This Paranormal Life - The Russian Sleep Experiment

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Unfortunately we weren't able to record a new episode of the show this week, so instead please enjoy one of our older bonus episodes made possible by our incredible Patreon supporters

Hey everyone, Rory here from This Paranormal Life. Unfortunately, we weren't able to record a new episode on the podcast this week. I don't want to go into too much detail, but apparently it turns out it's illegal to keep alligators as pets in London. Maybe the world, I don't know. So while we dispose of some of these problems, yeah, let's call them that, we thought instead that we'd take this opportunity to publicly release one of our older patreon bonus episodes Now this episode and all bonus episodes wouldn't and couldn't exist without the incredible support from our patreon subscribers So we all have them to thank personally for this week's episode. Thank you guys. Thank you and to our patreon subscribers

Of course, you'll still be getting your fresh bonus episode this month. It's actually one of my favorites that we've done. It's really funny. Anyway, thank you for all of the support. I gotta go find a sewer or something to dump these assholes. Whoa. We'll be back with a new episode next week. Until then, I hope you enjoy. Let's get stuck into this month's bonus episode. This one is a little different. I felt like because it's Halloween, we would look into a case that maybe typically we wouldn't look into. Partially because it is in fact fictional.

Oh, right off the bat. Usually the point of the podcast is to come to a conclusion as to whether or not something is true or false, whether it did or did not happen. Going into this case, we know pretty confidently that it did not happen. But I thought this is the perfect opportunity to do it because we've also been suggested this case a number of times by Duke, by David Chadwickadwick by rojo by daniel by a lot of d's and david as well all emailed in asking if we could investigate a case known as the russian sleep experiment okay i'm in i'm in now I'm in. Now, the Russian sleep experiment might sound familiar to some of you guys. It's a very popular story that was circulated around the Internet in the, you know, what would that have been? Early 2000s?

Probably, yeah. Somewhere around there. Message board era. It is, in fact, a creepypasta. Now, a lot of people might not know what a creepypasta is. But for those of you who don't. It a dish made out of specific type of wheat from southern Italy that you have to only find in a graveyard no on Halloween creepy passes are described as being horror related legends that have been copied and

pasted around the internet these These internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare readers. It is kind of incredible that we've ignored creepypastas for as long as this, given that creepypastas are arguably the modern equivalent of paranormal folklore. Think of thousands of years of paranormal information getting passed on through generations it was through folklore and creepypastas are absolutely

the modern equivalent very true we did investigate uh slenderman true which started off as creepypasta yeah he that was pretty much the closest we've ever got to investigating full-on creepypasta i think we looked into him because he kind of bled into reality a little bit with people doing some weird stuff to, you know, honor Slenderman and things like that. That becomes a little bit more... That's the creepy risotto, folks. That's a little too real. We don't like to investigate that stuff.

It's a spicy meal. Without further ado, let's dive right in and talk about the russian sleep experiment the year 1940s the specific year classified we're in a top secret soviet test facility not where you want to be if you're a prisoner of war not where you want to be at all actually in any capacity i like that it's a classified year, even though you just said it was during the war. So it's probably years 41 through 44. But the specific year, sir, is classified. And if you ask again, you're going to feel the butt of my rifle up your ass.

My KGB Russian rifle. The Soviet Union was notorious for conducting some of the most grisly and brutal human experiments in history that were often conducted on political prisoners or traitors. Some of their most infamous experiments was... This is in real life, by the way. We're not into the creepypasta yet. No, this is just real life. This is just creepy.

One of their most famous experiments was the Poison Laboratory, which does sound like a laboratory made of poison yeah sure i think in fact it's it's more a tox top secret lab where they try and make the ultimate poison now like an odorless colorless instant death liquid wow lombardi essentially we never talked about where lombardi came from but lombardi is a colorful odorful liquid that makes you wish it was poison you kind of wish you were dead uh yeah poison is the lombardi chaser you have a shot of lombardi and you chase it with bleach the only thing that tastes worse than bleach is lombardi whilst a poison laboratory is terrifying

it is maybe slightly less terrifying than the laboratory made of poison can you imagine being a scientist you train your whole life just to be of all ironies a guinea pig in someone else's up experiment yeah what does that even like everything you touch would kill you you start your first day in this secret soviet laboratory you're like so vladimir thank you for uh thank you for onboarding me today i'm glad to be here in the laboratory so what are we going to be experimenting oh don't worry peter just basically chill just Just hang out, you know, touch things, sit down, lick things. There's like a row of 20 men with notepads just watching you. This feels wrong. Any country that has a poison lab, you don't want to be in one of their test facilities. Well, as I said, it's the late 1940s and five political prisoners are being

