The Montauk Project: The Chilling Story That Inspired STRANGER THINGS

Summary

Sightings Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: The Montauk Project: The Chilling Story That Inspired STRANGER THINGS

Date: November 17, 2025
Hosts: McLeod Anders & Brian Sigley
Produced by: REVERB | QCODE

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Episode Overview

This episode of Sightings delves into the legend of the Montauk Project, a set of alleged government experiments involving psychic abilities, child abductions, time travel, and monsters at the decommissioned Montauk Air Station in Long Island. Widely understood as the inspiration for the Netflix series Stranger Things, the story is presented here as a gripping, immersive audio drama, followed by a fact-versus-fiction breakdown and discussion of the real claims, evidence, and subsequent cultural impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immersive Storytelling: The Disappearance of James Carrington

• [01:26–23:47]
  • The episode opens with a dramatized set of voicemails to the New York Times tip line from Mike Carrington, a father searching for his missing son, James.
  • James, portrayed as gifted with psychic abilities ("He'd always know when someone was calling before the phone rang." – Mike Carrington, [04:39]), vanished after attending a special "gifted program" and suffering from disturbing nightmares involving a "humming chair," "Humpty Dumpty," and a radar tower with an American flag.
  • Mike connects with another parent, Dawn, whose daughter, Casey, disappeared under similar circumstances. Both children had similar psychic talents and nightmares.
  • The narrative uncovers mysterious security personnel at the supposedly closed Montauk Air Station. Mike and Dawn encounter a polite but evasive "Commander Reese" and later discover a children's Humpty Dumpty book at the radar tower, hidden among "electrical supplies."
  • With the help of Paul Marsh, an engineer experiencing vivid dreams of working at the base on psychic experiments, the trio infiltrates the base’s underground levels.
  • They find evidence that James has been there, witness chaos and the appearance of a monstrous creature during an apparent containment breach, and flee, convinced of a government cover-up.

2. Debrief & Real-World Context

• Discussion resumes [26:19]
• Hosts recap the episode’s plot and begin to separate fabricated details from elements based on real-world lore.
  • Stranger Things was originally inspired by the Montauk Project mythos and was even called “Montauk” early in its development ([26:31]).
  • Host Brian Sigley admits the narrative is dramatized, but core elements—like psychic children, government cover-ups, and the monster—are drawn directly from legends and the book "The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time" ([28:13]).

3. Montauk Project: History & Claims

• Location & Background

  • Montauk Air Station is a real Cold War-era facility on the far eastern tip of Long Island, featuring a distinctive radar tower. Officially closed in the early 1980s, local rumors of ongoing activity continued for years ([29:51–30:25]).
  • Anecdotal incidents, such as “weird storms” and animal stampedes, add to the area’s mystique ([30:29–30:38]).

• Origin of the Montauk Project Story

  • Preston Nichols’s “Experiments in Time”
    • The legend traces to the book by Nichols, an electrical engineer, who claimed he and “Duncan Cameron” uncovered suppressed memories of working at Montauk.
    • Experiments included amplifying psychic powers via an elaborate chair connected to the radar. Subjects allegedly visualized objects into existence, and at advanced stages, psychic-induced portals (“wormholes”) were reportedly opened ([32:38–33:29]).

• Link to Other Conspiracy Lore

  • Ties to MKUltra: While this was a real CIA mind control project using LSD, the psychic elements are less substantiated ([35:27–35:34]).
  • Connections to the Philadelphia Experiment—another alleged government time-travel experiment—are referenced ([33:57–34:02]).

• Children & Abuse Claims

  • Subsequent to the book, others claimed to remember childhood abductions and experimentation at Montauk. These stories closely mirror Stranger Things’ narrative of Eleven, yet none have been independently verified ([34:39–35:01]).

4. Analysis: Hype vs. Evidence

• Physical "Evidence" & Urban Exploration

  • In the 1990s, a teen explored Montauk with a camera and found receipts for post-closure food purchases and underground bunkers ([37:30–37:56]).
  • Security presence and oddities at the base feed speculation, but "none of this in any way, shape or form has been verified" ([38:11]).

• Authors’ and Witnesses’ Credibility

  • Claims of degrees and timelines by self-appointed “witnesses” (like Nichols) don’t check out; no evidence for claims such as the use of Nazi gold or large-scale child disappearances ([39:29–39:43]).

• Cultural Impact

  • Although the core story remains unsubstantiated, its influence is profound—fueling Stranger Things and the ongoing appetite for supernatural media ([42:12–43:13]).

