Exposed： The CIA's Secret Experiments on Witches and Black Magic ｜ Mythology Lore

It begins with a question that no one dares to ask aloud. What if the world's most powerful intelligence agency once tried to weaponize the human soul? Imagine a team of men in dark suits, locked inside a windowless room, not studying weapons or political maps, but ancient grimoires, astrological charts and symbols that once belonged to forgotten cults. Welcome to Tales of Mythology, where ancient legends, forgotten horrors and supernatural wars come to life. If you love exploring the untold side of mythology, please like this video, subscribe to our channel and tap the bell below, so you never miss another legendary story. In the early 1970s, investigative journalist Gordon Thomas stumbled upon something buried in declassified documents, files that were never meant to see daylight. Among the standard reports on behavioral science and toxicology, he noticed peculiar phrases, references to psychic research, astrological consultants and even ritual observation experiments. These weren't the fantasies of conspiracy theorists. They were typed, numbered and stamped central intelligence agency. According to Thomas, what he discovered wasn't another chapter of MKUltra's infamous mind control saga. It was the beginning of something darker, something that blended science with superstition in a desperate quest for control. Inside those hidden records lay the traces of Operation Mkofton, a project allegedly created to study the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs, but secretly designed to explore the occult as a weapon. Within its walls, scientists, astrologers and self-proclaimed sorcerers were reportedly brought together under government payroll. They performed seances, studied psychic influence and analyzed how belief systems could be turned into psychological tools. CIA director Richard Helms, upon reading the program's summary, reportedly wrote two chilling words across the top of the file. Read. Destroy. To understand why Mkofton existed, one must first see how it emerged from a lineage of experiments already skirting the edge of morality. Programs like MKUltra, MKSearch and MKChikwit weren't random tests. They were pieces of a vast puzzle. Each sought to uncover how consciousness could be manipulated, broken or reshaped. The CIA, under the guidance of figures like Sidney Gottlieb, believed that the mind was a code that could be rewritten. Universities, hospitals and psychiatric institutions became covert laboratories. Soldiers, patients, even ordinary citizens became unwitting subjects in a campaign to master the art of control. Declassified fragments show that these programs relied on universities such as Harvard, Stanford and McGill, reputable names masking secret funding. Behind polished academic fronts like the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, researchers carried out chilling procedures. Prolonged LSD exposure, hypnosis combined with electroshock and sensory deprivation that left patients stripped of identity and memory. All of it justified as science in service of national security. The results? Minds shattered beyond repair and data that would shape M. Cofton's next evolution. While the world believed the CIA's interest in mysticism was absurd, inside Langley the logic was simple. If billions of people around the globe based decisions on religious or occult beliefs, then understanding those beliefs wasn't foolish, it was strategic. What if ritual could be harnessed the same way drugs had been? What if superstition could be engineered into a psychological weapon? As one operative would later confess, the question was never whether magic worked, the question was why people believed it did, and how that belief could be used against them. Thomas' findings paint a portrait of paranoia disguised as research. According to his investigation, CIA consultants dabbled in astrology, palmistry and psychic reading. Not as entertainment, but as field studies in manipulation. They wanted to know how individuals surrendered judgment to those claiming secret knowledge. What made people confess to fortune tellers what they would never tell a priest or a spy? The results, though hidden behind layers of redaction, suggested an alarming answer. Belief itself was the most potent hallucinogen of all. The deeper one looks into the MK archives, the clearer the pattern becomes. From drug trials to psychic experiments, each operation was a mirror reflecting humanity's obsession with control. The official files describe sterile laboratories and animal tests, but Thomas' sources whispered of candlelit basements, coded chants, and CIA officers observing rituals through two-way mirrors. They weren't seeking the supernatural, they were studying submission. And when Richard Helms read the classified summary of M. Cofton, something must have terrified him. Within hours, the order was given. Burn the records, dismantle the teams, silence the witnesses. The program, years in the making, vanished almost overnight. But fire doesn't erase ideas. The ashes left behind still whisper of rooms filled with smoke, of voices calling into the dark, and of an intelligence agency trying to decode the oldest secret of all. How to control belief itself. The CIA wasn't experimenting with magic because it believed in it, wrote Thomas. It