Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. AI had the time of my life a I never felt this way before. From building timelines to assigning the right people and even spotting risks across dozens of projects, Monday Sidekick knows your business, thinks ahead and takes action. One click on the star and consider it done. And I owe it all to you. Try Monday Sidekick AI you'll love to use on Monday.com. you're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone and welcome back to the into the Dark podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Moreland. I'm so glad you are tuning in to today's episode. If you are new here, this is a true crime podcast that also ventures into all things dark and spooky and I can't wait for you to follow along. Now, before we get into the actual episode, I need to start with my 10 seconds, which is basically just something I do to start off on a lighter foot before we get into the dark. For my 10 seconds today, my birthday is actually tomorrow. Crazy. I'm going to be like 19 or something. I'm so excited for that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just rounding out to my 30s anyways. So yeah, my birthday's tomorrow. I don't think we're doing much. We're just gonna maybe go out to dinner, but it still should be a good day. I know I'm gonna have to record another episode because Thanksgiving is coming up, but yeah, that's basically all I have going on this week. I hope all of you, if you celebrate, have a great holiday. If not, I hope you get some time off. But yeah, let's just jump right into today's case. Now if you've been online lately, especially if you've visited Netflix, social media or any kind of pop culture website, you know that basically everyone is talking about Stranger Things right now. Which makes sense. This show is a pop culture phenomenon. It's one of the biggest programs on Netflix and it is not just a TV show. It also has tie in novels, comics, theater productions, and tons of of merch. Experts have a hard time saying exactly how much money Stranger Things has made over the years. Netflix hasn't released all of the data, but estimates say it has to be millions of dollars at least. And just in case you've never seen the show or you don't know what it's about, here is a brief summary. I promise this has to do with today's episode. Now, this also doesn't contain any spoilers from the final season. So. Stranger Things, the series follows a group of teens and adults and they basically team up to defend their midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana back in the 80s. It is at the center of a government conspiracy and being attacked by strange otherworldly monsters. Their little town is. And they get a lot of help from a young girl named Eleven. She doesn't have a traditional name because Eleven grew up as part of a top secret scientific study. It involved taking babies with psychic powers away from their parents, raising them in a lab, and trying to turn them into spies or weapons for America. And because of these tests, 11 is very powerful. Her abilities make her the ideal person to keep all of her new friends safe from the monsters in their town. So every season, 11 and the other characters fight evil, all while trying to escape from from the scientists who raised her and did experiments on her. Now you might be thinking this sounds like something out of an 80s sci fi movie. In fact, fans say Stranger Things is full of references to films like E.T. carrie, the Thing, Firestarter, the Goonies. I could go on, but if you didn't know. Stranger Things takes inspiration from a supposedly true story. Now, this all comes down to how you define the word true and whether you believe in tinfoil tales. Because there are a lot of allegations about real secret government experiments involving children with psychic powers trying to create the strongest army. And all of these real theories inspired the show Stranger Things. And that's why today I will be covering two. Two of these tinfoil tales. The two tinfoil tales that brought you Stranger Things. Essentially, the creators of the show have admitted that they got the idea for the show and based the show off of these experiments. And with the new season dropping, I felt like it was the perfect time to tell you the story of the real Stranger Things. So the first theory is actually 100 true. So it's not really a tinfoil tell. It isn't just a theory or speculation. The government has confirmed that the story I'm about to tell you is real and based on fact. This is 100 real. It is about a program called MK Ultra. Now, this project ran during the 1950s and 60s. Basically the CIA set it up because they were trying to develop a mind control drug for war. Basically, they were afraid that the Soviet Union had the ability to kidnap Americans and then they'd brainwash them into hating the usa, basically loving communism. So American officials ran hundreds of experiments to see if they could change the way people thought and felt too. They're like, maybe we can change them. And I want to be clear, the CIA wasn't only trying to change people's political leanings. They wanted to find a way to completely erase someone's personality and turn them into an entirely different individual. Basically treating human beings like an electronic device that could be wiped or reprogrammed. This is very scary and very real. Now, they had a lot of methods to try and erase or control people's minds. Lots of times they dosed random civilians with LSD without telling them what they were doing. And truly this is why MK ULTRA