Was I Part of a Cold War CIA Project?

Until recently, I hadn’t thought about the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program in decades. But as soon as I saw it, something clicked—it was the same one I’d been part of back in fourth grade, at a tiny Christian day school. My parents were poor church members, which meant I could go tuition-free. Fourth grade. I was in the GATE program that year, but that was the beginning and the end of my official giftedness that I recall. Our teacher was Mrs. Dahlke—I remember her mostly because she went to school with Elvis Presley, my mother’s favorite singer. 

That was also the year I fell off my desk and got a concussion, which might explain a lot. Or nothing. Or maybe it just opened the door a crack wider—right as the tones were pouring in.

The rest of the class had study time—just quiet desks, pencils scratching out spelling words, maybe a few whispers passed between worksheets. Meanwhile, the handful of us in GATE were clustered at a side table, each outfitted with a pair of oversized headphones like miniature Cold War assets. The tapes weren’t music, exactly. Just tones—low, rising, pulsing frequencies that made the air feel thick.[1]

We were told the tones were for creativity or concentration, but in hindsight, they might’ve just been anti-communist subliminal messages delivered in Morse code beeps and sine waves. A sonic red scare, piped directly into our developing frontal lobes. Some believe programs like GATE weren’t purely academic—that they doubled as quiet testing grounds for cognitive research, maybe even covert recruitment. I don’t know if I buy that entirely. We had worksheets with odd little diagrams and breathing cues, and we followed them because that’s what good students did. Looking back, I’m not sure what we were absorbing—just that the sounds stuck with me longer than the lessons. And I still wonder who, if anyone, was keeping score.

Outside of this, I remember when the attack warning signal would howl its low, rising wail through the town. Not a tornado drill. Not a test you could ignore. I remember feeling it in my ribs, different from the weather sirens—slower, deeper, like the sound itself was bracing for impact. If I was outside when it started, I’d sprint home in tears—terror striking fast, like instinct. I didn’t understand the politics, but the siren made sure I understood the stakes.

Shortly after, I started having strange dreams—vivid, weightless episodes that blurred the line between sleep paralysis, out-of-body experience, and something closer to astral projection. In one of them, a giant chicken—comically oversized, feathered like a parade float but moving with unsettling purpose—was levitating my body out of bed. It didn’t flap its wings or speak. It just stared down as I rose, weightless and obedient. I’d wake up drenched in sweat, unsure whether to laugh, cry, or check for feathers. Once, when I woke up unable to move, my parents took me to the emergency room. The doctors called it sleep paralysis.

Maybe they were just childhood nightmares. Or maybe the subliminal tones from those fourth-grade headphone sessions had finally cracked open the portal. But I still remember the way the chicken watched me—calm, enormous, and somehow… informed.

Later in high school, I made it into the college prep English class but skipped the college prep math track—I chose art instead. Ours was a small school, with just the standard prep classes and the occasional reminder that some kids were headed for bigger things. Maybe that’s why the Army recruiter was so persistent with me—even though I wasn’t exactly the image of combat readiness. Maybe he saw something in my file. Maybe GATE flagged me early. Or maybe he just really needed someone to run the projector in the strategy tent.

After all, the Gateway Program had already caught the military’s attention.[2] Officers were being sent to the Monroe Institute to train in out-of-body travel and consciousness expansion. The CIA had mapped the brain like a battlefield.[3] And I’d already been through the tones, the breathing cues, the diagrams.

Maybe they weren’t recruiting soldiers. Maybe they were recruiting minds that had already been primed.

Even now, certain tones—barely perceptible to anyone else—set my teeth on edge. I can feel them in my ribs before I even register the sound. I used to think it was just a quirk. But maybe my ears remember something my memory doesn’t.

Sources:

1. See Ellyn LaPointe, “I was in gifted classes as a kid in the 90s… here’s why I think it was a secret CIA program,” Daily Mail, Jan 2025.
2. The Gateway Experience was developed by Robert Monroe and later used in Army Intelligence training. 
3. CIA document “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process,” declassified 2003. Available at cia.gov.

Author’s Note:

Tina Antonis is a writer and researcher who occasionally dreams in Cold War color palettes. Her work explores the intersections of memory, propaganda, and the strange frequencies that hum beneath American childhood. She has never officially levitated, but she remains open to reactivation. Her frequencies are occasionally detectable at thechaoscat.com.