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 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 with them the whole time is refreshing. They never catch the Zodiac Killer by the end of Zodiac , but it’s still a great look into the mind of the investigators.

And we look into that investigator’s mind in this interview with Greg Newkirk, where we go in depth about:

• What made them want to dive back into the world of Hellier
• How did the first series change the investigative techniques of the second
• Have more synchronicities have popped up since the shooting ended?

And speaking of synchronicities, there’s a scene shot at the very point where the Stillwater, Minnesota ghost tour starts (which is a company I run, but they shot in the winter so there wasn’t a tour running at the time!) Not a synchronicity, but something awesome, is that you’ll also hear a couple of Sunspot songs on the soundtrack of Hellier 2 !

The first Hellier took the investigators onto a route inspired by John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies. One of the characters that shows up in that book is a strange self-proclaimed alien observer with a big smile named Indrid Cold. Early on in the new series, they talk to a the daughter of Woodrow Derenberger, a man who said he was stopped along the road by Indrid and then had contact with him over the next several years

Welcome to See You on the Other Mike, where the world of

the mysterious collides with the world of entertainment.

A discussion of art, music, movies, spirituality,

the weird and self discovery. And

now, your hosts, musicians and entertainers

who have their own weakness for the weird, Mike and

Wendy from the band Sunspot. Episode

275, Hellyer 2, The Quickening.

And, we got Greg Newkirk on with us today along

with Alison Jornland from milwaukeeghost.com and, of

course, Wendy Lynn. And we're gonna talk

about, the very cool new series that is,

you can check it out on Amazon Prime right now. In a couple weeks, you'll

be able to check it out on YouTube. Greg,

how you doing? We haven't had you on the podcast for a while. Man, I'm

I'm fantastic. I feel like I'm I'm ready to give birth

and, let all of this stress leave my

leave my life, the secrets I've been keeping for a year. Has your water broke

yet, Greg? Yeah. I

think I think it broke this morning. Oh,

dear. Excellent. Okay. Well,

thank you for that, image, Allison. Hey. You're welcome. Moving on.

So I gotta say that speaking of images, so, you know, as

we're watching Halyard and I gotta say, I felt this when I was looking at

the first season. As I'm watching it,

Greg, I'm just hating you

because it's so beautiful. Like, hey, Carl, not

me. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. That's what Greg

says. It really you know? And III was saying that to Carl. I'm like,

Carl, you you did a really brilliant job. This is so it's directed and

edited by Carl Pfeiffer, who is I mean, you see him every once

in a while in Hellyer, and he is 1 of the investigative team that consists

of, Greg and his wife, Dana,

Connor Randall, Carl Pfeiffer, and then, of course,

paranormal adventurer, Tyler Strand. Dear god, help us

all. Right. And but the thing is I'm watching this, and I'm like, oh my

god. I'm so jealous because it's so it just looks fantastic.

It it really it does not look like paranormal television.

Thank god. There's no, like, jump cuts or anything. There's nothing

like, you hear somebody's like, after the break, you're we're

gonna show you the shadow foot or something like that.

It's all I mean, it looks more like an episode, and this is gonna sound

weird, but, like, Mike Office, it looks like a documentary where

people are going out. It's it's it's much more Errol Morris than Zach Boggins,

and I think we can all appreciate that feeling. That one's going on the

poster. More Errol Morris than Zach

Boggins. I like that. Thank you. So, you know, what was kind of the

decision in the visual look of it, to

be more documentary like than,

like flash cut reality TV stuff? I mean, it's all very intentional.

The reason that Hellyer looks the way that it looks is is a 100% Carl

Pfeiffer. You know, he had a very distinct vision

when he set out to do this. He wanted to make something you know, 1

of the topics that we get into in season 2 is the idea of

of, liminality and the idea of existing

in in the middle. And that's sort of what Hellyer does because it makes

people confused. They see it and it's shot with an

anamorphic lens, cinema style, 24

frames a second. So when people watch it, they automatically feel

like they're watching a film. They don't understand sometimes subconsciously

they're watching AAA documentary. And so it adds this very

dreamlike feeling to Hellyer because the the

whole investigation for us feels very dreamlike. So it's very

intentional. And and part of the reason is we wanted to make the

antithesis of a paranormal reality show. We wanted to make something that

was beautiful and, introspective.

