The last half of the show featured Open Lines, with a special hotline for truck drivers, police officers and newspaper carriers who had creepy stories to share.

Hot Rocks & Half Cats

During the first hour, reporter and editor for Earthfiles.com, Linda Moulton Howe presented news on the hot rock mystery in California. According to Linda, the "unique and really mysterious" hot rocks were exposed after a landslide in the Los Padres National Forest. She said a test conducted at a depth of 11 1/2 feet below the rocks measured the ground temperature at 584-degrees Fahrenheit. Geothermal energy, volcanic magma, and radioactivity have been ruled out as explanations, Linda revealed.

Linda also provided information about unusual cat deaths in the Seattle area. It appears the unfortunate felines have been cut in half, Linda explained, with some kind of "high heat" cutting instrument. Read more here (Warning: contains graphic images).

Deep Impact Scandal

Second hour guest, Richard C. Hoagland of Enterprise Mission talked about a scandal related to the Deep Impact space mission, which sent a probe smashing into comet Tempel 1. According to Hoagland, NASA is a less than open institution that employs "bad guys behind the scenes who are playing with us... keeping all the good stuff to themselves." Hoagland believes NASA is holding back information about Deep Impact because their findings could show that comets and asteroids are the same thing -- fragments of the hypothetical "Planet 5," which some think exploded in our solar system 65 million years ago.