Dark Holler

Check out latest update from creator Ward Hiney:

https://vimeo.com/668769358/3b78b60cd1

Dark Holler’s Notes from the Field #2

https://vimeo.com/672498917/db4f7747d6

Dark Holler’s Notes from the Field #1

https://vimeo.com/668766170/df97590a6d

Creator Ward Hiney sits down with hosts Ritchie Brook and Reverend Josh Robinson (from Dark Holler) to talk Dark Holler. From Sword and Staff: “They discuss the background to Dark Holler, the exorcism of Kristin Bellomy, the other strange events connected to the event and the family, and in the Uncut portion of the episode they talk about the strange events still surrounding the case today and how it has all come full circle.”

https://anchor.fm/swordandstafforder/episodes/Dark-Holler-with-Ward-Hiney-e18gvoq

Well. We took a break but things are coming full circle as we wait for DH Chapter 1 to go live for everyone and crank away on editing ep2. A year ago, now, we shot the first interview for what would become Dark Holler. From very early, @revjoshrobinson and @ritchiebrock (now working together at @swordandstafforder ) were invaluable in helping me start to pick up on patterns and possible categories to organize all the experiences we were hearing from Kristin, her family, and those close to her. Even beyond Josh’s obvious centrality to the story (you’ll meet him on-camera in Episode 2), both he and Ritchie were something like the Mentor to me in the sort of quasi-hero’s journey I felt like I had embarked on at the time. Having brothers in the faith that were capable of entertaining fringe ideas while still serving as a rationality check was so incredibly important, especially as I was just diving into all of it.

So, now, the exciting bit. In addition to being massively grateful for that, it looks like we’re going to get a chance to sit down together and take a pretty deep dive into the story, the case, the phenomena surrounding it, and maybe how it’s affected all of us via the Sword and Staff Podcast as they kick off a month of spooky content. I could not be more pleased to get the opportunity to speak with these guys on this subject. They are legitimately, in my opinion, doing some of the absolute best work in exploring and explaining fringe phenomena from a worldview that makes sense of so much of it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dark-holler-with-ward-hiney/id1516636352?i=1000538599263

IT LIVES!!! I really enjoyed getting to talk to Eric about DH and other weirdness, check it out! Reposted from @theunseenparanormalpodcast NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Listen anywhere you find podcast or music or at: https://unseendarkparanorm.wixsite.com/mysite/podcast/episode/1d12e0a3/dark-holler-with-documentary-filmmaker-ward-hiney

St Cyrian interviewed the creator (Ward Hiney) of the upcoming Loor.Tv docuseries, Dark Holler, and they discussed Dark Holler and delved into a bunch of “High Strangeness” & paranormal topics from a Christian perspective. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/1-cErM6CUKA

The guys over at the Fearscape podcast talk to Ward Hiney about his experience with a family and church dealing with an accidental exorcism of an entity that has been haunting a West Virginia family for multiple generations.

Check it out here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zqy6w-10955fa

Director Ward Hiney talks Dark Holler on the Courageous Theology podcast.

Check it out here:

https://courageoustheology.libsyn.com/episode-71-dark-holler-w-ward-hiney

“If someone came up to you claiming to have experienced or participated in an exorcism, what would your initial gut-instinct be? For most, it would be immediate skepticism & disbelief given all the over the top sensationalism of Hollywood films like “The Exorcist” & televangelist charlatans like “Bob Larson”. Join us as we talk with pastor Josh Robinson & former witch Kristen Bellomy who unexpectedly shared this unique experience soon to be featured to the upcoming documentary https://www.darkhollerfilm.com/. Is there way reasonable & biblical way to make sense of what seems to be a taboo & hush hush subject amongst evangelicals & especially the reformed world? Come Join us for the first part of our series to find out!”

https://www.apologiastudios.com/episodes/the-exorcism-of-kristin-bellomy https://www.apologiastudios.com/episodes/the-exorcism-of-kristin-bellomy-pt-2

I’m glad that I didn’t know what I would be working on now eighteen months ago. That me would have called this me crazy.

Starting around 2019, I found myself in a position where a lot of my friends were coming to reject what we would think of as mainstream narratives about the way the world is, where power resides, and where we’re going. I had friends embracing all kinds of different “conspiracy theories”, running the gamut from aliens to demonic cults to secret societies to HAARP and chemtrails. Thankfully, I had a drawer in which to place all these things, a drawer with a neat little ‘nah fam, that’s crazy’ label on the front in a clean, respectable typeface. Helvetica, maybe.

The nice thing about having a drawer like that is that you can put anything in there and then you never really have to think critically about how vast a number of experiencers you dismiss as liars or madmen along with (of course) the actual liars and madmen. The unfortunate thing about having such a drawer is that sometimes just one or two of those things you shoved in there up and sprout tentacles and start lashing about the cracks you left the last time you tried to stuff something that wouldn’t really fit in there just because it made you uncomfortable to have it out here in front of company and everyone, leaving slime trails across the living room.

But you have enough friends cracking their drawers open and poking around in there and you sort of have to start figuring out how to have these conversations. “Fringe” conversations.

It so happens that I was diving into this world of the strange and unexplained just as, unbeknownst to me, a significant part of the paranormal world was turning its eye on Kentucky. A number of cases had been publicized concerning this region, particularly eastern Kentucky. Some of peculiar strangeness connected to the Mothman ‘flap’ of Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia fame. A friend of mine had planted a church in the Logan, WV area, which I knew was a short drive from eastern Kentucky, and so I broached the subject with him one day. Had he ever seen anything? Experienced anything paranormal there in true coal country?

As it turns out, he had come to believe that he had, a few weeks prior to that conversation, been involved in a genuine exorcism. It’s difficult to describe how this struck me at the time. If there were an english word for being simultaneously shocked and also feeling that in some almost inevitable way pieces had fallen into place somewhere. “How could this be?” and “How could it be any other way?” at the same time. It was a feeling I would grow used to.

Part of the reason for that feeling is that I also had a background in documentary film work, and had always dreamt of doing a project that dealt with southern WV. I had grown up in Alum Creek, maybe half an hour north of Logan, and though I’ve since moved several times, I’ve always had that idea nagging at me to someday do something that felt like West Virginia. I had finally reached a place in my career in video production where I had enough of my own equipment to allow me to do something on my own, and so it all came to feel very much as if an interesting story had fallen into my lap at a time when I really wanted to figure out my own position on this subject and had the capability to explore it via a medium I was familiar with.

Initially intending to only do a short feature on the story, we rapidly discovered that when you scratch the surface, the darkness goes much deeper than any of us suspected. Elements of time and place and kin all play into the case and a profound pattern of synchronicities and other phenomena began to present itself that must be witnessed to be believed. Dark Holler was born.