The The Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast. I'm your host Kelly Chase.

Today we welcome James Madden back to the show.

As spooky season draws to a close, I didn't want to miss the chance to explore some of the darker themes that have been inspiring both Jim's recent work and our ongoing conversation about the nature of the UFO phenomenon.

Specifically, the paranoia that comes from our uncanny encounters with things

that lie just beyond the limits of our own personal caves.

You can find Jim's most recent musings on his sub-stack

in a piece entitled Specters of the Thinking Machine, the uncanny suggestion of the non-human

within the human, which I have linked up in the episode brief.

In this episode, we'll be exploring the themes of that article,

as well as exploring a work that has become something of a touchstone for me in my exploration

of the darker contours of the UFO phenomenon, the phenomenal docuaries Hellier.

If you haven't seen Hellier, I really can't recommend enough that you do.

Continuing in the tradition of John Keel's The Moth Man prophecies,

this genre-bending work is a fearless and unflinching immersion into the experience of

encountering the phenomenon, the authenticity of which only resonates more deeply for all the

ways in which it unfolds like a fever dream.

Hellier is challenging and nuanced and unself-conscious in a way that few other explorations

of the intelligence behind the phenomenon managed to be.

And perhaps we owe this fresh take to the fact that the team behind Hellier,

Dana and Greg Newkirk, Carl Pfizer, Connor Randall, and Tyler Strand, don't come from the

UFO community, but from the paranormal world. And though I'd argue that this is

what makes Hellier so good, it certainly has also made it divisive

...