The top secret CIA experiment behind Stranger Things and new Netflix drama Wormwood
Project MKUltra was carried out in the 1950s during the Cold War in a bid to develop mind control drugs to use on Soviet spies but was stopped after a scientist plunged to his death from a hotel after being secretly dosed with acid
IT sounds like a dark dystopian novel - the CIA secretly carrying out mind control experiments using LSD and psychological torture on unwitting patients.
But Project MKUltra was a top secret test in the 1950s that was behind the chilling story of Eleven's mum in Stranger Things and new Netflix drama Wormwood.
The shady experiment was stopped after it was linked to the death of scientist Frank Olson, who plunged to his death from a 13th storey window after being secretly dosed with acid.
The operation was officially sanctioned in 1953 during the Cold War as a way of developing mind controlling drugs for use against Soviet spies amid fears enemies had been using truth serums on US prisoners of war.
Dozens of experiments were carried out - with the more dangerous tests reserved for terminally ill cancer patients.
Some people were dosed for weeks at a time while scientists attempted to develop techniques that would wipe their memory, control their behaviour or encourage them to divulge secrets while under interrogation.
Psychotropic drugs were administered to everyone from prisoners to prostitutes, with the latter often used to lure men to CIA safe houses where they be given acid while scientists watched the effects behind one-way glass.
The CIA wanted "people who couldn't fight back" and often bribed heroin addicts into taken LSD with offers of more heroin.
In one case, seven volunteers in Kentucky were given LSD for 77 consecutive days.
But the experiment became even more sinister when Dr Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who directed MKUltra, wanted to see if the drugs could be given to high ranking officials to alter the course of important meetings and speeches.
He initiated a string of experiments where LSD was given to people in "normal" settings without warning - with surprise acid trips becoming "something of an occupational hazard" among CIA employees.
And the tests didn't stop with drugs - declassified documents reveal hypnosis was also studied with the aim of "inducing anxieties" and "hypnotically increasing ability to learn and recall complex written matter".
The mind control experiments were ramped up when Scottish psychiatrist Ewen Cameron began overseeing horrific tests - including electroshock treatments and putting people into chemically induced comas.
He believed "psychic driving" through constant playing of taped messages could wipe out the symptoms of mental illness but this "de-patterning" often erased the patient's memory and left them in a child-like state.
Cameron also put his patients through electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal power.
The programme was finally exposed in 1975 - two years after CIA director Robert Helms took the decision to destroy all MKUltra files.
But the documents that survived were released under freedom of information laws and exposed the dark truth - the CIA had been funding experiments where LSD was tested on human subjects often without their knowledge.
MKUltra is now going to be explored in new Netflix drama Wormwood, which focuses on the death of scientist Frank Olson in 1953.
Declassified reports show he was secretly dosed with LSD and suffered a nervous breakdown before dying nine days later in an apparent suicide at the Hotel Statler in New York.
His family sued the agency for his "wrongful death" and received a £559,000 out-of-court settlement as well as apologies from President Gerald Ford and William Colby, who was head of the CIA at the time.
But the mystery deepened in the nineties when his body was exhumed and an autopsy revealed evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide".
The series begins on December 15 and was created by The Thin Blue Line director Errol Morris, who said of Frank's death: "What happened in that room? What in God's name happened in that room?"
The six-part docu-drama is told through Frank's son Eric and reveals his 60-year mission to unravel the mystery surrounding his death.
It stars Peter Sarsgaard as Frank and switches between his narrative story and Eric's actual interviews in his battle for the truth.
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MKUltra was also touched upon in hit Netflix drama Stranger Things after Chief Hopper tracks down Eleven's mum Terry Ives.
Terry's abuse of psychedelic drugs leads to her daughter being born with special powers and Eleven - real name Jane - is later taken away to Hawkins Laboratory by Dr Martin Brenner.
The mum tried suing the government but the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence and Terry ends up in a catatonic state able only to repeat the same words: "Breathe. Sunflower. Three to the right, four to the left. 450. Rainbow."
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