Synchronicities Defined, 5 Spirit Communication Methods to Note // Hellier: Part 1
Season 1 Chapter 1
WELCOME to the kickoff of our first Season of The Legend Queens! We’ve spent hours planning, researching, and cultivating the chapters that await you these upcoming weeks, so please know that the time you put into opening and reading this newsletter is incredibly appreciated.
*Please note, we were *so* excited about this first chapter that we put perhaps a little too much information in it and it is a bit longer than this email. To read the full newsletter, please be sure to visit our Substack page or read this article in the Substack app!*
Today we’ll be setting the stage for the rest of the season. First, Amber will introduce you to two different concepts that will help you better understand the rest of our upcoming chapters. She’ll define synchronicities and give you a couple of examples of how this phenomena may even impact your own life. Then, she’ll clue you in to different ways paranormal researchers communicate with what is often believed to be the dead / spirits or energy from other dimensions.
Afterwards, Austin will walk you through an introduction to the series that ignited the inception of The Legend Queens: Hellier. He’ll acquaint you with Greg and Dana Newkirk, two seasoned paranormal investigators, and the unique synchronicities that lead them to the case of a lifetime.
Shall we begin?
Synchronicities Defined
Written by: Amber Brevig
Synchronicities can be a hot topic in both the spiritual and paranormal communities… but what is a synchronicity, and why does it matter? Who determines its meaning?
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, stated:
“Synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance.”
Analytical psychology is a pretty dense topic, but if you’d like to dive in to Carl Jung’s research and ideologies, this excerpt from his essay “Exposition” is a great place to start.
Put simply - have you ever experienced coincidences that seemed almost too coincidental? In the spiritual community, these occurrences are often interpreted as spiritual guidance: a miracle in their own right. God, Source, The Universe, etc. guiding you on your highest path.
I would gamble that you have likely observed these coincidences at some point of your life, even if you didn’t attach much significance to them at the time. On page 115 of The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith, Gabrielle Bernstein gives a few every day examples:
“You may have experienced these types of undeniable synchronicities in your own life: Maybe you think about a loved one, and they call just as you pick up the phone to dial them; you say something casually, and an hour later it happens. It’s likely these moments come and go - and when they do you’re amazed because you can’t actually believe it. In some ways it seems too good to be true. You may chalk it up to coincidence, but in truth it’s much, much more. These synchronicities are the Universe’s way of guiding you to exactly what you need.”
In the paranormal community though, and as you’ll see in Hellier, synchronicities can be interpreted a little differently. They’re almost thought of as a calling - these coincidences lead the Newkirks and the Hellier team to each other and to different clues throughout their case. While these synchronicities can be exciting, Dana Newkirk also expresses a hint of fear and concern that sometimes something that *seems* like a coincidence is purposeful manipulation and can be sinister and dangerous if blindly followed.
Interpretation, though, is up to whoever is experiencing these coincidences to discern. Manipulation or divine guidance, malicious or holy… the choice is yours.
If you’ve had any experiences with synchronicities, we would love to hear about them! Be sure to clue us in on the tea by tapping on the “Leave a comment” button below.
5 Spirit Communication Methods to Note
Written by: Amber Brevig
If you’ve watched any ghost-hunting show, you’ve likely seen someone try to contact the dead. Often in either an older abandoned environment or an allegedly haunted family home, these hunters will set up equipment around the location to capture any movement or sound recordings. They’ll also usually wander around the area and try to communicate with spirits themselves.
Below are five common methods of spirit communication, but first, what is a spirit?
Spirits - also known as ghosts, the dead, paranormal entities, etc. These are typically terms used interchangeably, as Kathryn Hulick of Science News Explores describes:
“In the mythology of the United States and many other Western cultures, a ghost or spirit is a dead person who interacts with the living world.”