And the the way that it's filmed and the score,

all of that has a lot to do with making people feel that as they

watch it. I think you can definitely tell that. And, it's funny you're

talking about the dreamlike quality of cinema, you know,

versus, you know, things shot on video. And so I guess

the difference we explain it really quick to people. So film has a

different look than video. So when you go see a movie, you're seeing something at

24 frames a second, and you're seeing something with

millions of lines of resolution versus when you're looking at

video, you're looking at 30 frames a second and maybe

6 40 lines of resolution for old,

TV and now 101,080, like, newer,

newer HD videos. And so it's like when you're looking

at a football footage, just take for example, a lot of people have seen, like,

you're watching a football game. Even in HD, there's a very live feeling

to it. And you could be watching football highlights on

film from the day before, and it feels like it's a 100

years old. Like, am I watching a 19 sixties Super Bowl here? And it

it's it's just that that medium, it

helps us kind of create the context with which we watch it

from. And so I think that's kinda wanted to get into a little bit

of the decisions behind that, as you said, to give it a

more dreamlike aspect and create a context

where it's not just, well, it's it's not like

looking at, like, your paranormal team's footage. You know, we're not just watching your

paranormal teams, like, talking to the spirit box or whatever. We feel

like we're watching a movie of it. And, that's a that's

a really cool, choice, and I think that, that's kinda

what has set it apart so far. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there

there were a lot of, really distinct decisions. Like,

we didn't wanna use any night vision. There's there's a couple

bits of night vision in season 2 just purely out of necessity because it's

very difficult to shoot in a cave. So that was a big

deal. Yeah. We even we even had arguments about whether or not we should include

it. You know, we made a really an obvious decision that we didn't want night

vision. We didn't want it to look like other paranormal shows. You know, there's the

fact that it's shot widescreen. That's it's it's got a

cinema widescreen, which has been an absolute

pain, to to get things formatted and

have people watch it correctly, but it's it's worth it.

It looks gorgeous. And,

it's it's part of the purpose,

I think, of what we're trying to do because we're we're trying to present

ideas that aren't typically covered in paranormal television.

And we're I think to to put them in a wrapper

that looks a lot more serious and looks a lot more cinematic

allows people to maybe take those ideas a little more seriously. It's the same reason

I wear a suit when I do with the traveling museum. You know? I can

talk and say the craziest things. I can say Bigfoot's a ghost, and because I'm

wearing a tie, more people are gonna take me seriously than roll their eyes. Right.

That's because Bigfoot is a ghost. Of course. Well, we know that. Don't tell Lauren

Coleman that. He'll like like, I can feel, like, Lauren like, somewhere

in Maine right now, his ears perked up. He's

Mike, did those bastards just say he's not real?

No. He's real. He's just a ghost. For sure. But but, yeah, let's

talk about some of those ideas because, you know, the look, as

you said, it kind of, gets people

to be a lot more thoughtful and slower

in their approach to think about it rather than just to be, like,

jingoist and, like, wondering, like, what was that? You know?

Right. To to, you know, think about it. And I like how you,

kind of digest things that happen throughout the series.

And you, you know, there's a lot of scenes of you guys looking in

books. Which is Mike, oh my god. There's

books in No. Listen. The series. I mean, I I'm I'm saying

that's cool. No. Legit legitimately, 1 of the things

we're all a bunch of nerds. That's true. The

the 1 of the things that we're all proudest about with Hellyer, you

know, in particular, we saw this happen with the first season, is

so many people ran out and bought books because they wanted to

do their own research. They wanted to see what we were talking about. Well, there's

not a ton of hand holding in Hellyer. And because of that, we can

go, listen. Here's what we're talking about. Here's where we found out

about this. Here's where we read it. Check this book out. And so people have

put booklets together, and they're reading things they never would have normally

read because of it. And and if if if Hellyer accomplishes nothing

else but getting people to read really great books that I think are

are underread and underutilized in this field, success.

Forget the forget Oprah. Forget her book club. The Hellyer book

club. You are truly the LeVar Burton of the paranormal.

Yes. There's the the Hellyer book club is going to expand quite a

bit in season 2. There's, I mean, probably a dozen or or not

more, if not more, books that people are gonna have to go out and find

and, yeah, they're gonna have fun. Let's get people, like, caught

up. Maybe if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't seen

Hellyer yet, but you're interested, kinda let's get a little

bit of the cliff notes version of the story so,

that we can get some listeners who maybe aren't cool enough to have seen the

1st season yet, a chance to still get engaged

in the conversation. So, Greg, can you just give us your elevator

pitch on this? The the short version

is in 2012, I got an email from a

guy who said that there were little creatures coming out of a mine shaft on

the edge of his property in rural Kentucky. Yeah. It's totally normal

stuff. Right? And said that, the name of the town was

Hellyer, where this was all happening. And he said, I was given your

contact information by a man who goes by the name Terry

Wrist, Terry r Wrist. And said

he he said, you're well equipped to handle things like this. I would like you

to come down and help me handle this problem. He wanted to blow up the

mine, but he wanted somebody there to document all of

this. And I was, like, whatever. Of course

not. You know, we get weird emails from people all the time. It's just

the nature of what we do. And I just thought it was 1 of my

friends playing a prank on me because it went to a very weird email address

for my old defunct ghost hunting team that wasn't very serious.

