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C2C's Ouija Board Debacle

In the future, when the George Noory era of Coast to Coast AM is looked back on, in retrospect, the 7.25.7 edition of the program, dubbed the "Ouija Board Special", will easily be seen as one of the key moments when the show "jumped the shark". Unlike some of the previous debacles on C2C, where dubious guests were at fault, this fiasco was entirely created, cultivated, and ultimately committed by George Noory and Coast to Coast itself. This was a four hour showcase of missteps and embarrassments the likes of which, I have never heard on the program in all of my time listening.

The Road to Ouija-ville

Ever since he was installed as C2C host, George Noory has had an un-natural fascination with the Ouija Board. Over the last few years, he has tried, desperately, to make the Ouija Board relevant again, despite the fact that no one really took it seriously and the "game" is little more than a hold-over from the swinging sixties New Age era. We shouldn't be too surprised, considering Noory's sadly dated pop culture frame of reference, that he deemed the Ouija Board somehow important to the world of esoterica.

Anyway, the hype really kicked into full gear sometime around the Spring of this year, when rumblings of a Ouija experiment began. The Noor began polling listeners, and some guests, asking if he should conduct a Ouija experiment. Whether or not it would ever happen was always this vague deal, as Noory seemed to want to do it, but also seemed to want to be talked out of it. It was all very lame. Around late June or early July, a date was finally set ... July 25th ... the Ouija Board experiment would happen, sort of. The hype for the episode followed the same pattern all along, with Noory dancing around committing to actually doing an experiment, but schilling the episode as if something would happen. Something did happen, of course, but it was an esoteric radio train wreck, not a Ouija Board experiment.

Play by Play

Let's go chronologically through the show, since that is probably the easiest way to try and untangle this mess and the best way to hit the scant highlights and many low lights ...

Hour One

The night began with Archbishop James Long as a very quick pop-in segment right after the news. The gist of it was that something awful had happened to Long's mother and he was suggesting it was because he'd appeared on C2C the previous week and was anti-Ouija experiment.

This would become the foundation for The Noor's "great" escape from doing any experiment. Though he didn't say as much just then. No, he only hyped the rest of the show, saying that the third hour "is the planned moment for the experiment."

Then Jerry Edward Cornelius was the first hour guest and he was entertaining as hell and very informative. He seemed to bring a level headed take to the Ouija board, which was a nice counter balance to Noory's paranoia over doing the experiment.

Toward the end of the interview, though, things start to get fugly. First, Noory says that he has gone from "definitely doing it to being 'on the fence' now". Noory says won't do it unless he's "100 percent strong" (whatever that means) and that he hasn't "had an opportunity to really talk to the three of them [Ouija room guests] in a group to hear what they have to say and weigh their advice."

Then comes the kicker as Noory starts with his anti-coincidences spiel and says that "over the last couple weeks, some very strange things have been happening to people I know who are on this program, like the Bishop [James Long]". So now Noory is starting to suggest that the Ouija experiment may be causing these events to happen. It will only get worse from here.

Hour Two

Cornelius leaves and then Stoker Hunt comes on for what Noory calls "a very brief interview". This was probably the funniest part of the episode, simply because no one bothered to tell Stoker what was going on during the show.

Noory asked, "If you were me, tonight, would you do this experiment ?"

To which Stoker deadpans, "What experiment ?"

Noory says, "This Ouija board experiment."

Then Stoker says, "You wanted to work with the Ouija board ? Would I do it with you ?"

Noory, "No, no, would I do it tonight ... I'm doing one tonight."

Stoker, "Are you ?"

Noory, "Yes".

Stoker, "On air ?"

Noory, "You may be the only person in the world who doesn't know that."

Wow, wow, wow. What an exchange. First question, who the hell didn't bother to brief Stoker on what this episode was all about ? Jesus Christ, who is running the ship over there ?

