A mother lies dead. A son on the run. Mysterious creatures in the Alaskan wilderness create a paranormal encounter for the suspected killer.

Derived from the best-selling Audible audiobook “Midnight Son,” by James Dommek Jr., a new documentary on Hulu premiers September 4,“Blood & Myth,” directed by Kahlil Hudson and executive produced by Dommek. The story follows Dommek’s investigation into a series of shocking violent crimes that shatter a remote Native village in Northern Alaska.

Dommek first learns about a string of bloody attacks, and the details don’t add up. At the center of the rampage is fugitive Teddy Kyle Smith, a fellow Iñupiaq man and successful actor who was admired within his tribe.

The mystery deepens when Smith is apprehended after making a run for it in the wild, and makes a shocking claim: while out in the wilderness, he had a frightening encounter with Iñukuns – sinister beings well-known and long-feared by the Iñupiaq people – and that they had guided his violent actions.

“The first thing he said after being captured was ‘They’re real!’” Dommek told ICT from Alaska. “He says he heard them and then they showed themselves to him.”

During a subsequent trial, Smith’s tale of Iñukuns fell on deaf ears. The truth of his actions doomed him to being convicted of attempted murder after he left his mother lying dead on the floor of her house, ran into the woods and shot two men in a cabin who both survived. His mother’s death was ruled inconclusive with no actual cause given. He claimed to have encountered the Iñukuns in the woods outside his tent.

Dommek knew the frightening stories of “the little people” – whose existence is accepted as fact by northern Native communities and supported by first-person accounts and chilling sightings.

Obsessed by the story, he takes a journey back to the village to uncover the truth behind what Smith allegedly saw in those mountains. Was it possible that those myths were true, or was it all a “theater of the mind” as he says?

“I’ve always been obsessed with Alaskan survival stories,” Dommek says. “There were so many things going on with the story, but the crime, the matricide, the violence, those were a part of the story, but it’s not the whole thing. It’s just many little strings that braid together to make a pretty strong rope.”

Dommek is eventually allowed to visit Smith in jail.

“He was guarded about tough questions in there. Smith wanted to do the interview with his side of the story. He’s exhausted his appeals, but he still has hope. He’s still working to get a sentence reduction; he didn’t want to incriminate himself.”

The documentary shows footage taken by a woman that had flown over the area and shows a few rocky villages along a river that no one knew were there or who lived there.

“I don’t know where it is exactly,” Dommek says. “The government put a restriction on the area. The president of our tribe can’t even go there and that’s our land. There’s a buffer of 10 miles; they’re calling it a sacred site. I heard they were going to send a team of archaeologists this past summer to go and check it out, but there were massive wildfires in the area that prevented them from going.”

Dommek says the villages look like a wintertime camp, except the homes are made out of rocks. The size of the doorways and windows are very tiny and would have been difficult for adult humans to get in and out of.

In the film, Smith claims he first heard the little people and then they showed themselves to him one night, and he knew that he couldn’t show any fear or they might harm him. They told him he was “weak” and “vulnerable,” words that scared him into violent action.

After hearing his claim, Dommek met Smith in prison. What was his take after meeting him in person?

“My take on meeting him in person was I don’t believe he has mental issues. He was a US Marine, and the Marines have a very extensive vetting process, including a lot of psychological tests. He’s incredibly sharp. He’s grounded. We asked everyone we interviewed, what do you think? Do they exist or not? Now they may not be mythical magical creatures, but I definitely think that there was a group of small people that lived out on the land, as recent as a couple decades ago, and may still be out there now.

“What I hope people take away from this is that number one, Native people are very good storytellers. And number two, there is still some mystery that exists in this world. The Western concept is that we know it all. In the Indigenous concept, especially northern Alaskan, we don’t know it all. It’s a big wild place. That’s what I hope people take away. I’m excited to introduce this new monster in the woods that most viewers will never have heard of.”

The film presents a spectrum of different images of what these beings could be and how malevolent or benevolent they might be. The filmmakers leave it up to the viewer to decide, what they are, what they could be, how much Teddy may have been influenced by these beings who he may have contacted.

“There’s also the other social justice side,” director Hudson says, “getting into the issue around the justice system in rural Alaska and how it’s failed Native communities for centuries. The Western justice system is not set up to serve rural Alaska villages. Something needs to be done, more work and awareness brought to light and how those failures are impacting Native communities.”

Based on the facts, myth aside, he was convicted of attempted murder. They sent his mother’s body to Anchorage and the coroner said her death is inconclusive. Perhaps she was scared to death or shocked, but it was enough to send her panicked son on the run.

“I was always under the assumption only guilty people run,” Dommek claims. “After talking with Ted, I came to a new conclusion that maybe he thought he did something to her so frightening that she died from the shock. This is all speculation. But he was given 99 years for the attempted murders, the strictest sentence an Alaskan can get. We don’t have the death penalty up here.

“I don’t know if too many other stories exist like this, where it’s an Indigenous true crime told through an Indigenous lens. I just hope that we did the story justice. I’ve been obsessed with this since I first heard it.”

Dommek says he did an audiobook first for a reason.

“I wanted to tap into Native storytelling and oral tradition and the ‘theater of the mind’ and using words and unveiling the facts more like a movie does. The audio book did really well, and here we are today talking about the documentary.”

This article was first published with ICT, see the original story here.