Friday night's Open Lines featured a 'Halloween' hotline for callers who wanted to share memorable experiences from Halloweens past. Mark from California claimed to have been thrown around his room by a little girl who mysteriously appeared in his bedroom doorway one Halloween night. He said the girl tossed him onto his bed, vanished, then reappeared and threw him around again. He escaped the girl's clutches by running down the hall to his parent's room, he explained.
Rob from Tampa recalled the time he visited a burned down orphanage in Ohio. According to the caller, he and his friends heard the screams of children coming from the charred ruins, and discovered little fingerprints on the windows of his car. Rebecca, who called while driving through South Florida, remembered getting lost during a road trip. No matter how hard she tried she could not locate the highway, Rebecca said, and eventually gave in to her fatigue and fell asleep. She professes to have awakened the next morning in her driveway with no memory of how she got there.
Bob from Seattle said he visited and participated in a haunted house at the original Frankenstein's castle in Germany during his stint in the military. Quentin from Oklahoma shared a story about his dad, who along with his brother tried to scare two female companions with the legend of 'Deer Woman', a creature that was a cross between a deer and human. Quentin said the prank failed when one of the men stepped on a sick cow and nearly scared themselves to death. At the end of the program, George presented his rendition of Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.
John Belushi
During the first hour, John Belushi's widow, Judy Belushi-Pisano, along with co-author Tanner Colby shared stories about the late actor/comedian from their new book Belushi: A Biography. They also related a few 'ghost stories' about Belushi. According to one account, Belushi's ghost contacted a couple of friends through a Ouija board about a year after his death. The following is an excerpt of that paranormal experience as told by Carol Caldwell:
We concentrated more, and waited. Then all of a sudden, the planchette began whipping all over the board, sometimes without benefit of one or the other’s fingers on it. Start and whip, erratic as hell, almost jumping off the board by itself. She and I said, "WHAT!?"
And the thing spelled out, ITS ME! ITS ME! Over and over. We said, "Who? Natalie?"
NO NO NO! ITS ME, JOHN B.
We said, "John?"
The thing sped back and forth, back and forth over the YES, YES, YES. ITS ME!
Mars Update
In the second hour, Richard C. Hoagland of Enterprise Mission provided an update on Mars, which makes its closest approach to Earth (until June 2018) this weekend. Amateur astronomers with ordinary backyard telescopes will even be able to view a dust storm that broke out on Mars on Friday, Hoagland explained, instructing listeners to look for a "brilliant yellow splotch" on the surface of the Red Planet. Hoagland also commented on parallel universes, abiotic oil, and fielded phone calls.