The other troublesome point coming out of that exchange was Noory's "humorous" response to Stoker's ignorance of the experiment, which just speaks volumes as to his inflated ego and his warped sense of how important C2C is to the world. If I thought he was being tongue in cheek about it, I'd laugh, but I'm afraid Noory actually believes that garbage. No matter how many times he says it, no matter how hard he insists it is true, no matter how many faux big stories they "break", C2C is a joke to the mainstream media and most "normal" people in America.

I am torn over whether or not Stoker was booted from the show. Weighing against that theory is that Noory said it would be a "brief interview". But, Stoker was only on for like seven minutes total, the interview ended very shortly after it was revealed that he had no clue about the Ouija experiment, and when Noory thanked his for appearing, he was already gone. These signs point to The Noor deciding to "go loose". Also, Noory managed to slip his little "everyone in the world" chest thumping when Stoker left, which seemed rather petty of him. We'll probably never know, but it was all pretty suspicious.

Up next was the three ring circus portion of the show. Noory welcomed his "panel of experts", Bruce Goldberg (hypnotist / dentist), Rosemary Ellen Guiley (esoteric stalwart), and Jordan Maxwell (charismatic esoteric stalwart). Goldberg and Guiley were pretty much pro-Ouija and Maxwell was vehemently, and hilariously, anti-Ouija. Throughout the night, Jordan crapped all over the idea of a Ouija Board experiment, which was awesome.

They essentially had a mini-roundtable about the Ouija Board. Noory kept hyping "the moment" for later in the show. He said he wasn't worried about himself, but was concerned with people who aren't as strong as he is. Jordan ran with this idea and kept pointing out that this was irresponsible of Noory to do the experiment, but Goldberg was playing Devil's Advocate and arguing that Noory should do the experiment. The Goldberg v. Jordan debate over the experiment was pretty interesting and would have made a good stand alone episode, but was probably lost in the sea of crap that was this night as a whole.

The second hour came to a close with Noory saying that a month ago he was definitely going to do the experiment, but that "at this point, I don't know what the heck I am going to do."

Hour Three

The three ring circus kicked into high gear in the following hour, as Noory enters what he calls the "special room", which I imagine was more like a broom closet. I'm not sure if it was the specialness of the room or what, but Noory's voice was really muffled at this point, and I was wondering if he'd taken off his pants and tied them around his head (in order to protect him from "flying planchettes").

The tension was building. Rosemary busted out the Ouija. Noory went into total "cover your ass" territory as he said he wanted to go "on record" to anyone listening that may be about to use a Ouija along with the show, "do not use it." He must have realized that he'd set up this mess, so he better have that soundbite ready in case some nut killed his family because of it. He asked Rosemary for her Ouija experiment endorsement. She was pro-experiment.

Bruce Goldberg, hypnotist / dentist, then busted out some awful techno music and did some kind of shanty or jig where he doused Noory with "white light energy". It was all rather cheesy, but funny in a B-movie sort of way. It was also kind of sad, as I could see him charging some poor, desperate loser hundreds of dollars for this same "treatment". For the record, Goldy came down on the side of pro-experiment.

To round out the experts, Noory went to Jordan Maxwell next. Jordan was simply sublime here, really turning it up and going after Noory about how retarded the Ouija idea was, smartly playing up how it could hurt Noory's career. The key line of it all was, "You need to respect someone who knows more about this subject than you do. And I hate to have to pull rank on you, but I've been looking at this for 46 years." Amen.

Ironically enough, that great moment segued into something truly disgusting as Noory announced that Steve Quayle's mother had passed away and then made a point of saying that Quayle had been on recently to warn him about the Ouija experiment. This was the personal low point in the program for me. It's one thing to hype an episode and not deliver, it's another thing to exploit the death of someone's mother to put over your show over. It was easily the most tasteless thing I've ever heard from Noory and enough to make me seriously consider if I ever wanted to listen to the show again.

They went to a break and when they came back, Noory was ready to make his big decision. He then launched into a lengthy monologue where he confessed to have had a near death experience a few years ago and has been obsessed with finding out if there was anything on the other side. He admitted that he wanted to jeopardize the listeners in order to get an answer (how charming). The Noor then intimated that the story of people getting stuck in the St.Louis arch was because of the impending Ouija experiment. Seriously.

