People Of The Night Are Wondering: What Happened To Art Bell?

Paul Kay, 37, of Lynnwood, a mechanic and a musician, has his theory about what happened to Art Bell. "I don't want to sound too far-fetched," he tells me.

Far-fetched? We are talking about Art Bell here, where the paranormal and supernatural found a home. It made him one of the most listened-to radio personalities in America.

The night people in this country are worried, all of those with the graveyard jobs, all of those with insomnia, all of those for whom Art Bell was that rather formal voice on the radio, coming from the high Nevada desert, bringing them the news nobody else would. Bell was proud that his show wasn't focused on Bill and Monica or politics.

Who's going to tell the night people about the latest UFO sightings, the alien implant photos, the Third Secret of Fatima, the Crop Circle Connector, the Chupacabra monster images, the Area 51 mysteries of that secret Air Force base and the true meaning of the Mayan calendar?

The night people worry about what possible threat had caused Art Bell to quit his show. All he told his listeners was, ". . . a threatening terrible event occurred to my family, which I could not tell you about . . ."

Boom. That was it.

The country's highest-rated radio talk-show host was gone, his phone disconnected from the double-wide mobile home in Pahrump, Nev., from which he broadcast. The local sheriff did visit and said that Bell was unharmed.

Was it all a prank? The night people don't believe that.

"What can we do? Art has been my friend in the dark of night, every night, for three years now. I don't know what I'll do without his program . . ."

That's a woman named Vicki, posting her message at the Web site www.artbell.com, which boasted more than 22.7 million "hits" this year.

The calls this week just kept coming to the receptionist for KOMO Radio, which airs the show here. What happened to Art? the listeners asked. As I write this piece, with its deadline earlier this week, the answer is that no, nobody knows.

Bell, 53, had become a gold mine for the industry. From 10 p.m. until 3 a.m., he ruled the airwaves in 400 stations nationwide. In city after city, his "Coast to Coast A.M." beat out the rock stations, the "serious" talk shows, the sports jocks. Every week, something like 8 million to 10 million people tuned in. In Seattle, his show clobbered the competition, after midnight generating nearly three times the ratings of the closest competitor.

The mainstream press never paid much attention to Art Bell. I doubt there was an op-ed writer who had ever listened to the show. How could you take seriously a talk-show host whose callers expounded, "What we're thinking of as aliens, Art, they're extra-dimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the space program made contact with . . ."

A few years ago, a taxi driver first told me about Art Bell. Driving at night, flipping through the radio stations, he came upon the show. Bell was never judgmental about his callers or guests. A face on Mars? A time traveler? Psychic predictions? Fine, tell us all about it. Even if you didn't believe it, you listened to hear what new, amazing tale would be told.

Paul Kay began listening to Art Bell in 1994. "It was like a friendly voice, a dad with an open mind," he tells me.

Now that voice on the radio is gone.

"I don't want to sound too far-fetched," Kay says, "but what's weird is that he always talked about government conspiracies and stuff, about high-tech secret stuff. I wondered if some of those secret organizations really do exist, and that Art was bringing up too many things on the air, and they told him to shut down or else."

If only there were a radio show where Paul could talk to those millions of other night people.

But Art Bell quit. For a good many of your fellow Americans, whose nights now will have a huge void, that's the most important news of the year.

Erik Lacitis' column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. His phone number is 206-464-2237. His e-mail address is: elac-new@seatimes.com