And I said, well, listen. If you want us to do this, you're

gonna have to send us some evidence. You know, prove prove to us that this

is happening. I was living in Canada at the time, and I

wasn't about to travel to rural Kentucky. Right.

And then the guy sent photographs, these really weird photographs of

3 toed footprints, photographs of what he said were the creatures

themselves, and they were really compelling.

I I showed them to my Bigfoot Hunter friends because they were the only people

I knew that would know anything about weird footprints. And they

said, I don't know. I might take this more seriously because

these things have dermal ridges on them. And I said,

okay. Let's take it seriously. Let's go. Okay. Let's okay.

For somebody who, let's say, does not know what a dermal ridge is. Sure. So

you're Well, this is finger fingerprints for your feet. Yes. There you go.

Bingo. Exactly. And and they're they're notoriously difficult

to fake. And so because of that, I said, okay. That's

the straw. Let's go. Let's let's check this out. And then this

guy, David, disappears. Tried to get in touch with him a bunch

of times. Couldn't get any response back. And I thought, okay. Well, whatever. Let it

go. Years later, 2,000,

it was Mike 2014, 2015,

something like that, we had moved to Cincinnati and realized that this

town Hellier was only, I don't know, 3 and a half, 4 hours

away from us. And Dana and I were testing our new vehicle

that we just purchased. And I said, you know what? Let's go out there. Let's

see if we can just just get a feel for this. See if this thing

could have actually happened. And we visited this town Hellyer,

and we went, oh, wow. If this was gonna happen anywhere, it was gonna happen

here. The whole town had a very strange vibe to it. We were interviewing

locals who were like, oh, yeah. There's weird stuff that happens around here all the

time. We even found a house that looked like it would

have been where all of this went down. I mean, it it fit

it checked every single box. And it had been abandoned. If you look at

it, it looks like it's been abandoned just as long as this guy

had gone missing. And after that, we'd

made plans. We're, like, okay. This was a successful this was a successful trip. We're

gonna come out. We're gonna take this seriously. And then after that, we got

invited to do an episode of Finding Bigfoot, and everything that we

had done just sort of blew up, and we never had a chance to go

back and check this out again. And we just let it languish. In

2017, Carl Pfeiffer heard a old

podcast I had done talking about this case, and he

experienced this just tons of synchronicities around it so much

so that he said, I think we're supposed to do this. I

think we're being led to go and check this out. And I went, no

way. I was like, I I don't wanna invest all this time and energy

into doing this project. Like, dude, do you really think we're gonna find goblins?

And he was like, it doesn't matter. We're supposed to go and do this. So

we thought we were gonna go shoot an hour long documentary about this guy who

had goblins running around his yard, and it turned into something much

bigger, much stranger. You know, I did not anticipate

there would be a a second season, much less a 10 episode second season,

but it's insane. Yeah. And you got a renewal order with more episodes.

Yeah. If anyone renewed us, it's the phenomena, I

think. So you guys were, you know, at the kind of the end

of Hellyer 1. What like you said, you

didn't think that you were gonna go back into it. And plus, you had to

bring out because so if you guys are in the Cincinnati area, you're not that

far from Kentucky. No. But Connor and Carl live

in Denver or the other side of the country. Yeah. I mean, which

is a lot longer of a drive. Like, if you live in the East Coast

area, anywhere around the Midwest, you can pretty much get most places in 8 to

12 hours. But Right. When you're going out past the Rocky

Mountains, forget about it. So this is a major production

for him. Yeah. And and, I mean, I think that that speaks to how

much we felt compelled to do this project. You know, we love working with

Carl. We've got other projects in the work with him. But the fact that we

were so compelled to do another season of this, I

think shows that there's something really weird going on here

because, you know, we always Mike, we went looking for goblins

in season 1, and we found a tin can. Like, that was the climax.

Right? So so we didn't expect that we were gonna do

a second season based on that, but it's

it's crazy. The things that happen are so

undeniably weird, we didn't really have a choice. You know? But the fact

the thing is I mean, those are people who are going into

expecting to see the money shot at goblins or whatever. Like,

I feel that, that would have been

like, with the Internet the way it is Right. Like, people would have just grabbed

that last the the shot of goblins from the YouTube video, and that would

have been the story all over anywhere. Right. It would have been headline news on

every channel too. Yeah. For sure. Or or it wouldn't have been because it would

have been fake. Right. You know what I mean? Like, very obviously fake.