is so scary. And if you didn't know that this actually existed, I think it's very important that you do. The government hired scientists to say, basically, we need you to conduct experiments to see what you can do to make a person break. We want to learn how we can have 100% mind control over human beings. And then they literally made a task force and were like, here you go. Go figure it out. But the thing about MK ULTRA is it was a secret. No one really knew this was going on. It's not like all of America knew. And number two, like I just said, they did test on civilians without telling them, which is very unethical and is also why it's so scary that the American government was willing to do this. What else are they willing to do? Now, operatives in this group would pretend to be doctors prescribing medicine to people. And then their patients would take acid completely unprepared for the hallucinations that would follow. They had no idea they were taking acid, which means they just felt like they were going crazy. Other agents went to prisons and POW camps. And there they forced the drugs on incarcerated people. They slipped acid into lunches that were served in particular schools and hospitals, and then watched and studied how students and patients reacted. This ruined literal people's lives, like caused psychotic breaks. And MK Ultra scientists even experimented on other CIA agents. They would tamper with their co workers, food and water while they were in the office. At one point, a team working in San Francisco even partnered with the local sex workers. And these women agreed to a deal where each time they picked up a client, they would bring them back to a particular apartment and then they would offer the man a drink or a snack. But the customer had no way of knowing that all of this was actually done by The CIA and the food and alcohol had been spiked with LSD so they could be studied. Now, once the victim would begin hallucinating, CIA agents would come to the apartment to study him. And then the officials would pay the sex worker for her help. They'd also promise to help her out if she ever got arrested for the work she was doing. So basically, if the police tried to charge any of these women with sex work, the CIA would step in and be like, nope, she's safe. She is safe. And then the woman would get let go. All to say the CIA officers crossed a lot of boundaries with their non consensual LSD experiments. Legal ones, ethical ones, and general scientific guidelines. But on top of this, the MK Ultra scientists, and this is what it is like legally, historically called, this is what the program was called, MK ultra. They also tricked people into letting them perform electroshock therapy or hypnosis on them. Again, it was an attempt to erase people's personalities and create an army. And when the unwitting test subjects were in these experiments, they often hallucinated, became very confused, experienced paranoia and psychosis. Some people feared they were experiencing serious emotional breakdowns or that they had developed horrible mental health conditions all of a sudden. And at least one person did take his own life during one of these bad trips that he wasn't even aware was happening. So all this to say this was a horrible, shocking, and ultimately deadly government program, and it didn't even work. Officially, the CIA never found a method to brainwash people or rewrite their personalities. But it's hard to say if the official story is true, because the people who ran MK ULTRA actually ended up destroying all of their notes. They didn't actually want Congress to know what they had been doing. And to this day, we don't know exactly how many people they drugged, shocked or hypnotized, who the victims were, or what actually happened to them. Meaning there are still a ton of mysteries and controversies around MK ultra. Even to this day. All we know is that it was real and they were doing experiments that were unethical. We don't really know to what extent. And again, I want to emphasize, the CIA has confirmed all of this. MK ULTRA is a historical fact. They released all of the information they had on the program in the late 1970s. But of course, it's impossible to say how much more data never even saw the light of day. I do know that roughly 30 years after the info became public, two brothers with Hollywood dreams heard the story of MK Ultra and they were inspired by it. And I am talking about Matt and Ross Duffer, the Duffer Brothers, creators of the show Stranger Things. You can see how much this real CIA program shaped Stranger Things narrative if you've watched it. Stranger Things also features an unethical government research study. These characters are also running non consensual and unethical experiments on civilians. Like I mentioned before, one of the main characters is a girl named Eleven. She spent her whole life being in prison, tested and brainwashed. This is just like the real people who survived the MK Ultra tests. The main difference is that officially the MK Ultra experiments didn't work, but obviously in Stranger Things, the Doctors successfully turned 11 into a psychic weapon. And it's possible the show's creators decided to give 11 superpowers because they were inspired by another tinfoil tell. And this one has an even bigger influence on the Netflix show. I don't know about you guys, but my entire social feed is filled with different health trends. So like cottage cheese is an entire nutrition plan. Red light therapy can literally solve every problem. You should be slamming olive oil shots first thing in the morning. I say we give the algorithm a rest. Turn to in real life healthcare professionals who can help you meet your health goals. And with ZocDoc that is easy. You can find doctors that are right for you and instantly book an appointment. ZocDoc is a free free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. It's all in one place. With ZocDoc you can book in network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care to urgent care and more. