Somewhere out there bouncing off spinning and undulating
satellites, an electromagnetic wave propagated by an antenna
beams its way into my time zone and crashes into my eardrum,
causing my anticipation to soar. The news broadcaster
enthusiastically concludes, This is your 50,000 watt,
hometown radio station, Newsradio 1190, KEX." In the audible
distance, the faint driving reverberation of "The Chase",
from the movie soundtrack of Midnight Express, crescendos to
a deafening thunderclap and HE bursts forth, From the High
Desert and the Great American Southwest, I bid you good
evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in
the world of twenty-four time zones. I am Art Bell and this
is Coast To Coast. Welcome to the strangest show on radio
and I think, the best.
No argument there, Art. When I hear the panpipes and quenas
of the Chilean mountain bumper music, my heart starts to
flutter and I turn downright giddy. Has Planet X been
spotted? Has that guy in Northwest Washington taken that
alien out of his deep freezer yet? Is it going to be genetic
manipulation, plasma fields, Vatican intrigue, Sumerian
texts, ancient civilizations, secret societies, Martian
architecture or Area 51 that sends me clamoring under the
covers for protection? Will I meet the Shadow People while I'm under there?
I love Art. I love his voice, his manner, his monetarily
uncompensated guests. I am in love with what he gives me.
Like a woman caller never hesitates to add, I go to bed with
Art every night. Well, scoot over honey, because I do too.
I unabashedly confess it is purely a give-and-take
relationship. Art gives; I take. And all that he asks is
that I support his sponsors: a nutrition supplement here, a
deep space telescope there. I sap everything I can from Art,
like a leech on a leg. Sometimes the blood is bitter and
hard to swallow. But then, oh then, sometimes it is sweet
like honey, dripping down my throat coating every microbial
cell in its path until it becomes a part of me, awaking the
very synapses in my brain, forcing those little
neurotransmitters to work overtime, to expand and grow.
I have been listening to Art Bell for over eleven years. The
man has fostered in me a desire for intellectual expansion
like no four hours of Rush ever did. Art considers himself a
conduit of knowledge. Sitting out in the middle of the
Nevadan desert, hooked up to every type of radio and antennae
known to the modern world, Art will be the first to tell you
that he doesn t necessarily believe everything everybody
espouses on his program. He believes he was destined to
provide a forum for the unbelievable but true and for the
unbelievable but hard-to-believe.
My favorite all-time guest was Father Malachi Martin, an
Irish exorcist (among other accomplishments) who died under
mysterious circumstances in 1999. He received doctorates in
the Semitic languages, archeology and Oriental history. He
studied at Oxford and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Between 1958 and 1964, he was advisor to the Pope at the
Vatican in Rome. On one particular all-nighter trip,
traveling west from Texas across the New Mexican desert to
California, I read aloud by overhead car light to my driving
husband, Malachi Martin s Hostage to the Devil. Two o'clock
in the morning, pitch-black void, not another car, light,
house, snake or bug in sight, reading about documented demon
possession. I don't remember to what speed Steven was able
to push that car, but SETI reported a low-altitude UFO on
Route 66 that night. Father Martin told Art during one
program, that another book he penned, Windswept House, was
85% true. I'll let you in on a not-so-secret, secret. If
even 15% of the book is true I am ready to join a Tibetan
monastery and learn how to astral project myself right off
the face of this planet.
Another frequent guest is Dr. Michio Kaku, who is an
internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics.
Graduating number one in his physics class from Harvard in
1968, this man is not one whom non-Art-listeners would
imagine to hear on Coast To Coast. He received a Ph.D. from
the University of California at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory
in 1972 and is currently serving time at the City University
of New York, where he s been a professor of theoretical
physics for twenty-five years. He mesmerizes Art's audience
with current theories of parallel universes, time travel, the
tenth dimension (and you thought there were three), black
holes, and multiple universes.
And what about frequent guest Richard C. Hoagland, a former
NASA consultant and, during the historic Apollo Missions to
the moon, science advisor to Walter Cronkite and CBS News?
Is there some type of cellular life on Mars? Richard C.
Hoagland thinks so. Are there mathematically correct and
obvious non-happenstance pyramids on Mars similar to those in
Egypt? Richard C. Hoagland thinks so. Is the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California telling us the truth when
it comes to photographs of Mars? I'm wondering. Was Earth
settled by the life forms that abandoned Mars? Was it
intelligent life? Looking at some of the celebrities in
today's news, one would doubt it. You may think it sounds
crazy to contemplate the stuff of 1950 s science-fiction
comic books, but how do you think Sitting Bull, medicine man
and chief of the Lakotas, would react if he saw the B-2
Stealth Bomber flying over his head with nary a sound? I
thought so.
And this is what Art has given me. My mind is not confined
to a little box. I do not have a set parameter within which
I allow my mind to wander. I am willing to consider the
unimaginable and, dare I say, the unthinkable. Intellectual
freedom is the stuff that mothers experiments and
discoveries; the stuff that truly humbles. Thank you, Art.
Well, folks, there you have it; a real, live, witch, Dr.
Evelyn Paglini. This is Art Bell for Coast to Coast.
Good-night.
