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We’ve had Greg and Dana Newkirk from The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult on the show several times before and they’ve always got great stories, whether they’re talking about the beautiful story of how they met or reminiscing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We’ve hung out with them at numerous paranormal conventions and enjoyed their work.
So when the webseries Hellier came out last year, it was exciting. First of all, the series looked amazing. Director Karl Pfeiffer opted for a classic cinematic documentary style instead of the paranormal reality show style that we’ve been used to for the past decade and a half. It’s much more Errol Morris than Zak Bagans.
The Hellier Goblin
The first series was a slow deliberate blow-by-blow investigation into a series of emails that Greg Newkirk received in 2012 from a Kentucky man who said that goblins were emerging from a cave on his property. Greg sat on it for a long time, but eventually he and his wife Dana joined forces with paranormal researchers Connor Randall and Karl Pfeiffer who used to do paranormal investigations at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, as well as paranormal adventurer Tyler Strand, who took a job at Mammoth Cave to help with the production and is just about as fearless as they come.
In the end, the team didn’t get any goblins on video, so the people looking for a big reveal were disappointed. Most of the excitement happened through “synchronicities”, however, I applaud them for not making anything up. It still was an interesting methodical look into a paranormal investigation that used everything from tarot readings to “The Estes Method” (a mashup of a spirit box and the ganzfeld technique) in trying to discover the other side.
So, a year later, the adventure begins again as the team goes out to investigate more questions that were left hanging at the end of the first season. Expanding on the connections they found in Hellier to the original Mothman case in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, they start searching for how the mysterious Indrid Cold, who features prominently in John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies book might figure into their research. Their investigation leads them further down that rabbit hole and eventually deep into the Mammoth Cave.
Hellier 2 launched exclusively on Amazon Prime on Friday November 29th and it’s streaming on all services free starting on December 13th. We’ve watched several episodes that they’ve sent to the press and it still looks as amazing as ever. With the natural conversation segments, it often feels more like an episode of The Office than Ghost Hunters. But it’s that documentary-style and lack of flashy jump cut gotcha moments that make it feel much more real. It’s like a slice of life, albeit a slice of a weirdo’s life.
I’m not sure if we’re gonna get those goblin money shots in episodes 6-10 (they only sent the first five episodes for press review), but the fact that they’re not teasing us...
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“A certain number of people, good honest working folk, had seen something—something unusual. Something scary. Something hairy that relished pavement patty dinners!”
That was the caption underneath the cartoon of an upright wolf eating roadkill that ran in the December 29th, 1991...
Published 12/25/21
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Hello, dear listener! It’s been a bit since we published a “traditional episode” of this audio podcast, and we want you to know that we’re still here and we’re still at it!This episode is a quick “hello” and a little retrospective of what has gone on in our world since the last episode...
Published 12/22/21