Somewhere in the Skies - Karl Pfeiffer: HELLIER

Episode Date: January 19, 2019

On episode 92 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan welcomes back Karl Pfeiffer to the show. His most recent documentary series, HELLIER, released this week. We talk all about how it came to be, who is involved with this highly enigmatic series, and what to expect as the series and investigation both move forward in the most mysterious of ways. HELLIER is 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, led by the Traveling Museum of the Paranormal & Occult’s Greg & Dana Newkirk, find themselves in a dying coal town, where a series of strange coincidences leads them to a decades-old mystery with far-reaching implications. Guest Bio: Karl Pfeiffer (Executive Producer, Director, Editor, Cast), has always been passionate about the mysterious, uncanny, and supernatural in the world around him. In 2009, he won the first season of Syfy's Ghost Hunters Academy and went on to appear on Ghost Hunters International. While serving as the Resident Paranormal Investigator of Colorado’s famously haunted Stanley Hotel for five years, he directed and edited the web series, Spirits of the Stanley for the Dark Zone web network and conducted 250 investigations on the property. He is also a portrait and conceptual photographer based out of Northern Colorado, a freelance filmmaker, and he's the author of two fiction books. Learn more at: www.karlpfeiffer.com Watch ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED for free! Available now at www.cwseed.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening and Closing Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, my name is David. I received your contact information through a mutual acquaintance, who assures me that you are well equipped to investigate peculiar problems. For the past six months, I have been living in a rural home located on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky, where my family is nightly assaulted by creatures that I have come to believe are of an extraterrestrial origin. These beings appear to be the size and stature of a small child, devoid of any facial features save for large, oily eyes and lipless mouths. They frighten my children by peering through their bedroom windows, chirping at one another. I believe that they are coming from an abandoned mine located on the edge of my property.

Though I am armed, I'm afraid that I'm far too frightened to enter the mind by my lonesome. I can guarantee you evidence of these creatures, which I assure you, are not wild animals. Please respond, ASAP. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. Before we get to this week's interview, I want to thank all of you for the feedback on Roswell Mysteries Decoded. Since the airing on CW and the subsequent free streaming of the entire special on the CWC,

I've received so many leads on people to talk to. Suggestions on furthering our scientific analysis of materials we are now in possession with with Frank Kimber and some unexpected twists in our overall investigation that, if true, are far more compelling and much darker than the crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. We aren't done investigating. So if you want to see more of the show,

head on over to CWC right now and stream Roswell Mysteries Decoded. for free. Just look for the show, click, and enjoy. When you're done, be sure to share it across all your social networks. Your views help us in our journey to get back out there and keep digging, literally. Visit cwc.com to watch Roswell Mysteries Decoded right now. Speaking of which, I recently took part in two interviews where I give you the insight scoop on our investigation, what didn't make it into the show, and a whole lot more. You can find those right now at Open Minds UFO Radio, hosted by Alejandro Rojas.

Just head on over to open minds.tv and look for it. And also over the Bigfoot Collectors Club, hosted by actors and paranormal enthusiasts, Michael McMillian and Bryce Johnson. Just look for Bigfoot Collectors Club on all major podcast outlets. And now, let's get to this week's guest and topic. Carl Fyfer has always been passionate about the mysterious, uncanny, and supernatural in the world around him.

In 2009, he won the first season of sci-fi's Ghost Hunter's Academy and went on to appear on Ghost Hunters International. While serving as the resident paranormal investigator of Colorado's famously haunted Stanley Hotel, he directed and edited the web series, Spirits of the Stanley, and conducted 250 investigations on the property. He's also a portrait and conceptual photographer based out of Northern Colorado, a freelancer. filmmaker, and he's the author of two fiction books. Today, we're going to talk about his latest investigative documentary series, Hellier. 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 Carl Fyfer 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. Carl, thank you so much again for joining me on Somewhere in the Skies. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It has been a while, my friend. I remember having you on very early on in the inception days of somewhere in the skies. So this is, it's come full circle. I can't wait, man. It really has. It really has. Yeah. So, I mean, before we even get to why you're actually here,

you know, we're going to cover episodes one and two of Hellier, your new documentary series, which I recently got to watch the first two episodes. Oh, man. I, I, we'll get into it. So I'm just as in the dark as everyone else about where this journey is sort of leading you. So, we're going to cover episodes one and two, and then I'm going to have, you know, sort of your focal points of hell you're on later this month, Greg and Dana. But for those who may not be familiar with your personal work, can you maybe sort of run us through your investigative career, how you got involved with the paranormal? The origin story. My superhero issue one. Yeah, I mean, I grew up always fascinating with the mysterious and the paranormal and the creepier side of the world. It's just always been with me for whatever reason.

