- 5 hours ago
Truth is stranger than fiction... and sometimes it's the source! Join us as we explore the disturbing government experiments, conspiracy theories, and cultural phenomena that inspired the world of Hawkins Lab. Our countdown includes psychic spies, mind control programs, and mass hysteria that are even more chilling because they actually happened!
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00:00You speak of monsters, superheroes, that's the stuff of myth.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the real-ish world conspiracies,
00:11cover-ups, and coincidences that turn Stranger Things into something eerily familiar.
00:16Viewers beware, there are spoilers ahead.
00:18Afternoon, sir.
00:19Yeah, looks like another hot one today, huh?
00:21Never gets old, sir.
00:25Number 5. The Stargate Project
00:27Your gifts have been stolen.
00:30I believe I know why, and I believe I know how to get them back.
00:35If Dr. Brenner from Stranger Things traded in his lab coat for army fatigues and a lava lamp,
00:40you get the Stargate Project.
00:41In the 1970s, the U.S. military really did try to weaponize psychic powers.
00:46But growth in spirit, in wisdom, in psychic power, these are things that earn our respect.
00:52What started as small CIA experiments grew into a full-blown defense intelligence agency program,
00:58all run from Fort Meade, Maryland.
01:00Their mission, which they most definitely chose to accept,
01:03to train a select group of psychic spies who could literally see the unseen.
01:07What you're saying is that you were a psychic spy like Lacey.
01:12We prefer the term remote viewer.
01:14These soldiers didn't wield rifles.
01:16They were instead trained in clairvoyant espionage,
01:18using a technique called remote viewing they claimed to see across the planet.
01:22How far, Papa?
01:24Farther than we've ever gone before.
01:30To Bath?
01:32They allegedly sketched hidden Soviet bases and located hostages.
01:35In 1976, a secretary named Rosemary Smith reportedly pinpointed a downed Soviet aircraft
01:41through extrasensory perception.
01:43If that all sounds familiar, it's because Stranger Things 11 does something similar
01:46when she enters her sensory deprivation space.
01:48She uses her mind to spy on people halfway across the world.
01:52Remember to stay focused.
01:55Find the energy.
01:57Feel it.
01:58In real life, the team of adults, not children, never topped 20 members.
02:02Despite decades of funding, the results were mixed at best.
02:06What is that?
02:09I have no idea.
02:11In 1995, the project was finally declassified and shut down.
02:14Its data labeled inconclusive.
02:16But for nearly 20 years, the U.S. government bankrolled a real-life Hawkins lab.
02:20You didn't think it would be that easy.
02:22Did you?
02:27I don't understand.
02:30I do.
02:31Number 4.
02:32The West Memphis Three and Satanic Panic.
02:34An army of troglades charging to the chamber.
02:37Troglades.
02:38Told ya.
02:42Wait a minute.
02:43Stranger Things, Critical Role, and the streaming service Dropout have made D&D a mainstream game over the last decade.
02:50You may have wondered, then, why Stranger Things made D&D a symbol of misunderstood 1980s rebellion.
02:55Can you find it yet?
02:56No, I can't find it.
02:57Hey!
02:59Mom, we're the middle of my campaign.
03:01You mean the end?
03:0215 after.
03:03No!
03:03Oh my god.
03:04Look no further than the Satanic Panic.
03:07In the late 1980s and early 1990s, America was convinced that Satan himself had set up shop in the suburbs.
03:13No, you want to keep playing, right?
03:15Yeah, totally.
03:17We'll just call the girls afterwards.
03:18I said forget it, Mike, okay?
03:20I'm going home.
03:21Preachers, talk shows, and local news warned of secret cults.
03:25These monsters were allegedly abducting children, sacrificing animals, and spreading evil through rock music, horror movies, and D&D.
03:32Dungeons & Dragons, now beloved, was once blamed for luring kids into occultism.
03:37I hope your master, the devil, does take you soon.
03:41I want you to meet him real soon.
03:44And the day you die, I'm going to praise God.
