on trying to get to the heart of the Montauk Project conspiracy theory and whether it can be substantiated or not.

There could be some truth to the experiments that inspired the show

Christopher Garetano is the filmmaker behind a documentary called "The Montauk Chronicles," and he believes that there's more to Camp Hero than meets the eye. He recalled stumbling into the perimeter of the base as a child and being turned away. "I didn't even realise there was a base there. It's difficult to even see the radar tower behind the thick foliage in the summertime if you're not looking in the right direction," he told The Telegraph . "But I was stopped by this guard, and I always wondered what that was. It wasn't until I was in high school that I heard the legends."

Though some may balk at the idea that the types of experiments seen in "Stranger Things" might have actually been conducted in real life, there are documented cases of the United States government carrying out mind control trials as late as the 1970s, and accounts like those in "The Men Who Stare at Goats" may even help provide a basis to prove the existence of the Montauk Project. Still, "The Montauk Chronicles" is not the only source that claims to have insider information about what happened at Camp Hero.

There's no question that something big was going on at the base

"The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time" by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon is a novel that is supposedly based on the experiments that occurred at Camp Hero, with Nichols claiming he actually worked at the secret government facility as an engineer. "As I say in the book," he told Christopher Garetano, "you can believe it as fact, or you can believe it as science fiction." He also spoke of the experiments that he saw being performed on children, describing them as "shattering their minds, programming them, [and] then putting them back together."

Though we might never know what went on in the facility for certain, the fact that there are so many stories about Camp Hero will no doubt help fuel conspiracy theories about the base for years to come. Meanwhile, with Netflix's "Stranger Things" currently bigger than ever following the shocking  ending of Season 4 , locals can also expect fans to continue to make the pilgrimage to the site. The only question is what they'll find there.

Stranger Things Wiki

Read at your own discretion...

• Department of Energy
• Locations/Season 2
• Locations/Season 3
• Locations/Season 4
• US Government
• Locations in Hawkins

Hawkins National Laboratory

Unbeknownst to the residents of Hawkins, the lab hosted experiments for the controversial government program known as "MKUltra" . These experiments yielded the births of a number of child test subjects with psychokinetic abilities, who were in turn experimented on. The test subjects were strictly confined to the lab premises, their existence kept top secret by the authorities.

In November 1983 , during experiments at the laboratory, one of these test subjects , "Eleven", accidentally opened a gate to an alternate dimension , allowing a predatory humanoid creature to enter Hawkins. The monster abducted residents and brought them to the other world. Among its victims were Will Byers , who was brought home after a week, and Barbara Holland , who was killed by the creature. The circumstances of their disappearances were covered up by agents working for Hawkins Lab.

Following the opening of the Gate, the alternate dimension, known by Will Byers's friends as "The Upside Down", began to slowly influence the surrounding environment. Despite the lab's efforts to contain the breach, gigantic, vine-like tunnels grew out from the Gate, burrowing deep beneath the town and causing nearby crops to rot. However, in 1984, the Upside Down's incursion was halted when Eleven returned to close the Gate. Soon after, the lab was shut down after Murray Bauman , Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers disclosed that the lab had killed Barbara due to a "chemical leak".

By 1985 , the lab had been completely abandoned.

• 1.1 Creation
• 1.3.1 The strange boy
• 1.3.2 The abductions
• 1.5.1 The friendly orderly
• 1.5.2 The massacre at Hawkins Lab
• 1.6.1 Psychokinetic training
• 1.6.2 Targeting the Soviets
• 1.7.1 Searching for Eleven
• 1.7.2 The Demogorgon's attack
• 1.8 1983 - 1984
• 1.9.1 Will's symptoms
• 1.9.2 The teenagers' plan
• 1.9.3 Descent into chaos
• 1.9.4 Closing the Gate
• 1.9.5 The exposé and shutdown
• 1.10.1 Scuffle with Grigori
• 1.11.1 Buried memories
• 2.1 Floor 01
• 2.2 Floor 00
• 2.3 Clinical wing
• 2.4.1 Beneath the complex
• 2.5 The grounds
• 3.1 Scientists
• 3.4.1 MKUltra test subjects
• 3.4.2 Child test subjects
• 4.1 Concept
• 4.2 Filming & production design
• 7.1 Canon hierarchy

Following the Second World War, Hawkins Lab was established as one of several national laboratories across the United States.

From the 1950s to 1970s, a controversial CIA-sanctioned research program involving experiments on human subjects was established, known as "MKUltra". Dr. Martin Brenner , a high-ranking researcher for the U.S. Department of Energy , had a hand in these experiments. In 1953, MKUltra began experimentation at Hawkins Lab. [5]

The program was designed to develop mind-control techniques in which the subject suffered extreme conditions at the hands of the researchers, including use of psychedelic drugs, physical and mental abuse, sleep deprivation, and malnourishment.

1959 - 1979

The strange boy.

In 1959 , Brenner was contacted by a woman named Virginia Creel , who believed her son Henry was responsible for a number of inexplicable happenings at her household . After Virginia and Henry's sibling Alice were found dead at the house, and Henry knocked unconscious, Henry's father Victor was presumed to be responsible. However, after Brenner got involved with the situation, he quickly learned Henry not only had an appetite for murder, but possessed remarkable psychokinetic abilities.

Victor was told that Henry died a week later due to shock, but in truth, his death was a hoax orchestrated by Brenner. Henry awoke from his coma to discover he had been transported to Hawkins Lab.

Brenner intended to both study and closely supervise the boy. He inserted Soteria into Henry's neck, a miniature device that suppressed his powers and tracked his every movement; in Henry's own words, he had become a "prisoner". Henry was designated Hawkins Lab's first test subject, with Brenner tattooing "001" on his forearm to mark the occasion. In time, Henry became one of several orderlies who assisted Brenner and attended to the lab. Brenner deeply distrusted Henry, however, and would occasionally order the other orderlies to torture him to keep him intimidated.

The abductions

Hoping to recreate Henry's powers in other individuals, Brenner took what he had learned and adjusted his experimentations. Brenner gave volunteer test subjects experimental drugs and placed them inside sensory deprivation tanks , in the hopes of "expanding the boundaries of the mind".

One test subject, college student Terry Ives , was unknowingly pregnant while undergoing the experiments. As a result, her daughter was born with various psychokinetic abilities. Immediately after giving birth, her daughter was taken by Brenner. The lab covered up the kidnapping as a miscarriage and erased any traces of the child's existence. Terry filed a lawsuit against Brenner and his employees, but was unsuccessful due to a lack of evidence.

Terry's daughter was renamed " 011 " and raised in the laboratory, where she was subjected to harsh treatment and secluded from the outside world. Psychological tests were conducted to exploit the telekinetic abilities she was born with. Eleven was not the lab's only test subject: she had sixteen "brothers" and "sisters", who were probably abducted from their birth mothers in a similar fashion.

At some point in the '70s, MKUltra was exposed and along with it the alleged abuse of the test subjects. Despite this, the lab managed to block any inquiries.