So, you know, always had those sort of like kids' versions of the paranormal books and watching Ghostbusters and sightings and Unsolved Mysteries. And then, of course, the Ghost Hunters' craze kind of was taken off when I was in high school in college. So I started dipping my toes into those early investigative team scenarios back in those days. And it was shortly after that. It was after my sophomore year at college that Ghost Hunters Academy, the spinoff TV show from the Ghost Thunder's franchise was getting started, and I kept my ear to the ground on the

internet a lot those days, and I heard they were casting for a new Ghost Hunter show featuring college kids. So I dropped my name at a couple of places and shot off some emails. Got a callback looking for a video, and next thing you knew, I was on that first season of the show, which I won alongside Susan Slaughter, and did, yeah, woohoo. It's weird. It's getting weird to talk about that that's 10 years ago at this point now. Don't remind me. I know. Oh, 2009. That was only like three years ago, right? But yeah, when that one did an episode with Ghost Hunters International, went back to college after never got called back to that again, worked for five years up at the Stanley Hotel leading their weekly paranormal investigations. So by the end of that, I had done around 250 investigations up there on the property.

and towards the end of my time up there with them, myself and Connor Randall, who also makes an appearance quite regularly and produced Hellier with me. We were both working on a web series called Spiris of the Stanley. That went for a couple of weeks. And after that, it's been a lot of back-end type research

and juggling the Hollywood world until Hellier kind of poked its head up and that's become my life for the last year and a half now. poking its head out is a good way to put it, man. Feels like it. Poking, pointing. I want to get to pointy. Pointy little ears is what I specifically want to get to before we even get to, like, how

Hellyer came about. So for those who sort of need like a crash course on the original sort of case that inspired Hellier and kind of set you guys off on this journey, could you maybe run us through the Hopkinsville Goblin case? This is one of my favorite cases. So I'd love to hear sort of your interpretation of it and how it eventually got you connected to this current investigation. Yeah. The Hopkinsville case really serves as kind of a prolog, you know, almost the cold open in a kind of way that despite not actually being the cold open on Hellyer, in a linear narrative kind of sense, very much was the precursor in some ways. back in 1955.

There was a very kind of poor family where we're living in this farmhouse in rural, eastern, sorry, western Kentucky. And this UFO might have crashed near the farmhouse. There was a couple reports from police officers earlier in the night. People driving around that saw like a fireball type UFO going through the sky. Later that night, one of the people at the farmhouse, there was like, I think three or four adult males, kind of the matriarch figure, a couple of kids. And one of them went out in the back at one point, and he came running in the house.

He had seen this little creature that was kind of faintly glowing behind the house. Everyone thought he was just pulling a prank. And turned out, like, the rest of the night, they had this, I mean, kind of to hyperboize it a little bit, like they had a battle that night with these creatures, because they approached the house, freaked everyone. out, you know, the guys grabbed their guns. They ran outside. They took some shots at them. They were up in the trees.

They were up on the roof. So I think they fired like a couple of shots at them through the night. They saw the bullets just bounce off of them. They ran off. A couple hours later, they came back. The family drove over to nearby Hopkinsville and got the cops involved. And then the following days, it was just a media circus about what happened.

And there's tons of theories about it, you know, that some circus animal escaped from a passing circuses. It's a fascinating case because as you know you'll see with the hell of your story like this guy David's original emails have some consistent similarities with that and it it's Kentucky you know that's kind of the backbone but the Hopkins little case it's interesting so there's a couple primary sources you know when the news media shows up the next morning and the cops are there taking pictures there's there's definitely

some good documentation about it. That was me, my brother, my sister, two half-brothers, their wives, and a friend and his wife. That's about it, besides my mother. We just sat around, you know, talked and played cards. My half-brother's friend, Taylor, he had to go out. You know, we didn't have no inside restrooms back then. And as he was going out the door, he looked up and he noticed this around. One object had lights all around it.

She was just laying her awake with her eyes open and looking out the living room window and I saw this little object standing there. She screamed, you know. Little creatures, three foot tall, well feet, web ears, big eyes, hands were web shaped like. They were silver, had silver uniforms, no noise, no sound, no time. talking. They was just there. I don't know why. Everybody got roused up, started hollering and screaming. It's just he was going outside and one of them grabbed him by the hair of the head. And then he jumped on out in the yard and, you know, shot at them. They wasn't trying to hurt nobody.

They wasn't trying to hurt us old. I think they was more scared of us than we were of them. You know, but I was I was really scared. I'm just telling you the truth. But a lot of it nowadays, when you look at like the Center for UFO Studies, like, write up about it and you look at what Geraldine Sutton-Stith has written about it. She's one of the descendants of the family members there. A lot of it is in hindsight, you know, a lot of it's looking back. And that's something that we have to juggle a lot as UFO. Paranormal researchers is just kind of trying to weigh stuff that's like just retrospective,

taking people's words for it, looking for consistencies kind of research. that's a good point Carl I mean for for someone like a supernatural or paranormal investigator there's a lot of opportunity during your investigation to to like really tap into something as it's happening you know living in that moment of a of a case whereas with UFOs it's it's hard for us because usually it happens it's gone in the blink of an eye

and we're left with very little to investigate so I mean when when those two worlds sort of collided for you guys I was super excited to know that we might be dealing with UFOs. We might be dealing with some sort of crypted weird creature monster, something super now. It's got everything. Everything you guys experienced, it's just like a melting pot of just weird, weird shit, which we will get to. But definitely, no, thank you for that good explanation of the Hopkinsville Goblin case. It's one I always bring up as like one of those super rich stories of a highly close.

encounter and a family that reported it but never really wanted the publicity that came with it, which, which, you know, is a problem in our field is a lot of people come forward or just honestly make stuff up because they want to get noticed. But as far as I know, that Sutton family, they moved away after this. Am I correct in that? Because they just, they couldn't take the amount of media attention. Yeah, they kind of, they kind of scattered. I mean, because it was kind of an extended family that was there that night. A lot of them traveled for work and they had some of them had other residences with family members and stuff. So they kind of just kind of split as best they could after that because of the attention. I think it was the Geraldine's dad,

I think, uh, who was there involved in the incident. Um, lucky. Like, I think like he wouldn't even talk about it for like the rest of his life. Like, like, it was such a bad experience for them. But you're right. I mean, basically anything, whether it's connected with Helly or anything else, the first question we're constantly asking is, is this for publicity? And I mean, sometimes it's tough when it does go south,

that doesn't mean it wasn't done for publicity, you know, and then they just kind of realized after the fact, like, oh, shoot, that wasn't quite what we wanted. But at a certain point, you know, if it was, you're getting attention. There's media that there's people there, you know, like set up a sign and sell some stuff, whatever.

