Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Hellier Goblins: A Modern Kentucky Legend from Pike County’s Mine Country
Hellier sits in the mountains of Pike County, Kentucky, where the roads bend through hollows shaped by coal, rail lines, and the long memory of work underground. It is a real place with a real history, but the story that made its name known to paranormal readers and documentary viewers is much newer than the coal camps around it.
The Hellier Goblins are best understood as a modern Kentucky legend cycle. They are not an old, well-documented Appalachian folk creature in the way that Raw Head and Bloody Bones, the Plat-Eye, or haint tales appear in older oral traditions. Their strongest public record begins in the twenty first century, with a set of emails, a paranormal investigation, and a documentary series that turned a small Pike County community into the center of a much larger story about goblins, caves, mines, UFOs, synchronicity, and the strange power of Appalachian landscapes in the internet age.
That does not make the story meaningless. Folklore is not limited to stories printed in nineteenth century collections or passed down beside a fireplace. New folklore forms wherever people tell, share, doubt, retell, and reshape a story. Hellier is a case study in how a legend can grow in public view, moving from private emails to online articles, from a town in Eastern Kentucky to a documentary audience, and from one alleged sighting report into a sprawling mythology about the underground.
Hellier before the goblins
Before the paranormal story, Hellier was part of Pike County’s coal geography. The U.S. Geological Survey identifies Hellier as a populated place in Pike County, and the surrounding topographic and geologic records place it firmly in the rugged border country of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. The landscape is not incidental to the legend. The story depends on hills, old workings, abandoned openings, and the uneasy feeling that something hidden might move through the dark spaces under the mountain.
Local historical material helps ground the place. The Pike County Historical Society preserves images connected to Hellier and nearby coal communities, including a postcard postmarked from Hellier in 1911. Another Pike County Historical Society entry on Allegheny, Edgewater, and Greenough Mines notes a train wreck at Hellier in 1911 and describes Edgewater, about a mile above Hellier, as a coal camp that began in 1906 and closed in 1929.
That history matters because the modern legend is not simply about little creatures. It is about where such creatures are imagined to come from. In the Hellier story, the mine is not only a physical place. It becomes a doorway, a boundary, and a symbol. Appalachia has many stories in which the edge of the known world appears in a cave, a hollow, an abandoned house, a mine portal, or a road that feels too lonely after dark. Hellier fits that pattern, but it does so through modern media.
The email from “David Christie”
The public Hellier story begins with paranormal researcher Greg Newkirk. According to Planet Weird’s official account, Newkirk received an email in 2012 from a man calling himself David Christie. The man claimed that he and his family were being troubled by strange creatures at night. After exchanging emails, the sender disappeared from contact. Planet Weird’s summary says the case became stranger over the next five years, with other emails and connections appearing before the team traveled to rural Kentucky in 2017.
The story told in the documentary adds the details that made Hellier famous. The alleged creatures were small humanoids, sometimes described in comparison with the Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins of 1955. They were said to be coming from an abandoned mine or tunnel near the property. The emails reportedly included claims of footprints and activity around the home.
For historians, this is where caution is necessary. The alleged emails are central to the legend, but they are not the same thing as a courthouse record, a police report, a census record, or a nineteenth century folklore collection. They are part of the case as presented by the investigators. That makes them primary for the history of the Hellier phenomenon as a media and folklore event, but not proof that the creatures existed.
This distinction is important. The article is not asking whether goblins live under Pike County. It is asking how a goblin story attached itself to Hellier, why that story spread, and how it drew on older Kentucky legends and Appalachian settings.
From case file to documentary
Hellier became widely known through the documentary series of the same name. The first season was released in January 2019, and Planet Weird describes it as a five part paranormal documentary series built around the 2012 email, the missing sender, and the 2017 trip to rural Kentucky. The season one episode guide begins with “The Midnight Children,” where the David email is introduced, and continues through the team’s arrival in Hellier, their search for the sender, their review of public records, and their visit to an abandoned tunnel.
The second season, released later in 2019, widened the story. What began as a search for Kentucky goblins became something larger and stranger. The series moved through questions about hidden informants, caves, Somerset, Point Pleasant, Mothman, occult symbolism, Pan, synchronicity, and the possibility that different paranormal traditions were connected.
This widening is one reason Hellier became more than a simple creature story. A typical monster legend often asks, “What did someone see?” Hellier asks a different question: “What happens when every strange clue seems to point toward another strange clue?” The documentary became less a hunt for one creature and more a record of interpretation. Every email, local comment, odd coincidence, old book, cave story, and Kentucky place-name became part of the puzzle.
For believers, that structure made the series feel alive. For skeptics, it showed how quickly pattern seeking can turn scattered material into a web. For folklorists, that tension is exactly why the case is useful.
The older shadow of Kelly-Hopkinsville
The Hellier Goblins do not stand alone in Kentucky weird history. Their older cousin is the Kelly-Hopkinsville case of 1955, sometimes called the Hopkinsville Goblins or the Kelly Green Men.