5. Memorable Quotes

• Mike Carrington on his son’s abilities:

  • "He'd always know when someone was calling before the phone rang. He'd know what I was thinking before I said it. His grandmother joked that he was tuned like a radio.” — Mike Carrington, [04:39]

• Linking narrative and reality:

  • "So just to be crystal clear...I did make up the character that you read and the circumstances surrounding his missing son, like the whole gifted program, things like that. But as we'll see in this discussion...all of the elements that I pulled in the story and which Stranger Things pulls into their story...were based on the accounts that came out in the 1990s." — Brian Sigley, [28:13]

• Summing up the allure:

  • "But I also think it's just a really cool example of how you can see a story snowballing from, oh, there's a weird base at the end of Montauk that might be open to, oh, let me build on that and write this whole story about monsters and time travel and telekinesis and things like that to, oh, where you want to do a television show that's kind of nostalgic and 80s feeling. Why not kind of use Montauk's lore as a launching point?" — Brian Sigley, [42:12]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:26–23:47] – Immersive dramatization: Mike Carrington’s search for his son, discovery of the Montauk conspiracy, infiltration, and encounter with the monster.
• [26:19] – Transition to fact-versus-fiction breakdown and host discussion.
• [28:13] – Host clarification about dramatization vs. elements based on “real” stories.
• [29:51] – Explaining the real Montauk facility and introduction to the myths.
• [34:39] – Discussion of children, psychic experimentation, and parallels to Stranger Things.
• [37:30] – Physical "evidence" and analysis of plausibility.
• [42:12] – Cultural impact and how the story snowballed.

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Host Perspectives

• Brian Sigley: Fan of Stranger Things, foregrounds the Montauk Project’s influence, and finds it a compelling, if unproven, modern myth.
• McLeod Anders: Has not seen Stranger Things; approaches the material with skepticism but fascination, and highlights the thrill and creativity of such modern legends.

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Conclusion & Listener Takeaway

This episode of Sightings masterfully meshes fact, fiction, conspiracy, and pop culture, giving listeners both a chilling narrative experience and a critical breakdown of the Montauk Project’s origins, claims, and cultural legacy. While the show reinforces that the fantastical claims remain unsubstantiated, the thrilling blend of government secrets, psychic phenomena, and monstrous horrors ensures the Montauk Project’s enduring place in paranormal lore and pop entertainment.

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Next Episode

The podcast will take a break for Thanksgiving but promises new ghost, alien, and creature stories in December.
Closing Thought: "True or not, plausible or not...I'm so glad this story exists because it's fascinating and kind of, like, mind-expanding." — McLeod Anders, [43:13]

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Transcript

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[Mike Carrington]

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[Narrator]

Television shows love to blur the line between truth and imagination. We call it fiction. But what if some of those stories come from somewhere real? Before there was stranger things, there were whispers of a secret base, a humming machine, and children who vanished after being chosen for something special. Maybe art doesn't imitate life after all. Maybe it remembers it. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events.

[McLeod Anders]

Each episode brings you a thrilling story.

[Narrator]

That puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them.

[Mike Carrington]

I'm McLeod.

[Brian Sigley]

And I'm Brian. And today we're diving into the allegedly true story of the Montauk project, which was the inspiration for the pop culture phenomenon Stranger Things.

[Narrator]

So follow us to 1982, where one man is desperately trying to find his missing son. This is a story of telepathy, government secrets, strange monsters, and a mystery that grows deeper with each new twist and turn. Find out how on this episode of Sightings.

[New York Times Automated Message System]

New York Times Deadline May 18, 1982, 11:17am Hi.

[Mike Carrington]

Hello. Hi. I hope I've reached the right place. The lady on the switchboard said I could leave a message here and someone at the Times would maybe pass it on to Metro or Long island or whoever runs those columns with the pictures, you know, of missing kids. So I'm calling about my son, James Carrington. He's 12. Oh, I'm Mike Carrington. His father do you need me to spell that out? Anyway, it's been three days now. The cops think he just ran away, but I know he wouldn't. I mean, he's only 12. He doesn't hate me yet. He's my best bud, but. Sorry. Let me try to focus and just be concise, linear for you here. We know he went missing on his walk to school because he never showed up there. I led some detectives through his route. We talked to everyone, and unfortunately, no one saw anything. But there's some things that might sound crazy. I know. My wife doesn't even want me to talk about it. She says I'm making it worse. But I can't just sit here while James is out there somewhere. So I'm calling you because something more is going on here, because my boy was.

[McLeod Anders]

He's different.

[Mike Carrington]

You understand? He. How do I say this? He has a second sense, like something more. And I know how this sounds, but he's always. He'd always know when someone was calling before the phone rang. He'd know what I was thinking before I said it. His grandmother joked that he was tuned like a radio. And there's more than that, lots more. But. And I'm sure people can just try to explain it away if they wanted to accept. Except you can't explain away the last several weeks. So James comes home with this letter about a gifted program, this thing for smart kids to go one day a week. Not a different school exactly, but something else, like enrichment, extracurricular. And we thought it would be good for him. But a few nights after his first week, he started getting nightmares. Like, not kid nightmares, but way worse. Dark stuff. He'd wake up choking on air, screaming about this chair, this machine humming, and something about Humpty Dumpty. And. I don't know, it still doesn't make sense to me, but it terrified him completely. He'd wet the bed, even. And at first we thought it was just a phase, puberty, maybe. But we never thought it was connected to this gifted thing. I mean, it's. It's a school. They were reading novels. Damn it.

