.

You can see that the red pipe is coloured in in the VHS version:

Maybe because the tapes are actually the surveillance tapes that are black and white?

And then?

Vance Goodman: "Turn this one up to - yes - eleven. Really, turn it up to eleven!"

Just a random example:

The intro shows "tracking". If you adjust the tracking dials right, there should be NO white lines:

The VHS tapes mostly just flicker blue and red on my screen but in this scene there's a short glitch, the white line. Maybe that's an indication that the tape has been edited or erased here, as this is one of the crucial scenes that were never explained, who opened the door?

I'm still thinking about a sci-fi twist to ST, so this caught my eye. Be warned, it's very long:

We know the series draws heavily from MKUltra, the CIA operation from 1953 to 1973 to develop mind-control techniques against Cold War enemies: sensory deprivation, unknowing civilians as test subjects, abuse, torture were drawn for the ST lore. But it shut down already at the beginning of the 70s. The "remote viewing" part (spying on Soviets in the mind space) and the psychic abilities were actually drawn from an ensuing CIA project called Stargate Project and the 1983 Gateway Process report (declassified in 2003). After S5, it seems to be maybe even more connected to the ST lore than MKUltra.

Called the Gateway Process, the procedure claimed to help people access the intuitive knowledge of the universe, as well as travel in time and commune with other-dimensional beings.

That Stranger Things merged aspects of both MKUltra and Stargate/Gateway for their own lore was already discussed on Reddit and some media articles years ago, so maybe it's already known (I don't know the theories before this year, I just joined after the trainwreck of the finale lol). This Reddit post explains the connections to ST quite well:

Subjects are brought into this state of consciousness with sound patterns (the so-called Gateway Tapes, available online if you wanna try it lol):

The Gateway Process was originally the brainchild of radio producer Robert Monroe, who in the 1970s studied the effects of certain sound patterns on human consciousness. He claimed that his experiments led to out-of-body experiences through brain hemisphere synchronization, or “Hemi-Sync.” When a person listens to binaural beats (created by hearing different sounds in each ear), the contrast confuses the brain, causing it to shift out of its normal, somewhat scattered wave pattern into a coherent pattern shared between the left and right hemispheres, he said.

It's basically founded on the idea of synchonizing the right and left hemisphere of the brain, which in its entirety is also called the cerebrum. Dustin's radio Cerebro, obviously.

The subjects tried to reach altered states of consciousness, sometimes called the Gateway Experience, which reminds me of the The Stranger Things Experience, where people enter Hawkins Lab under the pretense of a sleep study.

The Gateway Process leans on quantum mechanics, neurobiology but also esoterical concepts.

Holographic simulation

The report explains that the world is essentially a holographic simulation that the mind can break free from.

The report claims it may be possible for human consciousness to profoundly alter the universe since reality is a holographic projection; the part encodes the whole. In this understanding of reality, everything is deeply connected in a matrix of interconnected energy vibrations, from your consciousness to the depths of the universe.

All the Matrix references, anyone?

Funnily enough, page 25 of the 1983 report was missing for 18 years and was only "found" in 2021. That the page was missing fueled some, yes, conspiracy theories that the government omitted the information on purpose and it would contain confirmation that reality is an illusion or how to escape the matrix.

Time travel and other dimensions

I won't try to explain the quantum mechanics behind it, but essentially it would allow you to travel through a "cosmic egg" in the hologram that is the world to any time in the past or future and to other dimensions.