Can Stranger Things Be Based off Reality?

The hit Netflix series Stranger Things stole all of our hearts when they first released season one back in 2016. With the blend of sci-fi and horror, this show will have you on the edge of your seat. The illumination of every scene and compelling camera work will encapsulate every viewer’s attention. Aside from the show’s use of visual imagery, this storyline is a particularly interesting one.  Stranger Things is about a young boy vanishing from a fictional town, Hawkins, Indiana. And while his friends investigate his disappearance, they come across a young girl who escaped from Brenner’s Laboratory. This girl goes by the name Eleven, however something is unusual about her: she exhibits some psychokinetic abilities. From there, various characters of the show uncover secret government experiments and alarming supernatural forces. This show has some wild plots but what if I told you that this show is not entirely fictional? 

Yes of course, this show is indeed made up, but some of its story elements are based off of real events. Creators of the show admitted that season one was connected to a real government project MKULTRA which created the storyline of Dr. Brennars’ experiments on Eleven. According to Stephen Kinzer, a journalist who studied this project extensively, when the Cold War was beginning, the CIA believed that communists were using specialized drugs to control people’s minds. In response, the CIA created the MKULTRA Project. The experiments of this project usually took place in prisons and international detention camps. Unwitting participants of these experiments were subjected to anything ranging from electroshock to high doses of LSD. Head of the project was a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb and his project was active from 1953 up until the early ‘60s. Gottlieb’s work was top-secret, so it is unknown the number of lives lost and ruined. The government eventually shut down the project and most of Gottlieb’s work was destroyed. However there was still enough evidence to draw up the story of Eleven being subjected to LSD experiments and sensory deprivation by Dr. Brennar, eventually leading to her psychic abilities.

  MKULTRA wasn’t the only project that the Duffer Brothers drew inspiration from, but another government conspiracy, The Montauk Project, also caught their eyes. Although The Montauk Project has less evidence in comparison, the Duffer Brother incorporated some of its wild stories into the show. As a matter of fact, at first, the show was supposed to be named ‘Montauk’ according to David Opie from the Digital Spy. Apparently a man, Alfred Bielek, claims that he was part of the project, where a particular experiment opened a hole in time between 1943 and 1983. According to Bielek, he and his brother Duncan stopped this wormhole by destroying the equipment. These insane claims are what drew up some of the plot of Stranger Things. The parallels are hard to miss, in the show Eleven opens up a hole in space which puts Hawkins in danger. Eleven and her friends close the gate to the “Upside-Down” to save their town. There are even more commonalities between Bielek’s claims and the show. Bielek’s suggested that following Duncan’s procedure, he gained psychic abilities. Obviously, this parallels Dr. Brennar’s procedures on Eleven, eventually giving her some supernatural abilities.   As bizarre as it sounds, Stranger Things was based on real reports and events. Sometimes the media can disclose secrets of our reality. History holds some unimaginable stories and eventually leads to some of the greatest hits in movies and television shows.

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