About the project
In 2012, Greg Newkirk received an email from a man calling himself David Christie, who claimed that he and his family were being terrorized by unearthly creatures by night. After exchanging emails, David disappeared. For the next five years, the case only got stranger, as more connections and mysterious emails came in. Then, in 2017, Greg and a team of researchers traveled to rural Kentucky, not knowing what they would uncover, or how deep they would discover the case might go.
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That was the premise of the five-part first season of Hellier, a paranormal documentary series and true labor of love from all those involved. The first season was put together on a shoestring budget with only the collection of prosumer DSLR cameras that the director, Karl Pfeiffer, and his friends could assemble.
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But Hellier didn't stop there. Despite spending hundreds of hours in the editing bay and releasing season one to much acclaim in January of 2019, the team continued to research and explore, and the case only blossomed. After thousands of miles of driving, months of research and filming, Hellier returned just 10 months later, in November of 2019, with a second season run of ten full-length episodes.
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Like season one, Hellier Two was completely self-funded, almost entirely with the money that Hellier Season One made. Due to that modest boost, Karl upgraded his equipment in order to better embrace the cinematic feel that made season one so compelling to many viewers, while still remaining entirely self-produced.
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Many on the team sacrificed television offers of starring roles, or development deals based on the goblins story. But it was worth it, they agreed. The story was too good and too special for Greg and Dana to give over creative control. The project was the perfect opportunity to do something truly novel and groundbreaking in the otherwise stagnant paranormal television space: make something bigger than just being scary and shallow, something wondrous, something artistic and cerebral, something that doesn't shy away from the truly bizarre, something that moves at a different pace.
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They made the show they'd always wanted to see. And they hoped that many out there wanted the same thing.
"Combined, Hellier seasons one and two cost less than a tenth of the budget of a single episode of a traditional paranormal reality show."
About donating
1) To get this to as many people as possible.
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2) To do our best to continue to get to the heart of this ongoing, mind-bending, globe-spanning mystery no matter where it takes us.
3) To make something beautiful, intelligent, exciting, and wondrous, as high a quality as possible.
Despite Hellier being completely self-funded, we wanted to get these episodes out to you, the viewer, without anything in the way. No paywalls. No subscriptions. No pay-per-download. But this project took hundreds of hours to complete and a bit of help goes a long way to improve our work and make it easier to bring more content like this to you. Cameras, lenses, mics, travel costs, rentals, insurance, licenses, software, hardware, web-hosting, domain names, and digital storage all add up quickly, especially while trying to stay competitive in a creative world that's demanding higher quality every year.
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Our goals are:
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The best way to do all of that is to continue to re-invest in the project, in better equipment and more time on the road, which unfortunately isn't always cheap. And, sadly, our residual percentage on revenue from Prime and YouTube are being cut down every few months by the powers that be.
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Which is to say, If you would like to donate, it would mean the world to us.
cast and crew
GREG NEWKIRK (Executive Producer, Cast) is one of the world’s only full-time paranormal researchers, and has spent the last two decades tracking down and investigating cases of the strange and the supernatural, and conducting groundbreaking research on everything from alien abduction phenomena to poltergeist hauntings. Greg is also the co-founder of the Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult, the world’s only mobile museum of the unexplained, and his work in the fields of cryptozoology, parapsychology, and paranormal research has seen him featured on hit shows like Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum and Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot.
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DANA NEWKIRK (Executive Producer, Cast) is a practicing hedgewitch with well over two decades of experience in seeking out the strangest cases of the unexplained. Dana began her career by forming the first-ever all-female paranormal investigation team in the late 90s, the subject of SPACE’s Girly Ghosthunters series. In 2013, she co-founded the Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult, for which she serves as head curator. When she’s not conjuring up conversations with phantoms on hit television shows like TLC’s Kindred Spirits or Destination America’s Paranormal Lockdown, Dana can be found giving tarot readings, interactive lectures, and hands-on workshops to packed houses across the country, sharing her expertise on everything from divination, to conjure & rootwork, to practical magic.
KARL PFEIFFER (Director, Editor, Cast), has always been passionate about the mysterious, uncanny, and supernatural in the world around him. Riding the public interest in the late Aughts, he dove into ghost hunting while in college and appeared on Syfy's Ghost Hunters Academy and Ghost Hunters International. From there, he acted as the Resident Paranormal Investigator at the Stanley Hotel for five years. There, he directed and edited the webseries Spirits of the Stanley for the Dark Zone web network and conducted 250 investigations on the property. Of late, between his studies into mysticism in college and with his research into the stranger corners of the ghostly. he's expanded his focus into all aspects of the paranormal. He is also a portrait and conceptual photographer based out of Northern Colorado, and he's written two books.
CONNOR JAMES RANDALL (Co-Producer, Cast, Score) is a musician and paranormal researcher. When he's not working his seasonal job at the Colorado State Capitol, he's often found touring the country and banging his drums in the downtown Denver scene with his punk-rock band, The Ghoulies. After harboring his own fascinations with all things mysterious and supernatural growing up, he applied to be a seasonal tour guide at the Stanley Hotel, a job which led him to both befriend Karl, and led to a permanent role as a Resident Investigator on the property. He was also featured in Spirits of the Stanley and, alongside Karl, became iconic for his work seemingly channeling spirits through their original viral experimental Spirit Box technique they dubbed The Estes Method.
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RASHAD SISEMORE (Camera Operator, Producer) is a photojournalist who also works in the Denver film and entertainment industry. Climbing through the ranks on set, he's worked as a Production Assistant, 2nd Assistant Camera, and sometimes as Director of Photography. He's done film and photojournalism work across the world, with his primary concentration and passion being the Middle East. Acting as a jack of all trades on the Hellier project, he brought his wealth of knowledge about the variety of demands and needs on location in order to consider and cover all bases of the project, quickly becoming an invaluable resource as the strangeness unfolded on the trip.
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TYLER STRAND (On-Camera Personality) is a Special Effects and makeup artist with a penchant for paranormal research and extreme adventuring. When he's not in the studio working on lifelike model representations of cryptids and paranormal creatures, he can be found searching deep underground for strange phenomena. After appearing briefly in a synchronistic phone call in season one, Tyler quickly became wrapped up in the case after venturing out on his own to a number of tangential locations as seen in season two. Tyler sculpted the goblin head seen in the promotional materials for season one, as well as the intro title credits for the series.
Production stills
