Russian Sleep Experiment: the best short story I’ve read.
August 8, 2009
Don’t know who wrote this or where it came from. My brother emailed me a link to it and I was completely immersed in it. Kudos to the author. If you know the author or any other works by this person, please leave me links in the comments, I would love to read more from this person.
For more crazy stuff, visit my brother’s blog!
August 10, 2009 at 2:11 am
I really, really need to know who wrote this. Freaking fascinating.
August 10, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Tony, you bastard! I had that story set to post on 9/12 and you beat me to it! But, I found a text version of the story instead of the shitty PIC version I sent you, so
August 10, 2009 at 9:37 pm
WTF! I made a smiley with it’s tongue sticking out and WordPress has this happy-go-lucky prick smiley in my last post. Hey WordPress…fix your smiley feature in the comments so they come out right…you lazy pricks!
In case anyone is reading this thinking I’m pissed at my brother…well, I’m just screwing around.
August 11, 2009 at 8:52 am
yeah, we’re just screwing around…. blow me charles
August 18, 2009 at 6:57 am
It’s from the imageboard Paranormal – /x/, 4chan.org =)
But, be careful, there are creepy pictures, stories, and many other things…
Sorry for my bad english -_-
August 23, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I was there when anon wrote that. I saved it too.
August 23, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Hey, guy above me. Fuck you.
Remember rules one and two, alright?
August 24, 2009 at 1:29 am
….. this really isn’t good at all…. The dialogue and descriptions lack any sort of depth, and there’s no substance to the plot. It’s trite, cheap, cliched, and overall just a terrible piece of writing (though I’m even reluctant to call it that).
August 24, 2009 at 2:03 am
Nietzsche made a similar claim for society as a whole and the origin of a “bad consciousness;” “the stress of the most fundamental change man ever experienced occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and peace” (GM II. 16).
August 24, 2009 at 2:30 am
sick bastard =S, there’s nothing neither artisty or cool about this, there’s a million other ways to say what he wanted to say, this is just disgusting and nauseating
August 24, 2009 at 2:54 am
Sick story! :O
August 24, 2009 at 2:55 am
This reminds me of the Stanford Prison experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Also reminds me of the movie “Das Experiment”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/
Really interesting story. Makes you think about the power and corruption people hold in society.
August 24, 2009 at 3:41 am
Very nice article indeed. As stated, I also want to know the author to prove the validity of the events that happened.
If it isn’t true, I would perform the same experiment and this time document it with video camera so that we can see the behavior of the subjects. If the subject started to perform odd behavior, restrain them immediately then continue the experiment until having high amounts of oxygen.
This research has a lot of potential of making super suicide soldiers. Release them behind enemy lines and wreck havoc.
August 24, 2009 at 3:43 am
Um… they had EEG monitors in the 1940s? Other than that, nice story.
August 24, 2009 at 3:49 am
-.= that was dissapointing… anti-climatic. oh well…. good try author-man ^o^ was this for a school writing competition?
August 24, 2009 at 4:00 am
Is this story a load of crap?
Cos if it isnt its bloody scary
August 24, 2009 at 4:12 am
you need to read some better stories…
i’m going to have nightmares for sure
August 24, 2009 at 5:04 am
the author is JG Ballard, me thinks
August 24, 2009 at 6:29 am
lol lame. i don’t get what about this is allegedly so amazing. it is just several paragraphs of gratuitous gore with no real plot or point at all. i almost thought they were going to come to some sort of conclusion for a second there at the end- after the one test subject was shown to have died from falling asleep- but then the last survivor ended up just blurting some meaningless, pseudo-profound prosey bullshit. yeah, we get it: there’s a bad man in all of us; we all have a dark side. tysm, 4chan, for that riveting development in the study of human nature. the least the author could have done was write something halfway believable. honestly- what person who has gone insane from a lack of sleep, an overdose of oxygen, extended exposure to a clearly dangerous experimental chemical, and (oh yeah) RIPPING OUT HIS OWN FREAKIN’ GUTS has the intellectual capacity left to spout off some ‘i am the evil in you’ moral lesson? i can’t even think of a sane, healthy person who would say something like that. not to mention it was just plain poorly written.
