Despite the popularity of "Stranger Things" it is little known that it is actually based on the Montauk Project, a conspiracy that supposedly involved the kidnapping of orphans who were subjected to physical and psychological torture to research the possibility of time travel, teleportation, & mind control.
In 2015, Filmmaker Christopher P. Garetano released his documentary The Montauk Chronicles, based on 10 years’ worth of research, and more recently continued his investigation for the History Channel series, The Dark Files. And he’s not the only one hooked by the conspiracy theory. The legends of Montauk – experiments on children, alien abductions, time travel, psychic powers, journeys to the far side of the galaxy, mind-bending drug tests, and monsters conjured out of thin air – were also the original inspiration for Stranger Things.
The stories are commonly thought to have started with the book The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon, a novel about the supposed events. Nichols claims to be an electrical engineer who worked on the project in real-life.
“As I say in the book,” he tells Garetano in Dark Files, “you can believe it as fact, or you can believe it as science fiction.” Nichols’ account, along with those from alleged time-traveller Al Bielek, and a handful of survivors make up the popular narrative of the Montauk conspiracy theories.
Children are said to have been abducted and subjected to horrific torture – with many of them dying – to create Manchurian Candidate-style super spies. According to Nichols, they were “shattering their minds, programming them, then putting them back together.”
The survivors of these experiments are known as the “Montauk Boys”, and the most famous of them is Stewart Swerdlow, a self-professed “Hyperspace Intuitive” who’s part alien abduction survivor, part new age healer (he’ll “de-programme” you from the government’s mind control for a cool $300). According to Swerdlow, alien beings snatched him while his parents were brainwashed; he was then experimented on at Camp Hero, and sent back in time on secret missions.
Another survivor, identified under the alias “James Bruce” in Garetano’s documentaries, recalls mind-bending drug tests in so-called “Acid Houses” at Camp Hero. The drugs, he says, could create psychic link with other subjects.
The US government does have a proven fascination in paranormal phenomenon and parapsychology. In January of this year, the CIA dumped over 13 million files online, revealing details of the agency’s “Stargate” programme, which ran from the 1970s to 1990s and involved tests into psychic abilities, research into UFOs, and a particular interest in “remote viewing” – seeing far-off objects or places with the mind. One file even attempts to document an attempt at astral projection to the surface of Mars.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, the US authorities were responsible for some hideous experiments in the name of science and national security: the Tuskegee syphilis study, which duped African American men into being infected with the disease and left them untreated; MK Ultra, a secret CIA operation into “mind control” techniques for interrogation and torture, which administered drugs to unwitting civilians; and the experiments in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison, where tests were carried out on prisoners’ skin using biochemical substances, including dioxin, a highly carcinogenic ingredient in Agent Orange.
“My thinking is, if happened in one place – or even two or three places – I wouldn’t put it past it happening at Camp Hero,” says Garetano. And with its already-dodgy track record, the US government testing drugs does sound credible next to aliens, monsters, and time travelling soldiers. “Survivors always talk about an injection being given to them,” says Garetano. “You can imagine that a highly experimental hallucinogen could cause them to think they’re seeing these things.”