03:48Movies like Mazes and Monsters fueled that fear, portraying fantasy gaming as a gateway to madness.
03:53None of it was real, but it ruined reputations, families, and lives.
03:57Oh god, why did you let this happen?
04:00Please help us through it.
04:02That hysteria reached its tragic peak in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993.
04:06Three teenagers, Damien Eccles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Miskelley Jr., were convicted of murdering three young boys.
04:13Thankfully the verdict went our way.
04:15Melissa, it must be mixed emotions because you have the guilty verdict, but you still have the loss to deal with.
04:21Prosecutors claimed they were enacting a satanic ritual.
04:24The evidence against them was flimsy, but Satan made for a good TV and an engaging case.
04:28We were like really the obvious choice because we stood out from everybody else.
04:36All three spent years behind bars before DNA testing helped exonerate them.
04:43Like the Upside Down itself, the satanic panic didn't go away.
04:46It just evolved, re-emerging decades later under new names like QAnon.
04:51It was sort of shorthand for a slew of false accusations that children were involved in satanic rituals.
04:56Yeah, well now the conspiracy is making a comeback online, and this is thanks to groups like QAnon.
05:02Number three, The Montauk Project.
05:04Hello?
05:06Can you hear us?
05:12No, no, no.
05:13Leave her.
05:13Before Hawkins, Indiana, there was Montauk, New York.
05:16On the eastern tip of Long Island, whispers still circle around a now-decommissioned air force base called Camp Hero.
05:23A World War II air base was built to protect the East Coast from invasion.
05:27The base closed in the 1980s, but a massive radar tower still stands.
05:32According to local lore, it wasn't just radar towers and soldiers stationed there.
05:35Camp Hero, they say, was the home to secret experiments straight out of science fiction.
05:39Apologies for the bumpy ride, kiddo.
05:43I would have paved the road, but kind of ruins the whole top secret location thing.
05:49Theories about what went on behind those fences range wildly.
05:52Some say it was the site of a military time travel experiment.
05:55Skynet sent two Terminators back through time.
05:59Their mission, to destroy the leader of the human resistance.
06:03Others believe there were strange psychic mind control experiments using sensory deprivation.
06:08Those theories tend to include claims that children were abducted for use in psychic trials meant to weaponize the human mind.
06:14They're laughing.
06:16At you.
06:19They think you're weak.
06:22Show them 11.
06:23The Duffer brothers originally envisioned Stranger Things as an adaptation of these rumors.
06:27They even titled their early pitch, Montauk.
06:29This way, gentlemen.
06:31The entire East Wing will be evacuated within the hour.
06:34We've sealed off this area following quarantine for the call.
06:37Elements like Eleven's telepathy, Dr. Brenner's experiments, and the lab's ominous secrecy were all drawn from those conspiracy tales.
06:44They clearly survived through years of redrafting.
06:47All done.
06:49Not so bad, was it?
06:52See?
06:54There's nothing to be afraid of.
06:56Historians say there's no evidence to back any of the Montauk project stories up.
07:00But the government's tight-lipped operations nearby on Plum Island didn't help calm suspicion.
07:05Less than 100 miles from New York City is Plum Island Land.
07:10Here, the U.S. government conducts top-secret biological experiments.
07:14The island is a real facility for animal disease research that was long off limits to civilians.
07:19It added fuel to the conspiratorial fire that something darker was happening under the surface.
07:24You cannot hide from me, Maxine.
07:29Number 2.
07:30Cold War Paranoia.
07:31Who is it now?
07:34Who is it?
07:36Behind the Demogorgon, Vecna, and psychic experiments lurked something even scarier because it was 100% real.
07:43Cold War Paranoia.
07:44From the 1950s through the end of the 1980s, Americans lived under the constant threat of nuclear war and espionage.
07:51Now believe there was and may very well still be a Russian spy presence in Hawkins.
07:55Russian spies!
07:56I'm sorry, Maria.
07:57Are the Russian spies in cahoots with the aliens?
07:59Or how do they fit in here?
08:01They didn't just fear total annihilation, but secret infiltration.
