Is Stranger Things based on a true story?

Stranger Things has been one of the biggest hits in the history of Netflix, but is the sci-fi series based on a true story?

Stranger Things launched on Netflix in the summer of 2016, and quickly became must-watch TV, while at the same time making stars of its young cast. An ensemble that continues to grow and make more household names as the fifth and final season nears.

The brainchild of brothers Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, the show is set in the 1980s, and revolves around spooky goings-on in a small Indiana town.

So is this tale of telekinesis, demogorgons, and the upside-down based on a true story? Read on to find out…

Is Stranger Things based on a true story?

No, Stranger Things isn’t based on a true story. The show tells a fictional tale – written by the Duffer Brothers – about fictional characters, in the invented town of Hawkins. However, a real-life conspiracy theory did inspire a central storyline.

While speaking to Wired in 2017, Gaten Matarazzo – who plays Dustin in the series – said Hawkins is “based on a place in Montauk, New York called Camp Hero. There was, like, rumors of secret government spies doing human experiments to fight in the Cold War. It’s based on that one government lab.”

The actor is referencing a huge area in Suffolk County, that was used as an Army base during WWII, and an Air Force station during the Cold War, but was decommissioned in 1981. A decade later, however, rumors started circulating about experiments that were conducted on kids in underground bunkers at the site, involving mind-control, teleportation, and psychokinesis.

Such stories were popularised by Preston Nichols’ 1991 book The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, which is described as chronicling “the most amazing and secretive research project in recorded history. Starting with the Philadelphia Experiment of 1943, invisibility experiments were conducted aboard the USS Eldridge that resulted in full-scale teleportation of the ship and crew. 40 years of massive research ensued, culminating in bizarre experiments at Montauk Point that actually manipulated time itself.”

While that book has largely been debunked, in 2020, the New York Post spoke to people claiming they had been victims of The Montauk Project.

Whatever truth there is to those theories, the conspiracy did help inspire Stranger Things’ central storyline, about experiments conducted on children by the US government during that exact time period. Indeed, the working title for Stranger Things was… Montuak.

You can read more about Stranger Things below, and head here for a preview of other shows streaming this month:

Everything we know about Stranger Things Season 5 | Does Max die in Stranger Things? | Why show is now “ruined” for Linda Hamilton | Remembering that massacre plot-hole | Stranger Things stars call for more deaths | Disappointing Season 5 update |