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, are a good fit for any medical need you may have and and are highly rated by verified patients and then once you find the right doctor you can see their actual appointment openings. Choose a time slot that works for you and click to instantly book a visit. And appointments made through Zocdoc typically happen within just 24 to 72 hours of booking. You guys, Zocdoc has been so so helpful when it comes to last minute things. My retainer actually just came undone my permanent retainer in my mouth and I was able to find a dentist to get me in that day using ZocDoc. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com Peyton to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's zocdoc Z O C D O C dot com Peyton P A Y T O N zocdoc dot com Peyton what if you could give a gift that brings your favorite holiday traditions and memories to life every day? Well, with an Aura frame you can. I talked about this last year but we have gifted aura frames to tons of family members over the holidays and it is amazing. I love that I can just upload photos for them. It is like the gift that keeps on giving. Aura Frames has unlimited free photos and video. All you have to do is download the Aura app and connect to wifi and you can preload photos before it ships and then also keep adding like I said. So the person you give an aura frame to has some memories already loaded on it when they open it and they will just keep coming. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it for a limited time. Visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver Matte frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code Payton at checkout. That's P A Y T O N. Don't forget your code. That's Aura A U R A frames.com promo code Peyton this exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year, so order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. This is called the Mon Talk project, and unlike MK Ultra, this one has not been officially confirmed by the government. But Stranger Things was so heavily influenced by Montauk that for a lot of the show's creation, it was actually called Montauk and not Stranger Things because they were basing it off of what I'm about to tell you. But then later on, the brothers disagreed and they decided to end up going with the name Stranger Things because they kind of had changed the story a little bit too much. It was no longer just following this Montauk project, so they went with Stranger Things. But I think it's so interesting that this huge global show that has seen so much success was actually originally called Montauk and based off of this project that I'm about to tell you about. And I can't tell the story about the Montauk project without also telling you about a man named Preston Nichols. Now, he was a devoted scientist who loved dabbling in electronics and inventing new devices. And the entire narrative I'm about to tell comes from a book that he published about his work. A real book. Keep in mind, a lot of the claims in it haven't been verified. We're going deep into Tinfoil tale territory. He here, but so did the brothers. Now, Preston even described his book as being full of what he called soft facts. He explained that he didn't have much physical proof of the claims he makes in the book. He was going by eyewitnesses and people's memories, which we know can be inaccurate. So even he admitted that a lot of these allegations may not be true. He just talked to people, gathered the information, and made a book. But he insisted that the broad strokes of the book are accurate. And here's what he said. At some point in history during the Cold War, Preston was able to pick up a strange radio signal using some equipment that he had designed, and he realized it was a secret transmission from the Soviet Union. This discovery he made proved that, number one, he was really good at what he did and that his skills were useful to national security. Obviously, he just basically butted in and got the enemy. Now, before long, a military contractor reached out to him with a job. Again, this is. This part's all true. It was 1971 at this point, and Preston was just 25 years old. Now, these military contractors wanted to know if telepathy, a fancy word for mind reading, was real. Remember, the US Government was also doing a lot of strange experiments during this time, as was the rest of the the world. This was the era of MK Ultra experiments on people. And they figured that if it was possible for secret agents to hear other people's thoughts, obviously that would be very valuable. So Preston was put in charge of a study where he tested different people to see if they had psychic powers. To this day, a lot of the details on this official study. Okay. Aren't public. This part was real. So I don't know exactly what the experiments involved, but Preston was also using his advanced knowledge of electrical engineering in these tests. Now, it sounds like he was trying to trigger telepathy or measure it with electric currents. It's hard to say for sure. Now, up until the time when he joined this