Welcome to another chapter of The Legend Queens! Thank you for all the support we’ve gotten since we’ve launched our first season a month ago. We’re already at 50 subscribers and we are overjoyed with the amount of love and support all of you have given us so far. We want to continue to grow our community and our base so whenever you see something from us, a comment, a like, and of course a share really help us out. It’s just us two ~queers~ doing all of the writing, researching, advertising, and production of this newsletter. Any support from you, the reader, in any form really helps us out at the end of the day and puts a smile on our faces.
In our last few chapters, Amber has chatted all about different methods of spirit communication (and if you aren’t caught up, you can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here). This week, Amber will give you a brief background on the God Helmet (yes, it’s another spirit communication method), and Austin will continue to dive into the depths of the happenings in Hellier with Newkirks and Co. finally going into the meat of their investigation of what they found while they were in town. Engaging in multiple experiments and using several different paranormal research methods to not only entice some activity to happen around them but to also document the paranormal strangeness happening in this small town connected to The Mammoth Cave System.
And with that…. Shall we begin?
What is the God Helmet?
Written by Amber Brevig
Can a fancy magnet helmet make you see God?
A Brief Background
The Koren Helmet was originally invented by Dr. Michael Persinger and Sten Koren for neurotheology which, in short, is the practice of studying brain scans to see how spirituality effects the brain. This device, also dubbed as the “God Helmet” by the media, is a headpiece which creates a “complex” magnetic field within the temporo-parietal lobes by sending out light electro-magnetic pulses into the mind.
In plain English, it’s a helmet with probes on it, and these probes send out pulses which change activity within the brain while the helmet is turned on.
So why exactly did these men want to stick magnets around peoples’ noggins?
You know how some people claim to see God or hear directly from him (and not in the “I have faith in the unseen” way but the “I physically saw this entity when I was sober and he spoke directly to me in broad daylight” kind of way)? If that’s not familiar, have you ever heard of a near-death experience or an out-of-body experience? It’s estimated that 10-20% of the American population has had a mystical experience like this.
Parsinger theorized that this kind of spiritual experience was largely due to certain brain activity (which, according to Big Think, has been confirmed today and is considered a biological fact), and he hypothesized that he could induce those types of experiences by manipulating the mind to recreate that kind of activity.
Greg Newkirk summarizes the whole apparatus nicely in Hellier Season 2:
“It [the helmet] takes complex magnetic fields and it pumps them through different hemispheres of the brain in order to stimulate a religious experience. The media has dubbed this thing the God Helmet because it’s given so many people visions of God. In a lot of places that are considered holy places, they have higher, stranger electromagnetic fields, and they just figured, maybe there’s something about these areas that’s causing these experiences. And so they created a device that simulates those."
Truthfully, the science behind it all is a little too much for me to comprehend, but if you’d like to gain access to Parsinger’s and Koren’s scholarly journal article on their experiments, you can do so here or read a summary of the helmet’s history here. Additionally, Andrew Newberg conducted his own neurotheology studies which further sheds light on how spiritual experiences light up the brain, and you can read all about that here.
So What Does the Koren Helmet Have to Do with Spirit Communication?
Although the helmet was originally used to study neurotheological data, the God Helmet has since been used in more paranormal ways as opposed to solely religious studies.
Dana Newkirk, who has used the God Helmet more than a handful of times, explains in Season 2 Episode 3 of Hellier:
The God Helmet is a device and it’s a tool that we can use and it essentially helps us trigger similar feelings that people have when they have religious experiences, psychic experiences, and paranormal experiences. So the God Helmet is actually working to get your brain to respond the same way that we will respond to in those types of situations. Sort of a cheat code in a way. It forces the brain to respond in that way.
And Greg Newkirk also shares:
It’s also been used in a number of psychic experiments, which is something they [the inventors] didn’t necessarily anticipate… and they’ve found that when they have the coils arranged in a specific way they can actually enhance someone’s latent psychic abilities.
