Soviet scientist Ivanov Smolensky conducted his infamous "Sleep Study" at the Institute
for Brain Research in Leningrad, shortly before the Stalinist prohibition of experiments in parapsychology.
The five human test subjects were volunteers... political prisoners given a chance to redeem themselves.
They were promised if they submitted to the test, they would be set free.
The "Russian Sleep Experiment" was scheduled to last thirty days.
Four men and one woman were exposed to a newly developed stimulant in the form of a gas.
One wing of the Institute was sealed off to contain both the gas and the volunteers.
1947 had not seen the advent of closed circuit monitors, but Smolensky was able to track
the reactions of his subjects through a series of microphones and two glass portholes, recently
installed in the two locked doors standing at opposite ends of the wing.
The experimental chamber had chairs in which to sit but no beds in which to sleep.
It was stocked with books and playing cards, fresh water and canned food.
The participants chose their own living quarters from the numerous rooms on either side of
the hall, each of which had its own toilet and a standing shower.
The shower had hot running water.
For the first three days the subjects could be heard in conversation and while playing
"Durak", a Russian game known as "the fool" in which the goal is to get rid of all of
one's playing cards.
On the fourth day the test subjects completely abandoned talking with one another.
This left Smolensky and his colleagues mostly in the dark as to the progress of the medical
trial, except when a volunteer was seen through one of the portholes.
The participants no longer left their rooms.
But one would open his or her door very slightly, seeming to survey the empty hall with fearful
eyes.
A lab assistant was posted at each porthole and they reported as the behavior of the prisoners
became increasingly more paranoid.
One day the volunteers raided the pantry almost as a group.
They returned to their rooms and were never seen again to open their doors.
On day fifteen of the experiment the sound of their breathing could no longer be heard
by the microphones.
The public address system was activated by Smolensky and his voice was piped through
all the intercoms in the experimental wing.
"We are coming in to test your microphones.
Also we will set free one of the participants," he said.
The orderlies first entered the room of the female volunteer.
She attacked her rescuers and she screamed, "I do not want to be free."
One orderly attempted to restrain her but she broke his grip and her head bumped into
the wall.
This bump should not even have left a mark.
However the woman immediately collapsed and she was later diagnosed as comatose.
Only male subjects were left.
The next volunteer they found mute staring at some distant, fixed point.
He did not even seem to be aware of the personnel who entered his room.
Unable to leave under his own power he was completely "nonresponsive", and he also was
transported to a hospital in Leningrad.
Two of the other men were found together.
They had apparently somewhere discovered surgical instruments.
Both participated in some form of self-immolation which had gotten entirely out-of-hand.
Both of them had died with smiles on their faces.
The last volunteer was strangely lucid.
With his captors he pleaded that the gas be turned back on lest he fall asleep.
In his interview by Doctor Smolensky, the man said "I am the madness that lurks within
man.
I am that from which you hide in your bed every night.
Please... turn on the gas.