Netflix’s biggest sci-fi hit may be hiding a jaw-dropping Cold War secret.
Stranger Things isn’t just inspired by ‘80s nostalgia, Dungeons & Dragons, and Spielberg vibes. According to explosive declassified files and former intelligence insiders, the bones of the show trace back to a real U.S. government psychic spy program aimed straight at the Soviet Union.
Yes — psychic spies.
The blockbuster series Stranger Things follows Eleven, a young girl raised in a secret lab where she’s trained to use telekinesis and remote viewing to track enemies. In the show, she floats in a sensory deprivation tank, taps into another dimension, and spies on Russian operatives from miles away.
It feels like sci-fi fantasy.
But from 1977 to 1995, the U.S. government actually funded a classified operation called Project Stargate — a program that recruited individuals who claimed they could psychically “see” distant targets.
Run first by the Defense Intelligence Agency and later overseen by the CIA, the project tasked so-called remote viewers with locating hidden Soviet military installations, secret weapons programs, and even downed aircraft across the globe — without leaving American soil.
Sound familiar?
Former participants claimed astonishing results. One account alleged a psychic pinpointed the crash site of a Soviet Tu-95 bomber in Africa before Russian operatives could secure it. Other sessions reportedly described secret underground facilities and classified technology thousands of miles away.
And it gets even stranger.
Recently declassified documents reveal that one remote viewing session described what appeared to be an alien base hidden inside Mount Hayes in Alaska — a location long tied to UFO sightings and unexplained military activity. The viewer allegedly detailed structures inside the mountain and non-human entities guarding the site.
The CIA ultimately shut the program down in 1995 after an independent review concluded the psychic intelligence was too vague and inconsistent to justify its cost. Still, even the auditors admitted that something statistically unusual appeared to be happening during certain sessions.
For nearly two decades, taxpayer dollars funded experiments into psychic warfare — all during the height of Cold War paranoia.
The Duffer Brothers have openly said their show was influenced by real government conspiracy theories and MK-Ultra era experimentation. But the parallels between Hawkins Lab and Project Stargate go far beyond Easter eggs.
Secret government labs. Psychic children. Soviet espionage. Remote viewing. Sensory deprivation tanks.
Stranger Things may be fiction — but the government’s obsession with psychic spies was very real.
And now that the series has wrapped its final season, fans are left with one chilling question:
If this much was true… what else haven’t we been told?
i think remote viewing is pretty much like astral traveling!