[Narrator]

Sorry.

[Mike Carrington]

Just the night before he went missing, the nightmares went to a whole nother level. There's more about this Humpty Dumpty, that chair. But also, there was something about this place, this facility. He said he saw an American flag patch, and. Oh, God, what was it? Something else. Point is, the next morning, he was gone. Vanished. Taken. I don't know, because that's what I'm getting at. My son didn't run away he was taken. And it has something to do with this program with Humpty Dumpty, a humming chair and the American flag. So I don't know. Military, government. I know how that sounds, but I just. I just feel that they have my boy. They took my boy and.

[New York Times Automated Message System]

Message Time limit reached New York Times Deadline May 18, 1982, 1:04pm Hi, it's Mike Carrington again.

[Mike Carrington]

Sorry I got cut off by the message thing, but I took some time to think, to collect. And I'm gonna be calmer and clearer, I promise. I haven't made some notes because I didn't tell you everything. And I. And I even remembered some more, so. And I know. I know this will sound insane, but please, just listen. So I said, James had those nightmares, but there was more than that. And right at the height of his terror, the lights in the hall outside his bedroom would flicker. Every night, same thing. Then the night before he disappeared, this airplane. He has this model airplane we made together, just paint and plastic. But at the height of his nightmare, I saw it lift up on its own and hover in the air above the shelf. I swear it. And then. And when I was writing everything down, I remembered it. The thing that I couldn't remember from the last call, but that last night, he was saying something about a tower. So, an American flag and a tower, this giant tower made of metal with rooms and equipment below it. And that's where the hum came from, he said. And I can't believe I forgot it, because I know a tower like that. There's only one on Long Island I've ever seen, and that's the radar tower, the one at the air station at Montauk. I've never even taken James de Montauk, but he knew it. Why did he know it? Is that where he is? Where he's been taken? I mean, I have nothing else to go on here, but it has to mean something, right? I swear on my life, on my son's life. I'm not a nutcase. I've never called a newspaper in my life. But if you just print my phone number and mention the gifted class and the disappearance and the tower, if you put that where people can see it, maybe some other parents will read it and realize their kid said something in a nightmare. And maybe they'll know where James is. I know maybe I'm grasping at straws, but straws are all I got. So please, just print something.

[New York Times Automated Message System]

New York times tip line. May 20, 1982, 2:14am.

[Mike Carrington]

Hi, yeah, it's Mike Carrington. The guy with the missing kid. I called a few days back, and I know you guys get a lot of calls, so I'm not mad that nothing's been printed yet, but I. I'm at a payphone and Montauk, and something happens, something that'll bust this whole thing wide open, and. Oh, here, sorry. Let me go back a little bit. Okay. So yesterday I got a call from a woman who saw one of the flyers I put up. I've been putting up flyers all over town. And she said her daughter disappeared two months ago. Casey Fleming. There was an article in the Times about it. I checked. But this woman, her name was dawn, she met me at a diner in Medford, and we started talking. And you wouldn't believe this, but her daughter and my son, Same gifted program, different schools, different districts even, but same thing, same nightmares, same abilities. I. I don't know what you want to call it, but dawn said. Oh, what was the word? Telekinesis. Like mind control. Mind stuff. So. So we started comparing notes about what our kids said during their nightmares. And there, too, same thing. Humpty Dumpty. The chair.

[Narrator]

The hum.

[Mike Carrington]

The tower. Dawn hadn't realized it was the tower in Montauk, but when I described it to her, she said it sounded exactly like what her daughter said. So we called the number for the air station, but the person who answered was at this nationwide switchboard and said, montauk station closed in January, which seemed a little too convenient, you know? So dawn and I drove out there last night to Montauk. And, yeah, there's fencing all around the station. It all looked deserted, all right, but we needed proof, and we were gonna get it. So we parked in the brush right next to the fence and we watched. And. And wouldn't you know it? There were unmarked trucks going in and out of there every two hours. And though we couldn't fully see it, it looked like they were heading straight for that radar tower. And so I finally decided to get out of the car to get a closer look. And then the second. The second I step out, this flashlight blasts on me and we're swarmed by security guys.

[McLeod Anders]

Now, you tell me, why is a.

