THE MAN WHO SPREAD THE MYTH

By LEON JAROFF

The Heaven's Gate 39 had been awaiting the cue to begin their final act. And last fall it apparently came, not in a heavenly vision but on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, a late-night talk-radio show that has become the nation's top meeting place of the reality challenged.

During a five-hour program that is carried on 335 stations across the nation every night and is heard by more than 10 million night owls, Bell is host to callers who usually relate a weird assortment of paranormal and supernatural tales. Alien abductions, poltergeists, UFO encounters, remote viewing, ESP and other unlikely phenomena are common fare.

Given that far-out environment, it seemed only natural last November when amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek called in to report he had spotted and photographed "a Saturn-like object" trailing the approaching Hale-Bopp comet. But even the most jaded Bell fans were excited when Courtney Brown, an Emory University professor, called to make a patently ludicrous announcement: his team of three psychic "remote viewers" had focused on Shramek's object and determined it was a spaceship full of aliens. Furthermore, Brown claimed, he had a photograph of the craft taken by a "Top-10-university astronomy professor," who had told him radio signals were coming from the object, indicating it was "intelligently driven."

That revelation, Bell reported on his elaborate and well-attended Website, "practically blew away my disbelieving side." It seemed to have had a similar effect on the Heaven's Gate cult members, who surmised that the spacecraft would be their vehicle for reaching "the next level."

Even after astronomers identified Shramek's "object" as an ordinary star and Bell himself exposed Brown's picture as a fake and his "Top-10" professor a no-show, the cult members were not dissuaded. When news of their suicide was reported, says Bell, "I started getting a lot of messages saying, 'Art Bell, you killed 39 people.' It's important to understand that the only person who ever said there was a spacecraft following Hale-Bopp was Courtney Brown."

Coast to Coast originates from a most unlikely spot: Bell's double-trailer module home on the outskirts of the tiny desert town of Pahrump, Nevada (pop. 7,400), about 50 miles from Las Vegas. There, Bell sits at a telephone console, punching buttons to take incoming calls. Playing a mildly aggressive but avuncular host, he rarely interrogates or challenges his callers. "Instead of trying to pin them against the wall 60 Minutes-style," he says, "I help them tell their story."

That was obvious last week, when a caller, who had earlier provided Bell's Website with a picture of Bigfoot peeking from behind a tree, reported he had seen "a big ball of light coming down" to where the creature had been standing. "So, it's UFO-involved?" asked Bell mildly. The caller thought so but was hazy on the details.

Other remarkable Bell shows have involved such subjects as a 1957 Chevrolet that "just fell out of the sky" in Long Beach, California; a farmer who threw machinery and dead cows into a hole on his property and claimed that they "never hit bottom"; and an interview with Richard Hoagland, who claims the government is suppressing news of alien structures on the Moon and Mars.

Bell brushes off critics who charge that his uncritical airing of such nonsense only promotes scientific illiteracy and, as in the case of Heaven's Gate, can actually have harmful consequences. "All we glorify really is the possibility that we as humans are more than we appear to be," he says. "I have an opportunity to push in that direction, and I do. I have an open mind. I'll listen to anybody."

--By Leon Jaroff. Reported by James Willwerth/Pahrump

With reporting by JAMES WILLWERTH/PAHRUMP