studied it because others did, and in that belief lay a power science could measure. Thomas' secrets and lies, inside the CIA's hidden experiments. So when the last page of M. Cofton's file turned to ash under the director's order, read, destroy. What exactly was being erased? Was it madness or discovery? Somewhere in the labyrinth of declassified lies, Thomas warned. There remains a truth too dangerous to reveal. For the moment you understand how easily faith can be engineered, you stop believing anything at all. Inside the heart of Langley, the corridors of secrecy hummed like electric veins, feeding a beast that thrived on silence. Operation M. Cofton had begun quietly, under the same bureaucratic veil that cloaked hundreds of other intelligence initiatives. The paperwork described it as a harmless investigation into the toxicological and behavioral effects of new chemical compounds. But beneath those dry definitions, lay an obsession with something far stranger. Former operatives later revealed that agents were dispatched not to laboratories, but to spiritualist gatherings, esoteric schools, and private seances across America. Here, amid incense smoke and the murmurs of self-proclaimed mediums, the CIA began a scientific study of faith itself. The agency didn't seek miracles, it sought predictability. Could belief be induced, measured, and replicated the same way a drug could? According to investigative records and Gordon Thomas' testimony, M. Cofton expanded rapidly during the early 70s. Under the supervision of the Office of Research and Development, it operated parallel to traditional biochemical experiments. Three astrologers were reportedly contracted as consultants, earning weekly wages that, by today's standards, would equal thousands of dollars. Their task wasn't to predict world events, but to observe how predictions altered human behavior. Meetings between these astrologers and field analysts blurred the line between science and mysticism. Agents documented the ways people's decisions shifted after receiving divinatory guidance, tracking confidence levels, hesitation, and conformity. This data, strange as it sounded, began feeding into the CIA's psychological warfare archives, proof that prophecy, even false prophecy, could manipulate choice. The deeper M. Cofton's operatives ventured, the more surreal their encounters became. In a basement beneath the United Nations building in New York, mediums were allegedly guided through corridors while surveillance cameras recorded their every gesture. Each claimed to sense dark auras or malevolent energies surrounding diplomats from particular nations. Though no measurable evidence resulted, the recordings were carefully analyzed for behavioral impact. Observers noted not what the medium said, but how those present reacted. Did diplomats seem unsettled, defensive, or dismissive? Every twitch of discomfort became valuable data. Behind this bizarre experiment was a chilling motive. To test whether spiritual authority could disrupt negotiations or reveal psychological weaknesses among foreign officials. When religious institutions refused cooperation, the agency simply found others more willing to participate. The New York Archdiocese declined access to exorcism rituals, citing theological boundaries. But that didn't end the study. Instead, the CIA turned to public occultists, most notably Sybil Leake, the flamboyant witch from Houston known for her appearances with a pet crow perched on her shoulder. She entertained millions on television, but behind the camera, she was allegedly approached by intelligence officers interested in the mechanics of influence. Leake embodied what M. Cofton valued most, charismatic authority wrapped in mystery. Her ability to command attention and loyalty became a live case study in how belief transforms into obedience. Thomas later wrote that the agency viewed her not as a witch, but as a mirror reflecting the human need to believe. The same logic guided McCofton's academic infiltration. Under the banner of the Scientific Engineering Institute, a front organization connected to the CIA, funding quietly flowed to a university in South Carolina. There, students unknowingly participated in what was described as a comparative anthropology of ritual. In reality, it was a course on sorcery, exploring fertility rites, initiation ceremonies, and necromantic traditions from ancient cultures. Professors received grants, classrooms were allocated, and research reports were filed, all without anyone realizing the ultimate sponsor. Through this academic facade, the CIA obtained a controlled environment for testing ritual behavior among young participants. Every chant, every symbolic gesture, every emotional response was cataloged, dissected, and filed into psychological frameworks that aimed to decode the language of faith. The more these operations unfolded, the clearer their true objective became. McCofton wasn't about validating the supernatural, it was about translating it into behavioral science. Agency psychologists viewed rituals, symbols, and myths as tools. Ancient systems of influence honed over millennia. By examining how individuals surrendered control to ritual authority, the CIA sought to design methods for persuasion that bypassed rational thought. Religion and magic became the templates for manipulation. They weren't studying