Hellier

Hellier isn’t your run-of-the-mill ghost hunting show. It’s not even really about ghosts. Part documentary, part mystery, and part paranormal investigation, Hellier explores what happens when paranormal investigators receive a series of strange emails that throw them headlong into something bigger than they could have imagined.

Instead of a “Monster of the Week” style show with a series of stand-alone episodes at different paranormal locations, Hellier is presented as a two-season long documentary following Dana and Greg Newkirk—who run the website Week in Weird and the Travelling Museum of the Paranormal & The Occult—as they investigate strange emails that they had received describing a family being harassed by creatures in their home near the small Kentucky town of Hellier. They’re joined by Connor Randal and filmmaker Karl Pfeiffer who spent the better part of a decade as the resident paranormal investigators of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.

Rather than simply filming the events of a ghost hunt, though, Hellier explores the process of investigating the claims presented in the emails that the Newkirks received, following them as they try to re-establish contact with the sender, travel to Kentucky, interview local residents about their experiences, and try to find the truth or anything that would explain the experiences that were relayed to them.

Part of a larger narrative, each episode is concentrated on a part of the investigation, from digging deeper into the initial claims, to finding evidence of a person fitting the description of the sender ever living in the area, and investigating the multitude of claims that they learned while interviewing Hellier residents. It also explores the mystery’s shift from a fact-finding mission into an almost-conspiracy as they uncover more strange information about the area and the events that have taken place there.

Analysis

Part of what makes Heller so different—and more interesting—is that it feels more like what someone would expect from a paranormal investigation and, at times, feels like you’re watching investigative journalism take place. From the beginning, their purpose and methods geared more toward exploring the claims and learning the facts of the case rather than “proving” the claims themselves. They’re asking questions about who the person was that contacted them, what they were experiencing, and how did they get their contact information? At every step of the way, instead of finding answers, they’re presented with more questions.

The investigators are not without their own biases. The Newkirks are well-known within the paranormal community and, based on their other endeavors, are believers in the paranormal in general. Even so, they approach the subject of Hellier with a healthy dose of skepticism and hesitation that makes this feel more like a true paranormal investigation. Their methods aren’t exactly scientific—there is no hypothesis or experiment—however they do steer clear of dabbling in pseudo science by claiming to be performing experiments or collecting data. Instead, they are collecting information surrounding paranormal claims and establishing the veracity of those claims. They’re not capturing EVPs or video of shadow figures and declaring that “ghosts exist”, they’re asking questions and looking for answers to those questions, whatever those answers may be.

Conclusion

Hellier is a compelling series that, whether intentionally or not, explores the question of what paranormal investigation is and digs into the truth of what people are experiencing. The investigatores aren’t collecting evidence of the paranormal nor are they trying to prove the existence of the paranormal—they’re simply investigating paranormal claims.

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Hellier premiered in 2019 on Amazon Prime Video. It’s available on Amazon Prime Video, hellier.tv, and YouTube.