The Secret Classroom: My Memories of GATE and the Questions That Remain

Recovering my memories of GATE, trauma, and the questions that still remain.

When I was in the third grade, the school called my mom and asked if she was okay with me being placed in advanced classes. She did not care much one way or the other, as long as it did not cost money. No one asked what I wanted. I was simply told my mother had approved it, and that was that.

At first, I was not excited about the change. Then they explained that I would get to read more and that my cousin Scott would also be in the class. That mattered because he was one of the few kids I liked being around. He was happy reading a book and being left alone, which suited me just fine.

I always remembered the advanced reading, writing, and history classes, but little else. That never seemed unusual because I do not remember large parts of my childhood. I have significant childhood trauma, and many memories were buried until something later in life brought them back. A few years ago, I went through intensive trauma therapy for PTSD. I had been in and out of therapy since fourth grade, mostly because of severe nightmares that would last for months at a time. Most of those nightmares took place in the trailer outside my elementary school where I attended those advanced classes. I did not consciously associate that place with anything bad, yet the nightmares continued for years until trauma therapy helped stop them.¹

At that age, I struggled with many things. I had severe asthma and was frequently in the hospital. Social situations were difficult, and making friends did not come easily. I became overwhelmed by things others barely noticed, like the seams in my socks or the buzzing sound of fluorescent lights. I often spent recess inside reading because my asthma kept me from most playground activities, and I usually preferred books to other children anyway. I was bullied for being “too smart” and for being sickly. Therapists assumed those experiences explained the nightmares.

Years later, I came across discussions online about the GATE program and neurodivergence. After asking questions and watching former students describe their experiences, memories began rushing back. Things I had held only in fragments suddenly started fitting together.

I searched through old papers and found a journal from that time. What I thought had been an ordinary diary had actually been given to me by the program as a sleep journal. It described some of the tests and projects we did.

I also found a letter my mother wrote to my uncle while he was in basic training. In it, she mentioned that I had scored in the top five percent nationally on my SAT scores. I knew I had done well on those tests later in life, but I have no memory of taking them in fifth grade. After reading this journal, I had memories of taking a test on the weekend at the local LDS stake center building. Eventually I learned that this was frequently how the SATs were administered to gifted students as part of a talent search program.

What stands out most begins with a teacher I had never seen before calling my name after lunch and saying it was time for my new class. We picked up Scott from another room, then walked outside the main school building to the trailers behind the school. Their windows were blacked out, and I had always wondered what happened inside them.

The moment I stepped in, something felt wrong. The air was warm and heavy. The lights were much brighter than those in other classrooms. A headache started immediately.

The teacher, Mr. Dan, began with pattern exercises using red and white blocks. The faster I copied the patterns he made, the more pleased he seemed. After that came other tasks disguised as games: simple puzzles, vocabulary questions, explaining how words were alike or different, repeating numbers backward, finishing pictures with missing pieces, and solving math word problems. Some of it was unpleasant, but it still felt more interesting than regular classwork. There were many tests.

One of the clearest memories is a hearing test conducted in a mobile trailer run by some government agency that visited elementary schools around the county. I had taken plenty of hearing tests as a younger child, and they usually made sense. Sounds would grow softer or shift in pitch so doctors could determine hearing range. This was nothing like that.

Several of us were placed in small booths wearing bulky headsets. There was no clear pattern, only random bursts of noise. At times it felt less like hearing a sound and more like feeling it. Sometimes loud noise played while we were expected to detect quieter sounds underneath it. We had to push a button whenever we heard them. Those sounds were deeply uncomfortable and felt as if they were coming from inside my head.

We were also given pink liquid that tasted like bubblegum. Our school already did weekly fluoride rinses, but this seemed different because it was swallowed rather than spit out.

Another exercise involved lying down in a dark room with four or five other children while sounds played. We were told to relax and think of nothing. Afterwards, adults asked what we had seen or felt.

There were symbol cards marked with shapes such as a circle, cross, wavy lines, square, and star. Board games were used where the real task was not to win, but to predict the opponent’s next move. Blank cards were held up while we were asked to say what was on the other side. Mirrors were placed in front of us while sounds played, and later we were told to draw whatever we saw.

