October 30, 2002: Electronic Voice Phenomena - Brendan Cook & Barbara McBeath
Before the planned EVP segment, Art addresses a range of unsettling news stories, including a shocking 1,000 percent increase in autism diagnoses over 20 years according to California's Department of Developmental Services, an unexplained ocean dead zone off the Oregon coast where oxygen levels dropped so low that all marine life perished, and political upheaval following Senator Paul Wellstone's death in a plane crash. He raises pointed questions about what environmental factors might be driving the surge in developmental disorders.
Persistent telephone equipment failures throughout the broadcast prevent the full EVP presentation from taking place. After repeatedly losing all phone connections mid-call, Art is forced to cut the program short, promising to reschedule the GIS appearance and previewing the next night's Ghost to Ghost AM special focused on entity attacks.
Key Moments
Wyoming prison ghost recordings hit the Denver Post: Art reads from the Denver Post's just-published feature on GIS investigations of two long-abandoned Wyoming prisons, including EVP captures of voices saying 'get me out of here,' 'get out,' a request for a smoke, and a child answering 'Hazel' - the name of a girl who drowned in a pond near the warden's house decades earlier.
California autism up 273 percent in 90 days: Art reports California Department of Developmental Services data: 566 new diagnosed-autism children entered the system in the last 90 days, up from 667 in all of 1994 - a 273 percent year-over-year jump and a roughly 1,000 percent rise over twenty years.
Oregon's first West Coast ocean dead zone: Art reads the OSU report that an unprecedented dead zone off the central Oregon coast suffocated fish and crab in summer 2002 - the first such oxygen-collapse documented on the U.S. West Coast - and connects it to the autism numbers as evidence of broader environmental disturbance.
Customer pays with 1857 Canadian money: A gas-station night-shift caller describes a roughly 40-year-old man who didn't know how to operate a fuel pump, then opened a wallet stuffed with 1857-dated Canadian bills and coins; the call cuts out before the man's two-pen demonstration is described.