ghosts, Thomas wrote, they were studying obedience. The program's archives reportedly contained experiments measuring pulse, eye movement, and brainwave activity during seances, comparing them to responses in hypnosis or interrogation. The overlap was staggering. Ritual trance and psychological submission appeared to share the same neurological pathways. It was this revelation that likely pushed McCofton into dangerous territory. Internal memos hinted at growing concern among senior officials. When reports surfaced of astrologers falsifying predictions and mediums demanding more pay for results, Richard Helms' patience snapped. On a winter morning, a single memorandum circulated through the Office of Research and Development bearing his signature and just two words, read, destroy. It marked the swiftest termination order in the agency's history, yet destruction is never perfect. Some fragments survived, budget ledgers, correspondence with university departments, and ambiguous field reports from New York. These remnants, pieced together by journalists and historians decades later, reveal not incompetence, but fear. For all its strangeness, McCofton exposed something profoundly human within the machinery of intelligence. Beneath the jargon of psychological warfare was a confession. That belief is the oldest form of control. The agency had dared to quantify it, to turn faith into data, and in doing so had glimpsed an abyss too vast to regulate. Thomas summarized it best when he wrote, The CIA discovered not that magic was real, but that belief in magic could be more powerful than any truth. That insight, more than any occult experiment, frightened those at the top. Because once you understand how easily conviction can be engineered, morality becomes negotiable. Faith, wrote Thomas in his final analysis, is the most efficient weapon ever conceived, because the believer wields it against himself. The fires that consumed the McCofton files may have erased its records, but not its legacy. Somewhere, in forgotten archives and quiet university halls, traces of those experiments remain, waiting for someone bold enough to unearth them. The investigation into Operation McCofton did not end with the Destruction Order. Instead, what remained were faint traces, archival ghosts scattered across universities, corporations, and even religious institutions. Gordon Thomas, relentless in his pursuit of the truth, began mapping the potential paper trails. His research revealed how the CIA's most secretive experiment had seeped into legitimate bureaucracies, leaving behind a web of documentation that no fire could completely erase. In his analysis, he described a bureaucratic fingerprint, the kind of subtle mark intelligence agencies often overlook in their efforts to conceal evidence. The very systems built to maintain secrecy, budget records, academic proposals, and payment receipts, became their greatest vulnerability. The labyrinth of redacted memos and coded correspondence suggested that McCofton was not merely an isolated operation, but an entire network of interdependent studies woven into America's institutional framework. Thomas began by tracing the alleged academic connection in South Carolina, where the so-called Sorcery Course had taken place. Universities are meticulous record keepers. They preserve catalogs, meeting minutes, and faculty correspondences. These were not classified archives that could vanish under a director's command. If a course existed, it required official approval, classroom allocations, budget authorizations, and departmental votes. Thomas proposed that within these ordinary records might lie extraordinary evidence. A listing under Comparative Anthropology of Ritual Systems, or psychological symbolism in ancient cultures, could mask something far stranger. Even a brief mention of CIA-linked funding in a budget meeting could confirm the agency's hand. The existence of student theses or project evaluations tied to these studies would further validate the claim that McCofton used academia as both cover and conduit for its occult research. Next, Thomas turned to the Scientific Engineering Institute, a corporate front long suspected of funding covert research. Officially tied to defense and imaging technologies, SEI had corporate links to Polaroid, a major contractor. The possibility that company funds were used to underwrite ritual-based psychological studies was explosive. Corporate accounting systems, unlike classified military budgets, required documentation for every grant and expense. This meant invoices, contracts, and internal memos had to exist somewhere, even decades later. Thomas argued that such documents could expose how CIA funds were laundered through civilian partnerships, providing an image of legality while masking their true nature. Follow the money, he wrote, and belief becomes a ledger entry. The simple trail of payments for research materials or student participation costs might, when viewed in context, reveal a covert agenda disguised as academic curiosity. The United Nations operation presented an even stranger bureaucratic puzzle. Thomas claimed that CIA operatives, using assumed identities, escorted a medium through the UN building to record psychic impressions of diplomats. The UN's rigid security structure made this operation risky. Every visitor required clearance. Every camera