The Montauk Project

Beneath the abandoned radar towers of Camp Hero in Montauk, New York, lurks perhaps one of the most chilling urban legends of the modern age: the Montauk Project. According to controversial author Preston Nichols and other claimants, the U.S. government ran a series of secret experiments there—ranging from mind control and psychic warfare to time travel, teleportation, and contact with otherworldly beings. More info Nichols even alleges he recovered repressed memories of working on the “Montauk Chair,” a device designed to amplify psychic powers. The tales don’t stop there: children, known as the “Montauk Boys,” were supposedly abducted and trained; a portal was opened to other dimensions; and a monstrous creature may have emerged from that very rift. More info These wild, science-fiction-style claims have no solid proof, and many researchers dismiss them as fabrication or conflated memories. More info Yet the legend persists — so much so that the hit Netflix series Stranger Things originally bore the working title Montauk, and creators have acknowledged the project as a central inspiration. More info