program, Preston had never believed in the supernatural or the occult. He was a scientist who trusted things like data, numbers and figures. But that's what made Preston the perfect person to run this study for the military. He would focus on the facts and not get distracted by his own bias. Now, Preston came on board thinking he was actually going to prove that telepathy wasn't real. He's like, yeah, you can hire me to do this, but it's not real and I'll prove it. Except he was wrong to think that. According to him, his book doesn't go into much detail about what exactly he learned, but it does say that the experiments were a resounding success, and he found people with real mind reading abilities, aka 11. Now, according to the book, Preston was stunned. He had to reevaluate his entire way of looking at the world. But at his core, he was still a scientist, and he wanted to gather as much information as he could. So he kept conducting tests and measuring the results. Except, as he was running his study, he noticed something odd. Every single day at the same time each day, everyone's telepathy powers would suddenly. And then after some time had passed, the abilities would just to suddenly come back. This happened on a consistent schedule, and it was obvious to Preston that something was interfering with his experiment. It was almost like someone had a machine that they could turn on and it would affect people's mind reading skills, like it could turn them on and off, and they were shutting everything down every day at the same time. Now, of course, Preston's like, okay, I've made this observation. What, how, when, where? So he built a machine that could detect radio waves on a particular frequency. And sure enough, it showed that every day, when everyone's telepathy stopped working, there was a huge blast on that wavelength. Preston figured the radio signal was stopping his subjects from being able to read minds, get energy from other people's minds because of a larger energy source. So his next step was to try and figure out what direction it was coming from, who was broadcasting it. Where is this coming from? He attached an antenna to the top of his car, drove around until he found the source of the signal. And sure enough, he tracked it to the nearest air force base, which was in a small town in Long island called Montauk, where Stranger Things was originally supposed to be based off of. Now, locals had a nickname for Montauk. They called it the end because it's the last town on Long Island. Once you get past it, there's nothing but rocky cliffs and then the ocean. Still, the name the end sounds a bit dark and ominous, even when you know the explanation for the nickname. But when you think about all the real experiments going on here, it is a little eerie. And that's not the only thing that makes the town of Montauk feel mysterious. Its air force base has always been closed to the public, and the officers were secretive about what happened there. So people knew this base existed. They no one knew what was going on. However, this base had a huge radio tower in the middle of it. The tower was big enough that people could actually See it without going onto the grounds, which was good news for Preston. See, he had never been on the base before and he didn't know what the radio tower was used for. But since it was so big and so visible, he immediately realized this was definitely broadcasting the signal that was interfering with his study. Now, his next thought is he should ask someone on the base to turn the tower off. However, he wasn't able to actually get to anyone with authority. The guards at the gate told him the base was highly secured and only authorized people were allowed inside. Again, this is probably sounding somewhat familiar to you if you've watched Stranger Things Now, Preston tried to explain that he was doing important scientific work and the radio antenna was causing interference, but nobody would listen. And eventually he gave up. He just had to accept that every day he was going to have to deal with a lot of interference that was disrupting his research. Sadly, this meant that his experiment couldn't go much further from there. And according to him, eventually his study ended. All Preston had left were questions like, what was going on at the Montauk Air Force Base? Like, what is strong enough to be messing with people's energy? And did they know they had developed an anti telepathy machine? Like, essentially, if our enemies figured out telepathy, we have learned how to stop it. Now, when Preston tried to research the base's history, he didn't find anything. See, it was first built in 1942, and originally the army ran it. Montauk was the easternmost point in all of Long island, and the army thought it was a good location for a lookout station. Basically, if enemy ships from Europe ever came close to the US's shores for an invasion, officers at Montauk would spot them before anyone else. Now, Luckily, World War II ended and that invasion never came. And then in the late 1940s and early 50s, the army left the base and the Air Force took over. They installed that giant radio tower and used it to monitor Soviet communications. At least this is the official story. This base was monitoring Russia. But Preston suspected there was more to it. You don't need to blast anti telepathy waves to spy on the USSR at the same time every single day. He thought there was something else going on at Montauk. He just didn't know what. But then, over a decade later, in 1984, he finally had the chance to learn more. That year, the