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By: Kristen Anderson

When’s the last time you felt really and truly moved by something you watched? So much so that you started devouring everything you could about it or what it ignited in you, loading up your wishlist of books and spending hours on the internet finding more, more, more? 

For a select group, it was when they laid eyes on Hellier. A documentary series from the creators of The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult, it may have started out about goblins but—please don’t stop reading—it turned into so much more.

The elevator pitch for Hellier is hard to nail. The CliffsNotes that I’ve given before is that it’s about a group of friends and paranormal researchers who receive a strange email about the presence of goblins in Hellier, Kentucky, and they go and follow up on the claims. (There’s an infamous precedent for goblin sightings in the state—see the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter—so any self-respecting investigator would naturally go and check things out). They don’t find what they were expecting (which wasn’t goblins, p.s.,), and end up going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, chasing coincidences—OR ARE THEY?—that pop up and investigating them just to see what happens.

And stuff happens, alright. Explorations of caves, extraterrestrial communication experiments using technology you’ve probably never heard of, rituals, rites and magick with a k. It’s fascinating and fun to watch them explore and, more than that, play. They take it seriously, but not deadly so. If you’re someone who’s into theory and thought around what might be weird out there, you’ll be into it. If you’ll be frustrated that it’s not driving toward a solid, provable conclusion, it might not be your thing.

They’re not going to find a goblin. They’re not even going to fake having found a goblin. And that’s what sets Hellier apart and engages so many people.

Obviously, there are a lot of paranormally-minded people out there who are on an “It’s the journey, not the destination” trip, and Hellier is opening their minds to more and more possible roads to go down. The crew Dana Newirk, Greg Newkirk (they’re married), Karl Pfeiffer, Conor Randall, and Tyler Strand have the ability to put their critical “Nah” brains aside selectively, allowing themselves to indulge in childlike curiosity about what their adult brains might say is impossible. Their credo is “curiosity over fear,” and it might as well also be, “Why the hell not?” “Why not try?” or “Why not look?”

A lot of people take them up on it. Part of what’s unique about Hellier is that, despite the sometimes heady material, the crew doesn’t talk down to you—they invite you to rise to their level rather than explaining everything to death, and there’s a community that meets them there. It led to the organization of a GoodReads list of books mentioned in the show and a community of reawakened occult practitioners, many aided by Dana’s Magic of the Month Club. 

Of course, not everyone is a fan—there are people that are annoyed at the lack of straightforwardness. UFOlogy in particular is a field where a lot of people are fighting for respect and validation, and some think that bringing magical thinking into the mix hurts the cause. Beyond that, there are viewers who were annoyed that they feel they were promised goblins that never appeared. But rather than let that get them down, the Hellier team saw that as another opportunity for those who “get it” to unify, turning their “No Goblins, [One Star]” review parody t-shirt into a popular piece of merch for fans to show off. The group of weird kids proudly sitting at the same lunch table.

I think part of what leads fans to have such strong feelings about the show is how relatable and accessible it is. We’re watching normal dorks who are super interested in something pursue it by foot and by car, just like almost any of us could—as Greg has said before, just “put down the remote [and] pick up a flashlight.” It’s easy to put yourself in the shoes of the team.

A team is literally, actually accessible. The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult has a super-active Patreon community where Greg and Dana livestream almost weekly, often joined by other members of the Hellier crew. It creates a family feel to not only the documentary but their ongoing exploits, which they let the community in on—with the understanding that they’re getting insider info that may wind up in future seasons of Hellier. After all, a long-private Patreon livestream ended up playing an important role in season two. Not only is there some part of it that might be for you, YOU might be part of it.

Synchronicity, the idea of meaningful coincidences put forth by psychiatrist Carl Jung, plays a big role in Hellier. So do interconnectedness and the collective consciousness theory, the idea that there’s one well of understanding that we all can occasionally dip a toe into. Based on that, there’s a moment in the show that posits that the audience is part of what’s happening in a very real way, during a moment with Karl that stops just short of being a “Perhaps YOU may be able to help solve a mystery” parody of Robert Stack at the end of Unsolved Mysteries.

Other topics of high strangeness (a term for the bizarre and otherworldly) are discussed in the private Patreon group, and almost all roads lead back to Hellier and what’s referred to as the phenomena: the source of all that strangeness. It’s theorized that it all basically comes from one place, meaning that every weird thing you experience is unified. Meaning that everyone who experiences it or seeks it is unified, too. It's a comforting thought in these times of separateness.

On one level, Hellier is just a wild ride for people interested in the supernatural. But it also may be a source of some of the things we’re sorely lacking right now—community, open-mindedness, connection and optimism. “Curiosity over fear?” Come on, yes, please. If that comes with a side of goblins, all the better.