The Hopkins bookcase really just doesn't feel like, that at all. Everything you read about it, it was like a normal family that had an experience and was put out by it in a way that they did not enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Ronda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry and the best heavy weight in the world, Frances Nganoe versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix.

Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Sort of the small details, and the more weird it is, the more I'm willing to accept it. You know, it's not so prototypical, and that's kind of what you guys came across as well. So I kind of want to start with episode one. I've seen the first two episodes. Episode one, The Midnight Children. This is sort of our introduction to you. and your focal points in terms of investigators and how this all came to be.

I remember when we first spoke, that was like days within starting this project. And I knew you were talking to Greg and Dana Newkirk, fellow colleagues of mine as well. And before we even get to Hellier with you, tell us how you first got involved with Greg and Dana about this weird string of events that kind of led to your documentary series, if you don't mind. My prologue with the story with Greg and Dana was that I met them in 2016, I think, when we were wrapping up at the Stanley Hotel. They had eliminated the paranormal investigations at that point, and there was kind of one final scheduled paranormal event, which was Strange Escapes with Amy Bruni up there that weekend. And Greg and Dana were up there. It was the first time I met them.

I'd heard a little bit about them, obviously, as public figures. And they're good friends with John Tenney. and I tend to hang out with him at those events. So via him, met Greg and Dana. We hit it off really well that weekend amongst all the busyness, and we kept in touch. But it was months later, actually just probably a couple weeks later that Dana wrote up a really nice blog entry about all these indie paranormal projects. People should check out. And she included My Spirits of the Stanley Web series on the list.

But she also included an episode of Jim Perry's Euphemat podcast on there as well. And I know you know Jim. Oh, yeah, love that show. Exactly. It's great. So I went to listen to that one because I kind of was checking out everything on the list. But I didn't have a chance to really dig into the episode past the first minute or two. And months later, I went back to it and was like, oh, yeah, I need to listen to this episode.

So I start digging in. And it's, of course, the hell of year the Kentucky Goblins episode. And halfway through, I mean, I'm just sucked into this story. I'm so absorbed. So I, ironically, has I'm sucked into it. and absorb that posit to go tell the internet about it. As we do.

As we do. You know, you got to share it. So I blast it out and Greg writes back and he's all like, you know, Jim does a great job with the podcast. It's all him. And just like a minute later, his week and weird,

Planet Weird account tweets out the link to the Kentucky Godland story to which I think is just great kind of utilizing my mention about it to blast it out to everyone else and remind them about the story. And he's like, no, I didn't send that out. That was our account auto posting, our old blog entries and articles, of which there are 1,700 plus in the archives that it could have auto posted. But there's only two that are about the Kentucky Goblins case, the hell of your case. And so just the fact that I should randomly be listening to that episode, months after it was recorded, that this account should auto post right as I'm there on Twitter talking about it, mid listening to the other. episode, just the odds of that really felt significant. They really kind of blew me over.

So I'd never really had a synchronicity like that that I felt was particularly, I don't know, you know, like dictating or intelligent. I've never had one that's connected to anything like that. But the next two weeks after that, I was just having tons of these synchronicities. And then they started to kind of quiet down. But little did I know as I finished the episode, the whole story ended on a cliffing. Like, they wanted to go back to this town, this place, and do more research. So it was after that that I started feeling a little bit connected to the case, but my filmmaker's side, you know, looking for the next project, wanting to be involved in a

cool project, being friends with Greg and Dana, I started hounding him a little bit on wanting to go back. And it took about a year because I think there was some reluctance for him and Dana to go back at that point. They wanted to time it well because they're super busy. And they know this case well enough that if they dig into. it, it's going to consume them for a little while. And as we got it put together, our schedule is aligned somehow miraculously, because we're learning now as much harder to do than it

sounds as we try to do more work. And so we just hopped in the car and we went out there to follow up the next step. Did you have any preconceived notions about this whole sort of goblin sighting report thing? And how did that, how did you really decide to tackle this whole thing as a documentary. Did you have like a certain style you wanted to evoke or was it just sort of stumbling along the way making those discoveries? I would assume it's a lot of everything. Yeah, it really is. Whether that's the content of the case or the documentary itself, it's a lot of everything on all sides. You know, approaching it all, I've read Keel and I've read Valley, you know. So Valley, of course, with that sort of like pluralistic concept of all.

all of these things being kind of connected. Like he's very resistant towards the idea of the UFO phenomena and the UFO occupant question. He's reluctant to jump to the conclusion that they're from outside of our planet. And he was the one that did a lot of interesting research connecting it to all of the old folklore and legends and stuff like the Faye. And, you know, these little creatures like goblins connecting to the UFO phenomena. So I've always been kind of taken from his work with the idea that if we're talking about UFOs or aliens, that there might be a connection there to these stories of goblins. And David, too, you know, he's talking about these things coming out of minds on his property in his original emails. And he says he believes they're extraterrestrial, which is a bit of a leap, which is interesting to even hear in his original emails because he didn't say they were coming from UFOs.

