February 6, 2005: Amazing Open Lines

Art Bell opens the phone lines for a wide-ranging evening that produces some of the most memorable caller stories in the program's history. He reserves one line for anyone who has made a pact with the devil, inspired by the late Father Malachi Martin's discussions on the subject. A caller describes making such a pact in desperation over a relationship, only to find himself drawn into the occult, eventually requiring an exorcism through the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Greg Williams recounts his harrowing thirteen days as a prisoner of Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Originally a homeless man from Florida who traveled there on a church mission, Williams was kidnapped at gunpoint, tortured with needles driven under his fingernails, and forced to witness the beheading of his companion. He survived when a Muslim translator, moved by their shared faith, risked his own life to lead Williams through a hidden air shaft in an old Japanese cave fortification.

A retired fire captain from New York describes witnessing a collapsed radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia, where steel bolts appeared to have been cut as if by a laser on a calm, windless night. A nurse and a retired firefighter each independently describe seeing the spirits of dying patients standing beside their own bodies in emergency rooms, with a physician confirming he had witnessed the same phenomenon throughout his career.