Art Bell photographed preparing for his comeback at his home studio on Sept. 1, 2013 in Pahrump, Nev.
Not much happens in the patch of the Mojave Desert an hour's drive west of Las Vegas' nonstop carnival. It's hot during the day. Most nights the sky fills with stars. Sometimes there's a lightning or dust storm.
But since July, two events have shaken the typically sleepy region. After decades of obfuscation, the CIA acknowledged the existence and location of Area 51, a base for testing secret military aircraft that has long been central to UFO lore. And Art Bell, whose late-night radio show once attracted an audience of millions of loyal insomniacs, announced he was returning to the airwaves full time after more than 10 years away.
For Bell fans, the timing wasn't a coincidence. They are the sort of people inclined to believe the government knows more about mysterious shapes in the sky than it lets on. Bell has been speaking and listening to them since 1984, broadcasting first from Las Vegas and then, after 1988, from a studio in his home in Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 36,441 not far from Area 51.
From 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. E.T., six days a week, Bell held forth on all manner of science, science fiction and science-maybe-fiction in his smoky, spooky voice. He was a one-man band, cuing the bumper music, taking calls and interviewing guests entirely on his own, explaining everything from clairvoyance to the chupacabra in a relaxed but foreboding style. From 1997 to 2002, his Coast to Coast AM was one of the five most-listened-to shows on talk radio, syndicated to as many as 500 North American stations and attracting a peak weekly audience of 15 million. Then Bell walked away.
Bell had taken breaks before, most notably a two-week spell in 1998 after his son was molested by a teacher and a longer one in 2000 to deal with the ongoing fallout. When he retired in 2002, Bell agreed to host weekends, saying the lighter load would ease his back problems. Weeknights were ceded to George Noory, his eventual successor. As Noory took command, Bell's hosting duties gradually tapered off. He last appeared on the show he created in 2010.
Bell says the decision to come out of retirement was entirely his, a response to the direction that Noory has taken the show--closer to talk radio's overcaffeinated political chat (Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist best known for claiming that the government perpetrated the Boston bombings, is a regular guest) than the open-minded exploration of the supernatural that defined Bell's tenure. Noory, he says, has "ruined" the franchise. Noory declined to speak to Time; a spokesperson for his syndicator, Premiere Networks, said the company is "fortunate" to have him.
"Not a chance in hell," Bell says, when asked if he would ever return to his old show. "It's not personal. It's just an institutional hatred. I really hate them."