Around that same time, severe migraines began. I missed school because of them. Bloody noses became frequent as well. Doctors at the children’s hospital performed scans and told my family there was a mass on my brain. We then waited months for a specialist appointment. When that finally came, they prescribed migraine medication and said the earlier scans must have been wrong because nothing was there anymore. I still remember my mom and grandma crying when they heard that.

As the years passed, the tests and games became harder. We were given pages of paragraphs to read as quickly as possible, then answer questions about them. Reading came easily to me because I had learned young and was always above grade level. At first I doubted I could do it fast enough, but I ended up reading faster than everyone else.

We learned sign language, though only fragments remain with me now. There were also code-breaking exercises. Sometimes the messages were in Morse code, other times alphanumeric systems. I loved those tasks. Pattern recognition has always come naturally to me, which I now suspect is connected to neurodivergence.

There were war games where we planned how to defeat each other and take territory. We were asked to draw abstract concepts and then write stories based on the images.

Some memories from that period feel stranger still. I briefly died when I was one year old after becoming very sick and suffering seizures. Later, while swimming, an asthma attack caused me to pass out in the water, and I woke up in the hospital.

One weekend, despite loving visits to my grandmother’s house, I cried and begged not to go. I told my mother she could not leave because she was going to be hurt. She dismissed it and went out drinking. That night my grandmother woke me to say my mother had been in a car wreck and was being airlifted to the hospital.

Another time, while we were visiting my great-grandmother, I suddenly told my mother we needed to go home because my sister’s dad was hurt. She did not even question it and started walking back. As we reached the sidewalk, he burst outside screaming while carrying a flaming pan. He had started a grease fire and badly burned himself trying to run it outdoors.

I once dreamed of a woman sitting on my bed talking to me about the tests I was doing at school, saying they were important. I described her to my grandmother as an older white woman wearing a turban, bald underneath, with a mole on her cheek. My grandmother brought out a photograph I had never seen before and asked if that was her. It was. She told me the woman was her great-grandmother, who had been dead for many years.

I was terrified of being alone and often believed I could see shadowy figures moving around. Mirrors have always unsettled me. Streetlights often seemed to go out when I walked beneath them. I can hear electricity, and sometimes the sound hurts my ears. Static shocks happen to me far more often than they seem to happen to most people.

Later in life, I knew both of my pregnancies would end early before doctors believed me. With my first child, I panicked at six months pregnant that we were almost out of time, and then I needed an emergency C-section at thirty-one weeks. With my second, I repeatedly told doctors I believed my water had broken early. They kept saying everything was fine until an ultrasound showed there was no fluid left, and I was rushed into surgery at thirty-three weeks.

In the documentary The Secret Classroom, former students described unusual health and learning profiles, intense sensory experiences, memory gaps, the feeling of being watched, and obsessions with ancient history or mythology.² Much of that sounded painfully familiar to me.

I was not diagnosed with ADHD until my late twenties. Now, in my forties, I am realizing I am likely autistic as well. Like many girls, it was missed because girls were taught to behave, mask distress, and quietly adapt. I have struggled with mental illness since childhood, and despite being intelligent, executive functioning has often been difficult because of overload and chronic overwhelm.³

Why does any of this matter?

Because while many conspiracy theories are nonsense, some things once dismissed as impossible later proved true. Project MKULTRA was a real CIA program involving unethical experiments in behavior modification, hypnosis, drugs, and mind control.⁴ The Gateway Process, later examined in a declassified Army report, explored altered states of consciousness and audio-based methods designed to influence awareness.⁵

I do not know whether the government created these school programs or what they may have been looking for. I do know that many former students have started comparing notes and realizing how much they share in common, and how little some of it resembles a normal advanced class.

For most of my life, many things about me never made sense.

Since these memories returned, some of them finally do.

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References:

1.Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking, 2014).

2. The Secret Classroom

3. Devon Price, Unmasking Autism (New York: Harmony Books, 2022).

4. United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977).

5. U.S. Army Operational Group, Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process (1983), declassified CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.