Quick Info
It was late on the night of September 11, 1997 when Art Bell opened up a special phone line on Coast to Coast AM just for people who worked or used to work at Area 51. What happened next still gives a lot of us chills.
On September 11, 1997, a terrified man claiming to be a freshly discharged Area 51 employee called Art Bell live on air. In a shaky voice he warned that the beings we call aliens are actually extra-dimensional entities who have infiltrated the military. Right as he described coming disasters the entire broadcast went dead for 20 minutes. To this day, no one knows who he really was.
A Voice That Sounded Truly Scared
The guy on the line sounded shaken from the very first word. His voice kept cracking like he was fighting back tears or panic. He said he'd only been out of Area 51 for about a week after getting a medical discharge, and he'd been driving around the country trying to stay off the radar. He wouldn't say where he was calling from because he was convinced they were already tracking him.
“I don’t have a whole lot of time… I was let go on a medical discharge about a week ago… I’ve kind of been running across the country, man.”
His fear came through the radio so clearly that many listeners that night felt he was genuinely terrified for his life.
What He Actually Said
Art tried to keep him calm and get the story out quickly. That's when the caller dropped the real bombshell.
“What we’re thinking of as ‘aliens’… they’re extra-dimensional beings… They are not what they claim to be… They have infiltrated a lot of aspects of the military establishment, particularly Area 51… The disasters that are coming… the government knows about ’em…”
According to him, these entities had been working behind the scenes for years, and the government was fully aware of the disasters they were planning.
Then Everything Went Dead
Right as the caller was getting more worked up and the warning was turning really dark, the impossible happened. The whole Coast to Coast satellite feed cut out completely. For around 20 minutes, stations all over the country went silent. When Art finally came back on air he sounded rattled and said it had never happened like that before in all his years on the radio.
The timing felt way too perfect for a lot of listeners. Was it just a weird technical glitch, or did someone hit a big red button to shut him up?
Listen to call and hear for yourself below ツ
More videos about the call on YouTube
The Follow-Up Call and All the Questions
About seven months later, in April 1998, another guy named Brian called in and claimed the whole thing was just an elaborate hoax he had pulled off. But a bunch of people who heard both calls swore the voices didn't match up. The tone, the emotion, everything felt different. Some folks still think the original caller got silenced somehow and the second call was damage control.
To this day nobody knows for sure who the frantic first caller really was. The audio has been played and replayed for years, even sampled in songs. Was it a brilliant prank? A terrified insider who took a huge risk? Or something else entirely? And that sudden dead-air moment, that part still has no good explanation.
“They are not what they claim to be.”
— The Area 51 Caller, September 11, 1997
That single line has been repeated, analyzed, and debated for nearly three decades now.
What Do You Think?
After reading this story, what do you make of it? Do you think the caller was a real scared employee trying to warn the world, or was it all an elaborate hoax? Remember it pretty hard to take a satellite conncetion out if it was a hoax. If these beings really are extra-dimensional rather than from another planet, how does that change everything we think we know about UFOs? And why on earth did the entire broadcast cut out right at the most important moment? Would you have believed him if you were listening live that night?