permit an authorization signature. Thomas believed that somewhere in the UN's archives, entries still exist. Perhaps visitor badges, security logs, or a filming request registered under a false academic project. The complexity of the bureaucracy that day might have inadvertently preserved evidence of the CIA's presence. Even the faintest record of unusual guests or unscheduled filming could confirm that the experiment occurred, not as myth, but as an event buried beneath layers of diplomatic paperwork. The search extended to the Archdiocese of New York, where church officials reportedly declined a CIA request to study exorcism rituals. Thomas suspected that official correspondence documenting the refusal might still rest within the church's archives. Unlike intelligence agencies, ecclesiastical institutions maintain records for centuries, not decades. A letter rejecting cooperation with a government agency on theological grounds would have been carefully preserved, if only to mark the boundaries between sacred and secular authority. The mere existence of such a letter would reveal the CIA's willingness to cross into domains traditionally ruled by faith, a boundary rarely breached so openly. Thomas described this as the moment the scientific pursuit of control met the ancient guardianship of belief. The trail of money remained the most concrete evidence. Three astrologers on the CIA payroll were allegedly paid substantial sums, equivalent to thousands of modern dollars each week, plus expenses. Thomas identified one San Francisco consultant exposed as a fraud, who nonetheless continued to receive full payments. That decision, he noted, suggested the agency's interest had shifted from results to behavioral analysis. By observing how fraud operated, and how belief persisted even in the face of deception, the CIA could study the mechanics of faith's resilience. Each reimbursement form, each travel request, each expense voucher served as a psychological case study disguised as routine accounting. Even the falsified predictions became valuable data. The agency learned that belief didn't depend on truth, it depended on need. This bureaucratic archaeology illuminated a profound irony. The same administrative machinery designed to protect secrecy ensured that traces of Mkioftan would survive. Governments and universities thrive on documentation, and every signature, every approval left an echo. The CIA feared exposure, Thomas wrote, but it was undone by its devotion to order. Paperwork was its religion. His reasoning reframed the investigation not as a hunt for confession, but as an act of reconstruction, an attempt to rebuild the shape of a hidden truth from the dust of ordinary forms and reports. The labyrinth, once thought impenetrable, could be navigated by anyone patient enough to understand bureaucracy's peculiar logic. For Thomas, the implications stretched far beyond espionage. If even one document confirming Mkioftan's true purpose surfaced, one course listing, one payment voucher, one letter of refusal, it would redefine the boundaries between faith and intelligence. It would prove that the line separating science from superstition had been deliberately crossed by those entrusted with national security. In one haunting passage, he wrote, Governments may fear gods less than they fear the believers. The statement captured the essence of Mkioftan's shadow legacy, an institutional fascination with the human tendency to surrender reason to conviction. The bureaucracy, Thomas concluded, was the labyrinth and the minotaur both. It devoured what it created and buried its crimes beneath signatures and seals. But even the most secret empire leaves a trail, for every mystery ever hidden must first be filed, stamped, and approved. When the order to destroy all records of Mkioftan was issued, it should have marked the program's end. Yet its influence persisted in ways more subtle and disturbing than any surviving file. What began as a secret operation studying occult practices became the foundation for a broader understanding within intelligence circles. That human consciousness itself could be weaponized. The boundaries of warfare had shifted from the physical to the psychological. By the mid-70s, as congressional committees began exposing the CIA's past abuses, fragments of other programs came to light. Projects like Midnight Climax, MK Search, and Stargate. They all shared a single principle. Control the mind, and you control everything else. Mkioftan was part of this hidden continuum, an invisible thread connecting the study of drugs, psychic phenomena, and belief manipulation into one long, uninterrupted experiment on the human condition. Operation Midnight Climax revealed how easily morality could dissolve, under the pretext of national security. Between the 50s and 60s, CIA operatives ran safe houses in San Francisco and New York disguised as brothels, dosing unsuspecting citizens with LSD while observing them through one-way mirrors. Prostitutes were paid informants, the beds were surveillance laboratories, and every act of vulnerability became recorded data. The agency justified this as research into interrogation resistance and sexual compromise, but what it truly demonstrated was how far they were willing to go in pursuit of psychological leverage. The infrastructure, front companies, false leases, hidden