And I feel Mike the the thing with Hellyer and part of the reason

why we're so passionate about doing it the way we're doing it

is there's a lot of people who are very upset we did not find any

goblins. But they're only upset because they've been trained to

believe that they're going to get something like

that with these shows. You know, they expect it to be

normally, I wouldn't single a show out, but I I feel fine singling out Mountain

Monsters where they you know, every single week,

somebody, literally, there's an episode where sheeps watch pees

acid pee on 1 of their faces. That if you're

expecting that, I'm sorry. You

don't live in the real world. Right. I mean,

modern monsters. God. I Well, I mean It's horrible.

Sorry. Quentin Tarantino changed the end of World War

2 for 1 of his movies to give his character

revenge. You know? So I think it's it's that idea. You

know, Zodiac is still a good movie. Robert Downey junior does not catch

the Zodiac killer. Right. Like, spoiler,

for a 45 year old case.

Right. But the idea is, I think, that seeing

the blow by blow methodology of the investigation

is what keeps you interested and the different paranormal experiments

that you try. Mhmm. Yeah. Let's talk about some of those experiments.

Yeah. III1 of the things that we wanted to do, again, trying to be the

antithesis of a lot of paranormal reality shows, we didn't wanna

use, you know, the k 2 meters and things like that. I think the closest

we get to that is the use of an SP7 spirit box. But the way

that we use it, I hate ghost boxes. I can't

stand them. I think yeah. Exactly.

And and there's I have a practical reason for not liking them,

which is, when you're in an investigation and

somebody breaks 1 of those out, I feel Mike they're extremely stressful to be

around. They're they're they're extremely stressful. And if we really do

believe that a lot of what we experience with the paranormal is intention based

and, like, feeling based, putting yourself in that kind of a

stressful environment, I don't think does anything good any investigation you're

on. You're starting to to track into the territory where people wanna fight

ghosts, and I don't feel like feeling aggressive. Have you been to Zach Baggins

Museum yet? I want to so bad, but I haven't. He's got a room

where the spirit box is cranked up through a PA. It's like

you walk in. Like, if you think it's stressful on an investigation, wait till

it's blasting at you at 96 decibels. But I think that's,

like, that's the sneaky part of those things is because they put everyone

on edge when they're already scared. And so doing

that in a big group setting, number 1, you've got people you've got that weird

group bias that you get where somebody says, it's it said get out

when it probably only heard like, sounded like that for 1 person.

But then everybody agrees because it's they're already moved on by that point. So you

have that, and then you have the fact that it makes people really on edge,

which is not a great thing if you're trying to have a conversation with

something or someone. Right? You don't wanna feel on edge because that just makes

you cranky. Mike them cranky, probably. So

the way that that Carl and Connor developed the Estes method, which

was using, an s b 7 with a set of

headphones and a blindfold, double blinding this, and

basically turning someone into a a technologically assisted

medium, like a channeler, I think is fascinating. And that made me

change my opinion on the use of 1 of these things, because I think what's

happening there isn't so much Connor would disagree

with me on this. I'll put this out there. And I think it's because Connor's

psychic, and he doesn't wanna admit it. He would disagree with me.

He thinks that it's just down to being a really good listener, which I think

is true, but I also believe that there is a psychical element that's happening

there. I think that that noise is giving the conscious mind

something to do while the subconscious mind is able to slip in these

psychic impressions. Because some of the conversations that you're having with the person

that can't hear or see you, it just should not happen.

Absolutely should not happen. And so that's fascinating to me,

and that's the type of stuff that we try to do in Hellyer.

Well, in interesting. You you talk about the Estes method, and that is

a particularly fun part of the, of the program

when you you know, because it's always going to be a good visual

when somebody's blindfolded and it's dark. Oh, okay. Yeah. And

so that's part of the fun. But at the same time, you know, the

Gonsfeld procedure where this this kind of, you know,

takes its inspiration from, now that's

what if you guys out there have ever seen somebody with

the head Mike, the ping pong balls on their eyes at the same time.

Season 1. Greg, you did that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do it in season

1. That's it's using it's also a lot of

times, they'll use white noise in in the Ganzfeld to

completely cut out any kind of hearing cues that they could

get when you're trying to receive psychic messages, which

is the the basis of it. And what's cool

there, I think, is that now the spirit box even so

let's say the spirit box doesn't even say any words or whatever. It still serves

as that white noise Absolutely. That they use in the that they, you know, they

use in the experiment. And so it may be

somebody's not even you know, like, the the messages that they're hearing from the

radio, the, you know, kind of thing,

that could be just them receiving a message in their head and and saying it

out loud. Absolutely. And the ganzfeld,

to you nonbelievers out there, that's where

most of the experiments that have shown

psychic like, telepathic powers at least beating chance.