Wrapping up his spiel he announced, "in a decision that I have been approaching in the last week, I don't want anything to happen to you [ the listeners], and because of that, I will not do this experiment tonight."

This was just eight shades of awful here. Listening to his lengthy reason for cancelling the experiment, I find it very hard to believe that he made the final decision that night, because his announcement sounded painfully scripted (as did Jordan's big final plea for him not to do the experiment). The whole thing reeked of a sham and many listeners, myself included, felt completely bamboozled.

As if things couldn't get worse, when they got back from commercial Noory and C2C then went into full damage control. Noory asked Rosemary if she endorsed his "excuse" (his word) for not doing the experiment. Sadly, Rosemary then said that it wasn't an excuse and that Noory bailing on the experiment was "very courageous", to come up with the idea, do research on it, and then make a decision. Ugh. Rosemary, isn't that his job ? Shouldn't he be doing the research and making a decision before he commits to the special experiment episode ?!

This was just ridiculous, as Rosemary kept putting Noory over for discussing the Ouija, as if it was some kind of important social issue that needed some coverage. Noory lamented, practically whining, that he was going to do the experiment two weeks ago (as if it mattered at that point). Jordan, of course, was happy that Noory decided not to the experiment.

To top it all off, Bruce Goldberg then said "Interestingly enough, although you advertised this program as a Ouija Board Experiment, you actually did an experiment that proved exactly what I was trying to help illustrate in this discussion." You gotta love Goldy, turning a negative into a positive ... for himself. I'd ask if he had any shame, but I've heard his previous C2C appearances, so I already know the answer to that question.

That said, Goldberg did, accidentally, highlight the core problem with this episode when he said, "you advertised this program as a Ouija Board experiment". Bingo. The audience was clearly under the impression that the experiment would, in fact, happen and despite it being painfully obvious that the experiment wasn't going to happen, probably way before show time, Noory and company kept suggesting it would, even halfway through the show.

Heading towards the close of that hour, Noory again starts implying that the Ouija board "experiment" caused a bunch of bad stuff to happen, including the death of Steve Quayle's mother, an earthquake in Indonesia, and bad things happening to his family. Bruce Goldberg quickly chimes in to claim that the odds of those things happening by chance are ridiculous. That's, of course, completely asinine, since we have no real facts on any of the stuff that happened and much of it could have been very likely to happen.

From there, Noory went on to keep beating the drum of "bad things were happening, so I cancelled the experiment to save you all". The three experts kept enabling this line of thinking, despite being decidedly pro-Ouija less than an hour earlier. It's hard to take them seriously when they waffle in less than an hour.

We did get a little soul searching from Noory as he finally admitted that he'd painted himself into a corner with the Ouija experiment and was sure to have some people pissed off about his decision. I find it hard to believe that he didn't see this coming before he embarked on the night's show.

To put a nice bow on the end of that hour, Noory reads a letter from a listener who claimed to have had 11 people over to listen to the show and spent $150 for a big barbecue and that "we were jipped". How does Noory respond ? Does he apologize for getting their hopes up and disappointing them ? No, instead Noory laughs at them !

Hour Four

The hour kicks off with a solemn Noory, doing a self righteous routine where he thanks the "vast" people who wrote to him who "understand" why he backed out of the experiment. He then opens up phone lines so a caller can pat him on the back for cancelling the experiment and then The Noor went on the offensive, "some of the people who think I copped out on them because of this ... you know what ... if you don't understand it, you'll never understand it."

It's pretty obvious from his tone, and his follow up attempt at a question for Rosemary, that he is rattled. I'm guessing that over the break, he realized that he'd pissed a ton of people off. Of course, his response to that was to go on the offensive.

C2C let one caller through who was disappointed in Noory's decision. He was pretty blunt with the Noor, saying it was a cop out. Noory justified cancelling the experiment by saying he didn't want to be responsible if something bad happened to a listener. The caller wasn't buying it.