[Mike Carrington]

Deserted airbase swarming with security? So these guys, they don't cuff us or anything. They just ask us if we could step inside to answer some questions. And of course, we said, yeah, they were leading us right where we wanted to go. So we followed as they checked our IDs and had us wait in this office building with just rows of empty desks. That looked so empty that it had to be staged. And after, I don't know, 15 minutes of us waiting, this man named Commander Reese R E E S E came in and apologized for all the trouble, but asked what we were doing outside a decommissioned military station after midnight. Which I could have asked him the exact same question, but that's what I'm getting at here. And that's why I'm calling you now. I wasn't quite sure how to answer that, but dawn blurted out our kids had run away, and we thought they might be hiding out here because they talked about that big radar tower. And it's funny the way Reese reacted. He softened, like he understood. He said when he saw our IDs, he realized he'd heard about our kids on the local news. He was a parent himself and couldn't imagine what we were going through. But he assured us his security team was the only one still on that station. Now, I guess he could tell that we didn't believe him. So he offered to show us the radar building. And we didn't object. So he walked us over to that massive tower and the square concrete building below it. He unlocked the door, and indeed, the place looked spotless. Just rows of unused equipment and neatly labeled boxes of abandoned supplies. He walked us from one empty room to another, then back to the door we came in. And I could tell that dawn was defeated. And honestly, I was, too. But then I saw it. It was on a box labeled Electrical supplies. And the only reason I noticed was because its color stood out. It was a bright colored children's book. A book about Humpty Dumpty. I didn't say a word. I just followed Reese out. And as soon as we were off station property, I came here to this phone booth. Because they have my son. I know they do.

[McLeod Anders]

Why else would James have been talking.

[Mike Carrington]

About Humpty Dumpty and the tower unless he'd been there?

[New York Times Automated Message System]

Unless he message time limit reached.

[Brian Sigley]

The.

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[New York Times Automated Message System]

New York Times Deadline May 22, 1982 9:47pm.

[Mike Carrington]

Hi, it's Mike Carrington again. I don't know if anyone's even listening to these, but I hope you are. And if someone is pleased, save this, because we're going back to that radio tower, and I just need somebody to have a record in case something happens to us. So after I got cut off, I think I was explaining to you the Humpty Dumpty book that I saw at the radar tower. Dawn and I. Dawn was with me the whole time. Dawn and I, we went back to that diner that we first met at to just figure out what we're gonna do next. And this guy approaches us, he says his name's Paul Marsh, and he knew that we'd been watching Montauk Air Station because he was watching Montauk Air Station, and he said he desperately needed to talk to us. So Paul says he's an electrical engineer from Bayshore who worked for a defense contractor. Just a normal life, normal job. Except about six months ago, he started having these dreams, really vivid ones, like. Like more memories than anything he said. And in these dreams, he seemed to be working at Montauk Air Station. He'd see himself in these underground rooms filled with massive coils and huge computer systems. And this chair. Yeah, a chair in a shielded room surrounded by receivers and transmitters. But in these dreams, he wasn't just visiting or seeing it. He was working at the station. He was running the experiments there. And he was running the experiments on kids. Young kids, maybe 10 or 12. And here's the bizarre thing. Paul has no actual memory of any of this. He's never worked at Montauk. As far as he knows, he's never even been inside that station. But his Dreams were so detailed that he became convinced they were real somehow. Like he was living a life he just couldn't remember. Honestly, at that point, I didn't know what to think. So I pulled out a picture of James and I showed it to Paul. He said James was one of the kids from his dreams. Dawn asked what they were doing to these kids, and Paul said he didn't know exactly. But in his dreams, he was monitoring their brain waves. And the kids would sit in the chair and somehow their thoughts would manifest on computer screens. And even weirder objects would appear out of nowhere, as if conjured from thin air. Pencils, cups, things like that. But Paul said they kept pushing the kids harder, trying to conjure more and more, more elaborate objects. So now you've got three of us, okay? You've got three people who know something is happening at this station. Three people who have been called crazy, been told to stop asking questions and been told to stay away.

[Narrator]

No.

[Mike Carrington]

Paul thinks he can get us inside. He remembers stuff from his dreams. Door locations, security rotations, schedules. And he drew us a map of the underground level. Five floors of them, all hidden beneath that radar tower. And I know somewhere down there is James. And I'm going to get him. We're going back tonight, all three of us. We're going to find those underground levels, we're going to find our kids, and we're going to get them out. So if anything happens to us, I need this recording to exist. Someone has to know where we went and why.

[New York Times Automated Message System]

New York times tip line, May 23, 1982, 3:51am.

[Mike Carrington]