Aaron Sagers, a paranormal pop culture expert, describes ghosts and spirits as two separate beings. He labels both as souls of the dead, however he defines ghosts as souls that still exist on the “earthly plane” who haven’t “crossed over” and spirits as souls which have crossed over and which exist “in a spiritual or metaphysical plane” which is interesting food for thought, but not one the average person likely considers when thinking about the paranormal.
So how are people contacting these souls, regardless of what plane of existence they’re in?
1. They use a Ouija Board
Originally developed to be a children’s toy, the versions of today’s Ouija board have been around since the 1800s.
First produced by Kennard Manufacturing out of Maryland, The Ouija Board was known as a “talking board” which was designed to be held in the laps of two people sitting across from one another. The board looked and operated similarly to how you’ve likely seen them used in movies - the board features the letters of the alphabet, the words “Yes” “No” and “Goodbye”, and numbers 1-9 plus 0. To operate the game, the playing parties both touch the table that sits atop the board (often referred to as a planchette in some earlier news clippings), and then they ask various questions of any energy or spirits that might be in the room. To answer, the table will allegedly move across the board and point to letters to spell out answers to the users’ questions.
How real the Ouija’s answers are, though, have been up for debate since the inception of the board. A news clipping from 1887 states “Sometimes it talks utter nonsense and again it will write real information.”
Today, Ouija Boards are featured in movies such as The Exorcist (1973), Ouija (2014), The Conjuring 2 (2014), and 50+ others and are still sold in stores, often in the board games section.
2. Bring in a Medium
Not to be confused with a psychic, mediums have a unique talent for communicating with energy from the other side. Mediums use tools such as tarot and angel cards, pendulums, crystals, crystal balls, and astrology along with different internal modalities including clairvoyance1, clairsentience2, and clairaudience3 in addition to their interpretation of synchronicities in order to understand messages from the other side.
These communications come to mediums both instinctively, as a natural gift, and can be further trained and honed over years of experience.
Mediums can perform both cold and hot readings on their clients. Cold readings are when a medium communicates with spirits on behalf of a client without looking up anything about the client before conducting the reading. Hot readings are the opposite, and some critics claim just about anybody could conduct a reading based on someone’s Facebook information.
Tyler Henry’s Netflix Show “Life After Death” gives us an idea of what a typical reading from a medium looks like: clients sit in a familiar location with the medium, usually their home or place of work. They may give the medium an item from the deceased person they would like to have the medium contact. The medium will then utilize their tools and intuition (or manipulation and influence skills, if you’re a skeptic) to relay information from the dead to the living. This is often an emotional experience and can bring up trauma for the client (which is a big reason mediums are known as “grief vampires” by critics).
This experience, though, can also bring happiness and closure to clients who believe they are actually communicating with their dead loved one.
3. Conduct a Seance
A seance (French for “session”) is essentially a group meeting focused on communicating with a specific deceased entity. These meetings are often focused around our friend the medium who channels the spirit and communicates on its behalf.
Although it isn’t exactly the same thing as a typical reading from a medium, the primary difference seems to be that a seance is aimed at a specific entity that the group attempts to summon to the meeting whereas a reading invites any and all messages for a specific client from whichever entities are coming through from the other side at the time.
For your enjoyment I have gathered this super legit and definitely scientifically vetted wikiHow article. Please peruse it at your own discretion if you would like to learn more about conducting your own seance.
4. Yeah, They Make an App for That
Ever thought “I’d like to casually sit at my home and just see if there’s any ghosts around me?” Well, there’s an app for that. Several, actually. A quick search for “ghost detector” in the Google Play store (yeah, I have an Android, sue me) brings up a plethora of different radars, EMF (electromagnetic fields) detectors, and ghost cameras.
These 13 apps have pretty high ratings in the store, but who’s to say if they actually work? If you end up testing any out or have used some previously, let us know your experience!
5. Spirit Boxes
A spirit box, also known as a spirit radio, is one of the more popular tools used by ghost hunters today. You may have seen the ever popular “SB7” used by celebrities like Zak Bagans on Ghost Adventures or, my personal favorite duo, Shane and Ryan from The Watcher (but you may know them from Buzzfeed Unsolved).