So the fact that he's already made that connection is interesting, if not telling. But yeah, so I came in very open-minded. I came in very intrigued. After reading Keel, I always wanted kind of a big story, you know, a rich, exciting story, like whether that's a flap area or just a highly, highly strange story with a lot of facets. And this felt like it. So I, you know, with a little self-interest, I was excited to try to engage in this case from a personal element and have some weird experiences in my life.

So I did bring a bit of a bias in terms of an eagerness for it being high strange and paranormal. I wanted to do more documentary work and I felt like this was a good project to document. So when we drove out there, we had no idea what it was going to be. We didn't know if we were going to shoot a sizzle reel, if we were going to shoot like a short documentary, like a 40-minute doc about the backstory. We wanted to go down to town, but we had no idea of anything what happened there. if nothing happened, you know, we come back home and try to figure out how long this thing's going to be. Do we release a feature? Sure. A sizzle. What do we do? And it just wound up growing. Through the whole trip, there was enough weirdness and subtle weirdness too that we wanted to take

people along on that first journey rather than just kind of retell it beat by beat, which obviously could have taken two hours easy. But it's, it became about the journey. And especially in today's kind of paranormal media world. It's either like, you know, a night of ghost hunting or like a documentary style, just kind of talking heads telling old stories and ideas. And there's not, it's tough to make research sexy, right? You know, like, hey, check it out. You know, people are going to the library.

Let's make a whole show about this, right? Like, I get it, you know. So that was kind of one of my goals as a filmmaker was to take people along on actual research side of it, but make that exciting. And luckily, the case did its own part too, and it provided us some new connections and new leads that are very interesting and I think very telling that make the benefits of that research fun. So we got our own kind of story of beats from the research side too. So a high concept kind of like content wise. That was one of the things that I was going with the documentary in hindsight.

Stylistically, I mean, I wanted to look cinematic as possible. I'm a consumer of a lot of TV and movies these days, and I always want to continue my interaction with those things by creating myself. And some of my favorite stuff just have that cinematic quality. I watch a lot of scripted shows, and I wanted to bring that into the documentary world by shooting, running gun, but giving it that feel and flavor as much as I could with basically zero budget and not having worked in Hollywood before. So those two limitations working against me, I wanted to go out there and make it as cinematic as possible and bring some flavors to it

that I hadn't seen in tons of documentaries, let alone paranormal television at all. So I wanted an anamorphic feel, one of those cool 80s, sci-fi flares that you haven't seen on paranormal shows because the actual anamorphic lenses are like super, super expensive. Stuff like that. Like I just wanted it to have this like creepy cinematic feel that if I did my job right, kind of throws the audience into a bit of a state of messing with their heads where it kind of looks at times like it's a movie, but it's also real life. And I wanted to kind of blend those two things together where everything's honest,

everything's legit, but it feels like you're being taken into a way. world of cinema, which is an interesting line to walk, and I hope it kind of achieved that. You never know what to expect next, and you bring up a good point with valet and this whole idea of like the controlled mechanism, the sort of case and or phenomena was kind of working with you guys, like leading you at some points. It was you were leading them, and it was like you were working in tandem with what you were actually out there to try to uncons. cover.

Like, they were telling your story while you were telling theirs. And I found that very fascinating. This, even in the first two episodes, you guys just, there were so many different turns and, like, in leads. And, you know, I kind of want to backtrack to David for a second here. Because for anyone who may not have seen any of this yet and know what these emails actually were and why this all came to be. Yeah, yeah. This weird, cryptic, very, both.

but also very articulate string of emails started to come to Greg and Dana from this this dude named David. Am I correct? Yeah. So the original going back to it in 2012, Greg Newkirk gets a string of emails from this guy who's claiming to be kind of terrorized and visited by these creatures that he believes are coming out of mine shaft on the back of his property. He's in rural eastern Kentucky, kind of near the border. And he, like, by night, his daughter is seeing these creatures out behind the house, and she's very bothered by them. They're interested in her, and they're, like, tapping on her windows and stuff in the night. David, the father, is seeing evidence of this stuff by his yard being in disarray the next morning. So he finally sees these things and starts trying to install both. ocean-activated floodlights and that works for a time, but then they come back and his family

doesn't know what to do. So they're reaching out to Greg because they got his name and contact info from this guy that a friend knows named Terry Rist, clearly a made-up name, super elusive, mysterious character there who comes back into it later. And basically he wants Greg and Dana to come and blow up the mind. And he's like, you can film or do whatever you want. But like I just want to be done with this. But Grape can't get there because Dana's Canadian and they're going through immigration to bring her to the States. So they can't get away and they wind up,

David winds up fleeing the house. But in that time, like, I mean, he sent pictures of the footprints that he was finding on his property, sent pictures of the alleged creatures he was seeing, basically just enough to get Greg super hooked before he disappeared and never wrote back to Greg ever again. And then the case just gets bigger and leave. After that, where you think that would be the last note, the final note on it, as a random anecdote, it only got stranger. Yeah, it did.