Nobody's sitting there and, like, saying, like, okay. I did the ganzfeld,

and, I was able to talk to my dead grandma kind of thing. But

in in the guessing game of experiments, it has it almost

always beats chance, which is,

significant. Right. Statistically significant, and that's what we

use for scientific evidence. Yeah. In terms of, you know, raising

your psychic awareness. So, Greg, you know, what I liked about, you

know, you incorporating stuff like the Ganzfeld is

because, you know, I I think, in a lot

of paranormal TV, you don't see paranormal

TV that often informed by parapsychology.

No. No. I mean, if they do huge divide. If they do,

they're getting it very wrong. So 1 of the things that we use

in season 2 is we use, a god helmet, a version of

the god helmet that was developed by Todd Murphy with doctor Michael

Persinger from Laurentian University up in Canada. It's the only

yeah. It's the only lab like like,

non lab version of the god helmet that exists.

You wouldn't know that if you watch paranormal TV, though, because

there are people saying that they have god helmets when their their their

electromagnets that are in, like, a

Optimus Prime mask. Okay. Actually, this is a good opportunity.

Could you explain the God Helmet for the uninitiated? I can

give you a very, basic Sure. People should go and read the

research on this because it's fascinating. But the God Helmet was something that was

developed, late seventies, early eighties, by a guy

by the name of Stan Koren and doctor Michael Persinger.

They were doing research on religious experiences,

and they believed that religious experiences were being

triggered by places with weird electromagnetic

fields. So they built, they built

a device in a motorcycle helmet that has

it gives very low magnetic pulses,

through different hemispheres of the brain. And and the the magnets are

not dangerous. They're just regular magnets, and they they give

off pulses that are not even as strong as your hairdryer.

What makes it work is the chirp signals. So the way

that they pulse, they're patented. And what they do

is they there's a couple different versions that they run. They have 1

that's specific for psychic testing, and psychic

enhancement, and then they have another 1 that's literally just to

create, the sensed presence experience or religious

experience. And it just kinda pumps these complex

magnetic signals through different hemispheres of the

brain, in a way that confuses the

brain's they call it the binding factor of consciousness. It confuses

that because the brain is electric. It runs on electric,

signals. So that can corrupt called the electric slide.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Right there.

Science. And and it it interrupts that.

And when it does that, you know, it's Mike 90% of the brain's

processes are inhibitory. So they're to keep data out to

keep us from going nuts. So what this does is this

interrupts that and starts to let more data in.

And sometimes that data is very interesting and significant. So when they use

these with remote viewers Mike Ingo Swan, they would

notice that their hits would go way up. That's the

type of thing that we were interested in doing, with some of the

experiments we try in season 2. But you have people out

there who are saying they have god helmets when they're actually using

electromagnets. They're not ever electromagnets, probably

giving people brain cancer. And and

and they don't have those chirp signals, so they're just making

up. Sorry.

I got really heated there for a second. They're making crap up.

Don't make me come over there, Greg. You know what I'm capable of. That's

true. So the helmet was originally

devised to try to sort of, like, reverse engineer the experience that people

were having in these you were saying, like, more religious areas? Right.

So so they they they find that in a lot of places that have where

people go for pilgrimages and people have religious experiences

or even haunted houses, which we know as people who are paranormal investigators,

they have weird electromagnetic things going on in them. And

those things they truly believe were affecting the brain, and they have a lot of

data to back up. That's probably what's happening, which is interesting to

me because when you look at people on ghost hunting

television, they are using k 2 meters to follow ghosts

around. But the thing is the ghosts probably are not

the electromagnetic fields. The electromagnetic fields are what allow

you to see the ghosts. So if you can create those

anywhere, you can see them anywhere. Anywhere can be haunted. We

are haunted, not the places. Oh, a lot of ex girlfriends would say that

about me. For sure. So it's

exciting that you guys got like, how did you guys get a, like, non

lab god helmet for the thing? We wrote to Todd Murphy. And he's

Mike We we just we talked to a parapsychologist

Alright. Which no 1 does. Yeah. It's literally down to just

doing the research and asking. Like, you know, he charges for it, but

it's you they're they're available. They're publicly

available. You can get these things, but no one's actually

doing it. Yeah. That that that's really sad, but,

illuminating Yeah. Because, you know, there are a lot of

parapsychologists out there that, you know, let me just say it, would like to

be at some of the conferences. You know? Listen. Listen.