even disregarding all of the obvious literary reasons that this ’story’ is completely awful, there is the one big REAL-moral-lesson reason: there really should be no entertainment to be had in observing other human beings in unfathomable suffering, especially if there’s not even a good point being demonstrated through it. how is a reasonable person just loving on the (literally) gut-wrenching pain of other (even imaginary) people? i mean really- i didn’t know charles manson posted here.
in conclusion, terrible terrible terrible. some wanna-be chuck palahniuk cockery, sry2say. if you want quality gothic literature, look into norman mailer or aldous huxley. even faulkner could do the job, if this is the sort of thing you’re into.
August 24, 2009 at 6:55 am
Veeery creepy story. Seemed like it started to degenerate into targeted drama towards the end, but it was still compelling reading.
August 24, 2009 at 7:50 am
A test subject suddenly appears mid narration. There is the one early death. Then the one who bleeds out. Then the one who dies on the operation table. And there are still three to be put back on the chamber… from the original 5.
I think the mystery here is where did the mysterious extra test subject came from… maybe from another dimension?
August 24, 2009 at 8:08 am
Awesome story!
August 24, 2009 at 8:54 am
Cute story. Would’ve been better if it was actually true. As it stands it’s only a piece of semi-interesting fiction, with a few factual errors (KGB wasn’t founded until 1954).
I am still trying to find out what the author is trying to tell us with this piece…
August 24, 2009 at 9:12 am
I have just read this entire story waiting for what I expected to be a pretty freakin awesome ending, only to be left scratching my chin. Did I miss something? Can someone explain to me…? What are they?
August 24, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Holy hell! I got stumbled! Thanks to whoever posted this entry to StumbleUpon, you made my year. As of this comment, I’ve received over 23,000 visits from you guys. Enjoy the story!
August 24, 2009 at 4:50 pm
someone should turn this into a movie! great story and if it is true the goverment should round up all smackheads and give it to them save the tax payer a fortune on methadone projects
August 24, 2009 at 5:36 pm
It was pretty interesting, and I didn’t see any slight resemblance to Chuck Palahniuk, so I dunno where the hell that accusation came from. The ending was bad, clichéd, and didn’t make any sense as part of the rest of the story, but up until then I quite enjoyed it.
August 24, 2009 at 8:01 pm
that was fucked up
August 24, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Thank you for the link bro! Damn, you would think that you would have done that sooner since I gave you something that got you 20K+ hits to your site. Just kidding. Oh, you owe me a beer <–Not kidding about that
August 24, 2009 at 8:54 pm
This story is crap. I’m gonna go watch Pootie Tang
August 24, 2009 at 9:10 pm
update: as of this comment this post has received 26,000 visits. i really appreciate everyone reading and (mostly) enjoying the story. this is just remarkable. my site was posted to digg and reddit and didn’t generate this amount of attention. thanks again charles for sending this to me and, yeah, you’re right, i should of linked to you sooner.
August 25, 2009 at 2:31 am
Well, I forgot you had mentioned it was a story, so I read it as a historical document, a description of an actual experiment. And while I was surprised at the self-mutilization and formed several questions about it, I really had no problem accepting the information provided. I think it was very well-written and convincing. A little judicious editing would polish it up. I’m 65 and have been a voracious reader all my life, so I think you should value my opinion. Thanks for an entertaining story!
August 25, 2009 at 3:53 am
I think the Chuck Palahniuk comment may be in reference to his book Haunted. At least that’s what I thought of when I read this story.
August 25, 2009 at 5:54 pm
what was the gas? a load of bolony if you ask me
August 25, 2009 at 6:26 pm
This sounds like the chinese guy whose head exploded from playing chess. Or the, coincidentally, chinese referigerator manufacturers who wer shot for making unreliable refridgeorators.