Air Force officially decommissioned the base. They also renamed it Camp Hero around that same time. Now, the good news is, is that the base shut down. All of the guards Left, and the site was completely abandoned. At this point, Preston is now 38 years old. He was a bit more mature and more experienced, but he still had an adventurous streak. And more importantly, Preston now realized that he could sneak onto the property, poke around, and see if he could learn anything about those giant radio towers from back when he was conducting this experiment. Sure enough, when he drove out to the base a short while later, he realized he didn't even need to break in. The gates had been left open. Now, of course, he took that as an invitation and went on to camp heroes grounds. When Preston walked around, he saw equipment scattered everywhere. Buildings with doors just left hanging open, unlocked offices with papers all over the place. It actually seemed like the air force had evacuated in a pretty big hurry. It didn't even take the time to clean up after themselves. They just abandoned this station. It was very strange, and there was so much equipment and paperwork to go through. Preston couldn't review everything in one day. So he began making frequent visits to Montauk. And each time, he'd gather papers, examine the abandoned technology, and study everything he could get his hands on. Preston wanted to learn all that he could based on his history with this area. Now, during one of these visits, he came across a dirty man in ragged clothes who was also on the abandoned property. This guy looked like he had had a rough life for a long time, but as soon as he laid eyes on Preston, this random man claimed to know him. The man said Preston had done some kind of psychic experiment on him on the base. Except Preston didn't work on the base, and he didn't recognize the man. He knew all of the psychics that he had worked with, and this guy wasn't one of them. Not to mention, like I said, Preston actually never worked here. He almost wanted to dismiss what this man was saying. It was just all a little creepy. But he knew a lot of personal details about Preston that he couldn't have guessed. So Preston's like what? Like, how do you know me? How do you know things about me? And, like, you're in the psychic genre. When I was working the psychic genre, and that's what led me here, it all seemed impossible. And even weirder, Preston had another odd encounter a short while later. A man he'd also never met before came into his house and started talking to him. I want to be clear, he didn't ring the doorbell. He didn't break in. He just opened the front door, walked inside like he knew Preston, knew his way around the house, like he belonged there. And Then when he saw Preston, he made a comment about how me and you used to work together again. This man said, you don't remember? We ran psychic experiments on the Montauk Air Force Base together. Preston's like, no, not again. What is happening? This makes no sense. But now, two different men from Montauk and the military base had claimed to know him specifically from psychic experiments on the military base he couldn't even get into. And then that November, it was like history was repeating itself. This time, a man named Duncan Cameron reached out to Preston because he had heard about Preston's knack for engineering. Duncan wanted a radio repaired, and he wondered if Preston could help him. So the two meet up, and during their conversation, they start talking about all kinds of things, including Preston's telepathy studies. The old ones he had done. Now, based on the things Duncan said, Preston came to realize that Duncan was an incredibly powerful mind reader. Obviously, this feels like a massive coincidence, because he had worked with psychics in studies specifically designed to trigger people's mind reading abilities. And then he meets someone in real life who naturally has these powers. Preston was fascinated with Duncan, and out of curiosity, he invited Duncan to come to the Montauk base with him. He wondered what would happen if Duncan got close to the radio tower, which was still broadcasting interference after all these years. Well, reportedly, as soon as they reached the base, Duncan goes into some kind of trance. He's awake, his eyes are open, but it was like he couldn't see or hear anything around him, like he had gone somewhere. And that's when Duncan told Preston, I've actually met you before. A long time ago, he said Preston had been running an experiment on the base involving telepathy and mind reading. Duncan added, the reason I can read mind so well now, like why you're picking this up from me, is because I was one of the subjects in your study. Duncan also said that after the program was over, government officials had done something to his and Preston's brains. Both of the men were forced to forget about the work they had done at Montauk, AKA Men in Black. They Men in Blacked them. Okay. And that's why so many people recognized Preston and said he had worked on this project and he had no recollection of it because his memories had been erased. Now, the good news was that Preston actually knew how to unlock repressed memories. Apparently, he needed to learn this skill during his other experiments with sidekicks, the ones he still remembered. So he used those techniques to help Duncan, and along the way, his memories came back too. So according to Preston, him and Duncan are on this basically quest to try to get their memories back. And Preston begins to understand the role he had