It's true. It's true. But this is another this is part of why I think

Hellyer's important. Yeah. There's a divide because

parapsychologists don't typically speak in terms that people who watch

ghost hunting television will understand or find entertaining. So we're

trying to walk a very thin line between taking these

higher concepts that that we're interested in, and I think

to further the field, we need to do more research on,

and trying to boil them down into a way where where the general

public can look at this and go, wow. I never heard of that. That I

never exist I'd never existed in my world. What do I have to read to

find out more about that? So we're we're hoping to again, that

idea of a liminal space, being right in between 1 foot in and 1

foot out, is really what we're trying to do with Hellyer. The focus on

synchronicities and finding connections in places, I mean,

that's kind of when you talk about the liminal space,

That that period of in between is often where we can make

connections between different things, that we

normally would ignore. So what would you

say, maybe going from the first season to the

second 1, what were the a couple of the biggest

synchronicities that, you know, that compelled you

and that started leading the investigation even before the camera started rolling?

Oh, boy. I have to be careful how I answer this. I mean, this will

be out after season 2 is out, but you guys haven't seen the back

half of it yet. No. I haven't seen 6 to 10. So, like,

Mike, what is maybe what is something that kinda launched it there in the first

5 episodes? So what 1 of the interesting things about

Hellyer is, the the second season in particular,

we started shooting it long before the first season was out.

And so, you know, people saw the end of the first season with the little

email ding that pops up, and they go, that that's a cute way to end

it. And the whole time, we're going, no. You don't understand. Like, this is a

prologue. This is this is there's more to

this. And there were a lot of really weird

synchronicities that happened with those emails that came

in. Those came in the night

that our friend Tyler was getting prepared to go

to check out the GPS coordinates that were in the first batch of weird emails.

That was something that we hadn't gone and done in the first season, and Tyler

really wanted to follow-up on this and was going alone. So the fact that those

came in when they came in, I would I would call it synchronicity for sure,

and then there's some stuff that happens in the back half

that I we're at the point now

which people will see when they see the 2nd season. The things that are

happening are so undeniable. It's hard to even call

them synchronicities anymore because people get to

experience these things in real time. I still don't really know what

to think of them other than it truly feels like there's some

other force pushing us along a path. It really does feel that

way, more so than ever. And I think they're the the synchronicities

are far more stunning than they were in the first season. I don't know if

that's just because we've been in it longer,

or if we're doing the right things. I don't know.

Well, I I'm certainly excited. When I was watching the first episode,

and they talked about Tyler exploring things on his own, He goes up to

Stillwater. This is it's in the first episode. I don't want to spoil anything particular,

but he goes to Stillwater, Minnesota. Yeah. And where he's

shooting is right at the

beginning point of the Stillwater ghost tour that I run.

No joke. That Stillwater Farm store, like, you can see right in the

background of his shooting, and it's it's exactly it's where the Stillwater ghost

tour is. Idea. That's incredible. And so I'm seeing this, and I'm

like, oh my god. I can't wait to see what happens now

because then we're gonna put it into the ghost tour. That's not

Oh, here I thought Mike was was saying, like, I'm getting sucked into

this. Oh, my god. I'm sorry.

It's like, oh, yeah. Let's see what, you know, whatever they find because then we

Mike love that. We could use it on the tour. But I was I could

he's like, oh, I'm gonna steal what I'm gonna send. I'm like, oh, yeah. Well,

there's the bridge, but also to find those connections to Point

Pleasant. And Weird. Right.

But the thing is Minneapolis had its own huge bridge collapse

about 13 years ago. That's right. Yeah. Kinda thing where

the I 35 we actually talk about that a little bit on the Minneapolis ghost

tour because people have had experiences

around the area where that bridge had collapsed in, in the mid

2000. And so, anyway, that was just a little thing right there that I was

all excited about. I'm like, oh, I hope they find something good.

I love it. Well, you know, I wanted to, touch

too, like, you talked about the 37th parallel. Mhmm.

And, you know, that's that was made popular

in a recent book, and it was a big, theory

from, Chuck Zukowski. Mhmm. And so it was interesting,

like, watching you connect the dots and make these lines

across the United States. And, you know, for

me, it's it's Mike, wow. How big could this phenomena

be? If if it if if it affects our, Stillwater

tour, what about our Puerto Rico tour? Yeah. Of course.