I mean, the fact that this guy had evidence to show, Greg, that is what we all dream for. Whenever someone comes to me with a UFO sighting or a encounter claim, I'm like, cool, do you have a photo? Do you have corroborating witness? Do you, you know, what can you show me that's going to prompt me to actually go investigate this? or tell your story. So I think it was really, really telling that there were actually photos, there were footprints and all these other really interesting things, you know, testimony from the daughter even, who it was strikingly similar, what she was drawing and what she was seeing to the grays

or even the Hopkinsville goblins. It was all there, like this whole big weird soup was starting to boil over. Eventually, you know, you guys were able to go to the house that was presumably David's. Is that correct? What did this excursion eventually lead you all to do? Greg and Dana, when they finally moved to Cincinnati, they were nearby to Hellier. And so they took their first trip there in 2015. So about three years after they got the emails, they were finally able to kind of check out the town that, you know, the story had kind of kept coming back in their lives.

They were like, we'll go check it out. And during that visit, they drove around, just kind of seeing if they could find a house that might fit the description David gave. And they saw one on the side of the road that, like, they got really excited about that felt like it fit the description. That could be it. But look, it's abandoned. It looks like it's been abandoned. It looks like it's been abandoned for like three years. There's a basketball net back there.

That's where kids would be. Old fucking Christmas lights still up. Yep. There's a shed. There's a fucking. can shed there. And which is kind of weird because having been there now,

when we went back, we were trying to find that house that they saw or another house that might fit the description. And we found there were just miles and miles of back roads that people's houses were along and half of them are like abandoned

and half of them have shed. So as you saw in the second episode, like that was a real problem we were running into was, A, there's tons of houses that kind of fit, but we couldn't find a house that was similar to, we couldn't find the one that Greg and Dana saw originally, which was Wilkes throwing us. That's a little bit of a confusing point in the dock because we didn't know that that footage of the house existed until after we came back from the expedition.

So the linear narrative that everyone watches it with is a little misleading why we couldn't find it later. But we struggled with that part where it was very hard to find that house. they found the first time that for whatever reason on a gut level really resonated with them, which was interesting and will be interesting even past season one why that might have happened. So the quest for the house was one of the first things, the first kind of tangible things that we were like, let's go out and try to find this house that you guys saw. Is it still there?

You know, is there any other houses? But yeah, there's a lot more than just like, 20 houses that constitute that area. There's a lot of stuff under those woods. Yeah. And I mean, what I'm sort of trying to get across to people who are going to see this, too, is that, like, it's not just finding the house. It's finding David.

No one in Hellier seems to really know of this guy or, like, ever heard of him, which becomes a huge part of both the first, you know, the end of the first episode and the second episode is even finding. this individual. One of the most tangible things about the whole case and going on an expedition there is trying to find any evidence that this person, David, from these emails, existed in that area. How you doing? All right, you?

Pretty good. I was wondering if you guys might be able to help us out a little bit. We're in town, we're paranormal investigators. We were called to town because there was a guy from around Hellier who said that he was finding strange footprints, and they were coming out of an old cave or a mother. mine shaft or something on the edge of his property. Oh, what's his name? His name was David Christie.

David Christy? Yeah. No one around here does. But he sent all these photographs of these strange things, and then one day you just got a picture, maybe of his property, you can show him? How about to be able to help you that way? Not of his property. Did he have an address?

He didn't give us an address. We didn't get that far. I exchanged a whole bunch of emails with them, and then one day he just kind of up and left, and then all kinds of other weird stuff. Yeah, he just sent us pictures of, of what looked like three-toed footprints in a creek bed sort of. And I abandoned mine on his edge of...

Yeah, he said he was like a mine or a cave or something like that, some kind of entrance. And I know this place is just filled with that type of stuff. That was something that we could actually take steps to learn about and see if there was anything that would support or dispute that. Before we even got to the question of aliens, the first question was whether there was, whether this guy was even real. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that kind of propels us into episode two, the ink and black. I love the title, which is amazing.

Yeah. The reason this stood out to you is pretty mind-blowing. The ink and black, we'll get to that. But before we get to that, this is the part of the investigation where Conor Randall comes into play. So can you sort of let us know who Connor is and what role he played in all of this? Yeah. Connor Randall is he's one of my best friends we met up at the Stanley Hotel he was acting as a tour guide up there on the property at that point and he was working with one of the TAPS affiliate teams out in Denver doing ghost hunts for residences and stuff like that so eventually his time went on he became one of the resident paranormal investigators alongside myself at the hotel and just became great friends you know up there every weekend together he's a brilliant researcher he's a

one of those people that is perfectly happy to crack the books about anything and everything related to this paranormal stuff and try to actually learn whether it's the science behind the tools that we're using or whether it's the next book on high strangeness, which, as you know, when you meet people like that, like, they kind of click with you because there's a lot of people that just want to go out and be on TV without a camera, you know what I mean? Like just go look for ghosts or whatever, which is fine. you know, go experience, go have fun. But as a researcher myself, as someone who likes the concepts behind everything, the theories,

there's so much good stuff in these books. When you find other people like that, you instantly kind of know a kind of kind of know a kindred spirit. So we, yeah, we've just gone back a long ways. He was on Spirits of the Stanley about our investigations of the hotel there. And then so when I decided to go out towards Hellier, I had a buddy, Rashad, who works kind of in the film industry. out in Denver and he does some camera work and photography. So managed to get him on board to come out

to help me film it because I was going to be directing and filming but also on camera. So I was kind of, I recognized early that I'd be spreading myself a little thin. So I needed somebody else to hold a second camera and I wanted somebody else to kind of be, namely like kind of pick up my slack on the investigation side when I'm holding a camera. So Connor was kind of like, Jack of all trades. but also like he can help with the stuff investigating, researching boots on the ground that sometimes I couldn't. And he wound up becoming just an integral part of the team. You know, now we can't do it without him.