On the night of August 21, 1955, members of the Sutton and Taylor families near Kelly, in Christian County, Kentucky, reported that strange beings had approached their farmhouse. The story soon reached police and newspapers. The Kentucky New Era reported on the case the next day, and the incident became one of the best known American UFO and “little men” stories of the twentieth century.
Later summaries of the Kelly-Hopkinsville case describe small figures, glowing eyes, gunfire, fear, and a family barricaded inside a rural house. Investigators and writers have debated the case ever since. Some UFO writers treat it as one of the classic close encounter stories. Skeptics have suggested misidentified owls, excitement, and the growth of legend after the fact. Psychologists Rodney Schmaltz and Scott O. Lilienfeld used the Hopkinsville Goblins as a case study in teaching scientific thinking about extraordinary claims.
The link between Kelly-Hopkinsville and Hellier is not only visual. Both stories center on small humanoid beings in rural Kentucky. Both involve frightened families, darkness, and a sense of siege. Both became larger in the retelling. But there is a key difference. Kelly-Hopkinsville began in 1955 with a local report, police involvement, and newspaper coverage. Hellier began with emails and became famous through digital media. One belongs to the UFO age of the Cold War. The other belongs to the internet age of paranormal documentary storytelling.
Caves, mines, and the underground imagination
One of the strongest scholarly readings of Hellier comes from folklorist Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby of the University of Kentucky. In her Revenant article, “The Cave Conspiracy: Contemporary Legend in Hellier,” she treats the series as a contemporary legend that combines several existing traditions. She connects Hellier to the Hopkinsville Goblins, Mothman, cave folklore, fairy folk traditions, Satanic panic motifs, Appalachian stereotypes, internet research, and paranormal media.
That framework is useful because it avoids two weak approaches. It does not simply accept the goblins as real creatures, but it also does not dismiss the story as worthless. Instead, it asks what kind of story Hellier is and why it works.
Caves and mines have always carried symbolic weight. They are entrances into the earth. They are places of work, danger, death, treasure, burial, hiding, and mystery. In Appalachia, the mine carries even more meaning. It is tied to labor, company towns, injury, strikes, migration, and memory. A closed mine portal is not just a hole in the hillside. It can feel like a sealed chapter of family history.
That is why the mine setting gives the Hellier legend power. The alleged creatures do not come from a city alley or a laboratory. They come from under the mountain. The setting makes the story feel Appalachian, even if the documented legend itself is modern.
The underground also links Hellier to older European and Appalachian story patterns. Folklore often places fairies, goblins, hidden people, devils, and spirits beneath hills or inside caves. In Hellier, those older motifs are filtered through UFO language, paranormal investigation, occult interpretation, and online research. The result is not a pure survival of ancient folklore. It is a modern mixture.
What the record can and cannot prove
A careful Appalachian history article has to separate three things.
First, Hellier is a real Pike County place with a coal and mining context. Local historical records, maps, postcards, and geologic sources can support that.
Second, the Hellier Goblins are a real modern legend. They have a documented public life through emails presented by the investigators, early online paranormal writing, the Planet Weird documentary series, interviews, viewer discussions, and scholarly folklore analysis.
Third, the existence of goblin-like creatures in Hellier is not historically proven. There is no strong independent body of primary evidence showing that small humanoid beings came from an abandoned mine in Pike County. There is no known older local tradition that clearly establishes “Hellier Goblins” as a longstanding Pike County folk belief before the 2012 email story.
This does not ruin the subject. In folklore studies, a story does not have to be literally true to matter. The belief, doubt, fear, setting, and retelling are the evidence. The Hellier Goblins show how Appalachian places can become stages for national and even global paranormal imagination. They also show how easily outsiders can project mystery onto mountain communities.
That last point deserves care. Appalachia has often been treated by outside media as strange, backward, hidden, or dangerous. Hellier uses that atmosphere, sometimes beautifully and sometimes uneasily. The dark road, the old mine, the small town where no one seems to know the mysterious contact, the feeling of being watched by the hills, all of these are powerful storytelling tools. They can create wonder, but they can also repeat old stereotypes if handled carelessly.
Why Hellier spread
Hellier spread because it arrived at the right time for internet folklore. Viewers could watch the documentary, search the same names, pause the screen, compare maps, read old UFO cases, discuss clues on forums, and build theories in real time. The audience did not only receive the legend. It helped extend it.
That is one of the major differences between Hellier and older Appalachian legends. A nineteenth century ghost story might travel from porch to churchyard to newspaper column. Hellier moved through YouTube, Amazon Prime, Reddit, podcasts, websites, social media, and fan investigation. It became participatory. The line between viewer and researcher blurred.
The story also offered a large enough mystery for many kinds of people to enter. Cryptid readers found goblins. UFO readers found Hopkinsville and strange beings. Mothman readers found Point Pleasant connections. Occult readers found Pan and ritual. Folklorists found a living legend cycle. Skeptics found an example of pattern making. Appalachia readers found a familiar landscape of mines, roads, caves, and small communities made strange by outside attention.
That openness helped the story survive. A simple hoax claim can be accepted or rejected. A legend cycle keeps moving because it does not depend on one answer. Every unanswered question becomes another doorway.
The Hellier Goblins in Kentucky folklore
So where should the Hellier Goblins sit in Kentucky folklore?