This information from is of . Terry attempted to retrieve Jane, breaking into Hawkins Lab with a gun, but was apprehended. Brenner then subjected Terry to electroshock therapy, which left her in a seemingly permanent catatonic state for years after. Dr. Brenner raised Jane under the "name" Eleven . Brenner built himself up as a father figure in the mind of Eleven and seventeen other child test subjects, making them refer to him as "Papa". Kali Prasad , also known as Eight, managed to escape the lab before September 8, 1979. The friendly orderly During Henry Creel 's time as an orderly at Hawkins Lab, he took a particular liking to Eleven. After witnessing her being bullied by the other test subjects, he believed both of them were similarly misunderstood, and also believed Eleven to be the most powerful of the test subjects. Henry helped Eleven during times when her peers ridiculed her, offering encouraging words and advice. On September 4 , 1979 , Brenner took Eleven and the other subjects into the main training room, where, one-by-one, the children would attempt to psychically manipulate a series of lightbulbs. Eleven struggled with this task, leading the oldest child, Two , to mock and belittle her. Despite this, Eleven briefly powered one of the bulbs. [6] On September 7 , 1979 , Henry advised Eleven to use negative emotions, such as anger and sadness, to better channel her abilities. Later that day, Brenner pitted the children against each other in a combat-based test. Two children at a time would stand on mats, with both trying to psychically push their opponent off their mat, all the while resisting the other's attack. In this game, Eleven ultimately defeated Two , humiliating him. Later, Two and his allies - Three , Four and Five - ganged up on Eleven in the Rainbow Room , and bullied her with their powers, even threatening to kill her. After being slammed into a wall, she apparently suffered a concussion. The massacre at Hawkins Lab On September 8 , Brenner checked up on Eleven, before he summoned all the test subjects to the training room. He punished Two for attacking Eleven through use of an electroshock collar . Later that day, Eleven and Henry played chess in the Rainbow Room, during which Henry quietly offered her a chance to escape the lab. Henry disclosed - or claimed - that the other children planned to kill her, and that Brenner had been intending for this all along. He silently gave her a key card under the table, and told her to meet him in the basement. Some hours later, Eleven persuaded another orderly to escort her to the infirmary, pretending to feel ill. Eleven used the distraction to reach a stairwell and travel to the basement. There, she met with Henry, who showed her an escape route through a drain pipe. He then convinced her to use her powers to remove the "Soteria" suppressant chip from his neck, restoring Henry's long-dormant abilities. Shortly after this, security guards stormed the basement; the two reached a corridor but were surrounded by the guards. Henry used his restored powers to maim and kill the guards; he took Eleven to a storage cupboard and told her to wait there, revealing his "001" tattoo before leaving. Henry proceeded to go on a murderous rampage throughout the laboratory, killing all the other test subjects and various Hawkins Lab personnel, and indirectly knocked Dr. Brenner unconscious. Eleven entered the Rainbow Room and watched in horror as Henry finished killing Two . Henry explained himself to Eleven, telling her of his origins and philosophy; he asked her to join him in his goal to eradicate humanity. But Eleven refused. She used her powers to fling Henry into the wall; angered and disappointed, Henry stood back up and outreached his hand, with Eleven doing the same. The two test subjects engaged in a psychokinetic duel, with Henry initially overwhelming and almost killing Eleven. However, Eleven, finding strength in a distant memory, ultimately overpowered Henry, pinning him against the wall of the Rainbow Room. She began disintegrating his body, but somehow, she opened an interdimensional gate in the wall, through which Henry was transported. The gate began to seal up, and just after the membrane separating the worlds finished healing, Brenner entered the Rainbow Room. Though he initially believed Eleven was responsible for the massacre, he later learned Henry was to blame after reviewing surveillance footage. Brenner was amazed by Eleven's feat of power, but by the time Eleven woke from her coma, Brenner learnt she had no memory of the incident, and her powers had been somewhat reduced. Brenner was bewildered by Henry's disappearance, and wondered if he was still out there somewhere, "hiding in the darkness". 1979 - 1983 Psychokinetic training. For years, Brenner trained Eleven and developed her psychic abilities. To punish her for any failures, Eleven was sometimes locked in a solitary cell for great periods of time; this experience severely traumatized her, leaving her with a fear of confinement. In one experiment, Eleven was presented with a soda can, which she then crushed using telekinesis. Although her nose began bleeding soon afterwards, Dr. Brenner seemed pleased nonetheless. Another experiment involved using her powers to manipulate a living creature. Dr. Brenner presented Eleven with a cat, but she could not bring herself to do anything to it. As punishment for her refusal, she was dragged into the cell by two guards. Refusing to be locked in again, an enraged Eleven used her powers to smash one guard into a wall and to break the other's neck before they could close the door. While she sobbed at her experiences, Brenner gently carried her away, pleased with Eleven's feat of ability. Targeting the Soviets The Cold War was at a height in the early 1980s, with the United States and Soviet Union in conflict; Brenner and his associates sought to use Eleven's power to spy on their adversaries. Testing Eleven's ability to eavesdrop over long distances, Eleven was ordered to repeat words stated by an individual elsewhere in the laboratory. She did not repeat the words through her voice, but instead transmitted the individual's words via a speaker. Brenner later directed Eleven to spy on a Soviet agent . A room in the lab's underground complex contained a sensory deprivation tank used to enhance Eleven's psychic powers; when sensorily deprived, Eleven could become immersed in an inner mental void , in which she could project her consciousness and psychically reach out to other living creatures. On an unspecified date - likely in 1983 - Eleven was lowered into the tank before entering her Void. She succeeded in finding the agent, but she unwittingly encountered a creature from another dimension , transmitting the creature's noises over the loudspeakers in Brenner's control booth. Eleven panicked and the experiment was aborted, but Brenner remained intrigued by the creature. Searching for Eleven On November 6 , 1983 , Brenner repeated the experiment and encouraged Eleven to make contact with the creature. However, when Eleven made contact, another gate was somehow created, linking Eleven's dimension with the creature's dimension and cracking open the wall of the tank room. In the ensuing chaos, the Monster entered Eleven's dimension and killed a scientist , while Eleven managed to escape from the lab through the drain pipe in the boiler room. The entire east wing was subsequently evacuated, while the underground complex was sealed off following quarantine protocol. That evening, Will Byers was abducted by the Monster while going home on a road that passed by the laboratory. While looking for the escaped Eleven, scientists investigated the Gate, from which strange tendrils and membranes slowly unfurled and spread into the underground complex. Connie Frazier and other agents found Eleven at a local diner and killed the diner owner , but Eleven escaped into the nearby woods. The diner owner's death was staged as a suicide. When the lab intercepted Joyce Byers 's phone call to the police, they realized that her son had been taken by the Monster. Later that day, Brenner and a team of agents investigated the Byers' shed, finding traces of some bizarre, supernatural energy. During a nighttime search for Will, a piece of ripped cloth was discovered on the edge of a drainpipe that lead to the lab. Hawkins Police Chief Jim Hopper became suspicious. The following day , Hopper took a tour of the facility with his two officers  Powell  and  Callahan . They were escorted into the facility by the head of security , who allowed them to view the surveillance footage from the nights of the 6th and 7th. As the officers were leaving, Hopper realized a storm had occurred on the night of the 7th, but there was no rain in the footage, raising Hopper's suspicions. Meanwhile, Brenner decided a lab worker should venture through the Gate; he had a security line installed in the tank room, allowing the worker to be pulled out, if necessary. However, Brenner's plan would not be executed until the following day. In order to draw away any suspicion for Will's disappearance, Brenner and the lab created a fake body . The body was planted in the quarry , ready to be "discovered" by state police. The lab also instructed a state morgue worker to fake Will's autopsy. The next day , Brenner selected one of his lab workers, Shepard , to pass through the gate. However, Shepard's expedition was cut short after he was brutally attacked by the Monster; when the workers reeled the security line back in, only a bloody fragment of Shepard's hazmat suit remained. Unbeknownst to Brenner and his team of agents, local school-kids Mike , Lucas and Dustin had unwittingly crossed paths with Eleven, and were hiding her at Mike's house . The same day as Shepard's ill-fated expedition, the boys took Eleven to the middle school 's Heathkit Ham Shack , where Eleven used her abilities to transmit Will's voice through the radio. Eleven's power pushed to the radio to its limit, setting it aflame and heavily damaging it. However, Hawkins Lab's monitoring room intercepted and recorded the radio transmissions. That evening, Hopper discovered that Will's body had been faked, and decided to break into the lab. As he was searching the building for Will, he stumbled upon Eleven's room. Delving deeper into the complex, he was soon pursued by agents, taking an elevator in order to evade them. In the basement, he found the tank room where the Gate was located. Before he could investigate further, he was knocked out and drugged by several workers in hazmat suits. The next day , Hopper awoke to find himself moved back to his trailer, and discovered the lab had planted a recording device in his lightbulb. Back at the lab’s monitoring room, Brenner listened to the tapes of Mike, Lucas and Dustin's voices, and quickly made up his mind: "she was there". The agents' next steps were obvious: they had to learn the identity of the mysterious boys. Later that day, one of Brenner's agents , pretending to be a repairman from Hawkins Power & Light , went to the school and inspected the burned ham radio. While there, the principal informed him that the radio belonged to Scott Clarke. Elsewhere in Hawkins, Agent Frazier visited Scott Clarke at his residence, hoping to find out which pupils operated the school's ham radio. While there, she told Clarke about a fictitious Indiana AV Club program, complete with a falsified flier. When asked if he knew anyone who'd want to participate, Clarke told her about Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. That afternoon, Brenner and his team travelled to the Wheeler house in Hawkins Power and Light vans to retrieve Eleven; however, Eleven and the boys fled the house and narrowly escaped on bike, with Eleven psychically flipping one of the lab's vans in the process. Brenner and his agents then interviewed Mike's parents, Ted and Karen , and scoured the house for information that could help them find Eleven. That evening, Eleven, using a makeshift sensory deprivation tank at Hawkins Middle School , discovered Will's location in the Upside Down . Hopper and Joyce decided to break into the lab, enter the other world and save Will, but were caught while trespassing the lab grounds. Hopper made a deal with Brenner, disclosing that Eleven was located at Hawkins Middle. Brenner gave them permission to enter the Gate and search for Will, believing their mission to be suicidal and therefore unlikely to expose the lab. The Demogorgon's attack As Hopper and Joyce ventured through the Gate, Brenner, assisted by agents, traveled to the school and attempted to take Eleven back to the lab. Although Eleven killed some of the agents using her telekinetic powers, she was drained of strength and collapsed. Brenner cradled her and tried to convince her that he would fix everything and she would be brought back home, but Eleven saw through his facade and rejected him, crying out to reach Mike . In the meantime, the blood spilt from dead bodies attracted the Demogorgon, which distracted the surviving agents, allowing Eleven and her friends to escape. Brenner watched in horror as the monster ran towards him, freezing in shock. The Monster pounced onto him, either slashing or biting his face; he sustained a minor facial injury, but ultimately survived the attack. However, Brenner was unable to recover Eleven, who had mysteriously disappeared, along with the Demogorgon. Despite Brenner’s pessimistic belief that Hopper and Joyce wouldn’t survive the Upside Down, they returned through the Gate, having brought Will with them. Will was taken to Hawkins General Hospital , where he reunited with his brother and friends. Hopper went outside to get some air and light a cigarette, but was interrupted when a government car pulled up to the hospital, with Hawkins Lab agents beckoning for him to join them. After reluctantly tossing his cigarette aside, Hopper complied and entered the car, and he and the agents set off into the night. 