cameras, became the model for later experiments like Mkioftan, which used similar methods to test rituals instead of drugs. The pattern of deception was institutional, not accidental. At Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, military scientists tested hundreds of chemical agents on human volunteers, often soldiers unaware of the true risks. Compounds designated as EA substances were designed to disorient, paralyze, or alter perception. The official records spoke in clinical terms, dosages, reactions, durations, but behind those statistics were shattered minds and lasting trauma. In one report that survived the purge, references to EA-1992 surfaced alongside Mkioftan's designation, suggesting a logistical overlap between chemical testing and psychological operations. The fact that these two programs shared personnel, funding routes, and even facility access demonstrated how the study of the mind had fused seamlessly with the study of toxins. The enemy was no longer external. It resided within perception itself. Parallel to these operations, the CIA quietly supported Dr. Ewan Cameron's research in Montreal through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. Cameron's psychic driving experiments subjected patients to sensory deprivation, induced comas, and endless loops of recorded messages meant to erase and rebuild the human psyche. Many patients emerged broken, their memories wiped clean. To the agency, these human ruins were proof that identity could be reconstructed. It was the same philosophy that drove Mkioftan. If a mind could be erased by drugs and machines, perhaps it could also be reshaped by ritual and belief. Religion, magic, and psychology became indistinguishable fields in the intelligence war for control. The Stargate project would continue this trajectory into the 80s, exploring remote viewing and psychic surveillance. Soldiers and scientists at the Stanford Research Institute attempted to see distant targets using only mental focus. Reports described sessions where subjects identified hidden locations or classified objects with uncanny accuracy. Though official evaluations later dismissed the data as unreliable, funding continued for nearly two decades. The persistence of such programs revealed a deeper truth. Even when results failed, the pursuit never stopped. Mkioftan's occult research was not an anomaly, but a prototype. It taught the intelligence community that belief could be tested, codified, and perhaps directed. As one declassified note phrased it, human consciousness is the last undiscovered country. The real danger of Mkioftan was never the seances or astrology. It was the realization that belief itself could replace coercion. When faith becomes programmable, control requires no violence. A ritual, a prophecy, or a symbol can move nations if properly engineered. Thomas argued that Mkioftan represented the birth of psychological influence as a strategic weapon. The lessons learned from those occult studies found their way into propaganda design, interrogation manuals, and psychological operations abroad. The agency had proven that by exploiting the universal need to believe, it could guide behavior without force. It was no longer about breaking minds, it was about shaping them. The CIA didn't need to summon demons, Thomas wrote. It only needed to learn how to become one. The Watergate era exposed fragments of this hidden architecture, but the deeper foundations remained intact. While congressional hearings condemned the excesses of Mkultra, few realized that its most radical offspring had already been buried under new names. Research on behavioral influence continued under fresh designations, often through civilian contractors and universities. Funding flowed through benign foundations that sponsored studies on decision-making, media persuasion, and social psychology. The ghosts of Mkioftan lived quietly within these institutions, stripped of occult imagery, but still rooted in the same principles. Control of belief had become the modern philosopher's stone, a way to transmute perception into obedience. Thomas ended his account with a grim reflection. The true success of Mkioftan was not in its experiments, but in its philosophy. By proving that humans could be guided through symbolic and emotional cues, it reshaped how intelligence agencies viewed information itself. Propaganda became ritual, and media became altar. Every headline, slogan, or televised image carried echoes of those earlier séances, each designed to elicit reaction rather than reflection. What the agency learned from witchcraft and necromancy was not superstition, but method. The choreography of belief. The same instincts that once drew villagers to the firelight of shamans now drew citizens to glowing screens. In the end, Thomas wrote, Mkioftan's legacy was not a spell, but a system, a ritual without gods, performed daily by governments and media alike. It did not teach men to summon spirits, it taught them how to summon obedience. And so, even after the ashes of the Read and Destroy order cooled, the experiment continued in silence. The files may be gone, the witnesses buried, but the techniques remain. Living, evolving, and echoing through every institution that seeks to shape how we see the world. The secret war for the human mind never ended. It merely learned to disguise itself as truth.