played in top secret government programs many years ago before they had erased his memory. This time of year, it's sensory overload everywhere but one feeling. We are still chasing cozy and BOMBAS has the socks, slippers, tees and basically everything to get you there. Honestly, there's something weirdly therapeutic about fresh socks and the sock. Scientists at BOMBAS have found a way to channel that energy into everything from slippers with sticks, sink in cushioning to satisfyingly weighty tees. And that feeling, it doesn't stop after one wear, it keeps going. I love bombas. I have talked about them for a while, but I have more than just their socks. I have their slippers, I have their tees and I love all of it. And one of my favorite things about BOMBAS is that they donate one for every purchased. So it is giving back in such an amazing way, especially around this time of year year. So head over to bombas.comaudio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's Bombas B O-M-B-A-S.com audio code audio@ checkout Emoji moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GLP1s affordable. What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi. Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight. Three months in and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet. You're the best. Thanks, Mark. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com Mark is a Mochi member, compensated for his story. So here's what he recalled. In the 1960s and 70s, Preston reportedly worked on the base with a team of scientists. Their job was to find children with psychic abilities, bring them onto the base and train them to use their powers to help the US Military. Now, over the course of the study, these children learned how to spy on the United States enemies. But they also discovered ways to open tunnels through time so they could go back and change the past. Some of the children could even create portals to other frightening all alternative dimensions. During this time, Preston got to know one of the children. They were experimenting on that child's name, Duncan. The same man who had gone into a trance while they were on the Montauk base together. Except at this time, Duncan was much younger. Obviously he was barely A teenager. Preston couldn't get too close to him because part of his job was to be an impartial observer in the study. He knew the work that Duncan was doing was very dangerous as a child. It was also exhausting, especially when Duncan had to sit in the so called Montauk chair. This was a device that was supposed to make the children's powers even stronger. Study subjects had to sit in it, and then they would be able to do incredible things with their minds. For example, according to Preston, whenever anyone sat in this chair, it would make their thoughts visible. So if someone was thinking about a butterfly, an image of a butterfly would appear somewhere on the base. Other personnel would suddenly see this psychic insect drifting through the air. Or if the child imagined an apple or a book or a sock or anything, those would appear too. And if the person concentrated hard enough, their thoughts would become physically real, like an actual apple or butterfly or sock would manifest into existence because of this child's power. And then when the machine turned off, the item would disappear again. This sounds incredible. Just think how amazing, like, you sit in this machine and you can create anything you can imagine. The problem was that this was draining for the subjects who actually had to create items. Remember, these are children. They had never agreed to be part of this experiment. In many cases, they'd been taken from their families, and nobody involved with the project would let them go home. This is a horrible situation, and Preston slowly comes to realize that he couldn't be a part of it any longer. However, he also wasn't high ranking enough to, like, kidnap the subjects and get them back to their families. So back in the day, before their memories were erased, Duncan and Preston made a plan. Together, they would use the power of the Montauk chair to shut down the experiment forever. Now, the next time Duncan had to sit in the Montauk Chair, his handlers told him to think of an object. But instead of picturing something harmless and safe, he imagined the scariest, biggest, most violent monster he could think of. And since the chair was bringing his thoughts to life, the monster appeared somewhere on the base. You remember the tank that 11 would get in to help her powers. Okay, now, it's hard to say exactly where this monster materialized. Preston and Duncan never saw the thing for themselves. They could only go by the eyewitness accounts they would later hear. And these reports weren't consistent. Some people said the beast was 9 or 10ft tall. Others said it was 30ft, meaning it was potentially bigger than a two story house. That's a pretty big Variation. But the witnesses all agreed there was a huge hairy creature that showed up somewhere on the base and went into a violent rampage when Duncan was in the chair. And it killed many of the scientists who were running the experiment and then sped across the grounds looking for more victims. The thing was so big and powerful, any no one could fight it off. The only way to stop it was to shut down the Montauk Chair and get Duncan out of it. So Preston's superior officer gave him the order to halt the experiment by any means necessary. And these were the exact orders Preston had been waiting for. He goes and turns the chair off, and then he destroyed