The Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story Behind AMC's "Dispatches From Elsewhere"!

If you haven’t been watching "Dispatches From Elsewhere", you may want to start now.

In the new series, led by Jason Segel, four strangers in Philadelphia find their lives irrevocably intertwined after stumbling into a “puzzle hiding just beyond the veil of everyday life.” Peter (Segal) is drawn into the scavenger hunt-like game hosted by the cult-like Jejune Institute and its perplexing leader Octavio Coleman Esq. (Richard E. Grant), which demands participants complete a number of outlandish tasks to continue on.

The Institute promises that this expansive experiment will bolster human potential by bringing participants into the story and letting them impact how it unfolds.

But it’s not as outlandish as you may think -- it turns out the reality-bending game is real!

In 2008, an alternate reality scavenger hunt enlisted thousands of players in San Francisco to take part. Fliers handed out around the city prompted people to visit a website and eventually led them all to the same office building to begin the game. The experiment, called the Games of Nonchalance, lasted for three years and was created by Jeff Hull as a so-called art installation that endeavored to empower people and bring them together to uncover the secrets behind everyday reality.

The game may be real, but the cultish Jejune Institute and its founder are both made up mechanisms of this alternate reality designed by Jeff Hull. He also enlisted businesses and actors to become part of the game and hid clues in the most mundane of places, transforming the city into a treasure map.

Spencer McCall’s 2013 documentary, The Institute, explores the enchanting and sometimes dangerous web that The Games of Nonchalance wove. It’s what inspired Segal to tell the story again through "Dispatches from Elsewhere". It’s a stranger-than-fiction story that has us glued to our chairs.

"Dispatches From Elsewhere" airs Sundays 10/9c on AMC.