Art Bell and the strangest radio caller of all time: “They are not who they say they are”
As anyone who’s been unlucky enough to listen to any sports show in their lives will tell you, people who call into radio shows are among the worst people to ever live.
I’m aware that I’m painting with a large brush here. Perhaps, in over a hundred years of radiophonic history, there have been a few callers into radio stations who haven’t been reactionary cranks as angry as they are under-informed. And they are spectacularly under-informed.
Yet any radio callers that didn’t make you despair for the human condition are exceptions that prove the rule, aren’t they? Callers with an ounce of common sense, decency and compassion are such a breath of fresh air that it makes you think about everyone else you hear on the waves.
Thus, you can only imagine the kind of wackos that Art Bell got in the 1990s. From 1988 until 2003, Bell hosted Coast to Coast AM, a late-night talk show that focused on everything weird. Whether it was paranormal, extraterrestrial or conspiracy-minded, everything was on the table. For well over three hours a night, the creepiest, most baffling subjects were up for debate. With Bell, as host, treating every half-baked piece of scary nonsense like he was hearing the most fastidiously researched PHD presentation of all time.
If it sounds like a pretty compelling way of wasting your time on a long drive, that’s pretty much because it is. Nothing more than an audio version of Reddit Conspiracy three decades early, with all the ups and many, many, many downs that entails. Many of its callers were the kind I detailed earlier, little more than lonely weirdos acting out for attention like the toddlers they never really mentally aged past. Until one of them showed just how much imagination you can capture with a single, well-acted lie.
The story begins on April 28th, 1998.
Why was this radio caller so strange?
Art Bell hosted a special episode of Coast to Coast AM that specifically asked for people who worked at Area 51 to call in.
Area 51 (as if you read this website and don’t know) is a highly classified US Air Force base that is speculated to hold the government’s evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth. It doesn’t, it’s actually just where the US Air Force tests out experimental and prototype planes, which is why they’re so secretive about the specifics. So anyone claiming that they “worked at Area 51” was already on thin ice.
After all, they would be under the kind of NDAs that God himself couldn’t get out of in a hurry. Then you take into account all the people saying Kentucky Fried Bullshit about aliens and Men in Black, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a hilarious good time. That was until one caller came in who was clearly under immense distress. He phoned the show distraught, in floods of tears, and was apparently let go from a medical discharge from Area 51 a week before calling. Right from the off, there’s something different about this call.
Over the next three and a half minutes, the caller spins an incredibly compelling tale about how Aliens aren’t actually aliens but extra-dimensional beings who have already infiltrated the military establishment. So far, so tin-foil hat, but the guy sells it. Authentically terrified as he talks about upcoming disasters that the government and the military are aware of. As he gets more and more hysterical, his line begins to cut out before the line goes dead. In a very sinister turn of events, so does the whole show. Bell comes back on the air via a backup generator, saying that their satellite linkup died while on the air. Something that had never happened to the show before.
Since then, the call has become a legend in conspiracy circles, with his immortal words “they are not what they claim to be” having been sampled by many different music artists like Tool and MC Lars. It’s a hell of a listen to this day, a much more palatable brand of bullshit than your common or garden radio caller and at this point, it’ll take that.