marched down a dark hallway in shackles At the end of the hall the prisoners are stuffed into a small sealed chamber the door shuts behind Then a voice on the intercom Welcome test subjects to our little experiment For four years mankind has you say he was russian sorry i think i'm going a little german here welcome it's good hold on hold on let me rejig this it's hard to do high pitch russian accent yeah you know it's always like you want to go like a russian i can't even think i just did one russian but it was good it was low

i just got a vladimir and his russian accent vladimir and his russian accent you're a vampire that's the only difference all right we're gonna go vamp full-on vampire for this one then guys welcome to subject it's still german I feel like I'm at a circus Boys and girls Come on come all To the magical chamber Alright we're just gonna I don't know what we're gonna do for this

Maybe f*** it Australian Alright test subjects Get in the chamber Alright you sick motherf***ers You thought you could kill us Thought you could talk s shit about Russia mother Russia Yeah, I'm Russian. Yeah, I did a few years of school in Sydney, but I'm rushing through and through my alright I'm just gonna do a low Russian accent. It's only one

Welcome test subjects to our little experiment for years mankind has struggled For years we have struggled with the balance of being awake and being asleep. But no more. Have we? I feel like he struggles. No question, please. Huge bags under his eyes. You will be kept awake for 30 consecutive days.

Those who complete the experiment would be set free. That was the promise. It seemed like an achievable task, but what the men didn't know was that the way they would be kept awake would be with an experimental airborne stimulant that would stop them from sleeping even if they wanted to wow we've heard of knockout gas this is wake up gas it is the opposite being pumped into the chambers making it so that these test subjects can't fall asleep even if they're tired this is

like some kind of f***ed up uh wart era pre-YouTube MrBeast challenge. It is, yeah. Where instead of winning, you know, a Lamborghini by holding on to it for the longest, you win your freedom from this POW camp by staying awake for 30 days. If MrBeast was a Russian military commander, this is the sort of content he would come out with. Commander slash content creator. The ultimate job title. If you survive, then you will get your freedom.

Also, always remember to like, subscribe and share with your comrades. Today's experiment brought to you by G Fuel. All right. The first few days passed with zero complications. The men were tired, but continued behaving like normal, talking to each other. How would you have got? I mean, I'm just have to butt in because I would not make it. You've known me for long enough.

You would probably know that I would not make it you've known me for long enough you would probably know that i would not make it uh one day like i mean to i'm barely making it through this podcast because i got like seven hours sleep last night you're nodding off while the intercom is going hey hey wake up can i have a quick cat nap before we start the experiment? I did not. You know, I have known you for a long time. I did not know that you required sleep that much to function. Well, to be fair, we did do a kind of like, I don't remember how long we did it for, but we did a live stream on YouTube not that long ago. What was that?

12 hours? That's the limit on YouTube? Yeah. Yeah. We, yeah, about 12 hours. I the limit on youtube yeah yeah we we yeah about 12 hours i was hurting i was hurting bad and hard that and that wasn't even that late whereas you've done what's your your longest live stream i think it was 43 hours that wasn't the length of the live stream that was the amount of time i didn't sleep yeah yeah it was pretty bad yeah i

have actually talked about it on this podcast before um by the end i was yeah seeing things in the corners of my eyes the people around me sounded like their voice was being auto-tuned it was a very strange experience should we look up what the record is first because this creepypasta is allegedly fiction yes we don't know whether there are going to be real results here. For reference, should we find out what the world record is? We should do it.

I think I googled it. And at one point, the world record was held by a woman who was competing in a rocking chair competition. Oh. Where she stayed up rocking in a chair for an absurd amount of time. Wow. But fun fact,

the Guinness Book of World Records but fun fact the guinness book of world records actually took this record out of the book because it was incentivizing people to try and break the record themselves and obviously staying up for days and days on end is so detrimental to your health that uh they didn't want to encourage anyone to try and beat that record wow so it's removed from the book which is crazy because the guinness book of world records will encourage you to eat as many live scorpions there's a lot of worse shit in there there's like like uh bass jumping out of a hot air balloon at 25 000 feet i think someone ate a plane so that's pretty detrimental to your health you can try it we don't think you'll get very far i think the biggest risk of trying to stay up is falling asleep.

