A strange thing happened in 2019. A five-part paranormal documentary series named after a small town in Kentucky was released for free on the internet. The promo art for the series featured a bizarre humanoid figure with a conical head and amphibious features and felt like clear counterprogramming to the run-of-the-mill ghost-harassing fodder dominating mainstream TV at the time. The project was helmed by first-time director Karl Pfeiffer, and the documentary focused on the chummy husband-and-wife paranormal investigation duo, Greg and Dana Newkirk. Up until this point, Greg and Dana were known primarily as ghost hunters, and their approach to branding could best be described as the intersection of the anomalous and fart jokes. This new documentary, Hellier, felt very different. As a pretentious snob, at the time, I would have called myself a Fortean. I was less interested in ghost-hunting shows and Ancient Aliens than I was in pondering the novel theories of Jacques Vallee and Terrence McKenna and their implications for what we might call the paranormal.
Even though I was skeptical of Hellier initially, it was free after all, and I dove right in. Much like the Newkirk's themselves, I was shocked to discover that what was ostensibly going to be a quirky investigation of a purported goblin sighting soon became a deeply engrossing meditation on the amorphous nature of paranormal activity, and the implications of the phenomena, once glimpsed, staring back wryly. Credit to the team behind Hellier, as the narrative they encountered became weirder, so did their approach to the investigation. It's clear that John Keel and his heterodoxical embrace of so-called "high strangeness" in considering the realm of the paranormal became an intentional road map for the Newkirks to follow, but maybe less obvious to them was the way in which their goblin hunting movie was also becoming infected by a mysterious, co-creative trickster energy, more akin to Robert Anton Wilson's 1977 narrative non-fiction ordeal Cosmic Trigger. Playboy writer turned ironic cult leader, Robert Anton Wilson, through documenting his own psychedelic and synchromystical experiences with skillful levity and wit, fomented an occult revolution. Although Wilson was clearly a product of the late sixties hippie generation, his novel approach to the subject of the anomalous and esoteric planted a seed in the budding young weirdos of the next generation, becoming something of a patron saint for the chaos magicians and psychonauts that would carry the occult revival torch for the cyber punks and archaic revivalists of Generation X. By the time Hellier was released in 2019, Cosmic Trigger's influence had wained, and a new generation, unaware that all the structures holding together consensus reality were about to crumble around them, were ripe for an initiatory artifact of their own. To my estimation, Hellier became a new participant in the initiatory current that propelled Cosmic Trigger to infamy, but updated for the internet generation, and made bingeable.
There's a cathartic moment early in Hellier's second season where the floor drops out from under the premise of the series, and the creators sit down to recount the flurry of messages, warnings, and clues they received after the show first premiered. These messages weren't from their target ghost-hunting demographic, but a swarm of online occultists, who in an uncoordinated effort had reached out in droves to explain the hidden premise of their own show to them. Hellier, the series, the project, it was suggested, is a ritual, and an initiation is being unknowingly undertaken not only by the show's creators, but by its audience as well.
Season 2 of Hellier premiered a few months before a worldwide lockdown, spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic, would cause a large swath of the world who would normally be distracted by the mundane toils of daily life to be sucked deep down internet rabbit holes. For people like me, this was Hellier. Viewers across the globe reported synchronicities they began to experience in their own lives, seemingly a reflection of the bizarre occurrences that pursue the Newkirk's in both seasons of the show. In reddit forums and discord servers people were describing odd sightings of conspicuous blue star balloons, similar to the investigators on the show, as well as eerily consistent audio phenomena, frequent and uncanny occurrences of revelant names and symbols, and more widely a feeling that the rising number of synchronicities in the lives of the show's audience were evidence that something was intentionally leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.
This bizarre effect of the phenomena, once glimpsed staring back, isn't merely an example of the hunter becoming the hunted, but rather a mystical form of call and response. The breadcrumbs people have been led to follow from this sort of engagement don't often lead in a straight line, but weave like a maze. What can seem like hoaxes and fictions can, bizarrely, lead to true insights into these experiences for the participants. In many ways, these experiences are like being sucked into an Alternate Reality Game, with a loose and hidden set of rules. In this game, the initiatory phenomena seems to operate outside of the assumption that "x" marks the spot, instead rewarding the active participant choosing their own adventure.
Was the inciting incident of the Hellier series, essentially an anonymous tip about a goblin sighted in a Kentucky cave, just a rouse all along? A story that, when given the attention of Pfeiffer and the Newkirks, could be taken up and used by something else? What are we to make of this strange relationship between fiction, the phenomenon, and its ability to insert itself into our lives? My takeaway from watching Hellier and the subsequent synchronicities that entered my own life was that it wasn't the ghost hunters or speculative philosophers who seemed to have a real grasp on what I was experiencing. It was the occultists. Before long, what was once an armchair fascination with the Fortean, for me, became an active one. Magic has been a core part of my life ever since. I soon learned that the anomalous initiation that can follow a dead-end email tip about a goblin may be no different than the effects instigated by putting the statue of a deity on an altar and starting to talk to it like it can hear you.
Today's guest also felt Hellier's initiatory effects, but in the opposite way. Celeste Mott was already a self proclaimed Witch and professional tarot reader in New Orleans' French Quarter when lockdown drove her into the show's orbit. For Celeste, Hellier didn't introduce her to magic so much as showed her new ways to think about some of the stranger examples of how it manifested in her life. It turns out this wasn't Celeste's first foray into initiation via cultural artifact.
Celeste has recently had more than one viral moment while recounting how she was ensnared in an online Anne Rice vampire cult in the early days of the internet. Her story is fascinating, at times hilarious, at times disturbing, and ultimately a story about how narrative has the power to initiate, manipulate, and take on a life of its own. As someone who got chewed out by a deacon for reading Interview with a Vampire during a church service when I was nine, I am so here for this story. Today, Celeste is exploring how the same narrative magic she may once have fallen prey to, through a conscientious engagement with this byproduct of high strangeness, can instead be harnessed for personal empowerment. Oh yeah, we talk about Mall World too.
SHOW NOTES:
Celeste's Site: celestemott.com
Celeste's Substack: TheMothsMissives
Celeste's Patreon: TheMoth-UrHouse
Celeste on TikTok: @CelesteMoth
Celeste on IG: @celestemott
Celeste on YouTube: c/celestemott
Watch Hellier: YouTube
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