If you’ve spent any time at all on the creepypasta/SCP side of the internet, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Russian Sleep Experiment, an incredibly popular creepypasta about five people who were given a stimulant designed to prevent them from falling asleep. Like many urban legends, the lines between what’s fact and what’s fiction have started to blur, thanks in large part to online content creators deliberately pushing the idea that the experiment may have been inspired by true events.



According to the story published on the Creepypasta Wiki back in 2010, which was the first known instance of the story appearing online, the five participants, who were political prisoners, were kept awake for 15 days using a stimulant gas and monitored by scientists as they gradually descended into madness.


Eventually, the participants were released, although they begged the researchers to turn the gas back on; in addition, what researchers saw when they entered the test chamber on the 15th day was horrifying and disgusting, with the subjects having torn chunks of flesh from their own bodies and removed their own abdominal organs, laying them out on the floor.


The story was adapted for the screen in 2019 following the release of a novelization in 2015, and is considered by many to be the most prolific creepypasta story ever written. While it should be enough to enjoy a terrifying yet fictional story for what it is, some people continue to perpetuate the idea that the experiment may have been inspired by true events. TikToker Christopher Kiely, for one, said he wasn’t sure himself whether the experiment was real or not, sharing obviously doctored images and telling his audience, “This looks like someone who hasn’t slept for 30 days.” It looks like someone who isn’t real is what it looks like.


Fortunately for us, Snopes answered the question all the way back in 2013, describing the experiment as a “bit of supernatural fiction” that went viral online, and not a genuine historical record of a “1940s sleep deprivation research project gone awry.”


Sorry!