Now my life does not seem so hard.
August 25, 2009 at 8:03 pm
damn you people are harsh.. i didn’t think it was that great of a story either, but it wasn’t that bad, jeez.. assholes lol
my biggest criticism for it I guess is that the surviving guy explains the whole point of the story at the end.. its like you included the college kids thematic essay at the end lol. it doesn’t leave anything up to interpretation.
if it wasn’t for that i think it would be a pretty cool story.. my suggestion is remove the part where the guy explains that he is the animal side of the human mind and stuff and just use some more vague type dialogue to insinuate that same message without saying it outright.
August 26, 2009 at 1:46 am
Immersive…only inasmuch as any grotesque scene inflames curiosity. Ultimately disappointing and vacuous, and leaves one feeling cheap and shortchanged (as after masturbating).
Wormcat’s comment above is for me far more interesting than the story. I don’t understand wormcat’s ‘moral lesson’; there are countless examples of schadenfreude in literature, film and everyday life that all exploit the guilty pleasure of observing someone else’s suffering: Lucretius wrote about it in 50BC and he wasn’t the first or last to notice it. We LOVE hearing about the suffering of others, in extensive and inventive detail. The knowledge that it’s a fiction just takes away the guilt.
So it’s undeniable that we do occasionally enjoy descriptions of human suffering (among many other things). Perhaps the question to wormcat is, are we morally responsible for our aesthetic reactions? Can you judge me one way or the other for finding something interesting, or uninteresting? Do I *decide* to think something is worth reading, or boring? Because only if there’s a decision involved can you judge me, surely? Or are you just saying you wish this kind of thing didn’t interest people? Because that’s hardly a moral issue, more of a personal taste thing…
What do we make of something unpleasant (and shockingly unfeasible and badly written) that nevertheless interests us?
August 26, 2009 at 9:14 am
nice story..hmm…alfred hitchcock..
August 26, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I basically thought this story was brilliant. It kept me reading. Why pick out so many flaws in these things? In fairness, this story was good and shocking and different. Loved it. I’ve been telling everyone I know about it.
August 26, 2009 at 5:13 pm
This reads like someone decided to rehash the plot of Serenity only demonizing Russians. Poorly written too, as described above.
August 26, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Mad Scientist: I don’t think there’s any gas like the one in the story; however, without sleep, you die. You don’t turn crazy like this and rip yourself apart and have the ability to survive as long as you’re awake. Your body needs REM sleep, and, without it, you do go crazy, but you die shortly after.
Johnnybev: I beg to differ. I hate hearing about the suffering of others. Why would I want them to suffer? And gory things like this, I hate it!
* * *
As for the story, I didn’t like it very much. I’m not into pointless gore and such, but then the end was really anti-climactic, cliche, and too obvious an attempt at trying to teach a lesson.
As for not being able to stop reading, I think it’s anything but. I would have stopped, but I was falsely promised an amazing story.
August 27, 2009 at 12:21 am
so whats the mdeical explanation for why they started tearing themselves up and enjoying pain and needing to stay awake? not trying to ruin the story im just really interested if theres a legit explanation
August 27, 2009 at 11:27 am
This story is complete rubbish. How could anyone think that it is in any way based on fact? Obviously, the author of this story knew nothing of the actual workings of the human body or medicine. “He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal”… really stellar writing. Just a lot of inflated nonsense.
Even as a piece of FICTION this story is about as exciting as whale shit.
August 27, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Disturbing and plausible. An interesting read, though hard to recommend.
August 27, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I could probably only truly appreciate this if I were into ICP and vampires and shit. I know where you can find this author, sitting alone in his room jacking off to Catcher in the Rye.
You wanna scare people? Unplug from WoW and go out to some public place.
I can see how this story is appealing and appreciated by so many people, because I just described so many people. Sorry folks, truth hurts.
