The Truth About The Russian Sleep Experiment

The diurnal cycle of our body urges us to fall asleep at some point. This is because our body benefits from maintaining normal bodily function, cellular repair, and homeostasis. Missing a slumber, we could expect irritation, mild delusion, and general uneasiness. However, during wartime in the 1940s, Russian scientists wonder what happens when they took sleeplessness to the extremes? Hence the birth of an urban legend of creepypasta – The Russian Sleep Experiment.

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The Russian Sleep Experiment involves five political prisoners locked up in a gas chamber continually administered with a stimulant that keeps them indefinitely awake. These prisoners were promised to be set free under strict compliance of being awake under 30 days.

In the first few days, the prisoners were compliant, and everything seemed fine. These people interact with each other and sporadically whisper to the Russian scientist that monitors them outside. Their conversations have been logged from an electronic monitor, and their movements and behavior are seen from a clandestine mirror that opens two ways.

On the fifth day, there was a noticeable shift in their behavior. The prisoners exhibit distress and paranoia. Each refuses to talk with one another and only whisper to the microphone. On a ninth day, things have gotten grave. Two prisoners run uncontrollably while one of the prisoners wailed and shouted until his vocal cords were torn. The man was oblivious to his behavior leading to paralysis.

When the other man started to shout, bodily wasted were pasted to the mirror surface to prevent the researchers from observing. Then a few days passed without the researchers having the ability to peer into the chamber; there was an eerie silence that bothered the scientists. The researchers' fears were realized when they received a response from one of the subjects after announcing their intention to open the gas chamber. They did not want to be set free.

On the fifteenth day, the researchers decided to cut off the administered stimulant and opened the chamber. What they saw was something beyond words. Four of the prisoners seemed alive, each violently demanding to seal the room and readminister the stimulant. The researchers also saw mutilations and excessive disembowelment with torn muscles and removed internal organs. The prisoners seemed to draw blood from one of the dead subjects and scatter them on the floor and cannibalize themselves.

Image: Dread Central

The prisoners also exhibited inhumane strength, resistance to drugs and sedatives, and the ability to fend off wounds and injuries. Even after being treated and extracted, these prisoners showed their capabilities. However, once they fall asleep, they would die. One died from being administered treatment. By the orders of a military officer, the prisoners were put back to the gas chamber and the Russian scientists. The EKG monitors indicate these prisoners as brain dead.

However, before the readministering of the stimulant, one of the prisoners died. A scared scientist shoots the head of the military officer and one of the prisoners before running away. A gun was drawn to the prisoner's head with one frightened scientist left and one subject left. Before shooting the lone surviving prisoner, the researcher explained his refusal not to be locked up. He also pressed on asking what the prisoner was (believing he was not human anymore). The prisoner smiled and said he was the inherent evil within the human's consciousness that is deterred only by sleeping. At his dying breath, he muttered the phrase "so nearly free," implying that evil was closed to being let loose.

Many people who have read this creepypasta thought that this story is real. In contrast, USSR indeed had a history of secret police violence and human experimentation; historical accounts and declassified documents did not mention the Russian Sleep Experiment. The Russian Sleep Experiment is a cleverly made creepypasta and the most convincing one. Several video essays regarding this creepypasta might have contributed to this creepypasta's recent resurgence, including this one made by Infographics Show.

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