What If Stranger Things Really Happened? Pt. 2 – MK Ultra
Part two of our series on the myths, legends, and stories that influenced Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things. MK Ultra is referenced in Stranger Things season 1, and it is implied that Eleven’s superpowers are the result of MK Ultra experiments on her mother, Terry Ives. MK Ultra was a very real CIA program that ran from 1953–1973. The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy.
Hot Topics: I am disturbed, why am I doing this?, El is the Unabomber, tables, ladders, and chairs, Project Midnight Climax, LSD, CIA, Stranger Things, and much more.
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Project Midnight Climax
The CIA turned safe houses into brothels, in which prostitutes would dose unwitting clients with LSD and other hallucinogens. Their behavior was then observed by CIA agents, and recorded with hidden audio and video equipment. George White ran the program. He set up an apartment in San Francisco. The prostitutes picked up johns at local bars and brought them back to the makeshift brothel. The CIA preferred men from working class or financially disadvantaged backgrounds. The idea was that subjects with limited social status would attract the least attention, and be less likely to cause any issues. White paid the women with CIA funds.
MK Ultra
The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a study—but at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect. Many of the tests were conducted at universities, hospitals or prisons in the United States and Canada. Most took place between 1953 and 1964, but it’s not clear how many people were involved in the tests—the agency kept notoriously poor records and destroyed most MK-Ultra documents when the program was officially halted in 1973. The military was seeking mind control substances, and/or a type of truth serum to convince prisoners-of-war to reveal their secrets during interrogations.