I don't even know where to start. I. I'm shaking so bad, I can barely hold this phone. Okay. It's me, Mike Carrington. We made it out. Barely. We parked by the dunes and crawled under where it was sagging a little bit. No one came after us. I don't know why. There weren't any patrols. We made our way towards the radar tower. And the closer we got, the more we heard this hum. The same sound James described during his nightmares. The radar dish wasn't moving. And eventually we realized that that hum was somehow coming from beneath it. So we kept moving. We reached the building. Same one we went in before. We broke a handle to get inside the room. Looks exactly like it did earlier. Same rows of equipment and boxes. I found the same box again. The one marked Electrical supplies with the Humpty Dumpty book in it. It was still in there, but this time I picked it up. And inside, written in shaky pencil, were two Words help me. And it was James handwriting. I know it. I would know it anywhere. He'd been there and he'd held that book and he left me a message. So we kept moving through the rooms, looking for some way down, deeper. But Paul said something was wrong, that everything felt off compared to his dreams. And then we heard a pop. And then a scream. We followed the sound to the back of one room. There was this section of wall that wasn't quite flush with the rest. And he pulled it aside to reveal a door. Now, not a regular door, but. But something else. It was metal, heavy, like from a fallout shelter or something. And it had this panel next to it that glowed red. And I'd never seen anything like this before. But Paul said he'd seen it in his dreams. And he put his hand on that panel and the door opened to reveal a stairwell leading down. And immediately, as soon as the door opened, that hum was louder. And then gunshots, more of them. And screams. So something was happening down there. I pray it didn't involve James. At this point, dawn was getting pretty spooked and wanted to turn back, but I couldn't. So we kept going. And at the bottom of the stairs, there's just a few flights, by my guess, there's this hallway. And it was just wild. There were red lights flashing, armed men running in panic. And I could feel the floor shake as something approached. God, I don't even know how to describe it other than to say it was a monster. There was a monster down there. And it had to hunch because the ceiling was too low and it was covered in gross hair, I think. But I can't be sure because it moved so fast and soldiers were firing at it. And then it roared. And then the lights all just burst overhead. And in the dark, two soldiers grabbed us and started pushing us up the stairs, shouting at us, telling us to run, to get out of there. And they. They just kept pushing until we were out of the building entirely. And then they ran back inside. And we were not armed or prepared, so I knew we couldn't go back. We couldn't. So we ran back to the fence, to the car, and now to a payphone here. But I know what I saw. Something is happening under Montauk Air Station. I don't know what. All I do know is they've got our kids down there. They got James down there, and I'm not giving up until I get him back. I don't care what it takes. I don't care if they lock me up. Or call me insane. Or if you write an article or you don't write an article, I don't care anymore. But I'm getting James back. You understand that? I'm.

[New York Times Automated Message System]

Message time limit reached.

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[McLeod Anders]

Absolutely.

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[Brian Sigley]

I'm here to pick up my son, Milo.

[Narrator]

There's no Milo here who picked up.

[McLeod Anders]

My son from school Streaming only on Peacock.

[Brian Sigley]

I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us.

[Mike Carrington]

So this was all planned. What are you gonna do?

[Brian Sigley]

I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

[Mike Carrington]

I honestly didn't see this coming.

[Narrator]

These nice people killing each other.

[Mike Carrington]

All her fault. A new series streaming now only on peace.

[McLeod Anders]

Welcome back to Sightings. Brian. I don't know if I've ever heard a stranger thing than this story.

[Brian Sigley]

Look what you did there.

[McLeod Anders]

I'm so proud of myself.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah, it is an absolutely crazy story. And what I think I love about it, though, is that you can see the threads connecting what allegedly happened in Montauk with the world and the Characters of Stranger Things and fun fact. Stranger Things was originally titled Montauk.

[McLeod Anders]

Really? I didn't know that. Stranger Things is a better title.

[Brian Sigley]

I agree. I agree. But, yeah, the Duffer brothers who created Stranger Things were inspired by this wild tale of all these weird things allegedly going on at this military installation on the far end of Long Island. Obviously, they moved the story to the Midwest and made a bunch of other changes and things like that. But Stranger Things and the story that you read are based a lot on.

[McLeod Anders]

On the actual accounts.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah.

[McLeod Anders]

And for good reason. After. Okay, well, I think for the purposes of this discussion, I should probably come right out and let our audience know I haven't watched Stranger Things.

[Brian Sigley]

Oh, you're fired.

[McLeod Anders]

I'm sorry. I haven't watched it.

[Brian Sigley]

Okay.

[McLeod Anders]

I just, like, it just kept building, and it kept becoming a bigger and bigger deal, and then I felt too farther and farther behind until I was just like, well, I guess I missed it.

[Brian Sigley]

Oh, well, I'll go back.

[McLeod Anders]

Especially now. So, actually, Brian, your story is my first real exposure to the events of the Montauk Project, and it's awesome. So now I'm like, well, of course. Of course they made a TV show out of this. It's got everything.

[Brian Sigley]

It does. So just to be crystal clear. Well, first of all, let me say I am a Stranger Things fan. All of you listening. I hope you are, too.

[McLeod Anders]

Well, it's important that one of us are.

[Brian Sigley]

It is. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing this. But as many of you probably know, season five is coming out very, very soon, so I hope you all enjoy that. But just to come clean myself, I did make up the character that you read and the circumstances surrounding his missing son, like the whole gifted program, things like that.

[McLeod Anders]

Oh, okay.

