The Montauk Project -- a series of (alleged!) government experiments conducted in Montauk, Long Island in the early '80s -- reportedly served as one of the Duffer brothers' main inspirations for Stranger Things (the original working title of the show was even Montauk). So, we're talking about psychological warfare, experimenting on children, opening portals to other dimensions, and various other nefarious, government-funded creepiness. Hey, you've probably seen the show. While there were rumors circulating around shady government activity on the Southeastern tip of Long Island for nearly a decade prior, the legend wasn't fully baked until the early 1990s, when Peter B. Nichols -- a parapsychologist and electrical engineer -- helped pen The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, which detailed a slew of salacious "repressed memories" from his days working in Montauk, corroborated by other "colleagues." The book detailed time warps to Mars, genetic experiments, and Eleven-esque psychic child spies. The Montauk Project itself is said to be a piece of a larger psychological warfare conspiracy called The Philadelphia Experiment, which naturally, inspired its own film too.