So I don't know. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. Apparently, according to Google, the current record is set by a man called Randy Gardner, who in December 1963, he stayed awake for 11 days. Wow. That's intense. I like when it's an old school record because that

means it's hard as nails no one's beaten it in over 50 years well he beat the um original record held by honolulu dj what tom rounds i have a dj beat that record i want to see his piss test i want to i want to know what he was on a honolulu dj as well who was so chill he just forgot to sleep 30 days gas or no gas it's going to be a difficult uh difficult to pull off as i said the first few days passed totally fine the men were tired but continued behaving like normal, talking to each other, reading books, and communicating to the scientists from a large one-way mirror. But it wasn't long before their conversations got dark. And we're not talking like, stop talking about Marvel movies, started talking about DC movies.

Okay. We're talking about real weird stuff. Nine days into the experiment, out of nowhere, one of the test subjects began screaming. Yes, this was strange, but what was even stranger was that the other men had zero reaction. Wow, it's like they couldn't even hear it. He screamed so loud for so long that he tore his vocal cords until his cries were just a breathy whisper which is terrifying that's genuinely really scary there's a reason this story got passed around so much because it's very creepy that's horrible the next morning when the scientists got to the

facility and turned on the lights to look through the one-way mirror the room stayed dark when they walked up to the glass they realized that the prisoners had covered the entire one-way glass by pasting pages torn from a book without wanting to interrupt the experiment the scientists i keep calling them scientists they're monsters war criminals this isn't science this is just weird yeah the people trying to cure cancer are not the same as these men yeah this is like punching a cat and calling it an experiment this is just evil in a lab it's not the same thing you see a guy in a lab coat twisting pigeons necks just killing them it's like uh what are you doing he's like oh this is a new experiment and he's like okay what are you

measuring you taking measurements huh you're you're not writing anything down nah i just keep it all up here they didn't want to interrupt the experiment so they left the prisoners alone in the chamber. After days of complete silence, the researchers finally decided they had to go into the chamber and see what was going on. So they turned on the intercom and said, We're coming into the chamber, which means we have to turn off the gas. Don't fall asleep, okay? There was no response. Can you hear me in the chamber? A frail voice replied. Don't turn off the gas. The researchers had no choice. They opened the chamber doors and were horrified. The test subjects were all f***ed up, mutilated, bitten, organs on the floor, but they were somehow still alive. What? Except for one of them,

who looks like the others had basically ripped him apart. Jesus. They had even clogged the drain to the chamber so that the floor had pooled with blood. If you're one of those scientists when you're like, all right, let's time to check up on the old experiments, swing that door open and you see four little men hunched over a lifeless body, close the door. Just close the door and say, I'm calling it. We didn't learn anything from this i was never here i'm gonna not put this job on my resume a guy from like two labs down is just swinging by with a coffee being like hey how's that sleep experiment oh oh no he's like at the lab that's trying to make the most delicious pizza slice these guys got stuck with the sleep experiment the scientists knew if they wanted to continue the experiment they'd have to at least clean the chamber so they tried to remove the test subjects

okay i mean you gotta do more than clean the chamber maybe put their innards back inside their bodies maybe one step at a time the guy who died a burial last rites he's so he's he's rest he's in his resting place he's having a nice little nap really the chamber is a top priority because you're going to use that thing for a lot of extra experiments so you got to make sure it's in tip-top shape i think they sealed the pages uh to the one-way mirror with their own shit so it's definitely worth maybe giving it a little scrub down i i like that the scientists called it like a stay awake gas but the fact that they had to turn off the gas instead of just exposing themselves for

two seconds to the gas makes me think it does more than make you stay awake yeah i think that is one of the most minute side effects of the gas is the inability to sleep i think the major effect is it seems to make you lose your mind and become a semi-immortal demon yeah yeah that really to mention screaming until your vocal cords snap they tried to remove the test subjects from the chamber but they said they didn't want to go and they begged for the gas to be put back on. The subjects were eventually forcibly dragged from the chamber, severely injuring a guard in the process. When the subjects were finally settled, the researchers took the opportunity to conduct some tests and what they discovered was mind-blowing all the subjects appeared to possess extreme strength unprecedented

resistance to drugs and sedatives and the ability to remain alive despite lethal injuries what does that even mean this is the opposite of course of what we would expect normally if you don't get enough sleep uh your immune system is drastically compromised yeah very good way of like getting uh nasty colder flus by not sleeping um so we would not expect them to have gained muscle mass and uh be able to survive the unsurvivable yeah i think maybe gained muscle mass is the is not a good way to word it because uh even though they have possessed extreme strength uh in my mind that is definitely in no way visually represented okay they're not coming out of there looking like chris evans okay this is some post super soldiers

some pcp strength this is some angel dust strength where you're strong because your body doesn't know where its breaking point is anymore right yeah this is golem on cocaine you don't feel pain you will lift a car until your arms snap off because your brain is mashed potatoes basically yeah like it's a cool idea that you know you're always told that you need to get sleep at night so your body can rest and i guess part of the idea of this story is that if you don't sleep maybe you can gain some sort of superhuman abilities wow again this is not true i want to make that very clear for anyone listening to the podcast who was just about to close their eyes and go to bed but now wants to deadlift 200 kg now as we said while extreme strength and borderline invincibility does

sound great there was a lethal side effect of the gas the researchers discovered that if any of the men fell asleep they would die oh wow yeah they've gone too far now if they sleep they pass away they've pushed their bodies to the extremes interesting this is a kind of mr burns three stooges syndrome yeah they're they're currently impervious to everything invincible super strong because they haven't slept but if now if they get a single second of shut eye it all falls apart you're gone this is like you know when you're at university where you're like you know drinking till like 4 a.m and then you wake up at 10 you're still a little buzzed sure you're like if i can just keep this party going i never have to suffer

the consequences of the inevitable hangovers. You have a couple beers. Next thing you know, you're 11 days. You're 35 years old in an AA meeting. You live with your parents. It all went to shit. You have to keep pausing the podcast. You can do a shot of whiskey to keep the buzz alive.

Only problem is, uh-oh, I didn't get any of the bonuses. Zero strength. i feel like shit i am a crisp man i'm basically made of ready salted i'm so thin and weak actually ironically sleep a lot 11 hours a day after the experiments the three surviving subjects were begging to be put back in the chamber with the gas so by orders of the military officials against the experiments, the three surviving subjects were begging to be put back in the chamber with the gas. So by orders of the military officials, against the will of the scientists, they were placed back in the chamber. However, before the gas could be switched back on, one of the men fell asleep and died. In a panic to shut the doors and start the gas immediately,

In a panic to shut the doors and start the gas immediately, a military officer ordered the doors to be closed with three researchers still inside the chamber. What? That's a real, like, our kind of cliche, turn on the gas! It's like, but sir, please, they're not... Turn on the gas! Just trying to keep these guys alive.

I mean, I'm not saying that scientists don't deserve it. Yeah, actually, that's a pretty good point no no no i can't even i can't even get a little bit of this are you crazy this stuff is dangerous before one of the officers could seal the door one of the researchers drew a handgun and fired killing him in the doorway whoa he then turned and fired his gun at one of the test subjects who fell to the floor motionless. With this test subject dead, don't do it, Vladimir. With this test subject dead, only one remained in the chamber. The scientist pointed his gun at the

prisoner and screamed, I won't be locked in here with these things! Not with you! What are you? He demanded. I must know! The subject smiled. I gotta get a really good voice for this. Have you forgotten so easily? We are you. We are the madness that lurks within all of you,

begging to be set free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal heaven where we cannot tread. The researcher shot him between the eyes. Oh!

Oh, I told him! Oh, I told him! This guy stayed awake for so long he turned into a british professor he turned into professor xavier and now you have freed the beast and i am here to bring in the and the guy just pulls out a gun oh take it easy now don't do anything you're gonna He's still, it's just all talking with his brain. We're alike, you and I. You don't want to pull the trigger. Relatively pretty similar.

The Nocturnal Haven, where you guys go, that sounds pretty cool. I might actually go there myself one day. I know I look and behave weird, but I like some of the same things you do. Movies, long walks, sleeping. Look, I'm going to sleep. Your eyes are open. You're still standing. You're still awake. Your eyes are open. He has huge blood red.

He doesn't even have eyelids anymore. He's just standing there. He's somehow 12 feet tall. Hog snoo hulk snoo i'm breathing on butterflies um the researcher shot him right between the eyes great blood all over the walls the last test subject was dead he hit the floor only managing to whisper the words so nearly free wow yeah what does it mean it's like rosebud at the end of citizen game well you know what it was kind of cool because uh when i first read this story i was like oh so nearly free as in the monster side of him almost completely took over the human side of him

um but actually when i looked into the story a little more some people thought that that line so nearly free was more referring to the fact that he had nearly been awake for the 30 days oh that makes way more sense so when he was shot it was like the human part of his brain still thinking that he can get out of it and get out of it in some form that he had almost made it 30 days without sleeping which i thought was really weird and cool i guess there's multiple meanings yeah yeah it's like there's like two brains inside of his head working simultaneously i mean yeah it's like the zombie movie where like the wife is a zombie and the husband is still human. And he's pointing the gun at her and he's like, tears in his eyes.