August 27, 2009 at 3:51 pm
The whole psychological aspect was quite interesting, and about the cruelty…. heard worse stories about the Armenian Genocide….
August 27, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Sort of a cool idea…story is pretty dumb though. I’ve been through hellweek, so I was more or less kept awake for 5 days and I can tell you all that happens is that you get very stupid, you hallucinate, and don’t remember much afterward. I remember the instructors saying before break-out that they had to give us 90min on the 4th night or we risked permanent brain damage. I remember after it was over, I tried to call my mom to tell her I’d made it. I sat down, cell-phone in hand, and started to dial, then woke up with the phone on the floor. I went through the same process at least 5 or 6 times before I was actually able to complete the call.
August 28, 2009 at 2:25 am
You must not read much.
“So did the whispering to the microphones.”
Lol, yeah its right up there with Kafka.
August 28, 2009 at 8:43 pm
i undoubtedly enjoyed the story, the writing was lustterfull and exciting i was glued till the end but i dont quite understand the moral of the story; what is the subject trying to say? who is he? fear, evil, darkness? please somebody tell me about it thankyou
August 28, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Is this story for real?
August 29, 2009 at 4:51 am
erm this piece isnt not supposed to please people. its art but art isnt aimed to be pleasant all the time.
things i can comment about is… yes they tore their flesh apart but when a person does that he also damages the veins/arteries etc so its impossible to remain alive for so long… they’d die from hemorrhage. plus when the organs are laid out on the floor they’d dry out as quick as hours after exposure and they’d all rot to death.
other than that itll sound right-out chilling.
August 29, 2009 at 5:37 am
Excellent. I enjoyed it anyway.
August 29, 2009 at 7:53 am
thumbs DOWN
August 29, 2009 at 9:59 am
damn this is one creepy test.
and one thing that really hurts, reading that tiny font for 5 mins.
August 29, 2009 at 11:32 am
[...] read this?” That being said, StumbleUpon knows what I like, so when it presented me with this link, I couldn’t resist reading it in its [...]
August 29, 2009 at 1:41 pm
First, LOL at those who think this is supposed to be true. A clear work of fiction.
Second, some huge plot holes here. As I understand these stories, four of the test subjects somehow removed their own internal organs and spread them out across the floor. How could these test subjects then fight and kill several of their captors? As far as I know hand to hand combat is difficult if you have to drag your intestines around. At the very least they would get caught on stuff and slow any attacks down.
And the end was pretty cheesy. Our evil animal nature? Please. Wouldn’t evil animals try and eat the OTHER test subjects, and not themselves?
August 29, 2009 at 1:55 pm
How did a guy who was doped up on gas, sleep deprived, and all around Fucked Up able to say “We are You…” and all that other bull shit he said.
Story would’ve been believable, and just plain better without that part.
August 29, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Alright so most of you don’t get that it’s a short STORY.
FICTION.
NOT REAL.
made up. Got it?
So yes, the author skimped on some technical details. I dunno about you but I certainly couldn’t recite to you the date of the invention of the EEG monitor so don’t crap on him for that.
And to whoever didn’t believe sleep deprivation can’t make someone go crazy, do some research. Sleep deprivation is a totrture method. Try it, you’ll go nuts.
August 29, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Cool story bro!
August 29, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Someone make a movie of this!
August 30, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Unless the chamber was a partial vacuum this is impossible. Exposed lungs collapse.
August 30, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I was there when Anon wrote this and when he did The Good ending. Very nice anyway, love reading it every time! I smile when i get to the gore.
August 30, 2009 at 2:23 pm
i thought it started out great…but it began to wilt towards the end. impressive but eventually disappointing
August 30, 2009 at 8:52 pm
How in holy hell could anyone possibly think this is nonfiction? I don’t understand how anyone could have such a painful ignorance of the human body, honestly.
It started out seeming like it could be plausible, but got increasingly bizarre and distractingly unrealistic.