[Brian Sigley]

But as we'll see in this discussion, you know, all of the elements that I pulled in the story and which Stranger Things pulls into their story. You know, things like the telepathic kid, the monster on the loose, and then other things that were just in my story, like the second lives of Paul, the character in the story. All of that stuff that happened in the story was based on the accounts that came out in the 1990s. And it all kind of started with this book that was published called the Montauk Project Experiments in Time. Before we get into the details, though, and get into all the wild things that this book talks about, I think it's helpful to probably set the scene, because Montauk Air Station is obviously very different than the world of Stranger Things, but it is a real place and for those of you who are, I guess, are unfamiliar with Long island geography, Montauk is a town on the very, very furthest eastern tip of Long Island. I've been there. It's really pretty. There's a lighthouse, and there's also this decommissioned air base. It was built in 1942 as under the name Camp Hero for coastal defense during World War II, and it was reactivated then during the Cold War for radar tracking. And that famous tower that showed up in the story, that tower is real. It's one of 12 that have been installed around the United states. It's like 100ft or 90ft tall. It's big. It's met. You can see it in the show. Art, guys.

[Mike Carrington]

Okay, cool.

[Brian Sigley]

As we heard in the story, the base officially closed in the 1980s, but there are legends of unusually tight security that have been hanging out around the base for years afterwards. It's also worth noting, unrelated to the story, there's reports and legends of weird stuff happening in Montauk, completely separate from stuff that was in the book. Things like weird storms that would come out of nowhere, weird animal stampedes. What, through town? Yeah, and just other weird, weird stuff like that has been happening, which kind of create this, like, whole allure of mystery surrounding Montauk a little bit, I guess.

[McLeod Anders]

The wild giraffes of Montauk.

[Brian Sigley]

I think it's more like birds and like, just lots of goats and dogs and things like squirrels. Yeah, that'd be. I'd love to see a squirrel stampede.

[McLeod Anders]

Squirrel stampede.

[Brian Sigley]

But I guess to really understand what's going on here and understand, I guess, the profound influence that this hell had on Stranger Things, we gotta really dive into this book. So Montauk Project, Experiments in Time.

[McLeod Anders]

Wait, okay, so Experiments in Time. It didn't seem like there was any time travel in your story. And as far as I'm aware, there's not time travel in Stranger Things.

[Brian Sigley]

There's not and there wasn't. But this story has a little bit of everything. Everything from telekinesis to time travel, to monsters coming out of portals, things like that.

[McLeod Anders]

Portals?

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah. The guy who wrote this book, his name was Preston Nichols. He was an electrical engineer. He claims that in 1971, he received. Received a grant to study telepathy. And while he was working with a bunch of psychics on Long island, he noticed that they would all lose their abilities at about the same time every day. And he guessed that this was because of some kind of electromagnetic interference or something like that. And can you guess where he attracted to McCloud. Montauk. Absolutely. So he went to Montauk. He realized that whatever was happening at this radar base was influencing the psychic abilities of the people he was working with. But that's not all. It turns out he may have had more of a connection to that base than he thought. So I gotta jump forward a little bit in time to make this all make sense. But eventually he met up with this guy named Duncan, Duncan Cameron. And both of them, in the late 80s, I guess, or early 90s, started having of being at the base in, like, the late 70s and early 80s. And what's interesting is, in Duncan's case, it was as a test subject. But for Preston Nichols, he was a scientist who was apparently running the experiments there.

[McLeod Anders]

Okay, so is Preston the author of this book sort of your stand? Is Paul your stand in for Preston kind of or inspiration?

[Brian Sigley]

Yes. Because they were both having these weird dreams and realizing, oh, my gosh, am I leading a double life here? Where I'm, like, an engineer in my day job by day, and then at night, I'm somehow running these experiments.

[McLeod Anders]

So in these visions or dreams, what were they doing specifically at the Montauk base?

[Brian Sigley]

It seems like their experiments involved some kind of a chair.

[McLeod Anders]

So the chair was a thing from this book story.

[Brian Sigley]

Okay. Absolutely. It was surrounded by electromagnetic coils that somehow fed off of energy from the radar dish or something like that.

[McLeod Anders]

I got, like, Professor X vibes. What was it called? The dome that he would sit inside.

[Brian Sigley]

I totally get that vibe, too. This seems a lot more technical traumatizing, though, than that. Yes, Yes.

[McLeod Anders]

A little darker.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah. The goal ostensibly seemed to have been to amplify the psychic abilities of test.

[McLeod Anders]

Subjects very Professor X.

[Brian Sigley]

Ultimately, though, manipulate reality. So test subjects like Duncan could just visualize an object like a baseball or an apple or something like that, and it would just materialize in front of them when the machine was running.

[Narrator]

Okay.

[Brian Sigley]

But when they turned the machine off, everything just vanished. So that's kind of interesting. But then things get a little bit more out there than that. Even we've got portals through time and space. So in the early 80s, apparently, they were amplifying the psychic energy of these test subjects to create wormholes of some kind. And this is out there even for me. But it includes apparently a portal to 1943, which happens to be the Philadelphia Experiment, which we already did an episode on. Yeah. Oh.

