It’s no secret that the 1980s act as more than just the setting of “Stranger Things." From the ominous title sequence resembling that of the horror film “Altered States” to the blatant homage to “E.T.” surrounding Eleven’s entire storyline, it’s obvious where the bulk of the inspiration for this series lies.

“Poltergeist,” “Hellraiser,” “Stand By Me," “Firestarter," “The Goonies," “Little Shop Of Horrors," “A Nightmare On Elm Street”— the list of vintage sci-fi references goes on, yet each one seamlessly integrates into the series’ tone in a way that makes this 2016 release feel almost familiar. At times it can seem as if each episode is its own impressive collection some of the best 1980s horror movie tropes carefully strung along by an otherwise original premise. After all, who’s ever heard of a government-funded laboratory performing secret experiments on human subjects… right?

Turns out, the only thing stranger than the Upside-Down, telekinetic preteens, and a 40-something Winona Ryder screaming at Christmas lights is where the original inspiration for “Stranger Things” stems from. Although the original pitch was more or less the same as what we watch today, there's one distinct difference that links this story to its eerie roots.

Originally, the show was titled “Montauk”, therefore first setting the show in Montauk, New York rather than Hawkins, Indiana. Additionally, instead of the plainly named “Hawkins Lab”, the government facility that acts as the main source of strangeness throughout the series was called “Camp Hero”. Although seemingly insignificant, this edit was more than a matter of a simple change in setting, it was a matter of separating fact from fiction. Project MKUltra was a codename given to a program conducted at Camp Hero in Montauk, New York, consisting of experiments on human subjects designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War. The program engaged in several illegal activities, including subjecting unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens to manipulation of their mental state through the administration of LSD and several other serious drugs in addition to hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal abuse as well as several other forms of psychological torture. The intention of these human experiments was to identify and develop different drugs to be used for interrogations in response to the rumored Soviet, Chinese and North Korean use of mind control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. One of the project’s main goals was to produce a sort of truth serum to be used on captured Soviet spies.

The program used 80 different institutions as front organizations, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as a number of hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. After nearly two decades of inhumane experimentation, Project MKUltra was inevitably shut down in 1973 and in 1975 sparked an investigation on the CIA commissioned by Gerald Ford. However, investigative efforts were soon cut short by CIA Director Richard Helms, who ordered all MKUltra files to be destroyed after their initial shutdown two years prior.

Despite the CIA’s efforts to keep their program under wraps, in 1977 a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of roughly 20,000 documents relating to Project MKUltra, resulting in the few surviving pieces of information that remain declassified to this day. So if you don't believe me, all you have to do is Google it and go down the same rabbit hole I just spent the last hour in. Just search Project MKUltra, Camp Hero, The Montauk Experiments, or any of the other several works of fiction all based on this unbelievable piece of history. Regardless of how you do your research, it all comes back to the same horrifying conclusion: