The Russian Sleep Experiment is a creepypasta which tells the tale of 5 test subjects being exposed to an experimental sleep-inhibiting stimulant in a Soviet-era scientific experiment, and has become the basis of an urban legend. [1] Many news organizations, including Snopes, News.com.au, and LiveAbout, trace the story's origins to a website, [2] now known as the Creepypasta Wiki, being posted on August 10, 2010, by a user named OrangeSoda, whose real name is unknown. [3] [4]
The story recounts an experiment set in 1947 at a covert Soviet test facility, where scientists give test subjects a stimulant gas that would prevent sleep. As the experiment progresses, it is shown that the lack of sleep transforms the subjects into violent zombie-like creatures who are addicted to the gas. At the end of the story, every character dies except one scientist. [3] [5]
The Russian Sleep Experiment became immensely popular upon its original publication. It is considered by some to be the greatest and most shared creepypasta story ever made and Dread Central's Josh Millican has called it "one of the most shocking and impactful urban legends of the Internet Age". [6] [3] Much of the online and offline debate surrounds the belief held by many that the story is real rather than fiction, and many articles therefore seek to debunk this claim. [2]
The creepypasta is often shared alongside an image of a grotesque, emaciated figure, which is implied to be one of the test subjects. The image is actually of a life-size animatronic Halloween prop called "Spazm". [7]
In the chapter "Horror Memes and Digital Culture" in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, Tosha R. Taylor wrote that the creepypasta "reflects residual political anxieties as it purports to reveal a top-secret effort by Russian scientists in World War II." [8]
Sonali Srivastav and Shikha Rai drew comparisons between "Russian Sleep Experiment" and the 2018 miniseries Ghoul , noting that the series took inspiration from the creepypasta. [9]
The Russian Sleep Experiment's popularity has led to various adaptations over the years. A novel inspired by the original short story was published in 2015 but is now out-of-print. [10]
The 2019 play Subject UH1317 - When Science Traces A Deadly Turn is based on the short story. [11]
In early 2018, a psychological thriller based on the short story began production in Ireland, directed by John Farrelly. [12] The film was subsequently released in November 2022. [13]
In July 2019, horror author Jeremy Bates published The Sleep Experiment, a novel closely based on the original short story. [14]
Several other adaptations have been created, including a film based on the short story entitled The Soviet Sleep Experiment, with Chris Kattan starring and Barry Andersson directing. [15] [16] Filming for the movie took place in Lakeville, Minnesota during 2018. [17]
Urban legends is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not.
Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
The Hook, or the Hookman, is an urban legend about a killer with a pirate-like hook for a hand attacking a couple in a parked car. In many versions of the story, the killer is typically portrayed as a faceless, silhouetted old man wearing a raincoat and rain hat that conceals most of his features, especially his face.
The Baby Train, or simply Baby Train, is an urban legend told in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The legend first appeared in Christopher Morley's 1939 novel Kitty Foyle. According to the legend, a certain small town had an unusually high birth rate. This was allegedly caused by a freight train passing through the town and blowing its whistle, waking up all the residents. Since it was too late to go back to sleep and too early to get up, couples would have sex. This resulted in a mini-baby boom.
The Slender Man is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit.
Ben Drowned is a three-part multimedia alternate reality game (ARG) web serial and web series created by Alexander D. Hall under the pen name Jadusable. Originating as a creepypasta based on the 2000 action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and published by Hall from 2010 to 2020 with a hiatus in-between, the series is known for creating many of the common tropes and themes of creepypasta that are used nowadays and for subverting themes from The Legend of Zelda series. The series concluded on October 31, 2020.
A creepypasta is a horror-related legend which has been shared around the Internet. The term creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories that are intended to frighten readers. The subjects of creepypasta vary widely and can include topics such as ghosts, cryptids, murder, suicide, zombies, aliens, rituals to summon entities, haunted television shows, and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to extended multi-part series that can span multiple media types, some lasting for years.
Dread Central is an American website founded in 2006 that is dedicated to horror news, interviews, and reviews. It covers horror films, comics, novels, and toys. Dread Central has won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Website four times and was selected as AMC's Site of the Week in 2008.
Black-eyed children or black-eyed kids, in American contemporary legend, are paranormal creatures that resemble children between ages 6 and 16, with pale skin and black eyes, who are reportedly seen hitchhiking or begging, or are encountered on doorsteps of residential homes.
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Lavender Town is a fictional village in the 1996 video games Pokémon Red and Blue. Stylized as a haunted location, Lavender Town is home to the Pokémon Tower, a burial ground for deceased Pokémon and a location to find Ghost-Type Pokémon.
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Alexander D. Hall is an American writer, showrunner, horror fiction novelist, and documentarian. He is known for creating and producing the web series Ben Drowned (2010–2020) and showrunning the subsequent alternate reality game. He was the host of the podcast The Digital Fireside and created several documentaries.
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