Longtime radio talk show host and paranormal promoter Art Bell died on April 13, 2018, at the age of seventy-two at his home in Pahrump, Nevada. Bell achieved national prominence for Coast to Coast, a five-hour overnight show devoted to conspiracy theories, UFOs, and all manner of the paranormal. Much of the show was devoted to unscreened (and often unhinged) listeners calling in with their personal stories of seemingly unexplainable and sinister phenomena. Coast to Coast was broadcast from 1989 to 2003; at its peak in the 1990s, the show reached as many as 10 million listeners a week.
Much of Coast to Coast was devoted to unscreened (and often unhinged) listeners calling in with their personal stories of seemingly unexplainable and sinister phenomena.
In (dis)honor of Bell’s position as a perennial promoter of paranormal pabulum, he received CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry)’s Snuffed Candle Award in 1998 for his track record of “encouraging credulity, presenting pseudoscience as genuine, and contributing to the public’s lack of understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry.” (Bell accepted the award in good humor, mindful that any attention is good attention.)