1983 - 1984 Following the incident at the middle school, Hawkins Lab was placed under increased scrutiny. For unknown reasons, Dr. Sam Owens replaced Brenner as Director of Operations. Brenner's whereabouts and activities at this time remain unclear, though he was possibly in hospital, recovering from his injuries. After finding out about his "episodes", Joyce began taking Will to the lab to have his symptoms monitored by Owens. Meanwhile, Owens and the lab continued to study the Gate and the Upside Down, placing a probe-like machine within the dimension, presumably to gather data. They redeveloped the tank room into the "rift lab", where lab-affliated soldiers would periodically burn the vines extending from the Gate; despite the lab's efforts, the Gate grew to an enormous size, extending far beneath the lab and forming a series of tunnels beneath Hawkins. The lab soon discovered the existence of the tunnels; they created an elevator that transported lab workers and soldiers deep beneath the earth, connecting the lab to the tunnels' entranceways. Will's symptoms On October 29 , 1984 , Will experienced another episode at the Palace Arcade in which he flashed back to the Upside Down. The next day, Joyce took him to the lab for a medical exam with Dr. Owens . After meeting with Will in the lab, Owens explained to Joyce and Hopper that had "post traumatic stress disorder," Owens stated that Will's condition would get worse because of the "Anniversary Effect" and advised they should just "treat him normally". However, Will's episodes would soon take a turn for the worst, leading him to become possessed by a mysterious entity nicknamed "the shadow monster" . Once Hopper and Joyce departed, Owens's assistant came to inform Owens that "they" were ready for him. He took the elevator down to the underground complex, and watched one of his soldiers, Teddy, perform a routine burn on the Gate. After Merrill Wright's pumpkin patch and various other crops began to rot, Hopper demanded that Owens investigate, to which he eventually relented. He and his team analysed the soil at the degradation sites, and to their shock, discovered some of the particles would begin to float when exposed to heat; Owens was forced to conclude the particles were sentient, and were linked together in a hive intelligence. The teenagers' plan Meanwhile, Nancy Wheeler continued to grieve her friend Barbara Holland , who had been killed by the Demogorgon . Deciding she had to take action, she and Will's brother Jonathan developed a plan to expose Hawkins Lab and reveal the Upside Down's existence. Nancy called Barbara Holland 's mother and explained that she had information about Barbara's death. Nancy would give this information to Mrs. Holland the next morning, at a local park. The next day, Nancy and Jonathan went to the park; Mrs. Holland did not meet them, but noticed multiple people appeared to be watching them. Nancy and Jonathan went back to their car, but were unable to make it start. A man knocked on the window and said that he would give them a lift; Nancy and Jonathan realized they were surrounded by covert agents from Hawkins Lab. Nancy and Jonathan were taken to the lab, where they met with Owens. He took them to the Rift chamber, showing them the Gate; there, Owens stressed that the Soviet Union and other such foreign adversaries mustn’t learn about the Upside Down. He urged the pair to reconsider their course of action, before letting them go. Unbeknownst to Owens, Nancy had secretly tape-recorded his remarks, which included admissions about the lab's involvement in Barbara's death; they would later bring the tapes to investigative journalist Murray Bauman . Descent into chaos Later, Will had a vision of Hopper in the Hawkins Tunnel System and realized Hopper was in danger. Will guided Joyce, Bob and Mike to an entrance to the tunnels. Joyce and Bob entered the tunnels to find and rescue Hopper. Soldiers from the lab arrived, helped to rescue Hopper, but then started burning the vines in the tunnels. As soon as the burning began, Will began violently convulsing and collapsed to the ground. Will was rushed to the lab, where it was discovered that he had lost some of his memories; he was only recognized his mother and Mike , and did not recognize Dr. Owens, Bob or Hopper. The doctors tested his connection to the hive mind by burning a severed vine with a blowtorch. Will experienced extreme pain from the burning of the tendril. Dr. Owens believed that Will had been infected with a "virus" of some sort, resulting in him becoming connected to the Upside Down via the "hive mind". Several scientists argued over burning the tunnel system but Owens thought that it might kill Will. However, the scientists proposed that it was worth the risk and it was not possible for them to save Will. Claiming he knew the shadow monsters's weakness, Will revealed a location in the tunnels the entity didn't want him to see. Dr. Owens sent a team of soldiers into the tunnels to burn the location identified by Will. However, Will revealed that the shadow monster forced him to reveal this location. Mike realized it was a trap. Mike tried to warn Hopper and Owens of the trap but it was too late. While Hopper and Owens watched from the control room, the soldiers were ambushed and killed by a pack of Demodogs . As the Demodogs began entering the lab, Owens sounded the alarm. Hopper and Owens went up the stairs, while the other scientists took the elevator. When the elevator door opened on the main floor of the lab, two soldiers saw that the elevator was full of dead scientists and demodogs. Mike, Joyce and Bob sedated Will to prevent the shadow monster from spying on them. Once Hopper and Owens reached Will’s room, the group had to leave quickly as the Demodogs were after them. As the Demodogs attacked and killed everyone, the group hid in a CCTV monitoring room. The electricity in the lab failed, and all the doors were automatically locked when the power went off. Bob Newby volunteered to reset the breakers in the basement. He successfully reset the breakers and opened the doors. As Owens guided Bob over the radio, Bob made his way up from the basement and then through the lab, dodging Demodogs in the process. Meanwhile, Joyce, Hopper, and Mike managed to get Will out of the lab safely. Owens remained behind to watch the CCTV cameras and guide the others by radio. After outrunning a Demodog, Bob finally reached the lab's entrance lobby, where he saw Joyce. However, he was suddenly attacked and killed by a Demodog. Hopper pulled a traumatized Joyce out of the lab and, with the rest of the group, headed for the Byers house. Closing the Gate Eleven and Hopper went back to the lab, coming across the remains of the massacred technicians. They eventually found Dr. Owens seriously wounded in the stairwell; seemingly the only survivor of the attack. After a brief interaction, where Owens agreed to keep Eleven secret from the wider government, Hooper and Eleven continued to the rift lab. After waiting until Jonathan confirmed Will was safe over radio, and free from the Mind Flayer's influence, Eleven and Hopper then boarded the elevator and began their descent beneath the lab. Facing the Gate's massive new entrance, Eleven began to channel her power; slowly, but surely, the edges of the portal began to retreat. The Mind Flayer and the hive mind, frightened by Eleven's power, sent a horde of Demodogs their way to stop her; the creatures crawled up the cavernous wall and lunged at the elevator, but Hopper fought them off with his shotgun and rifle. As Eleven focused on sealing the breach, the enormous silhoutte of the Mind Flayer appeared beyond the membrane, but it was too late; Eleven, drawing on all her anger and pain, finished closing the Gate. As the Gate closed, the remaining Demodogs, deprived of their connection to the hive mind, dropped dead and fell from the cavern walls. Hopper embraced an exhausted Eleven, and commended her for her bravery. The exposé and shutdown Some time later, lab workers confirmed the Gate had been entirely erased, with only minor cavities remaining in the wall that hosted the Gate's initial entrance. Hopper watched as workers filled the last cavities with cement, convincing him the horrors of the Upside Down were well and truly over. [7] Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers worked with Murray Bauman to release the tape recording of Dr. Sam Owens 's 'confession', which compelled Hawkins Lab and "several high-level Department of Energy officials" to acknowledge their coverup of Barb's death. They claimed her death occurred due to the leak of an experimental chemical asphyxiant, a cover story that Nancy, Jonathan and Murray reluctantly agreed to. In December, the lab was shut down, with military police locking the lab. Scuffle with Grigori On July 1 , 1985 , Hopper and Joyce returned to the lab after Joyce suspected that the "bad men" were messing with the electro-magnetic field. When they went through the entrance, Joyce had small flashbacks of Bob's death, which had taken place there. After finding nothing but an abandoned government building, Hopper tells Joyce that all the bad experiences are over and she should move on. At the same time of their visit, Grigori was also at the lab. When the two heard sounds and realized they were not alone, Hopper followed the noises into a room, where he was ambushed by Grigori. Taken by surprise, Hopper was beaten and knocked out and Grigori escaped on his motorcycle. Joyce found Hopper and took him back to his cabin where she would nurse him back to health. Buried memories After learning Eleven lost her powers on July 4 , 1985 , Dr. Owens and Dr. Brenner established the Nina Project to help bring them back. A custom sensory deprivation tank was fitted out with television screens; when placed inside and exposed to archived CCTV footage from Hawkins Lab, Eleven entered a state of "re-experience". She relived repressed memories from Hawkins Lab, remembering her first interactions with 001 and regaining her powers in the process. The lab was very secretive and private; it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and guarded by military police. It was composed of one multi-story building that led down to an underground complex. It was located within a secluded forest with only a single road leading to it. According to one set of blueprints, the layout of Hawkins Lab was as follows: [8]

