Planet Weird to Premiere 'HELLIER' Documentary Series on January 18th
(Image credit: Planet Weird)
Planet Weird, the investigative media outlet and brainchild of Greg and Dana Newkirk, will reveal the culmination of a years-long investigation January 18th in the upcoming documentary series HELLIER.
“Something strange is going on in the Appalachian Mountains,” Greg Newkirk said in an email to the Singular Fortean Society. “For hundreds of years, locals have reported startling run-ins with monsters that dwell in the area’s caves and caverns, mass sightings of unidentified lights in the skies, and contact with mysterious entities that seem to originate from beyond this world.”
“HELLIER is a five-part, cinematic documentary that explores a sprawling mystery at the heart of coal country. What began as a plea for help from a frightened man, oppressed by what he believes are extraterrestrial forces, soon gave way to an unsettling mystery as deep and far-reaching as the caverns beneath Appalachia,” he continued. “Presented in a rare, anamorphic vérité format—a first for any reality-based series tackling the unexplained—HELLIER is both beautiful and cerebral, changing the rules for what paranormal television can—and should—look like. We hope you’ll agree.”
According to the press release:
Planet Weird presents HELLIER, a five-part, cinematic documentary series following an investigation into unsolved mysteries, impossible synchronicities, and a web of high strangeness which stretches from the heart of Appalachian coal country. Driven by a plea for help from a man under supernatural assault, a small crew of paranormal researchers find themselves in a dying coal town, where a series of strange coincidences leads them to a decades-old mystery with far-reaching implications. HELLIER premieres all episodes on Friday, January 18th at 12:01 AM ET on multiple streaming platforms.
In 2012, paranormal investigator Greg Newkirk was contacted by a frightened man named David, who claimed that small, humanoid creatures were emerging from a long-abandoned mine shaft on his rural Kentucky property. After enduring a series of nightly assaults by the strange entities, David shared a collection of stunning photographs of three-toed footprints - and even the creatures themselves. Then, David disappeared.
In the years that followed, the case only became stranger for Newkirk and his wife, Dana, as they fielded more emails from mysterious figures and tracked down historical leads from Appalachian locals. Then, in 2017, prompted by an impossible synchronicity, director Karl Pfeiffer and fellow investigator Connor Randall rendezvoused with Greg and Dana to unravel the dangling threads of the mystery once and for all. They travel into the shadows of the Appalachian mountains, to the source of it all, where a dwindling town named Hellier buries its secrets in the ancient caverns deep beneath the earth.
Aided by reluctant locals, cutting-edge parapsychological methods, and a trail of breadcrumbs left by occultists and UFO researchers decades before, the investigators uncover a mystery with frightening and far-reaching implications: the phenomena is bigger than Hellier, and someone - or something - has noticed them.
The release continues by promising that HELLIER will not “shy away from the true strangeness or complexity of the phenomena” and will “put the viewer in the middle of the experience.”
All episodes of HELLIER premiere free of charge on Friday, January 18th at 12:01 a.m. EST on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vimeo, and Hellier.tv. Check out Hellier.tv on January 18th for episode descriptions, downloads, detailed series information, behind-the-scenes looks, and special features. Follow @WeirdHQ and #HELLIER for more exclusive content and updates.
HELLIER is produced by Planet Weird. Executive producers for Planet Weird are Greg Newkirk and Dana Newkirk. HELLIER is directed by Karl Pfeiffer and co-produced by Connor Randall.
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