Russian Sleep Experiment

Background: My informant was a American who has lived across the country and has learned a lot of stories about other people through her travels.She is currently a student at the University of Southern California studying game design.

Main Piece: The Russian Sleep Experiment is a story about how they were trying to figure out in a perhaps-WWII era the effects of sleep deprevation on their soldiers. They put a group of soldiers in a room with a porthole. Then, they poured in gas that keeps them awake into the room. For a while, it goes normal, up to a week without any real observable effects. At this time, the mics stop responding and the researchers are only able to look into the room via the viewport.  However, the porthole gets covered some sort of liquid. The researchers attempt to talk to the subjects, but they get no response, at first. They end up turning off the gas and opening up the door. Inside, there are only a small group of the subjects left alive. The rest have been disembowled with blood everywhere, the same liquid on the porthole. The one that are still alive had portions of their body missing, and some of them had their own skin ripped off. Evidence suggested that there were no markings of teeth, and it is suggested that the portions of them missing were by hand. The subjects alive begin shouting and panicking, asking the scientists to turn the gas back on.

They become hysterical as they were screaming to put the gas back on. The scientists tried restraining them, but like in a superhero story, they threw one of the researchers across the room, as if a ridiculous strong superhuman.  Eventually, they wrangle down the subjects. They tried to inject them with morphine, 10x normal dose, did nothing. They try to operate on them, they were immune to sedatives. They put them under anesthetics, his heart stops, and in the autopsy, they discover their is triple the amount of oxygen in the blood of the first subject. The second person had his vocal cords ripped, and wanted to be operated without anesthetic. The doctors operating on the subjects said it’s medically impossible for them to still be alive. Once they were finished, the patient wanted to write a message. When they let them write their message it just said “keep cutting”. Afterwards, only two subjects were left alive. The scientists began to monitor the position of the two that live and noticed that the EEG would hard line several times. They were suffering from repeated brain death at various times.

Then the story ends “really stupidly”, according to the informant. One of the soldiers kills themselves, the other broke out. When they caught the other, the scientists asks what they are. The remaining soldier goes on a rant saying “We are you, we are the madness within you, we are what you hide from at night.” The End. To the informant, this last part makes the story seem the most absurd and unworthy of redemption. The informant said it was “stupid as fuck” and it just another example of stupid internet stories run wild.  “It’s just a lot of gore.”

Performance Context: According to my informant, someone linked it through the internet because they said they thought she was Russian.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it another example of creepy pasta that is on the internet of these strange twisted stories that almost seem to have no evidence, and yet is compelling enough that people read anyways. It makes you question whether the insanity of the story is of value or rather the insanity of its construction at all.