Art Bell

I can tell you precisely when I stopped sleeping to Art Bell, not the date but I don’t think that really matters. What matters is the topic of the show. Since childhood I have gone through periods of falling asleep listening to talk radio, something that has only ebbed when I am in a relationship, as most of the people I have become romantically involved with don’t share my love of talk radio. When I was in college, I was not able to get my favorite shows on AM radio in my dormitory so I got into the habit of sleeping with Nick at Night on softly in the background.

For those of you who have never been up at 2 AM listening to Art Bell, let me take a moment to describe his show. While he did from time to time touch on political issues, his main focus was on the bizarre. It was not uncommon for Art Bell to talk about UFO’s, alien abductions, tracer clouds, ghosts, or even the wildest of conspiracy theories. I loved his show, and in spite of knowing that he has left most of his show Coast to Coast with Art Bell on to George Noory, I still tune in from time to time hoping to hear his voice.

I am sure that my therapist would have a hay day with this information and use it to somehow describe my deep fascination with politics and Bewitched, but I digress. I had been dating a particular young man for a couple of years who loved to listen to music all night while we slept. Given my proclivity for background music to my sleeping, it never bothered me. After he moved out, I tried sleeping to silence but very quickly found myself back to talk radio.

I was sound asleep one night and everything was going on as usual. Then I began to have some of the most horrifying nightmares of my life. I am someone who has a lot of really bad dreams that are usually reoccurring and quite violent. I don’t remember exactly what the dreams were about but, I do remember them being quite vivid and real. I woke from my nightmare to find that it did not end. I was fully conscious sitting up in my bed in a dark bedroom and the fear from my dream had followed. It took me a moment to find my bearings and realize that in spite of the sense of fear that had consumed me that I was fine.

Then I found the cause of my nightmares. The guest on Art Bell’s show was someone, a priest I assume, with audio recordings of exorcisms. I had been listening to tapes of multiple demons being exorcised from various persons. The screams of unholy beings occupying human bodies had been the soundtrack of my dreams. It has been several years since this happened (about 5) and since then I have not slept all night to talk radio. I have fallen asleep a couple of times but I have never slept all night to the sounds of a radio voice.