Basement/underground complex )

A number of notable rooms were not mentioned by name in the blueprints:

• Chemical lab (possibly 17 on Floor 00) [9]
• Radio monitoring and surveillance room(s) (possibly 09 on Floors 00 and 01)
• Eleven 's 1983 bedroom (probably Floor 00) [3]
• Boiler room [10]

The tank room, which was later redeveloped into the "rift lab" after the Mothergate opened, contained the following:

• Sensory deprivation tank (later removed)
• The Mothergate 's original entrance
• Elevator to the Rift Chamber

Beneath the complex

• Rift Chamber - contained the Mothergate's second entrance
• Entrance to the underground tunnels

The grounds

• Front parking lot
• Main entrance
• Perimeter fence

All lab personnel - excluding the test subjects - were given electronic key cards (see below) .

• Dr. Martin Brenner † - head scientist and researcher, former Director of Operations
• Dr. Sam Owens - former Director of Operations [2]
• Dr. Owens' Assistant - former assistant to the Director
• Shepard † - scientist
• Dr. Ellis † - scientist
• Dr. John Pericles † - scientist
• Unnamed senior research scientist
• Unnamed scientist †
• Unnamed radar technician
• Unnamed technician †
• Edward J. Morris [11]
• Connie Frazier † - agent
• Unnamed lead agent
• An agent posing as a repairman
• Head of Security
• Ray Carroll (former orderly)
• Henry Creel
• Unnamed guard †
• Unnamed guard 1 †
• Unnamed guard 2 †
• Unnamed test subject (did not have psychic abilities; played a role in one of Eleven's tests)

Test Subjects

Mkultra test subjects.

#	Name	Status	Duration
1		Alive	-
2		Alive	1969 - 1971
3		Alive	1969 - 1971
4		Alive	1969 - 1971
5-6	(2)	Alive	1969 -
7-8	(2+)	Deceased	1969 - in or before 1973

Child test subjects

#	Birth name	Other aliases	Status
001 "
	and . and the
002 "	Unknown
003 "	Unknown
004 "	Unknown
005 "	Unknown
006 "	Unknown
007 "	Unknown
008 "
009 "	Unknown
010 "	Unknown
	.
011 "
	. to the alternate dimension four years later.
012 "	Unknown
013 "	Unknown
014 "	Unknown
015 "	Unknown
016 + 017 " "	Unknown
018 "	Unknown
003 "
006 "
009 "
009.5 "

Behind the scenes

In the original pilot script , Hawkins Lab's role in the story was instead fulfilled by the real life Camp Hero in Montauk, Long Island.

Filming & production design

The filming location used for the exterior scenes is the Georgia Mental Health Institute, which operated from 1965 to 1997 near the Emory University on Briarcliff road in Atlanta. It was bought by Emory University in its entirety from the state in 1988 and housed a number of actual research projects for some years, but is now defunct and primarily used for shooting film and television.

When creating the fourth season 's interior sets, production designer Chris Trujillo and his team researched institutional facilities for children throughout the 20th century. The lab's look took specific inspiration from Scandinavian children's homes and hospitals, including their carpet wrap furniture, clean lines, and hard antiseptic surfaces. They tried to get across that "an attempt was made to make [the lab] feel appropriate for children, but it's just fundamentally this cold, unpleasant space."

While seeking out sets for Lenora Hills High School , Trujillo was inspired by an "amazing coffered ceiling" with "recessed fluorescent squares" in the administration building of a school in New Mexico. While the ceiling was not at all appropriate for Lenora Hills High, the production team realised it was perfect for the season's new version of the Rainbow Room . [14]

• The 'Indigo' title is not seen or heard in the actual show, but it did crop up in the novel Suspicious Minds . [9]
• The Georgia Mental Health Institute, where exterior shots of Hawkins Lab were filmed, was also used for the 2017 horror movie, Rings . As of 2023, the building is scheduled for demolition in the not-too-distant future.
• ↑ "The Hellfire Club"
• ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 " Calling Hawkins Power will give you 'Stranger Things' clues " CNET . October 23, 2017.
• ↑ 3.0 3.1 "The Flea and the Acrobat"
• ↑ The official teleplay for "The Vanishing of Will Byers", page 26
• ↑ " New Poster, Official Release Date & Synopsis Revealed For ‘Stranger Things’ Season 2 " The Playlist . July 11, 2017.
• ↑ The September 4 date is displayed on the Hawkins Lab security camera in "The Nina Project"
• ↑ "The Case of the Missing Lifeguard"
• ↑ 8.0 8.1 Stranger Things Hawkins Memories: Vecna's Curse
• ↑ 9.0 9.1 Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds
• ↑ "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab"
• ↑ Into the Fire Issue 2
• ↑ In newspaper clippings, it states: "The six subjects will offer witness testimony about their individual experiences in the labs."
• ↑ In newspaper clippings, it states: "The documents contain significant details of the extent of the drug tests. Including, details of death at the hands of the experimenters." Due to this, you can ascertain that atleast 2 test subjects were killed before Project MKUltra were exposed.
• ↑ "Chris Trujillo ('Stranger Things' production designer): Designing 'the quintessential haunted house'" The GoldDerby channel on YouTube . August 2, 2022.
• ↑ The Duffer Brothers' 'MasterClass'

Canon hierarchy

• Suspicious Minds shows Brenner arriving at Hawkins Lab at 1969, yet the fourth season suggests Brenner has run Hawkins Lab since at least 1959.
• The comic versions of the test subjects are at odds with what the fourth season depicts. Additionally, the dating of Terry's rescue attempt differs between Stranger Things: SIX and what behind-the-scenes material suggests ( an Instagram post by lead makeup artist Amy L. Forsythe )

