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By Glen Sparks
The little boy floated to the ceiling of his bedroom in a middle-class section of Detroit. From the ceiling, he could see himself asleep in bed, wearing his pajamas. Frightened, the boy scrambled down from the ceiling and back into bed. Not surprisingly, sleep didn't come easy following the ou-of-body experience.
The next day, the boy hurried to the library and found a book—Projections of the Atrobody. The illustrations inside showed little boys bouncing from the bed to the ceiling, their eyes wide and afraid.
Forty-something years later, George Noory sits inside a studio at radio station KTRS-AM, “The Big 550,” listening to a caller. His program, “Coast to Coast,” attracts as many as 10 million listeners each night on over 500 stations. Here in
St. Louis, “Coast to Coast” airs from midnight to 5 a.m., Monday through Friday.
Tonight he is interviewing Leonard Cole, author of The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story, about the terrifying risks of bioterrorism. Just five pounds of anthrax, Cole says, released into the air under optimal conditions, would wipe out half the population of a major city such as Washington.
Two nights earlier, a seismology expert predicts that a major earthquake might hit Southern California this September. This is the same expert who accurately predicted the earthquake that struck San Francisco during the World Series in 1989.
“That’s pretty scary,” Noory says. “I’m going to be out in L.A. in September.”
Other callers are interested in UFOs, Big Foot, mysterious government agencies, gamma radiation bursts, Stonehenge and the alle-gedly haunted Lake County, Colo., jail.
“I don’t like to call ‘Coast to Coast’ a program about the paranormal, because it’s much more than that,” Noory, 54, says.
Still, this is not “All Things Considered,” or a call-in show about home repair. Noory remembers a story from a particular listener a few years back. Supposedly, a farmer comes out of nowhere to rescue a stranded motorist. The motorist, anxious to get back on the road, speeds away. Several months later, he returns to town and wants to thank the farmer for his help. He is directed to the farmer’s daughter, who tells the motorist that she often hears from motorists who get a helping hand from her father. The odd thing is, her dad had died several years earlier.
“Now, that’s chilling,” Noory says. “Is it a true story? I have no idea.”
Other calls border on the comical. Once, a lady dialed Noory and insisted that aliens had abducted her husband. He came home late and didn’t seem quite right. She couldn’t recall the last time that he had acted so tired, yet so happy. Well, maybe not since their honeymoon, anyway. Heck, the aliens had even stolen her husband’s wedding ring.
“I couldn’t stop laughing in the studio,” Noory says. “But I really think that this lady thought that aliens had abducted her husband.”
He confesses that while ghosts might be real, not every story he hears is true. He tries to sense the sincerity in a caller’s voice. “If they are slurring their words, that isn’t a good sign,” he says.
 George Noory |
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To the skeptical, all Noory asks is that they keep an open mind. “It’s a little sad,” Noory says, “if you are just so close-minded that you are completely unwilling to think about things in a different way.”
“Coast to Coast” is No. 1 for its time slot in almost every market it reaches, including
St. Louis, Noory says. When in St. Louis, he does the program from KTRS. He also broadcasts from the Premiere Radio Network
building in Sherman Oaks, Calif., if he is in
Los Angeles.
The legendary broadcaster Art Bell originated “Coast to Coast.” Noory took over in the spring of 2003, doing the show from L.A. A year later, he decided to return to St. Louis.
Noory, a broadcast major at the University of Detroit, came here in 1979 to be news director at KSDK-TV (Channel 5). In 1997, he began broadcasting from KTRS as “The Nighthawk.” His interest in covering UFOs (he began subscribing to the UFO magazine, MUFON, as a teenager in Detroit) and the paranormal caught the attention of L.A. radio executives.
“I like L.A. It’s a great place to develop your career and to do this type of show—and for it to get the recognition it needs, you need to be in L.A.,” he says. “But my three children are grown and I wanted to come back to St. Louis.”
He has a house in Clayton, an apartment in Sherman Oaks, and a feel for the nighttime. “Coast to Coast,” he believes, is not a show that would work in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. “There’s a mysterious quality to the nighttime
that just isn’t there in the middle of the afternoon,” Noory says.
He hopes to continue his show until 2012, which corresponds to the end of the Mayan calendar. The story goes that the ancient residents of Mexico predicted that terrible disasters will strike near 2012, and Earth will not survive.
“Or did they just run out of paper?” Noory wonders. “Who knows?”
If the Mayans did run out of paper, and the clock is still running in 2013, Noory might retire anyway. “Someone else can take over the show. There must be someone out there like me.”
Or maybe not.
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George Noory offers Commerce readers some quick takes on popular phenomena—all of which are of interest to any regular "Coast to Coast" listener.
The Loch Ness Monster
"I think there is definitely something out there in the loch. It could be a pre-historic creature. It surprises me that no one can find anything."
UFO's
"I think we may have been visited from the get-go. Some of the technology that alien cultures possess must be incredible."
Big Foot
"There is something out there. Too many people have reported seeing something. It could be a creature that transcends time in some way."
The Bermuda Triangle
"Is there something there, some sort of electromagnetic phenomenon? Or is it just a coincidence that so many planes and ships disappear in that area? There certainly are some bizarre stories (of experienced ship captains and airline pilots suddenly losing their way, their compasses going haywire and vanishing without a trace)." |
Glen Sparks is a freelance writer based in St. Louis. |
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