The Creepy, Real Life Inspiration Behind Stranger Things And The Town That Started It All

A question we were never expecting to hear, that’s for sure! With everyone fixated on the new season of Stranger Things, it has raised questions as to where the show got its inspirations from, and theories claim that it actually derived from a real life secret government project that involved the kidnapping of young children.

Matt and Ross Duffer, the genius and possibly slightly unhinged (based on the story) creators of Stranger Things, supposedly found their inspiration for the infamous Netflix show from the non-fictional village of Montauk, New York, which is situated on the east end of the Long Island peninsula. 

The Duffer brothers took a specific interest in an alleged US military programme named the ‘Montauk Project’ which happened in the village. According to a number of sources, it involved experimenting on children including mind reading, mind control and time travel. For this reason, the show was originally called ‘Montauk’, but the creators changed it to ‘Stranger Things’ because it sounded more like the infamous Stephen King novel ‘Needful Things’. 

Preston Nicols was an electrical engineer who grew up in Montauk, and claims to have worked on the suspicious project in an exclusive interview with The Sun. He stated “I found myself on this screwball project which became known as the Montauk Project.”