Remembering Art Bell

As a child of the 1980's, it was only fitting I would eventually meet Art Bell.  Not in person, mind you, but over the airwaves where the still of the night was filled with something a little more otherworldly than Led Zeppelin-inspired Whitesnake riffs.  

My summer nights during those years were spent consuming a heavy diet of Old Time Radio. Classics like "Suspense" and "The Shadow" would play until the local NPR broadcast signed off shortly after the witching hour.  At that point, it was time for dessert:  reading Stephen King and Peter Straub until my eyes could no longer spar with the inevitable late night ass-kicking champ: sleep.  

While my routine would change over the years, I would still find myself dialing through the radio stations late at night.  Listening to broadcasts from a far-off city somewhere else always seemed better than wherever I was at the time - at least physically - and such escapism is how I first came to hear of Art Bell.

Art's "Coast To Coast AM" seemed more than just a natural extension Old Time Radio's "theater of the mind;" it was real. Or at least realer than the works of fiction I had gobbled-up a decade earlier. Certainly the people who called into the show from all over were real, though whom they claimed to be, such as the anti-christ in one memorable conversation, stretched the boundaries of one's imagination.  

"Coast To Coast," in a sense, was a perfect modernization of Old Time Radio's "theater of the mind," providing an audience with countless hours of discussions on any variety of paranormal activities.  In fact, former business partner, Alan Corbath, said during Bell's induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame nobody was better than Bell at understanding "How to create theater of the mind..." 

Sometimes, listening to callers and their stories was like experiencing "The Blair Witch Project," only on radio, where you're caught up in some unexplainable madness unfolding.  Such was the case with the Area 51 frantic caller (see video below.)  These callers, many reoccurring and particularly those with unbridled emotions, were like finely drawn characters who had the ability to suck you into their strange worlds that made Twin Peaks seem the norm (minus the damn fine coffee, of course.)  

Whether any of the callers' experiences were true or not seemed less a concern with the way Art treated them and his profession in return: always serious, with an open mind and sometimes with a side of skepticism.  The approach, coupled with unscreened calls and strangely fascinating topics, made anything seem possible.  At least in one's imagination... in the middle of the night.