the urban legend that inspired Stranger Things

people believe this. loony people ONE CRACKED FACT | [View in browser]( The IRL Urban Legend That Inspired Stranger Things Stranger Things is very open about its '80s influences, which range from homages to "okay, we’re just copying stuff now." Eleven's story, however—the government experimenting on a girl for her psychic abilities—does not copy any single obvious pop culture source. Viewers debate just where the idea came from. Is it a spin on Stephen King stories like Firestarter? Does it rip off the game Beyond: Two Souls, which itself uses a bunch of established tropes but which Stranger Things replicates in many eerie ways? More than anything else, this plot seems to crib off The Montauk Project, a series of books by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon. These books are about a series of government experiments, some on children, at Long Island's Montauk Air Force Station. And yet if you ask fans of the books about the connections, they probably won't call it copying. They'd say Stranger Things is simply basing its story on the real life Montauk Project, because according to the conspiracy theory community, the project was real. The theory piggybacks off MKUltra, a CIA project that was real. We've talked about MKUltra plenty before: The CIA tinkered with people's minds using drugs and torture, and Stranger Things namechecks the project, saying it experimented on Eleven's mother. MKUltra led to other weirder theorized military experiments, including a naval experiment in Philadelphia to render ships invisible, and these in turn led to the still weirder idea that the military shifted to mind control and recruited children for its research. In Nichols and Moon's books, they claim to have been two of those children, and outside the books, they only occasionally reveal that, no, it's just fiction. In the books, the government use children to open portals. Naturally, some kids have shaved heads and wear electroencephalogram thingies on their heads, like Eleven. Al Bielek, who claimed to have been part of the Philadelphia experiment, said that his brother was the most powerful of the children, and in the books, these portal shenanigans made him manifest a monster "from his subconscious." Stranger Things has flirted repeatedly with the idea of Eleven creating that show's monster, though it has yet to really make that idea explicit, maybe since they've yet to figure out how that can make sense. Originally, the connection between Stranger Things and the Montauk Project was anything but secret. They were going to call the series Montauk and set it in Montauk and its Air Force Station. If Nichols and Moon then chased Netflix down for plagiarism, that would have been tricky. "We didn’t steal any of your ideas," Netflix might have said. "These weren't your ideas at all. All this stuff really happened, and to children besides you. Right?" For more Strange influences, check out: - [Eleven From Stranger Things Was Teleported Right Out Of Beyond: Two Souls]( - [The Stranger Things Mall Has A Dark Real-World Backstory]( - [Stranger Things—Eleven Is The Monster]( Top image: Netflix Daily Digest [15 Comedians’ Worst Shows Ever (According To Them)]( By JD Roberson / May 24th, 2022 [6 Songs That Take Their Comedy Movies To A Whole New Level]( By Matt Solomon / May 24th, 2022 ['Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance', The Weird 'MGS' Spin-Off That Became The Biggest Game In The Series]( By Tiago Svn / May 24th, 2022 [Just Tell Me If I Should Care About Monkeypox]( By Eli Yudin / May 24th, 2022 [26 Food Products From The 80s (That Should Stay In The Past)]( By Cracked Readers / May 24th, 2022 [READ MORE]( [fb]( [tw]( [yt]( [Logomark_DIGITAL_Red_50X50-px] [insta png]( [tiktok png]( [ARTICLES]( | [PICTOFACTS]( | [Videos]( Literally media Ltd. 190 West St, Suite 17B, Brooklyn NY 11222 COPYRIGHT © 2005-2021 Cracked is published by Literally media Ltd. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.