These boxes utilize EVP which is the “recording of sounds and voices onto tapes, videocassettes and other electronic devices.” While the spirit box is on, ghost hunters will typically ask questions out loud or try to antagonize the spirit to get the entity to manipulate its energy and communicate with the hunters through the device.
We’ll dive into the SB7 and ways it can be used in much more detail in Chapter 2, so be on the lookout for our email on September 18!
Until then, let us know by clicking the comment button below if you’ve had any experience communicating with “the other side” and if you’ve used any of the above methods (or others not on the list)!
Hellier: Part 1
Written by: Austin Charles Bolkcom
“It all started with an email.”
-Greg Newkirk
Greg and Dana Newkirk are no strangers to the paranormal, in fact they are some of the biggest players in the field of paranormal research. Having the worlds largest traveling museum of occult objects that would rival paranormal research couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren. Greg has a past in amateur ghost hunting expeditions with friends helping fuel his drive for his current passions and Dana a practicing Wiccan also with her own past of ghost investigations. Beginning as rival ghost hunting groups, these two soon kept bumping into each other and in the end fate wove these two together. This couple is the modern powerhouse for looking into the unknown! Their mutual love for ghost hunting brought them together as their research blossomed into looking for Bigfoot, UFO sightings and theories that had underlying meanings that these were all connected. This couple loves to get into the field, the very dirt , to get to the root of their investigations. Having hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of documentation of their workings through video and audio recordings.
With Greg’s past as a ghost hunter with his friends, they had a website that was dedicated to their adventures and findings. Their investigations were more just for fun with their theories based on shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Their journeys are more for bonding with each other and talking about the paranormal than diving deep into paranormal phenomena reasoning and any real use of a scientific method. The group eventually disbanded due to Greg moving and other members losing disinterest. Having very fond memories of each other and their time as a group, Greg kept the website up so they could scroll through whenever they were feeling nostalgic. Being a creature of habit, he would check up on the website from time to time as well as their email just in case anyone tried to contact them. In 2012 there was an email from a man who called himself David Christie.
Listen to the audio file below for a dramatized reading of two sets of emails sent by David Christie detailing him and his family being terrorized by unknown entities he believed were coming from an abandoned mine on his property. This audio is split over two emails, the first few minutes is the initial email Christie had sent Greg. The rest of the audio is Christie providing his accounts and detailing his encounters with the creatures to convince Newkirk to come to his property to investigate the phenomena he is experiencing. Take a seat, find something to drink, and take a deep breath before you sit down to listen.
Even being believers in the paranormal, the couple naturally was skeptical at first of the accounts Christie was making about the small beings on his property. Greg and Dana started to think otherwise when they got the picture of the footprints that they had left behind on the property. When they had inquired with friends about the validity of the prints, they were told that the prints had dermal ridges. Dermal ridges are like fingerprints, meaning the foot was fleshy with creases and would be very hard to fake, according to the couple and their inquiries. Think of it as a fingerprint, but for your foot. These footprints, along with other images provided by Christie, supported the idea that these creatures fit the description of a typical “gray” alien. But the only real contrast is that these creatures seemed to be coming from the mines and not from the skies.
Doing some deeper digging into what they were being told by Christie, they quickly realized that some of the details that he was telling them seemed to match up a lot with the story surrounding The Hopkinsville Goblins case, one of the best documented cases of contact with these types of creatures with over eleven witnesses including the police. In 1955 a farm was besieged by these tiny creatures that the residents believed to be extraterrestrials, police had fired on the creatures, and they even have sketches of the goblins seen on the farm that night. The themes and events of what happened in Hopkinsville are so eerily similar to Christie’s account, that the two had to ask themselves is David pulling their leg and pulling a copy cat story or is this a reoccurring phenomena through the Mammoth cave system? A system of mines and tunnels that run along the Eastern United States and is the largest cave system in the world with 400 miles mapped and explored with an estimated 600 miles still left unmapped. When the Newkirk’s mapped out where Christies house was and where the Hopkinsville case happened, both locations were mapped on top of the Mammoth cave system.