Absolutely. What other tours could we put some stories into? I I

think I that's a big part of of what we're

where things are are are going in the second season is

you start to see there's something bigger and stranger that's happening if

you just do the work to see it. And 1 of the things that Carl

starts to do is he starts to do all this work with the lines and

shows some really bizarre connections just making straight

lines between places that are significant to the case that we're working on.

And and the thing is, like, these these this is research

that other people have done, but no 1 has really picked up on. There's

actually a book called flying saucers in the straight line mystery,

by Amit Michel. And it

is literally about the statistical

anomalies following UFO sightings and about how they move in

straight lines. How do how do the Fae move?

They move in straight lines. What do you think is the biggest difference between the

1st season and the second season, Greg, in your

investigation, in the production, and, also, in,

has people's reaction to the 1st season changed how you guys approach

shooting number 2? We absolutely learned stuff from the 1st

season. Like I said, we didn't know what we were making when we made the

1st season. We thought we were making an hour long documentary. When Carl was

Mike, guys, this is a this is a series, I was

surprised. And then I saw it, and I got it. And I saw

what what he wanted to do with it. And we did. You know, we watched

this to see the way that people responded to the 1st season. And the first

season's really interesting because if you look, it has a solid middle of

the road 3 star review. Like, if you look at it, the 3 it

has a 3 star rating, which is Mike. But what's

really fascinating about that is the reason it has a 3 star rating.

50% of people rated it 1 star and said

there's no goblins. This is a waste of my Mike.

Which, sure, whatever. You're trained to to think that you're gonna get

goblins, so of course. But the other 40%

are 5 star reviews of people saying this changed the way that

I look at the phenomena. This this changed everything. I'm

reading different books than I did before, and I really appreciate this journey. This is

a big deal. There's really no 3 star reviews

in there. They're either I absolutely hated

this or this changed the way I see everything. So we

learned from that. And in the second season, it's Mike of it's very

much more of the same. But you you you

can see very easily what was shot

before season 1 came out because I the first 2 or 3 episodes

feel very much like season 1 episodes. They easily could have been. And

then it sort of becomes a different show after that.

It's much more fast paced. There's a lot more going

on. We could have stretched it out and made maybe 15

episodes, But because we realized there are some people who

are are challenged by watching something that's slower and more

introspective, there's a lot more Yeah. They didn't come here for

a Terrence Malick. Right. There's a lot more there's a lot more,

I hate to hesitate to see action, but there's a lot more in those episodes.

There's a lot more to to get out of them. It still has

that Hellyer look and feel, and it's still pretty slow and and introspective,

but there's more happening in those episodes. And you also start to see this

really cool thing. It's subtle, and I don't know how many people will notice it.

But you start to see the audio just got a

lot better. Wow. That lens looks a lot crisper,

because everything that we made from season 1, which is very

little, was put into season 2. And so you get to see

it grow and expand that way. And the really awesome part about

season 2, it happens in episode 6. Episode 6 is

actually the release of

the first season. You see the viewing audience become part of the

investigation because when we released Hellyer for free, that

became part of the case. I have stacks of emails from

people who are following up on the things that

we were doing in the 1st season or giving us more information about

cases in their area. That becomes a huge

part of the back half of season 2 is the audience,

you know, democratizing that process a little bit. And, also, I

think the audio gets better as soon as the Sunspot songs start. Yeah. To

me, you I No. I'm like You haven't even seen

how 1 of them is used yet, and it's Oh, okay.

Really I think you're going to be very happy. I

was blown away. It's, it's perfect, and I think you're gonna be

extremely happy. Well, we're definitely excited to check that out. And, obviously,

we recommend everybody out there to check out how you're it's on it's on Amazon

Prime. So Watch it on Amazon Prime because they actually pay

us. It'll still be free on YouTube.

It'll still be free. It's very important for us to do that, but Amazon

Prime gives us, like, you know, an extra quarter. Well and that's the kind of

thing. It's Mike that's we encourage people. It's like, oh, if you're gonna listen to

us for free, listen on Spotify. Right. Because at least Spotify shows up with a

with that with their fraction of a penny. Right. What what would you

recommend? Okay. So somebody who's coming in fresh, to your

end maybe you know, are there certain, episodes

from the first season they can watch to catch up? Or, you

know, what would you say is the ideal obviously, the ideal watching

situation is that they binge all 15 hours or whatever.

Right. But, you know, to to prep somebody to coming

in, like, how can they get the best experience, from watching the series?

I think aside from watching the first 5 and preparing

that way, which III will go out of the way and say is

essential. It really it really is essential for a full understanding of

everything that happens in the second season. Like, everything is there for a reason.