Director • Staff • • • • • • • • Test Subjects • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Locations • Objects & Items • • Other • • Locations • • • • • • • • • • • Entities • • • • • • • • • • • • The Flayed • • • • • Visitors • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Miscellaneous • • • • • • • • • • • Cities & Towns • • • • • • • • States & Regions • • • • • Buildings, Local Areas and Facilities • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Homes & Residences • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Countries • Upside Down & Miscellaneous • • • • • • • • • • Stranger Things 3 Max Mayfield Stranger than fiction: The real-life CIA projects that inspired 'Stranger Things' Social Sharing More than a few Canadians will be sleep-deprived this weekend after staying up late to binge-watch  Stranger Things 2 .  The show's much-anticipated second season dropped on Netflix on Oct. 27. Stranger Things was an instant hit when it launched last summer, receiving rave reviews for its eerie soundtrack and unabashed pastiche of '80s influences. MORE: The prop master who helped Stranger Things recreate the 1980s It follows a group of kids in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, as they struggle to uncover a massive government conspiracy with the help of a psychic girl named Eleven. Stranger Things 2 is set in 1984, one year after the events of the first season. The monsters are back — and bigger. But while the show's plot is pretty fantastical, it's not all science fiction.   Stranger Things ' creators actually borrowed parts of the story from real-life CIA experiments. Some of those experiments took place in Montreal, where, in the 1950s and '60s, psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron subjected his patients to treatments including electroshocks, experimental drugs and long periods of chemically-induced sleep. Earlier this year, the Canadian government quietly paid a $100,000 settlement to the daughter of one of Cameron's victims. But Dr. Ewen Cameron wasn't the only one conducting bizarre and troubling CIA experiments on unwitting patients in the mid-to-late 20th century. We asked journalist Cady Drell to take us through some of the creepiest government experiments that inspired Stranger Things . Here's some of what she had to say. Project MK Ultra "The most obvious real-life influence for Stranger Things was this project called MK Ultra . [It] was a CIA covert operation that happened from the 1950s to the 1970s. It took place at over 80 institutions — schools and universities, jails, even hospitals that were privately funded. And a lot of the participants in it had no idea that they were part of a government experiment. They wanted to find ways to extract information, and they were testing them on the American public. - Cady Drell MK Ultra's point was to develop methods and products for war, especially the Cold War. They wanted to find ways to extract information, and they were testing them on the American public. Project MK Ultra is actually mentioned by name in the show when Chief Hopper, who's kind of trying to get to the bottom of everything that's happening at Hawkins Laboratory, tracks down Terry Ives ... who tried to sue the government for abuse. She explicitly mentions Project MK Ultra, and being a part of those experiments without being aware of it." Sensory Deprivation "Eleven is one of the main characters in Stranger Things , and we discover pretty early on that the government is trying to shape her into almost a killing machine. She's a human weapon of war, and they're doing this by putting her through a lot of different experiments. "Dr. Ewen Cameron ... used a combination of hallucinatory drugs like LSD, electroshock therapy, and sensory deprivation on a lot of unwitting patients." - Cady Drell One of the first indications we get in the show that the government is participating in some unorthodox experiments is when we see Eleven, who is a little girl, entering a sensory deprivation chamber; she's being submerged in water. These actually existed and were used by the government as part of MK Ultra. Dr. Ewen Cameron , who was working on a subproject of MK Ultra, used a combination of hallucinatory drugs like LSD, electroshock therapy, and sensory deprivation on a lot of unwitting patients — many of whom came to see him for things like anxiety." Mind control and "Remote Viewings" "MK Ultra was clearly a huge influence on Stranger Things , but it was shut down by the 1970s, and Stranger Things takes place in the 1980s. [But] there were actually some pretty weird government experiments going on in the '80s, too. The one that most closely resembles the things that were happening in Stranger Things is the Star Gate Project . Star Gate was just getting warmed up by 1983; it actually started in 1978 and went all the way to 1995. And it was established to see whether psychic phenomena could be used in military applications. It wasn't even a CIA project; it was an army project. Do you remember that scene where Eleven is told to try to kill a cat with her mind? Those telekinetic abilities and psychic powers were something the government was genuinely testing for. There was a movie and a book called The Men Who Stare at Goats about the people who were involved in the Stargate experiments, testing telekinetic abilities by attempting to kill goats with their minds . One of the other missions for [the] Star Gate project was to see whether people could engage in ' remote viewings '. We actually see this in Stranger Things as well, when Eleven, while undergoing sensory deprivation, is able to listen in on a Russian conversation and actually see them in front of her. There was a section of the government that was convinced that we could potentially engage in 'remote viewings', and they were convinced enough that they thought this project was worth continuing from 1978 to 1995." For more about the CIA projects that inspired Stranger Things, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page. More from this episode DAY 6 'It's unenforceable': What Quebec can learn from Austria's burka ban The Battered Bastards of Baseball: The unlikely heroes of the Portland Mavericks DAY 6 A global chocolate shortage? Scientists race to beat the threat from climate change Breaking the sound barrier in the Supersonic Bloodhound jet car Day 6 'Reckless Daughter': The definitive biography of Joni Mitchell Riffed from the Headlines 28/10/2017 FULL EPISODE: Episode 361: Burka bans, 'Stranger Things', baseball misfits, jet cars, Joni Mitchell and more Related Stories Federal government quietly compensates daughter of brainwashing experiments victim 'Stranger Things' Was Inspired By A Creepy, Supposedly Real Experiment Called The Montauk Project Stranger Things has quickly become a pop-culture phenomenon after being released on Netflix about a month and a half ago. Since then the internet has been full of theories about The Upside Down, its monstrous inhabitant known as the Demogorgon, the telekinetic girl known as Eleven, and the experiments conducted by the company under the guise of the United States Department of Energy. The show is pure sci-fi, drawing inspiration from plenty of films from the same decade in which the story takes place, but the concept of the show is actually based on a very creepy, supposedly real-life experiment conducted by the government called The Montauk Project . How was Stranger Things inspired by The Montauk Project? Find out after the jump. The Montauk Project is known as a series of secret government projects and experiments that were reportedly conducted at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station on Montauk, Long Island. Much of the details on this project that began circulating in the 1980s come from a man named Preston Nichols, who claimed to have remembered repressed memories of his involvement with the project. The name of this project alone shows that this conspiracy was the inspiration for The Duffer Brothers' Netflix show. You might not remember this, but back in April of 2015, Netflix picked up a show called Montauk : Described as a love letter to the '80s classics that captivated a generation, the series is set in 1980 Montauk, Long Island, where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl. Yes, that series went on to become Stranger Things , and it's clear that the original title of the show was lifted straight from the experiments that inspired it. And when you hear what those experiments entailed thanks to some deep digging by Thrillist , the relationship between the show and the conspiracy becomes even clearer. In a series of books, Nichols discussed experiments that included researching topics such as time travel, teleportation, mind control, alien species and even faking the Apollo moon landings. All this has ties to another project called The Philadelphia Experiment in 1943 , which supposedly created a wormhole that transported two sailors named Duncan and Edward Cameron into Montauk in 1983. It was the sudden recollection of one of these sailors that sparked memories in Preston Nichols that led to the revelation of other experiments. Outside of portals, tests included something called The Montauk Chair, which allowed one of the supposedly transported sailors to do something that sounds very similar to an experiment conducted with Eleven in Stranger Things : The first experiment was called "The Seeing Eye." With a lock of person's hair or other appropriate object in his hand, Duncan could concentrate on the person and be able to see as if he was seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and feeling through their body. He could actually see through other people anywhere on the planet. That's pretty much how the secret government installation in Stranger Things came to stumble upon The Upside Down in the flashbacks scattered throughout the first season. This is even something that Eleven appears to be able to do in other ways as she was able to use her powers to allow a radio to pick up sound from The Upside Down to show to Mike, Dustin, and Lucas that their missing friend Will is still alive. Some other key details of this project include kids being abducted to take part in some of these experiments, just like Eleven. Even more intriguing is a story involving the consciousness of Duncan from 1983 somehow being transported into the mind of a sibling born in 1963. It's all rather confusing, but could that provide some hints as to why Eleven is being experimented on in Stranger Things ? Could she have the consciousness of another person lying inside her, giving her these powers? Also, there's this frightening portion from The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time : "We finally decided we'd had enough of the whole experiment. The contingency program was activated by someone approaching Duncan while he was in the chair and simply whispering "The time is now." At this moment, he let loose a monster from his subconscious. And the transmitter actually portrayed a hairy monster. It was big, hairy, hungry and nasty. But it