March 23, 2025

This Week in Amateur Radio

North America's Premiere Amateur Radio News Magazine

ON THE NIGHT of September 11, 1997, the phone lines on the Coast to Coast AM radio show were open and unscreened, with a special line reserved for callers with inside information about Area 51, the infamous United States Air Force base long rumored to house captive UFOs. The show’s host, Art Bell — nestled within his home studio in Pahrump, Nevada — spent the first few hours fielding calls from listeners with far-flung theories of government deception.

But something strange happened midway through the broadcast. A frantic caller managed to choke out a greeting before announcing that he didn’t have much time. “They’ll triangulate on this position really, really soon,” he said, audibly crying:

What we’re thinking of as […] aliens, Art, they’re […] extradimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the […] space program made contact with […] They have infiltrated a lot of […] aspects of […] the military establishment, particularly the Area 51. The disasters that are coming, they […] — the government — knows about them […] They want those major population centers wiped out so that […] the few that are left will be more easily controllable […] I started g —

The signal cut out. After five seconds of dead air, the show lurched back to life.

“Well […] we are now on a backup system. […] Something knocked us off the air,” Bell reported. The satellite uplink transmitter had failed without explanation, a first for the veteran broadcaster. For the remainder of the night, Bell and his audience speculated on what exactly had occurred.

Read more – Los Angeles Review of Books: