Did anyone else notice this in season one?

While Hellier intends to offer a deep dive into paranormal phenomena, it offers something far more potent and novel: A deep-dive into the human psyche, the search for meaning, and the desire to find significance in our lives stretching beyond our current understanding of reality. Hellier’s initial stated purpose is to uncover the truth behind reported goblins in Kentucky. What makes this series genius is the ability of these amateur documentarians to convince themselves (and then the viewers) that anything they experience from this point forward can be (and usually is) somehow connected to this premise.

As casual viewers can observe from acclaimed documentaries, the goal of true documentarians is to observe and develop a record of events with as little bias as possible. The moment the documentary crew removes themselves as simple observers and joins the investigation, this becomes a narrative film, following the lives of these individuals, led, directed, and edited by the collective of their personal biases.

Contrary to the definition of what constitutes a documentary, Greg incorrectly states in season 1 that the goal of a documentary is to show someone a specific perspective on things. Rather than a documentary, Greg is describing the goal of propaganda, advertisements, and narratives; films with an agenda intended to persuade the audience that a specific point of view has merit and/or is the correct opinion, and one the audience should believe wholeheartedly. This accidental statement is shared during a Tarot card reading, which underscores TWO important recurring themes throughout this series: First, the incorrect or improper use of what we will call “tools.” The second constant in the season 1 episodes is personal interpretations taken as fact, resulting from misguided analysis of improperly obtained data. As an example, Dana incorrectly draws Tarot cards without following the known procedure for doing so. Veracity of Tarot cards aside, Dana also provides incorrect descriptions about the meanings of each Tarot card. This then provides improper grounds for members of the team to make ungrounded connections to the case and add in their own personal assumptions and biases that drive the story forward and seem to provide some kind of significance to their theories.

Through this process of improper “tools” and incorrect analysis, the investigation encourages cognitive dissonance and compels the crew to lean into confirmation bias in nearly every scenario. As a result, viewers find themselves excited about supposed links or “synchronicities” which distract them, preventing them from questioning the investigation’s process or its integrity.

Through this kind of self-affirming, circular thought, the team continuously asserts that they are “following a lead and hitting a wall” over and over. In reality, they are grasping at straw number one, manufacturing some kind of perceived significance based on their own cognitive biases, following up on these manufactured “leads,” and ending up nowhere. Finally, the team reasons it is time to grasp for straw number two. However, in most if not all cases, straw number two is completely unrelated to straw number one — as seen in repeated cases such as following up with various unrelated events relayed to the team by different members of the Hellier community. These events are not connected, yet the fact that these encounters all happened in the same location somehow leads the team to lend significance to this and call it a link between events.

While following up, the team does whatever they can in order to divine some significant link to other parts of the story. This is done through the use of flawed, unrepeatable experiments, tarot cards, theories, phone calls, discussions, and more perceived “synchronicities.”

The last two devices worth mentioning are “sounds” and “feelings” or “vibes.” First, sounds in the woods are most often attributed to supernatural entities at the outset, with little or no consideration of environmental factors such as animals, weather, or other humans.

Second: At different times, various members of the team assert that their personal feelings (mental or physical) provide some kind of significance on their own by virtue of existing, with zero factual basis for this rationale. They then lend this perceived significance to their own assertions, as well as previous biased assertions from other members of the team, or other perceived connections to disparate, unrelated events.

The genius in this show is the way it takes advantage of viewers’ trust in the investigators, and the viewers’ willingness to suspend their disbelief (or extend their belief) based on the investigators’ unfounded assertions. This elegant sleight of hand by the filmmakers keeps audiences distracted by exciting, unfounded clues and conclusions while the filmmakers avoid providing any grounds or evidence for these clues and conclusions.

On a personal note, as someone who has experienced several terrifying encounters with unexplainable paranormal events, I do understand the frustration and impossibility of grounding them in fact using our current understanding of science. That said, I can still make connections less flimsy than the alleged connections made in this show.

Hellier is a profound and impressive example of how humans’ search for meaning can lead them to find significance in anything, so long as their trust in themselves and repeated self-affirmation allow them to do so. This phenomena itself is truly the investigation occurring on screen and in my opinion deserves to be discussed greater in academic and psychology circles.

Edit: Assuming this misdirection is completely intentional and not unfortunately accidental, I applaud the filmmakers’ genius and tact, and can happily say I have not known another show that achieves these same ends in such crafty and masterful ways. This is a masterpiece and I look forward to watching season 2.

Edit 2: names