Although the paranormal community knew the helmet could be used to amp up psychic abilities, it had never been used in conjunction with a more widely studied and vetted spirit communication method. At least, not until the Hellier team decided to pair the helmet with the Estes Method in Hellier Season 2.
The God Helmet + The Estes Method
In Hellier Season 2, Newkirk and Co. decide to utilize the Koren helmet and the Estes Method in conjunction with each other. Their idea was that the helmet would act as a sort of antennae or amplifier in their spirit communication efforts and that the Estes Method would allow them to talk directly to the entities involved in their adventure.
I won’t dive too deep into it because
1) I don’t want to spoil Austin’s chapters, and
2) SO much happens between Hellier Season 1 and 2 that it would take me way too long to explain the context.
So, long story short, the team basically proves their hypothesis. Dana used the God Helmet while Connor sat back to back with her while participating in an Estes Method session.
To kick off the session, Greg began by asking a specific entity the team had been trying to contact some pointed questions. They would get a few answers here and there, but Connor’s answers seemed to align more with anything Dana was saying than what anyone else was asking.
After a few minutes, Greg tells Dana to take charge of the questions. Suddenly, it’s as if Dana and Connor are having a back and forth conversation - she the antennae for a stronger paranormal connection, and he the communication conduit. Almost everything Dana asks is answered immediately and in a pretty logical way (keep in mind that Connor can neither see nor hear anything happening in the room).
If you’d like to check out the whole experiment, you can watch it below (but keep in mind you likely will not understand the context of the conversation if you have not watched the Hellier episodes up until this point):
Have you ever had an out-of-body or strong spiritual experience? Drop a comment below if you have! We’d love to hear about it (especially as we near the end of Season 1 and have a few things planned for the interim before the release of Season 2)!
Hellier: Chapter 3
Written by: Austin Charles Bolkcom
After getting met with dead end after dead end since the minute they’ve arrived in Hellier, the crew was getting impatient, they were tired, and frustrated. It was time for them to put matters into their own hands. Not only because at this point in the investigation were they convinced that whatever phenomena Christie had experienced was gone, but because they’ve traveled all the way out here and are definitely experiencing some activity. They just don’t know what that activity is. Is it goblins? Spirits? Elementals? Fae? At this point it could be just about anything. Every layer of this onion they were peeling back was only getting stranger and stranger, with more questions being added to everyone’s list instead of answers.
Being surrounded by woods, fields, and mining tunnels, the crew had no shortage of places where they could start their initiations of activity given that with every story they’ve gathered from this place, it seems likely for them to experience activity in any if not all of these areas. Along with most of these locations having one story or another from a local about seeing something odd.
Dana decides she wants to create a small ritual in a clearing, gathering materials needed for an Intention Setting Ceremony. The idea is that the sender casts out their intentions with mindfulness and purpose and uses physical materials to aid in the ritual. With the intention in place and materials to use, Dana begins offering tobacco while speaking aloud that they wish to communicate with whatever entity is present with them in the woods. Stating that they just wish to observe, being a bridge of peace between them, and to communicate. Hoping to wipe away any ideas of negativity or bad intentions on the group's behalf.
Almost immediately after the ritual begins, as if on cue, activity begins to happen around them. As Greg is speaking aloud to coax anything around him into stepping out from the tree lines or make some noise, you can hear an echoing of someone banging a log or big piece of wood against a tree. It only happens a few times but its distinct enough and repetitive enough for them to rule out it was just the natural sound of the surrounding woods encompassing them. The knocks don’t just happen in one part, they seem to be moving around and happening in different areas. They try to discount at least some of the noises as just natural occurrences (animals, wind, etc.) but some of the other signs they were getting felt a little too directed at them, even to the point where the group swears objects were being thrown in their vicinity. Every time they asked for some type of sign or reaction, they seemed to be met with a sound and a rebuttal. There even seems to be a point while they’re in the clearing that something seems to be whistling back to them, echoing their sound.
Greg notes how they seemed to have drawn something in, an event that seemed very similar to what they experienced when looking for Bigfoot. The sense of being watched by something after being called to be an intention.
