CIA brainwashing experiments helped make Outlast an iconic horror series

The Sleep Room in The Outlast Trials is named after a real-life space at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, where from 1957 to 1964, doctors conducted mind-control experiments on patients as part of the CIA’s MK-Ultra initiative. Led by Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, these tests included electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation and heavy doses of psychedelic drugs. One patient, Linda MacDonald, went to McGill seeking help for symptoms of postpartum depression after giving birth to her fifth child. She was placed in a drug-induced coma for 86 days in the Sleep Room, and records show she was treated with 109 rounds of shock therapy. MacDonald lost her identity, memories and motor skills; she had to be toilet trained all over again.

Another patient, Robert Logie, was 18 years old when he went to McGill with leg pain. He ended up in the Sleep Room, where he was injected with LSD every other day for weeks, his syringe sometimes spiked with sodium amytal — “truth serum” — and other drugs. A speaker positioned under his pillow played the phrase, “You killed your mother,” on a constant loop for 23 days. Meanwhile, his mom was alive and well. Logie left McGill with amnesia, insomnia and a painful leg.

The old McGill hospital is just two miles away from the Red Barrels offices, where the Outlast games are made.

“The name of the Sleep Room in Outlast Trials, we took that from McGill hospital,” Outlast series writer JT Petty said. “In the 1960s, they had the Sleep Room where they would treat trauma with LSD and induced comas. It was insane. And the people who came out of that came out severely damaged, in worse shape than they were before.”

“There are still active lawsuits going on because of these events,” Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin added. (And he’s correct.)

Like all of Red Barrels’ games, The Outlast Trials draws from dark and true stories of government-backed inhumanity, religious manipulation and capitalistic greed,