[Mike Carrington]

Oh, it's all coming full circle.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah. So they claim that they linked up with the USS Eldridge. That was the ship that went missing in 1943, when they turned on all these machines. I don't know what to make of all that because apparently they also went to Mars and did a whole bunch of other stuff using these portals that they created.

[Mike Carrington]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah.

[Stitch Fix Announcer]

Wow.

[McLeod Anders]

This is a lot. And I have so many questions piling up in my little question pile brain. So I'm starting to see some connections to what I know about Stranger Things, portals and stuff and telekinesis. But Stranger Things was a lot about kids, and this story that you wrote was a lot about kids. Where do the kids figure in to this book?

[Brian Sigley]

It was after the book was published, a couple men came forward and claimed that they were kidnapped as children and experimented on at Montauk. They basically tortured the kids to try and break their minds so they could be reprogrammed to be sleeper agents or something like that. I mean, I'm thinking very much of eleven, the character from Stranger Things, who's played by Millie Bobby Brown.

[Mike Carrington]

Oh, gotcha.

[Brian Sigley]

You know, who's been, like, brought up to be this psychic weapon. Yeah.

[McLeod Anders]

I mean, like, I feel like I've. Sorry, again if I'm taking this off course. Cause I feel like this spiderwebs in so many directions. But I feel like I'm aware loosely of stories about the government trying to develop like, telekinetic powers and like, you know, mind reading stuff in around the 60s, 70s or whatever.

[Brian Sigley]

Yes. So there was something called Mkultra.

[McLeod Anders]

Mkultra, okay.

[Brian Sigley]

It was less about, like telepathy, though, and more about mind control in a way.

[Mike Carrington]

Okay.

[Brian Sigley]

And what they were doing was like, dosing subjects with loads of like, LSD and other psychotropic drugs and things like that in order to try and like, break them down and study their minds and figure out how to Gotcha.

[McLeod Anders]

Like make like sleeper agents, sort of.

[Brian Sigley]

It was more like a what can we do with this? Kind of thing? But there is one more thing before we kind of dive into whether this all could have actually happened or not. That happened in the book and in the story that you read and in Stranger Things. And that is, of course, a monster, right? Yes.

[McLeod Anders]

Thank you. So did a monster go on the loose in Montauk? Was this before or after the squirrel stampede?

[Brian Sigley]

It might have been related, I'm not sure. But yes, a monster allegedly did go on the loose in Montauk right before the base.

[McLeod Anders]

There's a monster amok in Montauk.

[Brian Sigley]

So according to the book and to Duncan, the psychic guy, they say that Duncan was either tricked into or somehow manifests this Monster who came through one of the portals that his brain created, you know, and it wreaked havoc on this underground base.

[McLeod Anders]

Well, I don't really know what to think about this. Is there anything beyond what is starting to form for me, a narrative of like two guys got together and started hashing out some kind of like fun, crazy stories together and then wrote a book.

[Brian Sigley]

So there's sort of some corroborating evidence here. And then there's also a lot of big question marks. You're right that the core of this story, and I guess at the core of Stranger Things, is really based on the word of Preston and Duncan and what they claim happened at this base. It's interesting to note that they never claimed anything about kids that only came afterwards from two other guys who. You could see that as they're validating their story in a way, or you could see it as they're kind of piling it on and looking for attention.

[Mike Carrington]

Right.

[Brian Sigley]

In the 90s, apparently there was a teenager who snuck onto the base and explored it with a VHS camera. And when he was there, he found a whole bunch of underground bunkers, a mysterious vault like door. And this is kind of interesting. He found receipts for like huge $60,000 food purchases a month at this base. But the thing is that those receipts were all dated after the base had closed.

[McLeod Anders]

Okay.

[Brian Sigley]

Which implies that something was going on at this base after they officially closed the base.

[Mike Carrington]

Right.

[Brian Sigley]

And then, of course, as it appeared in the story, there were weird security forces at the base all the. Even though it was just a decommissioned radar base.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Brian Sigley]

Aside from that, though, none of this in any way, shape or form has been verified.

[McLeod Anders]

There's nothing to validate the kind of the portals and the.

[Brian Sigley]

Whatever the portal and the telekinesis and the gotcha child abductions and all that kind of stuff. None of that's been verified.

[Mike Carrington]

Okay.

[McLeod Anders]

But it does sound like there's some interesting evidence to indicate that there was some kind of secret project going on there.

[Brian Sigley]

I think it's entirely possible, yes. But again, like, there's no reports of mass amounts of kids going missing, you know, in Long island or things like that. And also of note, Preston, the author of the book, his own history, doesn't necessarily check out with the things that he claims in the book. He claims he has an engineering degree from the University of Tampa. There is no record of that happening. He also makes a whole bunch of claims that are way too wild to even try to incorporate into the story. For instance, he claims that the Montauk Project was, I guess, so, like, under wraps that they had to finance it using Nazi gold, which I guess. Cool. I guess. They also claim that Duncan, the psychic he was with, was actually born in the early 20th century and somehow traveled through time to 1983. Okay. The thing that jumped with me the most was one of the guys who claimed he was abducted by as a kid claims that hundreds of thousands of other kids were abducted and processed at Montauk. That's a lot of kids, which there is obviously no record of having vanished in any way, shape, or form.