the power supply to ensure that the chair could never be used again. Now, once he was done with his work, the monster faded into nothing. Preston had saved the day, and he had ensured that nobody would ever be able to use the Montauk chair again, essentially saving the children. Now, at that point, the Air Force decided they had no choice but to shut down the project because it had gone too far. They abandoned the base, physically erased the memory of everyone involved with the experiments, and then moved on. Let him go. And then Preston ended up as a private citizen who didn't believe in telepathy and with no memory of his adventure on the base. At least not until he reconnected with Duncan and found a way to rediscover the truth again and uncover their memories. So, officially, I have just told you Preston's story of Montauk. Okay. It may not surprise you to hear that there are a lot of people who don't believe him. I mean, his account involved psychic powers, mysterious, repressed memories, and monsters. The government doing experiments on children against their will. Powerful children. It feels more like something out of a sci fi movie or Stranger Things rather than a true story. You may have also noticed the story of the Montauk Project, like I said, is even more similar to Stranger Things, the plot of Stranger Things, than MK Ultra. Again, I'm not going to spoil the latest season, but in earlier episodes, we met characters like Eleven. And at one point, she even sat in a chair that was supposed to increase her power. Again, Montauk Chair and Stranger Things also features terrifying monsters with a supernatural connection to the top secret program who end up destroying the people running the program. And like I said in Stranger Things, originally, the series took place in Montauk, Long island, and was named Montauk Again. The creators officially decided it'd be easier to film the set if it was in the Midwest instead, which is why they changed the script so Everything would happen in a fictional small town called Hawkins, Indiana. Now, all of this to say, if you don't believe the Montauk project was real, you can't deny that it has shaped pop culture and it has shaped the real world and politics, too. The story, along with the confirmed MK Ultra, have inspired people to ask themselves what they should believe and whether they can trust their government leaders. Because these accounts suggest that officials aren't always honest about what they're up to, and they don't always have people's best interests at heart. And I mean, in history, we hear about these experiments and powerful governments running experiments all the time. What's to say America hasn't done the same? But the problem is, what can you believe? What can't you believe? What has been changed? What has been hidden? What has been uncovered? If this is true for you that you are skeptical, it is worth noting. Since 1984, Camp Hero has been open to the public, just like Preston claimed. Anybody could go wander around the decommissioned base, so long as you now pay an $8 fee. But here's where it gets a little weird. Even though Camp Hero hasn't been operational in decades, huge chunks of it are off limits to the public. Officially, this is because the land is a wildlife sanctuary. There are a lot of endangered species that live, hunt, and breed on the abandoned base, and the people who run the park don't want people to disturb these plants and animals. Unofficially, though, some people think there are still strange creatures who live in Montauk, perhaps even the same monster that Duncan physically created. I'll also note that in the summer of 2008, a group of civilians discovered the carcass of an unidentified creature on a beach near the base. They didn't know what it was, but they dubbed it the Montauk Monster. Now, monster aside, there are allegations that something mysterious and supernatural might even be going on at Camp Hero to this day. Visitors sometimes report they feel like they're being watched the whole time they're at the base. There are also rumors of strange sealed tunnels that run underneath the abandoned buildings. They might hold mysterious equipment and clues about the old experiments, but these claims are all unverified. I do know the radio tower Preston described is still standing at Camp Hero, and locals report that it gives them bad dreams and eerie feelings. It just messes with their energy. And many guests warn you that you shouldn't get too close to it because people aren't exactly sure what it's capable of. Now, if that all sounds too scary and you don't feel like going on a trip to Camp Hero. Don't worry, you can still catch up on the final season of Stranger Things. Safe at home. I'm obviously making a joke that they're one in the same. And as you're watching, just try to keep in mind that some people think Stranger Things is based off of true stories. I know the accounts are difficult to believe, but before you dismiss everything, consider this quote from an author named Robert McCammon. Quote There are stranger things on this earth than we can even figure out if we had a hundred lifetimes and if he's right and the world is stranger than what we could ever imagine, then maybe even wild stories like Stranger Things, Montauk, MK Ultra, the government running experiments, Monsters, the Upside Down. Maybe it could all be true. And that was the true story behind the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. Thank you so much for going into this dark history with me today and I will see you next time with another one. Goodbye.