Unfortunately after a few more emails and finally asking for David’s address and saying that they were on board, David dropped contact and has not responded to any of the following messages that Greg has sent asking to come visit the property. Not wanting someone else to make a jump on this golden egg of a case he has found, Greg sat with the information not letting anyone else know the major pieces of information in fright that in a few years he would see that they had solved the case before he could get to it. No only did Greg want to be the first one to solve this mystery, he didn’t want someone else to ruin it or misunderstand what was going on in Hellier.
Making calls to the town that David said he was in, Newkirk was able to confirm that cases of strangeness did happen around town but they weren’t willing to give them any details of any events or to who these cases happened to. Letting Greg know he was on the right path in where to look but the trail went cold for another year.
In 2013, the Newkirks decided they wanted to experiment with seeing if they could initiate an alien abduction experiment, deciding that they should head out to Brown Mountain, famous for “The Brown Mountain Lights”. Sightings of strange phenomena, including UFO’s and lights, have been seen in Brown Mountain North Carolina since the days before colonization deriving from tales told by the Native Americans. This area is a known hot spot for sightings as well as alien abduction stories. Greg admitted that the experiments were rather successful and they got what they came for, telling in an interview that the footage they captured was so unsettling for all those involved that they decided to never release it.
But what does this have to do with David Christie and his bizarre emails?
While looking into The Brown Mountain Lights, Newkirks and crew decided to take an excursion to what one of their guides has detailed as an entrance to a mine where known activity has been reported to occur. Having the thought of Christie’s email’s in mind, it was too tempting of an offer for them to pass up. They made it to the entrance of what seemed to be an opening of a cave but their entrance was close off by a large boulder, the two noting the rock seemed very out of place as if someone had put it there to block it off. Upon returning back to civilization where they could access the internet, an email was waiting for Greg from a man by the name of T. R. Wriste, the same person who lead David Christie into his direction.
“Why did you stop when you were so close?”
“The door is closed, the window is open.”
Beyond being a cryptic message that he didn’t grasp the full meaning of in the moment, Wriste had also included a series of numbers attached to the email. Greg and Dana had a hard time wrapping their head around what these numbers could be. A friend told them it looked like it was a credit card number by the sequence of numbers were in but they couldn’t find any that matched the corresponding digits. Another friend suggested that it could be GPS coordinates so the two plugged them into the computer and a cold chill ran down their spines.
The coordinates they received in the email had been the exact location the two had been at when they looked at the cave in Brown Mountain.
At one point taken as a hoax, thinking someone was pulling their leg from the start, reality started to settle in for the two realizing that who ever they were in contact with knew more about them then they knew about T.R. Wriste.
Who is David Christie and who is the man that led him to them, T.R. Wriste? Were these even real people or are the couple being harassed by the infamous Men in Black for their involvement researching UFO's and Extraterrestrials? The two would only start to unravel this thread once they make their way to Hellier with Karl Pfeiffer and Connor Randall in 2016….. where we will pick up next time.
Chapter 2 will drop on September 18th!
See you then.
Clairvoyance can be described as seeing beyond the spectrum of what the typical human is capable of. This can be both visual (seeing apparitions, auras, etc.) or a sort of mental sight that can be experienced when one’s eyes are closed.
Described as having a clear sense of feeling, clairsentience includes gut feelings, intuition, or just an overall sense of “knowing.”
The sense of hearing messages from the other side, much like how we hear every day sounds. This can be heard with the ears, or, again, can be experienced as sort of a mental audio.
Synchronicity story: I dreamt that my best friend was pregnant. I casually told her about this dream the next time I saw her. Unbeknownst to me, her period was late when I told her about the dream. She decided to take a pregnancy test that day and it came back positive. She was shocked. She called me to tell me right away, "You're psychic. You knew I was pregnant before I did!"