On a good note, it did manage to convince me for a while that I would finally learn the epic secret of how to create an awesome zombie.
The ending was rather, shall we say, incongruous? It masqueraded as a moral but lacked any recognizable depth.
My humble advice is that it should be made clear that this is utterly fiction to avoid that bewildering moment in the middle that those who aren’t anatomy-illiterate are bound to have while trying to reconcile the abrupt change from potentially-plausible to ‘excuse me, wtf?’, and to make the ending have actual relevance.
With work, this could be a passable random internet nonsense story. Providing that the author will ever emerge from the depths of oblivion that is Anon.
August 31, 2009 at 9:14 pm
good or bad, I read it all and enjoyed it.
August 31, 2009 at 11:17 pm
well i liked the story. but maybe we should really try it and video taped it (i know its been said before)
September 1, 2009 at 12:47 pm
WTF. This story is utter nonsense. Was it a high school assignment someone wrote to try and creep out a teacher or something? That’s the only plausible explanation I can come up with for this literary vomit. That there’s actually people who enjoyed this story really takes my hope for humanity down a notch.
I understand the attraction to gore and human suffering. It’s part of the human psyche. But how is something so unorganized and clearly lacking in any literary decency to be enjoyed? It might as well just be a list of gory, shocking things one could think of being done to a human body. Just a list, not a story.
The fact is that experiments like these have, and do happen. I’m disgusted by sick-minded individuals that get off on this stuff, whether fictional or non. Obviously events of the past should not be ignored, and should be learned about purely for educational and preventative reasons, NOT for pleasure.
This world is evil and corrupted enough without having to fill our minds with such bile. But if you’re going to do it anyway, at least read something with some sort of literary sense and plot.
September 3, 2009 at 6:47 am
I believe that the author has succeeded in invoking either praise or contempt for the story. Not all writing is about being accurate or being factually sound. It is a story. it was written to make you feel a certain way. If it even changed you for a second, then it was a success. Even if you didnt like the way it ended, he kept you hooked until the end, so you didnt hate it as much as you say.
It reminds me a lot of American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. If you havnt read that book, I would suggest it. Similarities include: Over the top gore, mixed with terror, invoking of disgust(I had to put American Psycho down several times to collect my thoughts.) That book and stories like this test what we think about writing. by saying it “sucked” or something similar you are being closed minded. It is on par with saying all drawings must contain straight lines. You need to take in the experience. If a story was supposed to make you feel bored, happy, sad or scared, you have to understand the authors intent and not simply dismiss it based on bias or favoritism.
Thank you for posting this. as you can see it is around 0400, and i am on post in the US Marines and this story was exactly what i needed to make an otherwise boring, 24-hour, duty shift, memorable.
Post Remarks: If anyone has more storys like this, post some links because that was great to read.
September 3, 2009 at 10:52 am
from johnnybev:
“What do we make of something unpleasant (and shockingly unfeasible and badly written) that nevertheless interests us?”
We discipline our minds. If you let a child indulge all his whims and wishes he turns into a spoiled brat, and later in life a self-centered potential sociopath who will hurt those around him without a thought if it means his own personal gain. We may have initial inclinations, but that doesn’t mean we have to indulge them. No, you do not have responsibility for your initial reaction, because we can’t control our brain’s first thought. You can control it after that, and have a moral obligation to. If you do something to me that makes me angry, I have two choices: I can indulge the anger continuously, until it becomes a rage, or I can choose to let it go. If it becomes a rage, I might murder you, or set fire to your house, or beat you senseless. “What a terrible thing to do!” you say. Well, that’s what comes from not controlling what comes out of our brains.
