November 27, 1998: Ghost Stories - Open Lines

Art Bell dedicates the entire broadcast to listener ghost stories, fulfilling a promise delayed from Halloween when the Pegasus story interrupted the planned Ghost to Ghost edition. He opens by explaining his fascination with spirits as potential evidence of existence after death, then reads accounts including a 1928 Vancouver tale of a headless brakeman haunting railway yards and a paramedic's uncanny visit to the Hotel Del Coronado seemingly orchestrated by its resident ghost.

Callers share remarkable encounters from across the country and beyond. A man in El Cajon describes seeing his deceased mother-in-law's apparition and finding her footprints on white carpet, while a former nuclear electrician from the USS Enterprise recounts how the ghost of a vaporized sailor would physically grab sleeping watchstanders by the hair. A San Diego police officer tells of a bleeding figure who vanished within seconds, and a stuntman describes being kept awake by a tuxedo-wearing specter at a former Al Capone hotel in Coral Gables.

A fire dispatcher recounts the most elaborate story of the night, describing a vivid dream in which he was transported to 1864 and experienced the deaths of an entire Mexican village through a young woman who had stayed behind to care for the dying. Art reflects on why spirits seem bound to specific locations and whether traumatic deaths create portals allowing other entities to pass through.