08:04Many people, both civilians and the government, believe that spies, communists, and double agents were everywhere.
08:10Don't you get it, Jim?
08:11No.
08:12This has potentially international implications.
08:15I'm talking a full-on Russian invasion right here in Hawkins.
08:19For decades, millions of Americans believed that the enemy could strike not just from abroad, but from next door.
08:24It was an age when technology, secrecy, and fear blurred into one.
08:28That's the world Stranger Things channels so effectively.
08:31In season one, Dodger-Braner isn't simply testing psychic abilities as a general principle.
08:35Is that okay?
08:41Okay.
08:43He's actively trying to use Eleven to spy on the Soviets.
08:46By season three, the paranoia goes full sci-fi pulp.
08:49A secret Russian base is operating right under the Starcourt Mall.
08:53Okay, this is what Alexei called the hub.
08:55Now the hub takes us to the vault room.
08:57Okay, where's the gate?
08:59Right here.
08:59I don't know the scale on this, but I think it's fairly close to the vault room.
09:04For the show's characters, the Red Scare literally goes underground.
09:07In reality, both superpowers explored everything from brainwashing and propaganda to psychic warfare.
09:13Stop this!
09:14Let me out!
09:15The Soviets and Americans were desperate to out-think and out-weaponize each other.
09:20Government secrecy was the norm, and ordinary people on both sides of the Pacific were filled with quiet terror.
09:26The rumors of invading armies and mass destruction are based on hysteria and are absolutely false.
09:32I repeat, these rumors are absolutely false.
09:37Stranger Things taps into that cultural unease, reminding us that paranoia can create monsters out of ordinary people.
09:43Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
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09:53If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
09:59Number 1. Project MKUltra
10:02Setting aside the psychic powers of it all, Hawkins' lab feels like a nightmare born from real government corruption.
10:08We're running out of time here, Martin. Hawkins is running out of time.
10:11I understand the stakes quite well.
10:15You know, sometimes I'm wondering if you really do.
10:17That's because it almost was.
10:18The CIA's Project MKUltra was one of the most chilling real-life inspirations for Stranger Things.
10:24Beginning in 1953, the agency launched a top-secret series of experiments, and there was nothing supernatural about them.
10:30Unsuspecting patients, many of whom had common ailments such as postpartum depression, were experimented on.
10:35They developed techniques for mind control, hypnosis, and chemical manipulation.
10:40They often used American and Canadian citizens as unsuspecting test subjects.
10:43I was given a glass of Kool-Aid, and so were the other children.
10:51This Kool-Aid was spiked.
10:55LSD, electroshock therapy, and sensory deprivation were employed all around the country to develop tools of psychological warfare.
11:02One offshoot, Operation Midnight Climax, saw the CIA running brothels in San Francisco and New York.
11:09LSD was slipped into clients' drinks, while handlers observed from behind two-way mirrors.
11:13North of the border, the so-called Montreal experiments pushed psychiatry into pure horror.
11:18Patients were subjected to massive electroshock sessions, forced drug comas, and constant repetition of recorded messages to reprogram their minds.
11:26With a recording beside him, uh, saying that your mother hates you, over and over and over and over and over.
11:36By the time the project was exposed in the 1970s, most MKUltra records had already been destroyed on orders from within the CIA.
11:43What remains revealed a dark truth.
11:45For two decades, the U.S. government tried to control the human mind.
11:48Look at me.
11:52I know you're frightened.
11:53You're terribly frightened by what you've seen.
11:57Stranger Things reimagines that history through Dr. Brenner and Eleven, but the inspiration was all too real, and far more terrifying without the Demogorgon.
12:05You're back! You're back!
12:10You're back!
12:13You're back! You're back!
12:16Think we missed a story straight out of the Upside Down?
12:18Leave your strangest theories in the comments below.
12:23Come on rainятся!
12:24Come on!
12:25Come on.
12:26You're back!
12:26Come on!
12:27Come on!
12:27Come on!
12:30Come on!
12:31Come on!
12:39Come on!
12:43Come on!
12:44Come on!
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