r/ArtBell

For me it was a ghost 2 ghost episode from the mid 90s (if you can tell me which one i would appreciate it).

A native man from Montreal called in telling a story of how he saw a beautiful native woman by a stream that told him "it's OK you can let go now". She then disappeared.

He later went on to say he knew it was his sister. He and his sister were taken away from their family and put into Residential Schools (a dark part of Canadas history). As kids they hatched a plan to escape to go home and in the process stole a car. While driving the car they crashed it and his sister died in the process. He could never live that down and she came and appeared to him as a fully grown beautiful woman telling him "you can let go".

It brought me to tears.

What's your favourite caller story?

I pull up a random show every day when I go walk, mostly from the 1990s back when Art was on the rise and hitting mainstream. It's funny I'll start to notice patterns with the themes of banter that Art has with regular guests, just like tropes in a TV show or movie series.

Whenever that gasbag Hoagland is on, I can't help but smirk when Hoagland starts going off about some super secret source or random email he received that happened at the same time some world event occurred and how its no coincidence. Then Art and Richard yuck it up for a bit and lay it on heavy with aggrandizing act about his show being the cutting edge because the 'mainstream' won't cover it, and Art leaning into it a bit until Hoagland sucks every bit of air out of the show with his righteous scientific trailblazer complex and crackpot pseudo-intellectualism.

Gotta love it, I nearly break out laughing when I hear him name drop Carl Sagan too, like they were buds on a first name basis. Never seen so much gasbag entitled elitism for a guy who spent an entire life out of pretending to be a scientist and so much mileage out of a simple suggestion box entry on what to be included with the Voyager probes and being a glorified intern for Cronkite.

On YouTube I just stumbled across a radio drama about a vampire invasion being discussed on an overnight radio show called midnight frequencies. It has an AI host who sounds exactly like Art, taking calls, and reporting on what’s going on.

Even though it’s AI, it sounds like the classic c2c I grew up listening to. It reminds of when of the Phoenix lights when people called in sharing their experiences.

I heard these broadcasts Live as they happened; the Area 51 call was CRAZY and I remember the broadcast cutting off and sitting there listening to silence for a noticeable amount of time, it was a TRIP. Mel's Hole saga wasn't nearly as dramatic but still really interesting. I did however miss the show where supposedly the Area 51 dude "fessed up", anyone have details on that one?

I've had some pretty remarkable supernatural encounters throughout my life and one of them was published in a Haunted Inns & Hotels kind of a book this lady who owned the Myrtles Plantation wrote. She was a strange bird, but that's a whole another story. Coincidentally, I believe she had been on Coast To Coast AM talking about the Plantation hauntings the year before. Anyway, I sent it in to Art via his website for his Ghost show around Halloween (this was around 2003 or so) and then forgot about it.

I wake up the morning after Halloween or whenever the show aired and checked my voicemail to find that Art had CALLED ME at like 1am the previous night to tell my story on-air. "Hello this is Art and I'm calling for ....., are you there? You're on next if you're there...okay then". And that was it. I literally listened to his show every night since the 80's, I was devastated. He gave me no notice!

The terrible scream of "NOOOO!!!" that came out of me that morning haunts my wife to this very day. I saved that voicemail for years until I had to get a new phone.

edit for typo.

Here is an article about the Ghost Investigators Society in the Lumberjack, from September 1, 1999 on the Northern Arizona University website.

Ghost Hunters tell their stories

I had to download it to read it, but it might work differently for you.

Brendan Cook was only 19 years old when this article was published. A glimpse into the group approx. one and a half years before their first appearance on Art's show.

Hi everyone. I’ve been an Art Bell fan for many years. I’m working on a project called ABAPS, the Art Bell Audio Preservation System.

The goal is to preserve as much surviving Art Bell audio as possible, but also to figure out where the recordings came from, identify material that may be missing, and preserve alternate versions rather than assuming one copy of a show is enough.
I already have a large collection backed up in multiple places, and I’m developing a Discovery system that searches for Art Bell material across different public sources. I’ve also started reaching out to some of the people behind older Art Bell collections.

What I’d really like to find are people who were involved earlier in the history of the archive.
If you ever recorded Art yourself on cassette, VHS, MiniDisc, CD, computer, or anything else, I’d love to hear from you. Same if you have an old hard drive full of shows, participated in BellGab or ArtAudio, traded tapes, helped build one of the old torrents or collections, or know someone who did.

Even if you assume everything you have is already online, I’d still be interested. Your copy might be longer, higher quality, from a different station, contain commercials or segments missing from another version, or simply help establish where a recording originally came from.

I’m also very interested in old episode lists, spreadsheets, file manifests, notes, or anything else documenting the history of these collections.
I’m not trying to replace the other Art Bell archive projects out there. I’d actually like to connect with the people behind them, compare notes, and see where collaboration might make sense.

If any of this sounds familiar, please reply here or message me. And if you know one of the old collectors who might be interested, I’d really appreciate you pointing them toward this post.

Hello fellow long time listeners and first time callers.

I am wondering if any one has a memory of Art Bell talking about his time in Alaska? I am putting together a radio podcast thingy with obscure Alaskan facts/audio and would love to sneak Art Bell in there.

Thanks all!

I fell in love with his show when I was introduced to him by a coworker in 1998. I was working the midnight shift at a Kinkos and we would always listen. I was hooked quickly, and still am. I almost always go to sleep listening to replays of Art on my phone, or when cooking or doing work around the house.

The other day I heard him interviewing a guest, I don't remember who it was, but what I do remember was that he was selling a book.

What was funny was before the break, Art asks him "Do you have an 800 number?" and the guest says no. Art kind of laughed at him, suggesting you're never going to sell your book if you don't have an 800 number for people to call. The guest then said that his book was available on Amazon com, which was apparently very new at the time.

As the bumper music came on, Art said that the audience should go to amazon as his guest suggested, in order to get a big discount of the guests book, before they go out of business. He added, because they aren't going to make any money by selling books so cheap!

If only he was still around...COVID, Politics, Disclosure, our new Space Race, and the world's first trillionaire! Boy o' boy, the shows would have been great!

RIP Art...