Given Netflix’s notoriously secret ratings info, we may never know how many people actually watched Stranger Things over the summer. But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we do know that members of the Department of Energy were watching—and, according to a stack of released e-mails, they had a lot to say about the “sinister (yet awesome)” way their organization was portrayed. It’s worth noting that D.O.E. employees, like the rest of us, have spoiler concerns.

If you thought that the Upside Down monster, Winona Ryder’s haircut, or the cartoonish 80s bullies were the real villains of Stranger Things, then that means you’ve conveniently forgotten Matthew Modine’s evil D.O.E. employee, Dr. Martin Brenner, and his nefarious experiments at the fictional Hawkins Lab. Brenner and his tentacle-y impact on the plot prompted one D.O.E. employee, Paul Lester, to write a defensive post on the Energy.gov site titled “What Stranger Things Didn’t Get Quite-So-Right About the Energy Department.” Tongue firmly in cheek, he wrote that the D.O.E. “doesn’t mess with monsters.”

Perhaps inspired by that post, Free Beacon journalist Lachlan Markay decided to employ the Freedom of Information Act, which gives U.S. citizens the right to access information from the federal government in order to unearth all mentions of Stranger Things in official D.O.E. e-mails. One such exchange, kicked off by this Business Insider reaction to Lester’s original Energy.gov post, reveals a bunch of D.O.E. employees were afraid to have the adventures of Eleven and her boy gang spoiled for them.

According to the dates on these e-mails, Stranger Things had already been out for over 20 days when this spoiler fretting occurred. You have to act quick on those Netflix shows, guys! Have you never heard of bingeing?

But a slightly deeper dive into the D.O.E.’s conversations about Stranger Things reveals something that might make a twitchy Winona Ryder even more paranoid. No, the real D.O.E. might not mess with monsters, or try to fool you into thinking your missing son is dead by dumping a shockingly lifelike cotton-stuffed dummy into a reservoir. But they cannot truthfully claim that they’ve never created weapons or experimented on humans subjects (like Eleven). Some of the details are redacted, but the sentences that remain are unsettling enough.

“There is some really eyebrow-raising stuff in the history of the atomic energy commission,” the D.O.E.’s John Larue writes. Oh, indeed. But all the spoilerphobic and slightly sinister (yet awesome) information revealed in these e-mails doesn’t seem to be ruffling any feathers over at the D.O.E. itself. Shifting the focus off their department, the D.O.E. press staff turned the conversation to a subject they know will draw attention. That’s right: it’s Barb.

The distraction seems to have worked! When Markay wrote up his report, it was the Barb comment that made the headline. So now if, as rumored, Matthew Modine’s Dr. Brenner returns for Season 2, he knows how to throw those nosy bike-riding kids off his scent. Just toss a moldering Barb (or a cotton-stuffed dummy of Barb?) in their path. They’ll be so busy chasing their tails and muttering “Justice for Barb!” that Brenner can get away clean.