Everyone has heard of the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” but what is less commonly known is its inspiration: the “Montauk Project.” Camp Hero State Park, located in Montauk, NY, is commonly known for its hiking trails, the bluffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, its view of the Montauk lighthouse and overall positive aura. Visitors are encouraged to walk the trails, despite the eerie warning signs that line the park.

Camp Hero was once a military base constructed after Pearl Harbor, designed to look similar to a normal fishing village in hopes of outsmarting overhead enemies. It became the Montauk Air Force Station in 1951. The camp was shut down in 1981, and it is still home to many underground, secret tunnels and bunkers. Since its closure, there have been wild conspiracies made about the park, including those of time travel, government-run child and human experiments and mind control experiments conducted by of Nazi scientists.

When walking the trails, one can see torn down barbed wire fences, unexploded live ammunition and the hardest feature-to-miss – the radar tower. The mysteries behind Camp Hero hook the attention of young thrill-seeking, myth-busters as it is notorious for people to attempt to trespass on the national historic site.

With the Central Intelligence Agency’s past of human experiments, including MK-Ultra, believers of the “Montauk Project” do not find the conspiracy theories to be farfetched.

Christopher Garetano, the filmmaker who produced and directed “Montauk Chronicles,” said, “MK-Ultra used vulnerable people, like prisoners. So why is it so far-fetched that orphans or runaway boys would be targeted? They seem exactly the sort of subjects who would be easy to take. And Montauk would be the ideal facility. In the winter it is like a ghost town.”

“The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time” and “Montauk Revisited: Adventures in Synchronicity” books by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, go into depth investigating the conspiracies. Nichols tells his side of the story, saying that he had been experimented on and traveled through time at Camp Hero. As there were already many rumors about psychological warfare being conducted by the military during this time, after the book release, many strangers have stepped forward claiming that they have also been a part of these experiments, coincidentally sharing similar stories to one another.

The “Montauk Project” ties into another conspiracy theory, “The Philadelphia Experiment,” from the 1940s, that contends the Navy and Nikola Tesla sent the U.S.S. Eldridge into another dimension during a secret World War II test, in an attempt to make the ship and crew invisible to radar detectors.

“Witnesses claim an eerie green-blue glow surrounded the hull of the ship as her generators spun up and then, suddenly, the Eldridge disappeared. The ship was then seen in Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia before disappearing again and reappearing back in Philadelphia,” said an article from Military.com.

Al Bielek claims to have discovered repressed memories in 1988. He said “The Philadelphia Experiment” actually occurred as he was there to witness it and that the ship landed in Montauk as well. He believes his memories were wiped as a part of the CIA’s MK-Ultra experiment.

Nichols is said to have been one to conduct psychic experiments on the young children known as the “Montauk Boys” in hopes to test mind-reading devices. In an attempt to break down the children, they were sexually abused, waterboarded and victims of gruesome abuse. The experiments came to an end when Nichols and a few others rebelled and destroyed all of the equipment. Nichols says that those who were involved in these events have had their memories expunged.