didn't appear underground in the null point. It showed up somewhere on the base. It would eat anything it could find. And it smashed everything in sight. Several different people saw it, but almost everyone described a different beast." The unleashing of a beast from the subconscious sounds an awful lot like the arrival of the Demogorgon. In fact, a recent theory proposes that the Demogorgon is actually a manifestation of the anger that lies within Eleven, which is why they both raise their hands at each other in a climactic scene in the classroom that sees them both disintegrate into dust. Clearly, Stranger Things isn't following the story of The Montauk Project exactly as it reportedly happened, but just as they use pieces of the 1980s movies that inspire the style of the show, they're lifting elements of the experiments for their own purposes in the narrative. It's not unlike how The Mothman Prophecies borrowed several different accounts of strange occurrences surrounding the supernatural phenomenon known as the Mothman and turned it into a movie. If you go reading about The Montauk Project more in-depth ( Thrillist has a great and even more extensive article that provided much of the "factual" information in this article), then it might just add fuel to some of the theories out there for the future of Stranger Things . Plus, if you're looking for more entertainment with ties to this mysterious government conspiracy, check out the found footage short film called Montauk that we featured back in December of 2012 . Plus, we have some predictions of our own as to what we can expect in Stranger Things season two based on the episode titles revealed recently. Inside The Montauk Project, The US Military’s Alleged Mind Control Program Allegedly conducted on the east end of long island during the cold war, project montauk was a secret military experiment to develop psychological warfare with abducted children.. The Montauk Project just might be the motherlode of lesser-known conspiracy theories. Time travel, teleportation, and mind control are all integral to the story, while contact with aliens and the staging of Apollo moon landings add color to an already wild yarn. Yet even after all that and the fact that it inspired the Netflix series Stranger Things , relatively few have even heard of the Montauk Project story. So how is it that the Montauk Project — which purports that shadowy elements of the U.S. military turned a pair of military installations on the far reaches of Long Island into a hub of illicit, chilling research into the paranormal — has gone overlooked? Perhaps it’s because the story originated in sources that are dubious even by conspiracy theory standards. Though even if the Montauk Project itself is fiction — which it surely is — the Central Intelligence Agency’s documented history of disturbing experiments like the ones supposedly carried out at Montauk means that this theory will stay intriguing for the few who know it. And with the popularity of Stranger Things firmly established, perhaps the Montauk Project’s time in the spotlight might finally be just around the corner. The Bizarre Origins Of The Montauk Project Story Wikimedia Commons The Montauk Project allegedly involved the abduction of orphans and runaways who were subjected to physical and psychological torture. The Montauk Project narrative got its start in earnest in 1992 with a self-published book by Preston B. Nichols called The Montauk Project: Experiments In Time [available as a PDF ]. There were already rumors that the American military had been conducting experiments in psychological warfare on the eastern end of Long Island as far back as the mid-1980s, so Nichols’ book added fuel to an already existing fire. NYS Parks The U.S. government has staunchly denied any research described in Nichols’ book occurred at either Camp Hero or the Montauk Air Force Station. Both Camp Hero and the Montauk Air Force Station — the Army transferred a portion of Camp Hero to the Air Force after World War II — were said to be the hubs of this paranormal research. Nichols begins by saying that he wrote the book after “recovering” memories of his time as a researcher for the project and then goes on to give an account detailing the interior of the facilities, its procedures, advanced technologies, and numerous paranormal incidents he claims to have witnessed. After the book’s publication, others started coming forward to say that they, too, had been privy to the illicit research conducted by the Montauk Project, beginning the process of circular reinforcement that is the essential mechanism of a conspiracy theory. YouTube Preston Nichols claimed he eventually recovered repressed memories of his true identity, and that he himself had worked on the Montauk Project. In terms of his actual claims, Nichols’ book goes all-in: experiments in mind control and telepathy, opening space-time portals to other dimensions, contact with alien life and the abduction of runaway children — all under the authority of a U.S. military program financed by Nazi gold recovered during World War II. With so many claims in play, untangling it all is an epic undertaking. Fortunately, we at least know where to start. Recent News american history Haunting Photos Of The Kennedy Assassination And Autopsy That Capture The Full Scope Of The Tragedy By All That's Interesting The Philadelphia Experiment Wikimedia Commons Some believe that the U.S. Navy’s alleged research into radar invisibility in 1943 not only made the USS Eldridge vanish completely, but actually transported it to Norfolk, Virginia. The story of the Montauk Project intersects with a longstanding and somewhat well-known conspiracy theory regarding the so-called Philadelphia experiment of 1943. According to lore, the U.S. military was trying to find ways to bypass Nazi radar during World War II by using electromagnetic fields. The various versions of the story say that the military successfully developed a technique that rendered the USS Eldridge , stationed at a naval shipyard in Philadelphia, not just invisible to radar but completely invisible to the naked eye. What’s more, the ship was supposedly then transported through a hole in space-time to Norfolk, Virginia, more than 200 miles away. When the Eldridge reappeared at the Philadelphia shipyard several minutes later, some crew members had been fused into the bulkheads of the ship or had rematerialized inside-out. Those who weren’t were driven insane by the disorientation they experienced while the ship was in a so-called “hyperspace bubble” that existed outside of space-time. Nearly all of the key details are either disprovable through obvious chronological inconsistencies or violations of the established laws of physics. Moreover, no two retellings of the Philadelphia experiment story are ever the same and people who actually served on the Eldridge in 1943 dispute the story entirely. Nonetheless, this conspiracy theory had been bouncing around for a few decades before it helped give birth to the Montauk Project story. A Tale Of Two Portals: From The Philadelphia Experiment To The Montauk Project In 1984, a schlocky, otherwise forgettable B-movie was made about the Philadelphia experiment, aptly titled The Philadelphia Experiment . When a 57-year-old man named Al Bielek saw the movie in 1988, he claimed that he experienced an overwhelming sense of déjà vu . Using new age therapies and practices, Bielek said that he was able to unlock a massive store of repressed memories about his extensive involvement not just in the Philadelphia experiment but in something called the Montauk Project as well and that the two were intertwined. Suggesting that his memory had been wiped using the CIA’s MK-Ultra techniques to maintain the secrecy of the program, Bielek claimed that his real name was Edward Cameron and that he and his brother Duncan Cameron were crewmembers on the Eldridge in 1943 when they were in their 20s. Bielek told his story to an audience at the Mutual UFO Network conference in 1990, saying not only that the Philadelphia experiment was real, but that he and his brother were aboard the ship when it happened. He said that none other than Nikola Tesla himself had engineered the “equipment” that caused the Eldridge to break out of space-time and that it had even opened up a wormhole to the future, which dropped the two brothers in the middle of Montauk’s Camp Hero on August 12, 1983. Wikimedia Commons A declassified document detailing Project MK-Ultra’s mind control experiments. Some information has been redacted. At this point, Bielek’s story becomes convoluted, but the thrust of it is that he and his brother joined up with the Montauk Project, which had grown out of the electromagnetic research of the Philadelphia experiment. Bielek claims he befriended Nichols in the 1970s and that together they developed the “Montauk Chair,” a mind-reading device that was a central component of the entire project and helps provide a window into the specifics of its supposed research. The Montauk Chair, Psychic Espionage, And Portals Through Time And Space Preston Nichols details his alleged work on the Montauk Chair in his book, claiming it used electromagnetism to further the psychic powers of whoever sat in it. Duncan Cameron — in a stroke of uncanny coincidence — happened to have substantial psychic abilities, including the ability to manifest objects with his mind using the device. This may sound familiar to fans of Stranger Things , where a similar device is used by the character Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, to open a portal to the parallel, alternate dimension called the Upside Down. In the Montauk Project lore, Cameron and other project researchers would use the Montauk Chair to similarly open portals through space-time. Nichols described another experiment in his book that is curiously similar to remote viewing , a paranormal concept that was actually researched by the CIA (and also included in Stranger Things ). Nichols writes: “The first experiment was called ‘The Seeing Eye.’ With a lock of a person’s hair or other appropriate object in his hand, Duncan could concentrate on the person and be able to see as if he was seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and feeling through their body. He could actually see through other people anywhere on the planet.” But more so than remote viewing or any of the other claims Nichols makes, the one about the abduction of young children — some no older than four — to use as subjects in the Montauk Project’s various experiments is surely the most shocking. Nichols referred to these underage abductees as the “Montauk Boys” and said that they were snatched off the street or even taken from their homes. According to Nichols, these children were so psychologically broken down by the Montauk Project that most would forget all about their time at Camp Hero for the rest of their lives. And the stories of the Montauk Boys only became more intriguing when someone started coming forward to confirm them. Twitter A sealed entrance to Camp Hero’s alleged underground facilities. Nichols claimed the subterranean floors were flooded with cement once the Montauk Project was shut down in the early 1980s. At least one man has claimed to similarly “recover” his traumatic memories of the Montauk Project just as Bielek and Nichols had. Stewart Swerdlow, a 52-year-old man living in Michigan, told The Sun in 2017 that he was one of the Montauk Boys Nichols describes and that he and others like him were subjected to horrific abuse: “When the experiments started they’d target ‘expendable’ boys like orphans, runaways or the children of drug addicts. The kind of kids no one would really come looking for. The aim was to fracture your mind so they could program you… they would change the temperature from very hot to very cold, starve you then over-feed you. I remember being beaten with a wooden pole. And they loved to hold your head underwater until you nearly drowned. That was effective — it makes a person likely to listen to and obey their ‘rescuer.’ They also used LSD to put our brains into an altered state.” Getty Images A doctor administers a dose of LSD to a volunteer during the MK-Ultra project. Stewart Swerdlow claims he and others were similarly dosed as children throughout the Montauk Project. Swerdlow added that he also observed project staffers sexually abusing the children in order to break them down. Swerdlow even alleged that he and other Montauk Boys were sent to Mars and back to Biblical times via the project’s portals. “In the early days, as they were perfecting the co-ordinates, a lot of boys were simply lost,” he said. “I still have nightmares about it today. I wasn’t there when the Montauk Chair was shut off but I felt it, like I had suddenly been unplugged from electricity.” The End Of The Montauk Project And The “True” Story Behind Stranger Things Netflix Stranger Things was originally titled Montauk and was heavily inspired by the purported experiments at Camp Hero. All of the project’s experiments finally came to an end in the early 1980s, Nichols claimed, when things finally went too far even for the researchers responsible. Nichols claimed that whatever someone sitting in the Montauk Chair envisioned would first appear on a transmitter screen, before being manifested in the real world in either solid or transparent form. The Montauk Project was shut down after Nichols and Duncan Cameron, along with other participants, rebelled against the project when something especially sinister was manifested: “We finally decided we’d had enough of the whole experiment. The contingency program was activated by someone approaching Duncan while he was in the chair and simply whispering ‘The time is now.’ At this moment, he let loose a monster from his subconscious. “And the transmitter actually portrayed a hairy monster. It was big, hairy, hungry and nasty. But it didn’t appear underground in the null point. It showed up somewhere on the base. It would eat anything it could find. And it smashed everything in sight. “Several different people saw it, but almost everyone described a different beast.” Nichols said they had to destroy all of the equipment in order to remove this creature from existence and send it back to its original dimension, or something to that effect. This is clearly the inspiration for a similar narrative in Stranger Things where Eleven summons a monster which similarly goes on to wreak havoc. Netflix The “Montauk Chair” Preston B. Nichols described in his book, which allegedly amplified a person’s psychic abilities, was changed to a suit in Stranger Things . According to Variety , show creators Matt and Russ Duffer were so inspired by the Montauk Project that the original title for their Netflix hit was simply Montauk . After filmmaker Charlie Kessler filed a lawsuit against the brothers for allegedly plagiarizing his short film, The Montauk Project , the setting was changed from Long Island to the suburbs of Indiana. Regardless of the creative squabble with Kessler, the Netflix show clearly relied heavily on Nichols’ work. Was There Any Truth To The Montauk Project Story? According to Nichols, the basement levels of Camp Hero were flooded with cement once all the equipment was destroyed and the project was shut down, with anyone involved in the project having their memories of the project suppressed using MK-Ultra techniques. The decommissioned facilities at Camp Hero are still standing, however, attracting curious passersby and local townsfolk to this day regardless of what actually happened inside. The SAGE Radar facility has become a notable landmark for boats sailing around the fork of Long Island, so it was left standing when the Air Force shut down the last of its air traffic control operations at the facility in 1984, giving the site an eerie, disquieting presence. The military, for its part, has disputed that anything like the Montauk Project took place on Long Island. But these sorts of denials often do little to dissuade believers because the U.S. government likewise denied their research into mind control and remote viewing with just as much assuredness as they deny Nichols’ claims — right up until the moment the research documents on MK-Ultra and other similar projects were declassified. While most locals likewise consider the Montauk Project story to be a fabrication, they aren’t entirely convinced by the U.S. military’s insistence that the Camp Hero and Air Force station facilities were entirely above-board either. “No doubt stories have been embellished,” said Paul Monte, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce, “but I don’t doubt that things went on there in the Cold War years. Even today, the base is patrolled and watched… They obviously don’t want people in there even now.” Filmmaker Christopher Garetano, whose documentary, The Montauk Chronicles , explores the history of the subject, believes that it’s important to consider a few precedents before writing off the story entirely. “The more I researched the more I’ve begun to believe it is not so ludicrous,” he said. “We know there was military interest in paranormal phenomena. Project Stargate, which began in 1978 and was later declassified, looked at whether psychics could perform ‘remote viewing’ and ‘see’ events from great distances.” “MK-Ultra used vulnerable people, like prisoners. So why is it so far-fetched that orphans or runaway boys would be targeted? They seem exactly the sort of subjects who would be easy to take. And Montauk would be the ideal facility. In the winter it is like a ghost town.” As chilling as these notions are, the Montauk Project and the outlandish stories associated with it sit squarely within the realm of fiction. But will some proof eventually spring forth from the depths of the government’s archives in the coming years or decades? Perhaps only time will tell. After learning about the alleged time travel, teleportation, and mind control of the Montauk Project, discover the supposed Philadelphia experiment . Then, read about the infamous Project MK-Ultra experiments . PO Box 24091 Brooklyn, NY 11202-4091 To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories . The Big Story Newsletters Steven Levy's Plaintext Column WIRED Classics from the Archive WIRED Insider WIRED Consulting Stranger Things Is Based on a True Story. Kinda Demogorgons, inverted worlds, really bad psychokinesis-induced nosebleeds—a lot of really unbelievable things exist in the world of Stranger Things . Hence the name. But that doesn’t mean everything in Hawkins, Indiana is fiction. At least not entirely. In fact, Hawkins itself has real-world roots. “It’s based on a place in Montauk, New York called Camp Hero,” says Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo (aka Dustin). “There was, like, rumors of secret government spies doing human experiments to fight in the Cold War. It’s based on that one government lab.” OK, so maybe Eleven isn't actually out in the woods somewhere fighting monsters, but it does show there’s more truth to the mysteries on Netflix’s show than you might think. Other things Matarazzo and his costar Joe Keery (Steve) reveal in Google Autocompete Interview above? Well, for one, they say it might not be good for children—“Depends on the kid,” Matarazzo says—and that Stranger Things passes the Bechdel Test . Want to know more, including whether or not Keery is currently pregnant? Click play on the video above. How Netflix made Stranger Things a global phenomenon WIRED's interview with Matt and Ross Duffer An excessively in-depth discussion of Season 2 Disneyland | Disneyland reveals plans for new Avatar land… Share this:. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Click to print (Opens in new window) Food & Drink Amusement Parks Theater & Arts Things To Do Disneyland | disneyland reveals plans for new avatar land based on ‘way of water’. Fans of “Avatar: The Way of Water” that grossed $2.3 billion at the box office may soon be able to board a boat and explore the Pandoran oceans seen in the blockbuster film if Disneyland moves forward with plans for an Avatar themed land teased for the Anaheim theme park resort. The new themed land will be built at Disney California Adventure, Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro announced on Saturday, Aug. 10 during the D23 fan event at the Honda Center in Anaheim. D’Amaro said the new land is in “active development” but no opening date for the attraction was announced. Also announced Saturday night: A new Marvel E-Ticket ride that has been in the works at Disney California Adventure’s Avengers Campus will be called Avengers: Infinity Defense. A second new ride called Stark Flight Lab will also be added to Avengers Campus. No further details or optening dates were announced. D’Amaro announced plans to build a new ride at Disney California Adventure based on the movie “Coco.” The ride, scheduled to open in 2026, will be inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean and music will play an important role in the attraction, D’Amaro said. In addition, Disneyland will unveil a new show about Walt Disney, featuring an audio-animatronic figure of the icon. The show, titled, “Walt Disney — A Magical Life,” will play in rotation with “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” at the Disneyland Opera House. As part of the presentation, Disney revealed that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, the revamped version of Splash Mountain that is currently under construction at Disneyland, will open Nov. 15. Also at Disneyland, The Mandalorian and Grogu will fly aboard the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, though no futher details were released Saturday. Concept art of the proposed Avatar themed land shows jutting rocks and floating mountains amid gushing geysers and alien flora. A boat filled with riders passes through an aqua-green lagoon heading toward a cascading waterfall. ALSO SEE: What will Disneyland build first in theme park expansion? Disney executives had tied a potential Avatar themed land to the approval of DisneylandForward in recent statements. A D23 blog post promised the Disneyland