As soon as the candles from the ritual died out, the activity around the area seemed to disappear with it but the crew got what they needed anyway. They just wanted to confirm their suspicions that there is something present in Hellier first hand instead of just experiencing it through others stories. Now that they had proof of activity, they had a path they could take to dive deeper into investigating what the phenomena was.
Heading back to the porch section of their residency, they all agree they are going to use The Estes Method as their next research tool to document the activity that is present in the area. Having the most experience being the transmitter in these instances, Connor seemed like the right choice out of the four to be in the “hot seat” for receiving and interpreting the information coming out of the spirit box.
What they intend to get out of this experience using the Estes Method is to see if they can get the transmitter, Connor, to get to a point where they are having a back and forth conversation with whatever they were communicating with. Not only did they get back and forth conversation coming from the Estes Method but they seemed to get a full narration of what they were doing and what was going on around them.
At first, while Greg is talking and asking questions, the notes coming from Connor seem to be very rambled and disjointed from the ongoing questions that were being presented at the moment. But soon sounds begin to happen around the cabin: breaking of branches, pebbles being thrown, rustling of bushes, unusual chirping and other sounds. Every time a sound would happen, Connor seemed to narrate at the exact moment the sound was happening. Sometimes with a “Over there…” or “Here..” not very direct but the wording would come the moment a sound would happen around them. Words like “Coming closer… Show… Arrive”. Having the group fully convinced that there was just something out of their sight under the tree line.
Connor seems to be able to have an answer or reaction to most of the questions being presented to him while hooked up to the spirit box, though not completely coherent. He even stated in a side interview that he had to take everything with a grain of salt to let himself really be open as a listener but he even said himself how much clear voice activity was happening from the voice box and it seemed like someone wanted them to know they were there and for them to have more information.
“It was basically precognition”
—Greg Newkirk
To top off the end of the experience with the spirit box, Connor says he sees a clear image of a tin can being projected to him. With his hundred of hours using the spirit box in the Estes Method, he states this is the first time he’s ever been shown an image or has had one as heavily imprinted into his mind during a session.
The session seems to end with the activity from the box stopping from producing anymore clear sounds for Connor to communicate to the other three. He says his eyes are starting to water and Dana notes that he looks agitated, agreeing that it would be a good idea to take him out of the session. With a jolt after Greg touches his leg, from being blindfolded and having headphones on, Connor laughs it off and removes the gear dulling his senses.
The group reconnects about what was happening around them to Connor while he was transmitting and Connor was telling them the sounds, voices and words he remembered clearly through the Estes Method. Karl and Connor once again comment on how close the narration to this session was and how the accuracy is never that consistent through one session.
Deciding that they have gathered enough for the night, the group ends their information gathering for the evening and packs up all their equipment before heading off to bed.
They spend the next morning and afternoon doing some more information gathering before they spend the night time working on more experiments to document activity. Newkirks and Crew came into contact with a few of the locals they had met last time they were in town in 2013, asking them what they’ve been asking everyone else about any stories or about anything they’ve seen lately in the area.
Through their local intel channels, the four have pinpointed an abandoned tunnel that hikers have passed by saying they could hear the crying of a baby coming from inside. Hikers also have stated seeing carvings in nearby caves of creatures with glowing red eyes, a case very similar to happenings around The Mothman and Point Pleasant. A synchronicity they keep coming across as they spend more time in Hellier.
Curious enough about all these caves surrounding the area, the group chooses one and starts off on a hike in the evening across tall prairie grass tall enough to go over their heads. Greg felt it very important to go somewhere that was connected to an opening in the earth. That’s where this phenomena seemed to be taking place so where better than to go to the source? After a few miles they find the opening to their destination. Not only do they find the entrance to the tunnel they were looking for, they also found a tin can coming into the cave. Connor seems to be having a difficult moment as he get confused as what is leading them there and why but also a conformation that this is where they’re supposed to be. Stating it was almost like a deja vu experience seeing it and all the details he saw in his mind the other night before.
And that is where we will pick up next time for our final chapter in season 1! See you October 16th for Chapter 4.