We if people are impatient, they can jump into the 2nd

season. We tried to recap as much of it as we can. You know,

there's a 3 minute thing at the beginning that gives people a quick

history, quick backstory. And there

are flashbacks in the second season as well that that try and

get people up to speed. But, absolutely, they

should watch the first episode of season 1 because that pretty much recaps the

entire beginning. That's that's why this series

exists, the first episode. And,

I mean, I think the only 1 that they could maybe

maybe skip, I think, is episode 4 of the first season,

which is very much just us being really frustrated

and disappointed for for 40 minutes or so.

Grab some popcorn. Unless people like to see us

tortured, I'm sure there's plenty of people who would, then definitely watch

the 4th episode of season 1. And, you know, 1 of the things that I

think is cool about, the second season is that you

guys kind of take the the John Keel Mothman

Prophecies thing even further. Yeah. You know? And it almost

becomes, you know, like a John Kiel 201

kind of thing, like an advanced reading of it because you're going beyond John Kiel

into, like, the Warren Burger book and things like

that. And so as you were exploring that,

is there anything you think that was maybe left out that was something you could

kinda wish got in there, or was there a little something that you were like,

oh, man. This I I wish people would have gotten this because it blew my

mind. There's a lot of stuff that is cut out

of season 2. Like, what's funny is the first season, we released it

on Blu ray, and Carl wanted to have deleted scenes.

There was they're really not deleted scenes. Carl just went

through the the bin and found stuff that wasn't gonna be used

anyway. In this season, there is so much stuff on the

cutting room floor that just you know, some of it's stuff that if we

introduced it, it would take a whole other episode to do it

justice. And because of that, we knew we couldn't release

it that way. I mean, maybe the we'll have them available at some point. But

I can think of 1 1 fact that doesn't really make it in. You

know, there's a a fantastic website.

It's johnkeel.com, and it's run by Doug Skinner who

has a ton of his old files. And he every every couple

weeks, he he uploads a scan of something. 1

of my jobs this 2nd season was I scoured that website

for anything that would lead me in another direction.

And I found between that and between going through old

newspaper archives, John Keel doesn't really ever talk about

this. I don't know why. I don't know what happened, but he was very interested

in the cave systems in in West Virginia

and was telling people that there was something happening in those cave systems, and

they should stay out of it. It's the first thing he told the local news

paper when he went to town, because Kiel always announced his presence in a

town by going to the local newspaper and saying, I'm John Kiel. I'm here to

investigate the strange sightings. Here's, you know, what I'm looking for. They

wrote an article about it, and you can look it up. And he's he

hammers on how important the cave systems were and how dangerous what

was happening in those cave systems were, and then it just never really appears in

any of his stuff. Don't know why. Awesome. Well, that's a, you

know, that's a that's a cool little note, to end on.

So, Greg, if people want to find

Hellyer 2, what's the website where they can go, like, right from

their phone right now and they can get it and, they can find it? Go

to hellyer.tv, and you'll find links to wherever you can watch it,

links to watch the 1st season for free. And, I think by the time this

airs, there'll be a store there too if they wanna throw some cash at

us. Fantastic. And we just encourage you guys to watch it,

not just because there's some Sunspot songs in it, but because it's a lot of

fun and it's fascinating, and it's fascinating and it's that kind of search

into the unknown, like the blow by blow investigation

where if you guys want to feel like you've been on a paranormal investigation through

all the high points where you feel something exciting and then all the low points

where you're like, oh, man. Is this really what I chose to do

with my life? I think that he might tell you really,

you know, brings that all out. And speaking of that John

Kiel connection, 1 of the people that is talked about in the Mothman

Prophecies as well as in Hellyer is the character of Indrid

Cold, the mysterious grinning man,

who shows up and makes phone calls to John Kiel and everything. And

you'll see Greg and Dana and Connor and Tyler and

Carl go in the search for Indrid Cole, in season

2, but inspired, by that

search and then a quote that he said

himself to Woodrow Derenberger, the sunspot song this week is

called, We'll Be Seeing You Again.

And we'll be seeing you again.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. You can find us

online at othersidepodcast.com. Until next

Mike. See you on the other side. Thanks for

tuning in. Well, I guess you're not really tuning in, but thanks for listening this

week. Hope you're having a great December. And before we go, I

just wanna send a huge thanks to our Patreon community. We

love each and every 1 of you and appreciate all of the great support that

you provide us. A huge shout out to our supporter

Ned. Doctor Ned is pledging at a level that he gets this

shout out every single week. Ned, thanks for being so great.

Now if you're interested in joining our community, it's really easy. Just visit

othersidepodcast.com/donate. Have a great week. Look out

for Krampus, and we'll catch you next week.

After the break, you're we're gonna show you the a shadow

foot.