They should not be placed beside older Appalachian folk creatures as if Pike County families had been telling the story for generations. The evidence does not support that. They belong instead to modern Kentucky paranormal folklore, alongside internet-era cryptid reports, UFO revivals, documentary storytelling, and the continuing influence of the Kelly-Hopkinsville case.
They are part of a newer tradition, but a newer tradition is still a tradition. The Hellier Goblins show how old themes return in new forms. The hidden people under the hill become small humanoids in a mine. The fairy cave becomes a coal tunnel. The whispered local story becomes an email. The traveling storyteller becomes a documentary team. The front porch audience becomes an online community.
Hellier’s importance is not that it proves monsters are under Pike County. Its importance is that it reveals how people still use the Appalachian underground to imagine mystery, danger, contact, and revelation. The mountains remain a place where stories can disappear into the dark and come back changed.
Sources & Further Reading
Hellier. Directed by Karl Pfeiffer. Planet Weird, 2019. Documentary series. https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-1
Hellier, Season 2. Directed by Karl Pfeiffer. Planet Weird, 2019. Documentary series. https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-2
Planet Weird. “About.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.planetweird.tv/about
Planet Weird. “Hellier Season 1.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-1
Planet Weird. “Hellier Season 2.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.planetweird.tv/hellier-season-2
Planet Weird. “Downloads.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.planetweird.tv/downloads
Planet Weird. “Hellier Season 1: Episode 1, The Midnight Children.” YouTube video, January 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1FwIuicx88
Planet Weird. “Hellier Season 2: Episode 1, Noise and Signal.” YouTube video, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsryOj4YQXw
Rouhier-Willoughby, Jeanmarie. “The Cave Conspiracy: Contemporary Legend in Hellier.” Revenant. Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/the-cave-conspiracy-contemporary-legend-in-hellier/
Rodgers, Diane. “Introduction.” Revenant. Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/introduction-7/
Centre for Contemporary Legend. “Special CCL Edited Edition of Revenant Now Live.” March 13, 2026. https://contemporarylegend.co.uk/2026/03/13/special-ccl-edited-edition-of-revenant-now-live/
Pike County Historical Society. “Hellier, KY.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://pikecountykyhistoricalsociety.com/hellier-ky/
Pike County Historical Society. “Allegheny, Edgewater, and Greenough Mines.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://pikecountykyhistoricalsociety.com/allegheney/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Hellier.” Geographic Names Information System. Accessed June 13, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/gaz-record/494007
Alvord, Donald Clayton. “Geologic Map of the Hellier Quadrangle, Kentucky-Virginia and Part of the Clintwood Quadrangle, Pike County, Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 950, 1971. https://doi.org/10.3133/gq950
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Interactive Map Services.” University of Kentucky. Accessed June 13, 2026. https://kygs.uky.edu/maps/
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Kentucky Geologic Map Service.” University of Kentucky. Accessed June 13, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kygeode/geomap/
Hunt, Charles Butts. “Coal Deposits of Pike County, Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 876, 1937. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0876/report.pdf
Census Reporter. “Hellier CCD, Pike County, KY.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/06000US2119591696-hellier-ccd-pike-county-ky/
Dickey, Colin. “The Long, Surprising Legacy of the Hopkinsville Goblins.” Atlas Obscura, February 8, 2024. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/column-hopkinsville-goblins-spielberg
Schmaltz, Rodney M., and Scott O. Lilienfeld. “Hauntings, Homeopathy, and the Hopkinsville Goblins: Using Pseudoscience to Teach Scientific Thinking.” Frontiers in Psychology 5, 2014. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00336/full
Nickell, Joe. “Siege of ‘Little Green Men’: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident.” Skeptical Inquirer, November and December 2006. https://skepticalinquirer.org/2006/11/siege-of-little-green-men-the-1955-kelly-kentucky-incident/
National Archives. “Project BLUE BOOK: Unidentified Flying Objects.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
U.S. Air Force. “Unidentified Flying Objects and Air Force Project Blue Book.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104590/unidentified-flying-objects-and-air-force-project-blue-book/
Fold3. “U.S., Project Blue Book, UFO Investigations, 1947–1969.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://www.fold3.com/publication/461/us-project-blue-book-ufo-investigations-1947-1969
Stith, Geraldine Sutton. The Kelly Green Men: Alien Legacy Revisited. Kuttawa, KY: McClanahan Publishing House, 2015. https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Green-Men-Legacy-Revisited/dp/1934898129
Apple TV. “Hellier.” Accessed June 13, 2026. https://tv.apple.com/us/show/hellier/umc.cmc.28vvg6c365hi94tswcpziig3
WVLT. “Aliens, Ghosts and Goblins? Paranormal Team Investigates Southeastern Ky. in Documentary.” April 27, 2020. https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/Aliens-ghosts-and-goblins-Paranormal-team-investigates-Southeastern-Ky-in-documentary-569979771.html
Author Note: This article treats the Hellier Goblins as modern folklore, not as proof of creatures in Pike County’s mines. The goal is to separate place, record, legend, and belief while still respecting how powerful a story can become.