Thank you, Queen. This story disgusted me as well, and the people who “loved it.” I came from Stumbleupon, and was promised a great story–I was expecting some kind of justifying ending or I would have stopped. I’m sick of this society reveling in gore. And we wonder why crime is on the rise. Fiction or not, glorified gore and crime and senseless violence lead to more gore and crime and senseless violence. A story being fiction does not remove the guilt of enjoying it. People enjoy the guilt too, the idea of liking something forbidden. That will leak over into real life, in small amounts or large ones. I guarantee it.
September 4, 2009 at 1:14 am
The best short story you’ve ever read? Keep reading.
September 4, 2009 at 1:27 am
Pretty ridiculous nonsense really. I think you’ve been playing half-life for too long or something.
September 4, 2009 at 2:41 am
You actually do go crazy if you lack enough sleep. Some DJ in Denmark (I think) went the world record (11 days, I think) and started to play the same music over and over again without realizing it.
I thought that this was compelling, if it were true. As fiction it is very rehashed. Some actual studies that I’ve heard of are much more horrifying, when the human mind is considered. The gore is the only thing that made this interesting.
The idea that of sedate into sleep is trite and glaringly obvious. This story could be believable if the writer actually researched how humans react to lack of sleep and included valid scientific knowledge.
Overall, it is not believable and is decent internet fiction but compared to real literature, it doesn’t even hold a candle.
September 5, 2009 at 9:21 pm
short story?
there’s no way i’m gonna read that.
September 9, 2009 at 5:30 am
At first, everything seems alright, hell they’re doing this to traitors…some of this does have a Non-Fiction side, those who go without sleep for a few days will begin to hallucinate, jibber jabber, and mutter complete nonsense… The autor obviously put a decent amount of work into this, and for people who read it, then decide to type a simple “Fuck You” letter should just click the tiny red X in the top right corner of the browser. Who wrote this did it so we could read it, and enjoy it. Which I did, now, if you assholes who call this crap, and blatantly insult it think you can do better, then by all means, write something up, I bet your ass you’ll be getting the same assholes spamming your page going “Wow, complete bullshit, blah blah blah so stupid, blah blah blah he fails so much at writing” Kudos to whoever wrote it, it certainly gripped me from begining to end. Yes I must agree it seemed the author lost a bit of steam near then end, but none the less, it is a very nice story.
September 13, 2009 at 4:32 pm
If this was non-fiction it would be ghastly and compelling. As fiction it is trite and sensational.
September 14, 2009 at 5:40 pm
some details not plausible, but ya know, the US did a bit of this sort of thing, too- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA.
and the best short story ever is The Yellow Wallpaper.
September 21, 2009 at 11:19 am
i feel like not sleeping any more what about you guys
September 25, 2009 at 7:37 am
It’s an interesting story to an extent, but the writing is absolutely horrible. And very cliche. I only read this because I heard how great it is. Figures it was someone on 4chan who wrote it.
October 3, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Rules are for newfags.
October 18, 2009 at 4:34 am
I just read this high and i’m scared as hell right now.
October 20, 2009 at 5:41 pm
cliched and pointless.
I don’t think anyone who’s read more than 15 “big kid” books in their life thinks this is good.
bad writing, bad plot, bad ending.
lame.
October 29, 2009 at 6:02 pm
You people have far too much free time.
November 11, 2009 at 1:50 am
It reads like a 10th grade English paper.
To those that consider this good writing: READ. This doesn’t have the literary merit to be published in Highlights Magazine.
November 21, 2009 at 5:52 am
I didn’t read this story, my friend told it to me and in that medium it was a lot more interesting. Sure there are inconsistencies and historical errors but its still entertaining. I have to agree with squiidux on almost everything they said. Christ some of you people are horribly whiney… Not that this comment makes me any better obviously.
November 27, 2009 at 7:48 am
I liked the story, but tbh the author could’ve left out the whole “We’re the evil within you”. It was way to long, and way to “descriptive” coming from a crazed halfdead corpse. It was sorta “forcing” a scenario onto the reader. Just the “so… Nearly… Free” would’ve been better IMO.
December 24, 2009 at 12:45 pm
This story gives me nightmares.