resort’s Avatar experience would rival Pandora — The World of Avatar themed land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida. Newsroom Guidelines Report an Error More in Disneyland Disneyland | Disneyland’s new Coco ride: 5 things you need to know Disneyland | See the Disneyland nighttime spectacular that almost happened in 1987 SUBSCRIBER ONLY Disneyland | 7 new disneyland attractions and when they will open. Disneyland | Niles: D23 gave Disney fans plenty of answers, but questions remain Monmouth County Ocean County Things To Do Homeservices Advertise With Us Connect With Us Newsletters For Subscribers Contributor Content 'Stranger Things' prequel 'The First Shadow' is coming to Broadway Broadway is getting a little stranger. "Stranger Things: The First Shadow," a prequel based on smash-hit science fiction/horror Netflix television show, is coming across the pond. The Olivier Award-winning production will start performances on Broadway on Friday, March 28, 2025, at the Marquis Theatre ahead of an opening night on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. It opened on the West End in November 2023. "The First Shadow" is a new play by Kate Trefry, based on an original story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Trefry. It's brought to Broadway by Netflix and Sonia Friedman Productions. Directed by Stephen Daldry and co-directed by Justin Martin, cast will be announced at later date. The play is described as occurring "before the world turned upside down." "Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy…and the shadows of the past have a very long reach," producers describe, promising "stunning special effects, extraordinary performances and a storyline that will keep you on the edge of your seat." More: 'Stranger Things,' 'Big Bang Theory,' 'Star Trek' stars started at the Shore You can sign up now for first access to pre-sale tickets at  StrangerThingsBroadway.com . Pre-sale tickets for those who sign up will go on sale at 11 a.m. Eastern on Friday, Sept. 13. Tickets for the general public will go on sale at 11:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Sept. 17. "Stranger Things" on Netflix includes Little Egg Harbor's Gaten Matarazzo among its stars. 492 IMAGES Inside are two real-life experiments that 'Stranger Things' is actually Stranger Things season 4 official trailer from Netflix 'Stranger Things': el experimento real de la CIA que inspiró al Inside the real-life lab and ‘secret experiments’ that inspired Where Was Stranger Things Season 4 Filmed? Filming Locations Explained 5 Experiments That Inspired COMMENTS Stranger Things True Story: The CIA's Real Project MKUltra Explained Project MKUltra lasted decades, allowing the secret operation to be a major focus of Stranger Things and the show's tie-in novels and comic books.Hawkins National Laboratory was one of the institutions that took part in the project under the leadership of Dr. Martin Brenner.Based on flashbacks in the series, Eleven's mother, Terry Ives, volunteered to participate in Project MKUltra. Inside the Real-Life Experiment That Inspired 'Stranger Things' The bulk of the Montauk Project is set around the same time as Stranger Things, but true believers like Nichols and Bielek, up until he passed away in 2011, maintain that these experiments dealing ... Stranger Things is based on a real-life CIA experiment In real life, the MKUltra project was created by the CIA in 1953 with the aim of developing mind-control techniques that could give America an advantage against Russia in the Cold War. Yes, really ... Stranger Things is based on a terrifying real-life CIA experiment However, the show does take inspiration from a real-life CIA experiment. Chatting to Rolling Stone in 2016, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained: "We wanted the supernatural ... 'Stranger Things': The Secret CIA Programs Behind Hit Series Telepathy Experiments Sure, Project MKUltra gets the shout-out in Stranger Things, but the tests on Eleven's abilities actually seem to hearken back to something called Stargate Project. After ... Stranger Things' True Story Is Based on a Mind-Blowing CIA Experiment Yes, really. Some details were later revealed in declassified CIA documents. Photo credit: Netflix - Netflix. What started out as a volunteer-based program soon evolved into something far more ... Meet the man who inspired Stranger Things Shows. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Garetano, The Dark Files is the story of alleged US Military funded human experimentation also known as the Montauk Project. Along with former CIA operative Barry Eisler, award-winning journalist Steve Volk, Chris investigates the rumours that inspired the Netflix series Stranger Things. Inside the two real-life experiments 'Stranger Things' is Inside the two real-life experiments 'Stranger Things' is actually based on. As soon as its first season launched on Netflix in July 2016, the American science fiction horror drama series Stranger Things instantly turned into a global phenomenon. Viewers fell in love with Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas, and the 31 October of that same year ... What Inspired 'Stranger Things': the Montauk Project Advertisement. It turns out that Netflix's sci-fi hit "Stranger Things" resembles very closely an alleged real-life government experiment known as "The Montauk Project.". As Thrillist ... Is Stranger Things Based on a True Story? Obviously, the experiments in Stranger Things have less to do with time travel and more to do with developing supernatural abilities. At this point, that's all we've got. At this point, that's all ... Project MKUltra Project MKUltra was a covert operation designed and conducted by the CIA that went on from 1953 to 1973, with the goal of developing mind-control techniques which could be used against enemies during the Cold War. The test subjects, many of which were unwitting, suffered extensive use of psychedelic drugs, physical and mental abuse, sleep deprivation and malnourishment, among many other ... Stranger Things: Every Kid Experimented on by Hawkins Lab Two is the oldest test subject after Vecna to be experimented on by Hawkins Lab during the 1970s. Arrogant and psychopathic, Two targets Eleven after she beats him in an exercise led by Dr. Brenner and relentlessly bullies her throughout Stranger Things season 4.Like many of the other test subjects, Two has exceptional telekinetic abilities, with only One and Eleven being stronger than him. MKUltra The popular series Stranger Things, a Netflix original, is largely based on the MKUltra experiments and the subsequent US government cover-ups. The main character, Eleven, is a child of an MKUltra test subject and is the last child to survive the massacre of the facility in 1979. Contrary to popular belief from urban legends, while MKUltra did ... What is Stranger Things based on? Inside the show's inspo 1. Project MKUltra. In Stranger Things, Jane "Eleven" Hopper (played by Millie Bobby Brown) is a girl born with psychokinetic and telepathic powers who was raised as a test subject by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) in a laboratory in fictional Hawkins, Indiana.The experiments involve Eleven making contact with alternate dimensions—it is during one such contact that she comes across the ... Stranger Things: The Real-Life Conspiracy That Inspired The ... "The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time" by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon is a novel that is supposedly based on the experiments that occurred at Camp Hero, with Nichols claiming he actually ... Hawkins National Laboratory Hawkins National Laboratory was a secretive federal complex located in Hawkins, Indiana, and was one of several national laboratories established following the Second World War. The lab controlled several subsidiaries, including Hawkins Power and Light.[2] The lab was seemingly operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, though some speculated it was actually controlled, entirely or in part, by ... Stranger than fiction: The real-life CIA projects that inspired Real CIA projects inspired the experiments performed on Eleven, a key character from the hit TV show Stranger Things. (Courtesy of Netflix) More than a few Canadians will be sleep-deprived this ... 'Stranger Things' Was Inspired By A Creepy, Supposedly Real Experiment Stranger Things has quickly become a pop-culture phenomenon after being released on Netflix about a month and a half ago. Since then the internet has been full of theories about The Upside Down ... The Montauk Project: The Conspiracy Theory That Inspired 'Stranger Things' Allegedly conducted on the east end of Long Island during the Cold War, Project Montauk was a secret military experiment to develop psychological warfare with abducted children. The Montauk Project just might be the motherlode of lesser-known conspiracy theories. Time travel, teleportation, and mind control are all integral to the story, while ... Montauk Project Montauk Project. Coordinates: 41°03′44″N 71°52′26″W. The Montauk Project is a conspiracy theory that alleges there were a series of United States government projects conducted at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station in Montauk, New York, for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and exotic research including ... 'Stranger Things' Is Based on a True Story. Kinda Nov 21, 2017 1:30 PM. Stranger Things Is Based on a True Story. Kinda. Or rather, Hawkins is based on a real place. It sounds cooler when Gaten Matarazzo explains it. Demogorgons, inverted worlds ... Upside Down: The weird science behind 'Stranger Things' In season 2 of "Stranger Things," Hawkins Middle School science teacher Scott Clarke shares the story of the most famous neuroscience patient, Phineas Gage. In 1848, 25-year-old Gage worked as ... Is 'Stranger Things' Based on a True Story? It's based on that one government lab.". View full post on Youtube. True believers claim that children were kidnapped and abducted and had mind-control experiments conducted on them for ... Top 10 Most Popular TV Shows on Netflix of All Time These lists rank titles based on 'views' for each title from Monday to Sunday of the previous week. We define views for a title as the total hours viewed divided by the total runtime. Values are rounded to 100,000. We consider each season of a series and each film on their own, so you might see both Stranger Things seasons 2 and 3 in the ... Disneyland reveals plans for new Avatar land based on 'Way of Water' Disneyland is ready to move forward with plans for an Avatar themed land teased for the Anaheim theme park resort based on the $5 billion action adventure fantasy science fiction movie franchise. 'Stranger Things' prequel 'The First Shadow' is coming to Broadway Broadway is getting a little stranger. "Stranger Things: The First Shadow," a prequel based on smash-hit science fiction/horror Netflix television show, is coming across the pond. The Olivier ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech thesis