So he came out as a helper and a friend and turned into a core team member on the hunt. If these goblins that we're looking for or other beings are here in this community, you would expect that they would know that we're here. here. And so why not go out and investigate him right at the place we were staying in. We were in town. We were in the area. And the woods were right there. So let's go see. Yeah. I mean, he kind of propelled what I assume is going to be a whole new ball field in episode three. You and Connor, you start making these discoveries separately from Greg and Dana, which was really cool, too. Like you said, you're not only the filmmaker, you're an investigator on this.

So when you start to become a part of it and have your own theories, it's good to know that there are other people around there to capture that for you. So you can sort of live in that moment. And one of the big ones came in the form of a book by Alan Greenfield, who I have a crazy story about as well. So we can touch on that. But what is that book, Carl? And what connections did you find to the case you were investigating? So Terry Rist, he's this enigmatic figure that David name checks in his email. David says he's got a friend that's into this stuff.

He talked to his friend about it. His friend said, I can't help. But I know somebody who might be able to help. His friend was named. David's friend's connection was named Terry R. Rist, which when you see in text is a name, when you verbalize it is pretty clearly a play on the word terrorist. It's a pseudonym, right? And apparently it's that Terry Risk figure that passes along Greg's name to David,

which was super weird at that time because Greg was a ghost hunter. They were putting together at that point, if not in the midst of, just starting up, their Who Forded website, which was like a satirical paranormal website at that point, because Greg and Dana started as kids really into it, and then they kind of went to the like satirical side making fun of everything and then they you know kind of grew back up into the research of it you know we're all kids and and david reaches out through gregg's old high school irreverent ghost hunting website so just all this weird stuff like who is terry wrist that's like even offering these guys to help when they're just like some goofball

rag tag teenage paranormal team super odd so anyways the only connection great could find to terry wrist was by running a Google search, he found an interview with a Terry Wrist in the back of a 1994 book by Alan Greenfield called Secret Cipher, the Youthnuts, which was all about these, the connections between UFOs and like magic and like old channeling spirits, kind of very vali in kind of some of those connections. But apparently his thesis was that they communicate through these coded messages. and that via some of the work of Alastair Crowley and a lot of magician's sense, they cracked this code.

And his whole book is about how to crack the code. And Terry Rist at the end of it is being interviewed, and he talks about how he got on at one point and infiltrated an underground alien cave base with a bunch of Vietnam vets back in the 80s or the 70s sometime. And that connected with that underground sort of theory that Greg and Anand had been operating after this Hellyer case. And that was kind of their only connection. Well, like a year later, they get an email, very cryptic and spooky from this Terry

wrist figure. They can't tell from the first one if it's fake or not, just like a troll. But by the second one, it seems like there's some actual info that this, like any fake or any troll should not have known. So the Terry wrist side kind of took the place once David disappeared, the Terry wrist stuff instantly kind of threw the whole thing into this. bigger weirdly conspiracy cryptic figure bigger implications kind of mythos and it was in the second episode that we kind of utilized that book to make a bigger connection that Greg and Dana had noticed

before yeah and I mean the minute I heard Alan Greenfield's name mentioned and then the book title I got chills because for those who don't know like Greenfield is he's pretty well known in the UFO circles, but he's very fringe, very out there, very like trying to come up with new theories. And so early on in the early days of somewhere in the skies, I wanted to get him on. I wanted to really start with the really out there stuff. So I reached out to him about a week later. He got back to me. He said, awesome, let's do it.

I'll send you a book and go through it. And then we'll go from there. So a week goes by, a month goes by, two months goes by, and nothing, nothing. And I'm like, I'll send him another email, see what happens. And I didn't get anything back from him email-wise. But finally, an envelope showed up in my mailbox, looked all beaten up and everything. And I saw his address on there. I'm like, oh, my God, finally.

Like, I could do this interview. So I get the book out and looks cool, covers awesome, and I'm just ready to devour it. And I don't think I've ever told this story on the show. I go to like the first couple pages and I notice that the way the book was printed, the text was like very diagonal and just shooting off the page. So clearly it was printed wrong and Alan hadn't realized that before he sent it. couldn't read half of the text that was on the page. I thought, oh, maybe it was like the first page. No, the entire book was like printed one way diagonally. Another page was printed the other way. So I'm like, how, how is that even possible? Like, my dad's in the printing industry.

I know, like, if you're, if you're printing and binding the book, it's all going to, like, be going the same way. But what I found even more interesting, man, is the, there were things in that text that were scribbled over or, like, blacked out. And, you know, and, like, blacked out. And And I'm just like, what is what is going on here? Like, did he do this on purpose? Was this like some weird marketing ploy that he was doing? Like, aha, the real book's on its way, blah, blah, blah. So I laughed about it at the time.

And I took some photos of it. And I went back to my email and I sent him photos. I'm like, hey, bad, what's going on with this? Didn't hear from him since. And never got to interview him. So I don't know what that is all about. I've reached out to him on social networks. I'm not saying it's some grand conspiracy, but something weird definitely happened.

It took two and a half months for him to get it to me and then for it to show up in that condition. I don't know. I don't know what to make of all that. But when... Was it a secret cipher? Was that the most? Yes, it was. Yeah.

Of course it was. So... Well, I'm curious now about like stuff being scribbled out and whatnot. Yeah. Because, you know, of course, we've been boring. for that book. So it's just kind of interesting. It's like, what?

The scribbled out is just weird because, you know, if it came from the printers, you know, you're going to know that it's a misprint long before you scribble stuff out before you send it to somebody. So that feels unusual that there's like an actual human interaction with this misprinted text. Oh, yeah. And like, at first I was like, maybe it's like embedded into the printing. Maybe this is like a cool way that he wanted it to be to be read or seen visually. But, you know, the closer I looked, like it looked.

Like, it looked like actual pen ink. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of all of it. But I would love to cross-reference, like what was scratched out and, quote, unquote, redacted with you guys. So I will definitely get those photos over to you. I might post them on the Facebook page or something, too. I still have the book. Thank God.

So we'll dig deeper into that. But, yeah, I was very intrigued when that whole aspect of all of this came about. Yeah, so it was cool to see that the connections it would eventually make with Greg and Dana So you guys, you start digging in Hellyer, start talking to locals and talk to everyone about things they've experienced And it's not easy. First of all, to get anyone to talk, but second, to actually find anyone who's a heard of David Or be like seeing something. So what was that? This is where it really rang true for me, the reality aspect of this whole documentary is those dead ends you come across. So what was that frustration like, that despair sort of creeping in, that you were hitting

every dead end you seemed to hit in this in the first two episodes. So as a director, filmmaker, where was your headspace during all that? I mean, at that point, it was kind of all over the place because, you know, I'd heard the story from Greg on the podcast that the first time they went to Lerner, they stopped in it. One of these gas stations was in town. It was kind of the central hub of the town. and they just had people start coming out of the woodwork with stories about different levels of weirdness and UFOs and big foot crossing the road.

And so we were all kind of expecting, you know, as much as we could, keeping open minds, that when we went back to Hellier, we'd post up at that gas station and people would be like, oh, yeah, you know, like, and have more stories of that that we would shoot. And we just didn't have that that first night. Now, granted my headspace, of course, like, I'm an introvert, you know, I don't, like to call too much attention to myself, but here we are when we post up at that gas station. It's like there's five non-locals hang out in this like kind of sketchy, also rural area. Just like basically everything short of having a signpost that said, tell us your weird story.

There was a lot of suspicion directed at us and we were trying to mask our own suspicion directed at others. And, you know, it was just awkward, just human awkward of being in a new place. So I was kind of hanging back. Our camera member shot. He was shooting the whole thing with like a tiny little camera that, you know, obviously was not calling too much attention to to what we were doing. And we popped into the gas station a couple of times, started some conversations.

A couple people came by. But like that whole feeling of just like, oh, yeah, you know, like if someone had a story great, if they didn't have a story, they usually knew someone that was into this who had a story. Because that's how it spread the first time. start calling people. This time everyone's like, no, I mean, I'd love to help, but I don't really know of any weirdness. Like, there was just nothing that first night.

So that was intriguing. I think the more you get into research, you know, putting aside my own filmmaking tendencies, the more you get into research, you're kind of used to the fact that sometimes this phenomenon is on and sometimes it's off. And to me, that's always, you know, the Stanley Hotel taught me that, like there's plenty of off nights, that it's always made it more interesting to me when there's always. off nights because if we're looking at something that, you know, doesn't exist or it's just kind of out there, like you're going to, for the most part, any random sampling is going to kind of

give you the same amount of like false leads, right? You know, you're going to go talk to people and they're going to have the same amount of like not true stories as any other people you talk to at any other time in the same place even. But the fact that sometimes people will have a ton of stories and sometimes people won't, to me is the same way as a normal sampling of people on a ghost hunt has a great night and then another night a normal sampling of people don't. It's just kind of like that difference there makes me inclined to believe that something was actually happening. So that was interesting of it in and of itself that like it was different, but it did sort of also set the tone of like, well, shoot, this is different now? Is this still a flap area?

Is there still something happened? Are we going to experience when we're here? you know, there was some concern as just someone who wanted it to be exciting and crazy and weird, you know. So there was a change. There was a difference when we had gotten there. And that sort of idea of like lead dead end, that theme winds up being a really recurring theme throughout the first season even. But I mean, dead ends lead to like new explorations too, which I was so happy to see like, not happy to see you guys frustrated or like. feeling somewhat defeated.

But that's what sets, I think, this apart from many documentary series or reality television is it's not, we don't have an edited, filtered version of the most exciting moments. Like, we're going to see you guys in true investigative form.

And there are some shitty days, man. I have been there, for sure. But what I really respected is by the end of episode two, you guys make your own. own exploration. You're not done just because you can't find date, just because you're not finding maybe the case reports you had hoped for or sightings or testimony. Like, you're not done with Hellier, clearly, by a long shot. And you guys decide to start to explore. So we have the four of us that

are there and we're extremely focused on getting some contact with whatever was there. And I expected it to get pretty weird, but not quite as weird. And Connor was really a big catalyst for that, too, is to get you guys out there and look at these caves again. Like, I know that's probably going to play a big part into this all, too. So could you maybe hint to us a little about what comes next in Hellier after episode two and where this series might be heading? Absolutely, yeah.

