TV and movie scriptwriters keep coming back to the subject of mind control including in the Netflix hit Stranger Things – but how much truth is in it?
Whether you’re talking about classic paranoid thriller The Manchurian Candidate or offbeat back comedy The Men Who Stare At Goats, they all take their inspiration from a real CIA program called MK Ultra.
It’s a technique said to combine psychology, neuroscience and occult rituals to create a second personality the victim’s mind.
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A personality that can be triggered and programmed by the handlers.
The Duffer Brothers, who created the dimension-hopping Stranger Things, told Rolling Stone magazine: "We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way.”
So they used the Cold War mind control experiment as an origin story for the show’s most mysterious character, Eleven.
Eleven's mother is, in the show’s world, one of the MK Ultra test subjects and while she was pregnant, was subjected to LSD and sensory deprivation experiments.
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As far as we know, none of the real subjects of MK Ultra developed psychic powers, but the truth behind the project has been kept very securely under wraps by the CIA.
Michael Wood, a lecturer at the University of Winchester’s Department of Psychology, has said that while the MK Ultra conspiracy theories sound crazy – that’s what the people behind them rely on."
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“MK Ultra sounds so cartoonish," he says "almost like the dastardly scheme of a Bond villain,” he said.
"But its origins are based on verifiable facts and that gives it an uncomfortable edge.”
Believers in the MK Ultra conspiracy cite the cases of celebrities suddenly losing focus and staring into space during a red carpet interviews.
They are believed to be examples of performers – quite commonly women – manipulated by sinister forces using MK Ultra techniques.
That’s not to say that women are always the victims of mind control.
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Real life mind control cults are alive and well on the fringes of the entertainment industry.
Smallville star Allison Mack became leader of "skin branding" cult Nxivm after falling under the spell of leader Keith Raniere.
Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg told People magazine that Nxivm was a "dangerous, mind-controlling cult".
Someone else with direct experience of this kind of control is actress Rose McGowan, who grew up in the notorious Children of God cult before exchanging it for the more luxurious confines of Hollywood.
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But it wasn’t all that different – she told The Guardian: “That town is really built on sickness.
"Very early on I looked at the power structure, the figureheads, the silence, the closed ranks. Nobody tells. It operates like a cult.”
McGowan says the experience came close to fracturing her mental health.
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Conspiracy theorist Fritz Springmeier claims movies are a key part of the programming technique.
He singles out a number of children’s movies, adding: “Most of films are used for programming purposes.
"Some of them are specifically designed for mind-control.”
The official MK Ultra program ended in 1973 but some part of its sinister legacy endures, either deliberately or not, in the movie industry.
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