[Mike Carrington]

Yeah.

[Brian Sigley]

Preston, the author of this book, also went on to write some more books with ridiculous titles referencing Nazis and things like that and Montauk, obviously. And he readily admits that he fictionalized some of the elements of those books. Whether or not he fictionalized elements of the first book remains to be.

[McLeod Anders]

He hasn't copped to that.

[Brian Sigley]

He hasn't copped to that necessarily. So that's kind of what we have to work with here. So given that, though, I just. Let's get a read from you. Where are you on all this? Because it's a pretty wild story, and I can see, obviously, why it became a show like Stranger Things because it just has all the elements of cool stuff. But do you think it actually happened?

[McLeod Anders]

I don't have any reason to believe, based on what I've learned, like, today, I don't have any reason to believe that, like, this guy Preston is necessarily telling the truth and isn't just telling a fantastical tale. I do find compelling the idea that there was something. Something going on at Montauk. I could believe, like a security force being at a decommissioned base. That actually still tracks for me because it's still government property, and they wouldn't just want people, you know, wandering in there like random teenagers with cameras. But the receipts for all the food dating, then. I mean, it's possible that that teenager could have kind of. I assume this was after the book came out.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah, this was in the mid-90s, so.

[McLeod Anders]

So, you know. You know, it's possible that that teenager could have been adding to the story kind of. But again, then it's like, well, but then how were people getting in and out, like, unseen? You imagine that you would still need a lot of people running a facility like that. $60,000 in food that of people are being fed.

[Brian Sigley]

No, that's. That's absolutely valid. I can imagine that they could have been running some kind of program, and there was probably always whispers of it around town, and maybe that's something that Preston picked up on, and it's just like, oh, what could be happening there? Let me write a book about it and just spun this whole tale.

[McLeod Anders]

Were there any, like, press junkets or anything for Preston and this guy Duncan? Like, where are they now?

[Brian Sigley]

Like, so both Duncan and Preston passed away in 2018. 2019, give or take. They are not affiliated with Stranger Things. Stranger Things, to my knowledge, does not credit the Montauk Project book or any of that for it. It just kind of took the lore that it established and ran with it without directly.

[McLeod Anders]

Then directly crib it sort of.

[Brian Sigley]

Yeah. But I think more than whether or not it's plausible or not, kind of like with the Dulcie Base story we had a few weeks ago, what's exciting to me about this is, number one, it's a fantastically cool story, and it has an even more compelling, you know, emotional core because you've got people with missing kids in this one that layers on top of just, you know, random military experiments going on. But I also think it's just a really cool example of how you can see a story snowballing from, oh, there's a weird base at the end of Montauk that might be open to, oh, let me build on that and write this whole story about monsters and time travel and telekinesis and things like that to, oh, where you want to do a television show that's kind of nostalgic and 80s feeling. Why not kind of use Montauk's lore as a launching point? And now we have Stranger Things, which is probably one of, if not the most popular television series in the world right now. You know, one of them. And, yeah, I think a lot of people just don't realize that it was based on what's allegedly a true account.

[McLeod Anders]

But, I mean, like, true or not, plausible or not. But I'm so glad that this story exists because it's fascinating and kind of, like, mind expanding and kind of just gives me that kind of tingly feeling of, like, excitement.

[Brian Sigley]

Absolutely, absolutely. And so I had so much fun writing this one as well. So, listeners, though, we'd love to hear what you think. If you love Stranger Things, let us know about it. If you think the Montauk Project is a load of hooey, let us know that too.

[McLeod Anders]

If there's some important evidence that you feel like we missed that you're aware.

[Brian Sigley]

Of, let us know that as well. For sure. Find us on Instagram itingspod, or leave us a message on Spotify. We love reading those.

[McLeod Anders]

So, Brian, do we have any supernatural turkeys in store for us next week.

[Brian Sigley]

We're taking next week off for the Thanksgiving holiday.

[McLeod Anders]

Oh, thank goodness. Daddy needs some stuff.

[Brian Sigley]

But we will be back in December with some of our very favorite favorite ghost, alien and creature stories. So I'm not gonna say any more than that.

[McLeod Anders]

Perfect for the season. Once again, we all know Santa is a ghost alien.

[Brian Sigley]

We'll leave you with that, listeners. We'll see you in two weeks, same time, same place, right here on Sightings.

[McLeod Anders]

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

[Brian Sigley]

Sightings is hosted by McLeod Anders and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, chase Kinzer and McLeod Andrews written by Brian Sigley music by Mitch Bain mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media, artwork by Nuno Cernatus. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our [e-mail] Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.