Basically, from all the early research and everything we knew about the area was that this phenomena was seemingly bigger than David and his mind shaft. It seemed like this was a phenomenon that stretched hundreds of miles between eastern and western Kentucky, but also up through the Appalachians. And that's a cave system. That's one of the biggest in the world is the mammoth cave system under Kentucky. and the area of Hellier itself, at least from two years before, seemed to be a real kind of hotbed of high strangeness and paranormal activity. It could have been a flap area even in general. Meanwhile, we're having all these connections to the Mothman prophecies,

as we sort of hinted at earlier. So it had this scope and scale and almost intelligence to it that seemed kind of aware of us. And because of that scope and scale in a supernatural and a physical sense, we were like, you know what? That first one at the end of episode two, we were like, you know what, let's just like, there's forest and wilderness all around this cabin we're staying at. Let's go and try to make contact. If there is some sort of like broader nature to the phenomenon we're trying to get in touch with, maybe it's right here right now and we can just reach out. So our first one was kind of like a local safe dabbling to try to make contact with this. And yeah, they might be these little creatures that are coming out of caves.

But because of the bigger nature, you get tons of UFO stories, as you know, that have a psychic element. That's actually one of the recurring themes of, yeah, of euphonaut, you know, contact, like alien communication. It's like there's a very recurring theme of telepathy. and we don't know with the way that these UFOs blink in and out of reality, these men in black things, like as you get to the bigger scope of this stuff, there's a sort of intangibility aspect that made us wonder, can we kind of apply some ghost hunting techniques that we've been using to these entities somehow?

Like, could we communicate that way? So that's where you kind of see the next episode, the third episode will take off with that first kind of investigative. that for a lot of intensive purposes kind of looks like a ghost hunt in some ways outside and we're basically trying to make contact on a more spiritual level

with these possible entities and we get some pretty weird stuff from that and that's also not the only investigation we do there in the season that provide us with a lot of little fits and pieces that start to apply later on that really kind of scramble our

brains in terms of what was happening there. I am so excited. You guys are bridging the gaps between all these fields and camps, and that's, it seems to be that the, this phenomena, I want to say, is leading you down all these different approaches and, uh, explorations. And whether it's all controlled and they are, you know, bringing you guys along for the right or you're bringing them along, uh, I can't wait. I'm both terrified.

and excited. I'm not going to lie to see what you discovered in Hellyer. But I know, you know, our journey as an audience, it's really only begun as I'm sure yours as a filmmaker and beyond has only begun. So where can we find out more about what you're up to and where can we find Hellyer? So at this point, Hellier, the hub of Hellyer is going to be at hellier.com. That's the main website. We released all these episodes for free. We try to make them as easily accessible for everyone as possible. So if you're on a browser or if you are on your smartphone, hellyer.tv, you can watch all the episodes there. If you'd like to download the episodes and stream to your TV, you can download them all there.

If you're interested in just streaming off the internet to your TV, they're on Prime Video. If you have an Amazon Prime account, they are on YouTube and Vimeo. So you can watch the full series. At this point when this is airing, it is all released. you're able to watch it anytime you like. And if you're interested in following that any further, I'm Carlfeiffer.com is where you can find more about me and my work. And if you liked it, you know, let us know and let your friends know.

And we're already working on more. But we want to make it as good as possible and be able to do to exhaust this case as fully as we can. And that's going to happen as best we can anyways, but it's going to happen a little smoother with audience support if everyone enjoys it. I hope they like it. Absolutely, man. I don't know how they couldn't. I'm going to be live tweeting

the rest of the episodes after episode two. So that's going to be super fun, bringing people along for my journey into this terrifying story. But I'm so excited to see what happens. So, Carl, thank you so much for joining me again on somewhere in the skies. That's it for this week's episode.

Again, you can stream Hellier for free right now. on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vimeo, and at hellier.tv. And be sure to check out all the work that Greg and Dana are up to at weirdhq.com. Once again, please check out Roswell Mysteries Decoded for free right now at cwc.com. Please also subscribe to somewhere in the skies on the largest podcast platform, Apple Podcasts, and iTunes. The more subscribers, the more we get bumped up to be featured. Please also rate and review the show. I truly take all feedback to better the show.

Thank you for your support. Subscribe to our growing YouTube channel with exclusive video content. Just search for the Ryan Sprague channel. I am looking for personal UFO stories for an upcoming episode of witness accounts. So, if you've had a UFO sighting or encounter and you'd be willing to tell your story on the show, contact me through the website, somewhere in the skies.com. The merch store is open over at Tpublic. Just search for the Somewhere in the Sky's store.

T-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-Public.com. My thanks, as always, to the E-1 Podcast Network, K-G-R-A-R-A-R-R-A-R-R-R-ROW, and most importantly, to you for listening. Remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com. Hi, everybody. I'm Chris.

I'm Nick. And we're the host of the Two Dumb Dads Podcast. a show about two dads trying to work our way through parenthood. Are we doing a show or a podcast? It's a podcast show. About parenting? Yeah, it's the same thing. He has my wife's mouth.

My wife's a big mouth. We talk about everything from how do you find a babysitter? I'm going to, I don't know, like, I'm going to stalk you for a week before I let you babysit my kids. Two Will Mac and Cheese Kill Your Kid? I've gotten to the point now where I just sprinkle a little bit of fucking mac and cheese on the hot town. I'm sold. You can find us at our website, Two Dumb Dads.com. You can find us at our Facebook group, the number two, dumb dads.

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