I have been cosmically disquieted by HELLIER, a reality tv documentary following Greg and Dana Newkirk to a small town plagued with strange occurrences. The second season premiered this year and both seasons are now streaming on Amazon Prime or on the Hellier website.
I am a paranormal geek but wouldn't categorize myself as a ghost hunter. I like to visit eerie places reported to be haunted, and anytime I travel, a detour to a mysterious place somehow ends up on the itinerary. I've been around the world to Iceland, Ireland, Italy, China, Mexico, Canada, and all over the United States in search of something scary. I didn't come face to face, literally, with the unexplained until I lived in San Francisco. (I wrote an article about that experience for Gayly Dreadful this past June.)
I've also watched a lot of the ghost hunter tv shows, read a library of spooky books, and studied the paranormal. The Hellier series however introduced me to concepts I've never come across, and while it's not a terrifying show, it's certainly disturbing.
The premise revolves around paranormal investigator Greg Newkirk who gets a cryptic email detailing a horde of small goblins that seem to be coming out of a nearby mine to terrorize a rural Kentucky family. After some exchanges the person sending the email disappears, so Newkirk gathers a group of investigators to document the phenomena in Hellier, Kentucky. What they find is a much larger mystery.
The show explores a variety of concepts including alien cyphers, occultist methods to contact aliens, the mammoth cave system under Kentucky that could have ties to the goblins, aliens, the Mothman, the Flatwoods monster, and perhaps even Bigfoot. But it gets stranger.
Newkirk introduces viewers to synchromysticism which is rooted in Carl Jung's concept of synchronicities (meaningful coincidences with no causal relationship). Synchromysticism goes a step further and becomes a spiritual or metaphysical practice of recognizing deliberate patterns, and they are believed to be coming from divine or otherworldly sources. Whether these sources are God, angels, aliens or interdimensional "ultraterrestrials" is unknown. This leads some to hypothesize that UFOs may not necessarily be coming from outerspace but rather innerspace, a parallel universe that exists alongside ours. And wait until you hear about the alien abduction that could happen without you leaving the comfy chair you are sitting on right now.
Finally, there is the concept of "high strangeness" where phenomena happen during a specific timeframe and then suddenly stop. High strangeness could also be connected to a virus-like thought infection that spreads from susceptible host to host thus furthering and possibility fueling future phenomena. The more open you are to the experience, the higher probability that you are a compatible host to carry the infection forward. For example, I'm spreading this story like gospel so I have been afflicted in some way just by watching the tv series. Is this the end goal of the phenomena? This is all very entertaining and unsettling, and I cannot stop thinking about it. The day I finished the last episode of Hellier Season 2, I stumbled upon a story from our local tv station who reported that the Pentagon would soon be revealing some findings about UFOs. This may be the first official statement about life outside Earth and what the Pentagon calls "aerial phenomena." Adjust your tin hats – it may be a bumpy ride.
The Hellier show has cracked open my mind like a walnut, and once these ideas get in, it's difficult to shake them. Since the show, I have identified possible instances of my own synchronicities. I've seen unidentified things in the sky (I live within a mile of Moffett Field, which is said to be a repository for UFOs). I've noted recurring micro moments of high strangeness involving a weird pitch I can hear followed by distance voices or music. 2020 has made me a believer in the impossible. An unimaginable global pandemic has infected nearly 30 million people, killed almost a million people, and permanently changed our way of life. Record-breaking wildfires have engulfed the Western U.S. turning skies to apocalyptic red-orange and creating smoke clouds that rain ash. Hundreds of thousands of birds are dropping dead out of the sky over White Sands, NM. And on and on. These are the most bizarre times – and then Hellier came along.
Hellier investigators Dana and Greg Newkirk run The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult and they are hosting PHENOMENACON, the first-ever online paranormal conference this weekend. There will be 40 hours of paranormal talks, movies, Q&A and music for $15. To get in, sign up for a membership on their Patreon page and that's it. Please note: Patreon has recurring monthly charges so if you only want to attend the con and not be charged another $15 for October, make sure to cancel your membership before September 30. The program looks fascinating!
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