The Hawkins Lab experiments in "Stranger Things" reference the CIA’s real-world Project MKUltra. The series adapts MKUltra’s documented interest in drugs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and other methods intended to influence human behavior into the fictional origin of Eleven’s abilities.
In the show’s backstory, Terry Ives takes part in experiments associated with Dr. Martin Brenner before her daughter is taken to Hawkins National Laboratory. Eleven and other children are then treated as test subjects, with isolation tanks and psychological manipulation used to develop their unusual powers. The fictional program dramatically extends the real history into telekinesis and interdimensional contact.
Project MKUltra began in 1953 and was halted in the early 1970s. It involved CIA-funded research into behavior modification and mind control, including experiments with LSD and other techniques; many subjects did not give informed consent. The program became public through investigations in the 1970s, although many records had already been destroyed.
The reference is sometimes confused with Project Stargate, another U.S. intelligence program, but MKUltra is the specific historical inspiration named by the show’s laboratory mythology.