A Russian researcher enters a room where he expects to see his human test subjects alive and well. Instead, he witnesses absolute pandemonium;he hears the screams of the damned and in front of him is a body that has been torn apart and eviscerated. It looks as though the anti-Christ himself has been in the room. Even the survivors have had chunks of flesh ripped from their arms and legs. The ends of their fingers show exposed bone;their faces are sheared of skin. “What is this inferno of madness?!,” thinks that researcher. “Err, this wasn’t exactly how the experiment was supposed to turn out,” he thinks. “Ok, the food wasn’t great, we might have made those beds a bit more comfortable, but tearing each other to shreds over a bit of lost sleep…Come on guys- that’s not very Comrade of you.” That nightmare scenario is straight out of the famous Russian Sleep Experiment, if you believe it really happened.
Let’s start from the beginning of the story. So, it’s the late 1940s and Soviet-era researchers have created a stimulant that they believe can keep a person awake for a long time, which is handy when you are fighting a war. In the second world war, the Germans had their version of such a stimulant, which was a formidable methamphetamine called Pervitin. The Americans and the British would dose their troops with the amphetamine Benzedrine, which was similar to your garden variety speed. The Soviets are looking to up the ante and use their own version of a drug which won’t lead to a total wipe out after a three-day binge. They’ve made something special, but they need to test it on humans first. It’s not hard to find test subjects since prisoners of war were aplenty in the 1940s, and where prisoners were concerned, by passing ethical considerations wasn’t such a big deal.
They set up a test area where five subjects will stay. It’s a sealed environment into which the researchers can release the stimulant in gas form and check if the levels of oxygen are ok. The subjects have been given dried food, each bed with no bedding, running water and a toilet. The researchers listen to the subjects through a microphone and there are cameras through which they can monitor the subjects. The only portholes to the outside are five-inch thick glass windows, which are barely good enough to see a shadow from. The scene is set and the five men seem in good spirits for the first three days. The gas is doing its job and the researchers are pleased about that. One researcher tells another, “Nazi meth,what a joke, just wait until the world sees what we’ve cooked up. Comrade Stalin will be most pleased.” The subjects have agreed to try and stay awake for 30 days, and have been falsely informed that if they can make the 30 days they will get their freedom. Such a deal seems fair to them. Things turn slightly dark around the four-day mark when the subjects start discussing war and the horrors they have seen. They speak of traumas, continual nightmares,other ghastly things they witnessed. Day 5 and things get worse. The men start showing signs of psychosis,talking to themselves and to things that are not there. They grow paranoid of each other and start whispering into those microphones, telling stories about the other subjects. The researchers of course know all about sleep deprivation. After five days the mind can turn on a person, hallucinations can seem real and horrifying. But, they wondered, was it the loss of sleep or the gas itself. Suspicions about the gas effects were more solid at day nine, when one guy just starting screaming; howling like a banshee and running up and down the room.
He screamed so much he seemed to tear his vocal cords, because after a few hours he squeaked like a children’s toy. A few more days passed and there was an eerie silence. The men could not be seen from the cameras. They were alive for sure, since the oxygen levels indicated five breathing men. But where were there? The researchers hadn’t wanted to interrupt the study but they felt they had no choice, and so said into an intercom:“We are opening the chamber to test the microphones; step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom.” They heard one voice respond. It said, “We no longer want to be freed.” What was this? Had they been getting ripped on that gas and were now addicted? The researchers said there’s nothing we can do but open the door. They opened the vents and let fresh air displace the residual stimulant. What the researchers heard next was the men screaming again, pleading for more of that damn fine gas. “W-t-f,” thought one of the Russians,“those guys are seriously hooked.” They opened the doors on Day 15 and to their surprise saw one man was dead. You know what the scene looked like because we laid that out for you in the intro, but we didn’t tell you what happened shortly after the gruesome discovery of the half-eaten man and the wounded survivors.
On closer inspection the researchers saw that the wounds on the men were very bad. They looked as if they might have been self-inflicted,too. They had torn the skin and muscles from their own chests, which revealed the horrific sight of the men’s lungs. Each man it seemed had performed this macabre surgery on himself. Blood vessels that were still working, had been removed. Other internal organs were seen laid out on the floor like a piece of art, and the men were going to eat those morsels. They were dining on their own bodies, and doing it with enthusiasm. The researchers called for back-up, not daring to go near those poor wretches. They closed the door to howls of the men pleading for that gas to come back. When soldiers arrived to help remove the subjects,the extrication process wasn’t exactly fun. One of the subjects ripped a man’s throat right out, while another soldier had his balls removed. Five soldiers lost their lives in total, but some of the victims took their own lives after the event. Once the subjects were out, the doctors injected enough morphine into them to sedate a Canadian moose, but the men still fought like wild beasts. One subject bled out and his heart stopped beating, but he still carried on screaming, “Give me gas, I need gas.” A doctor had some bones broken during that grim spectacle. The three others were eventually sedated and strapped and moved to a secure facility. The researchers talked to each other saying things like, “That wasn’t meant to happen, was it?” They hated to admit it, but maybe the Nazis,the Brits and the Americans had done the right thing in just plying their troops with top-notch crank.
The surgeons got to work on putting the missing organs and bits of viscera back in one man, but this guy almost broke through his restraints. When the docs finally got the anesthetic into him, the man’s heart stopped and he died right on the spot. The autopsy showed he had broken nine bones and his muscles were torn all over his body. When they tried to fix up the next man they decided two deaths were enough and didn’t use an anesthetic. They patched him up nice, sewing up his ruptured organs and laying skins graphs on him. The head surgeon said this man should not be alive after what he has gone through, but he admired his own work.
The Russian Sleep Experiment became immediately popular when anonymous wrote the actual happened in experiment. It was considered to be the greatest and most shared creepypasta story ever.
The surgeons got to work on putting the missing organs and bits of viscera back in one man, but this guy almost broke through his restraints. When the docs finally got the anesthetic into him, the man’s heart stopped and he died right on the spot. The autopsy showed he had broken nine bones and his muscles were torn all over his body. When they tried to fix up the next man they decided two deaths were enough and didn’t use an anesthetic. They patched him up nice, sewing up his ruptured organs and laying skins graphs on him. The head surgeon said this man should not be alive after what he has gone through, but he admired his own work.
0 Comments