He's like, remember me? Surely you remember your husband? And the zombie twitches for a second and is like, Richard! Richard! Doing a weird sign. Mary! Mary! And then obviously Mary bites him. Bites his face.

Of course, it happens every time. Because that's a good trick to trick Richard. It's actually pretty good. I love you, baby. Come on in. Come on for a big smooch. I mean, I have an Easter day. If I ever get bitten by a zombie and I have like a moment

of clarity, like right before I pass, like you've blown half of my face off with like a shotgun and i'm like thrashing about on the floor if i can kind of come back to myself right before the end i'd be like wipe my browser history and then i pass away that's my last message yeah and your family were waiting to hear that you love them yeah delete the hard drives guys that's it that's the story of the russian sleep experiment uh as i said not something we would usually cover because of course if you google it uh you'll find out that it is i mean

100 confirmed to be uh fictional it's a creepypasta it's a fictional uh spooky story really ironically actually written by that person in 1963 who stayed up for 11 days straight this is the only thing he could think of um yeah but i thought it was worth covering because one you know it's a it's a we'd like to cover current uh online modern day paranormal hauntings. Yeah. It doesn't get more modern day than creepypastas. As you said, that is the folklore of the 21st century. I love it because we love to cover all things paranormal and spooky, especially not least on Halloween. We want to cover something truly terrifying.

But that's the reality. Some of humanity's most terrifying stories, many of which are fiction. And, you know, it's kind of cool to think that the most, it's kind of cool to think that the same people as me and you, the same human brain, can come up with the most demonic, terrifying stories that scratch the itch of the human psyche. There's something in us that loves to hear something so terrifying yeah yeah i know what you mean this is just one of those stories that just ticks a lot of really cool creepy boxes yeah i think it's so close to being something that people could genuinely believe had happened you know that cliche setting of like a world war ii experimental lab in a foreign

country you know i mean they did things much worse than this in those labs the poison lab is real by the way it's believable yeah i mean if you do uh research any experimental uh soviet union laboratories you're gonna find a lot of stuff grizzlier than this for sure uh that did actually happen not paranormal just straight up evil bad and i don't want to do a podcast called this evil life no but yeah i just wanted to thank everyone for sending in those suggestions i'd like to do uh some more creepypastas so if you do know of any you think we would enjoy send them in i think the bonus episodes are actually a pretty good uh place to do them um yeah so let us know if you enjoyed this kind of format hopefully it's not an inbox full of

get back to real cases all right all right put down the pitchforks guys geez that's not why we're mad we're mad for other real reasons there's got to to be a bunch of you out there who have been with us since the very beginning of the Patreon. So, Jesus Christ, what a ride it's been. Yeah, thank you so much for sticking it out through all these years. I like to think we've only gotten better, personally. Actually, we do actually surveys on Patreon. Actually, they seem to say the opposite. People think it's tanking over three years.

I said year two was the golden golden era the british podcast award uh yeah victory makes sense yeah i really picked up we got like a lot of press and stuff for that that was pretty cool and they said you know you can they said in year three you can just you can just see just the the love for it just diminishing in wow in our jokes and our stories and our anecdotes and just actually they said pretty rude actually this comment says yeah around episode 150 you can really see roaring kids relationship deteriorate that's enough all right suggestion box closed i'm gonna put a new box down all right and it's got a it's just a a hole in a snake in it how about that put your feedback in that box you little bastards you know what we're not we're not we're not thankful for three years

of patronage uh no thank you honestly thank you so much um you guys are literally the reason we've been able to keep doing this show i don't even know for those of you who have been around since the very beginning of the podcast uh that's when it was it was insane i think it for the first couple weeks or months we were doing two episodes a week we we were the sleep experiment of our lives it was the london sleep experiment and the gas was a very unsuccessful podcast recorded in a bedroom but over the years it's blossomed into this big beautiful thing that we're so proud of

and yeah we're so grateful for you guys for sticking around and being with us on this awesome paranormal journey so thank you so much I hope you have a fantastic Halloween getting spooky, eating candy, watching horror movies. And as always, we will be back next Tuesday with a brand new Paranormal Tale.