From Montauk to Hawkins: The Story Behind the Rumors That Inspired Stranger Things

Greetings to all the Stranger Things fans watching all around the world.

If you're waiting for the final season, you’re probably as excited as I am. Each season has grown bigger and more emotional, and Season 4 especially had everyone talking. The Duffer Brothers mentioned that Season 5 will finally answer our questions, and judging from the long episode runtimes, it’s clear they want to close every storyline carefully.

But something made me curious years ago:

How much of Stranger Things is actually fiction, and how much came from real stories or rumors?

Where the idea really came from:

Before Hawkins existed, before Eleven rolled a waffle across the screen, the show had a different home — Montauk, New York.

When I first learned this, I honestly thought Stranger Things was only about monsters, bikes, and '80s nostalgia. But then I started reading about Montauk, and things got… interesting.

Locals from that area used to talk about a place called Camp Hero, an old military site. People told all kinds of stories about what happened behind the fences. Some said strange experiments took place. Others believed there were secret government projects no one talked about openly.

Were these things ever proven?

No. But the stories lived on for decades.

That mix of rumor and mystery is what caught the Duffer Brothers’ attention.

The show was originally called “Montauk”

The first script for Stranger Things was literally titled “Montauk.”

It was supposed to take place near the ocean, with fog, old military labs, and a lot of secrecy.

They only moved it to Hawkins, Indiana because filming near the coast was too expensive and complicated. But even after relocating the story, the early Montauk inspiration stayed. When you look at Hawkins Lab in the show, it feels like a version of Camp Hero in another state.

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What was real? What wasn’t?

There was a real U.S. program called MKUltra, where the CIA tested drugs and psychological methods on people in the 1950s–60s. That part is documented history.

The Duffer Brothers took:

#the real MKUltra program

#old rumors about Montauk

#their own imagination

…and built a story from it.

So Stranger Things is not “true,” but it is connected to pieces of real history and old local myths.

A strange coincidence: 1983

One detail caught my eye:

Camp Hero officially shut down in 1983.

Stranger Things begins in 1983 as well, with Will Byers disappearing that same year.

Is this a hidden reference?

A coincidence?

Something the writers just thought was cool?

I can’t say for sure, but the timing is interesting enough that fans still talk about it.

What makes these stories stick

Whenever I watch Eleven push herself to the point where her nose bleeds, I can’t help thinking about how real history sometimes contains things that are just as unsettling as fiction.

And maybe that’s why Stranger Things feels so familiar, even when it shows monsters. It mixes imagination with the uneasy parts of the past — the parts people don’t always talk about openly.

There may never have been portals, creatures, or an “Upside Down” in Montauk, but real history shows us how easy it is for fear, secrecy, and power to shape stories that last for years.

Sometimes the most unsettling things aren’t the monsters at all — it’s what people are capable of when no one is looking.