From there, Noory and the guests kept going over why not doing the experiment was a good idea, including Noory harping on Steve Quayle's mother again. A caller called in to, again, agree with his decision. George lets loose another Noory-ism as he says he was planning on doing the experiment and then "laughing about it" afterwards. (Just as I suspected when I previewed the episode)

We get a little bit of C2C history as Noory cites the Heaven's Gate controversy as reasoning behind the cancellation of the Ouija experiment. He claims that his experiment was even more reckless. Sigh. I agree with him, but these are the sort of issues that should have been addressed before the idea for the episode even came up, not in hindsight after you've hyped it and then cancelled it.

The remaining portion of the show consisted of a few more callers. One disagreed with Noory's decision, but fell all over himself kissing The Noor's ass, that his argument was pretty toothless. A couple more, including an obnoxious douche named Ruben, patted Noory on the back and telling him it was a good move to cancel the experiment. Another caller said he was disappointed with Noory's decision and asked if Noory would re-visit the Ouija experiment and Noory says he won't.

Then he said it would be "the easy way out" to do the experiment, that he'll "take the brunt of it" from people who are disappointed in him bailing on the experiment, and would prefer the people who are glad the experiment didn't happen. No shit, Noory, because the people who are pissed are going to stop listening and / or tell everyone how awful it was.

The episode pretty much ended after a few more callers, with Noory's final words being, "you can't win, you can't lose" and sounding pretty worn out by the night. I can't say I blame him, but I also can't say I feel sorry for him.

The Bottom Line :: Analysis

Just a terrible episode. Frustratingly bad on so many levels.

The issue that bothers me the most is that C2C had to have known that the experiment wasn't going to happen, but they still went through with the episode anyway and then Noory laughed at and insulted the people who were disappointed with how it all went down. I have no problem with him not doing the experiment. I think he's in the right with that decision. What I have a problem with is the obvious bait and switch of the whole night and how they handled cancelling the experiment. It speaks volumes as to how the show feels about its listeners. The dishonesty of it all is troubling to say the least.

From a Noory-centric, big picture perspective, it was just another sad attempt by The Noor to have an "Art Bell Moment". He did the same thing with his interview with guy who channels Satan, lots of hype, no payout. And don't even get me started on the imitation J.C. known as Oscar. What they don't seem to understand is that these great moments happen spontaneously and that trying to force them only makes you look like a shady carny instead of a legit showman.

To make matters worse, from start to finish, Noory was terrible throughout this episode. His wild ideas about what the Ouija experiment caused, his inclusion of Steve Quayle's mother in all of this, his story that doesn't quite add up regarding when he knew the experiment wasn't going to happen, his response to the people who were disappointed, including laughing at them and his combination "poor me / I saved you" attitude in the final hour ... it all added up to a bad night for The Noor.

I could waste my time going over the smaller details of awfulness of the show, but we've kind of already hit them. This was the perfect storm of esoteric radio shit, going so far into the awful that it earned value just for being historically terrible.

At the end of the day, this was the kind of episode that does major damage to a program, because it had the effect of pissing off a ton of the audience and it will take a long time to win back the goodwill of those listeners who were disenchanted by the night. It was a massive tactical mistake, a huge PR blunder, and yet another major display of the disconnect between C2C and their hardcore audience. C2C thrives on word of mouth to get people turned on to the show and this was the kind of buzz that turns people off of telling their friends about Coast.

For me, personally, the Ouija Board "special" will probably go down as the episode where writing about C2C just isn't fun for me anymore. I'm tired of talking about the things I didn't like and trying to find bright moments in otherwise dreadful shows. When Sean David Morton is the guest the night after a debacle like this, I wonder why I am even bothering to listen anymore. C2C has changed and so have I. Simply put, this is no longer the show I fell in love with. For me, that realization, more than the annoyance and disappointment of how the experiment went down, is saddest part of it all.

The Kimball / Binnall Summit Will Happen

As noted @ the BoA blog (HERE), I will be heading up to Canada on Thursday for a meeting of the minds / adventure with esoteric pundit Paul Kimball.

We'll be attending Explore Oak Island Days, which promises to be a lot of fun. From what I gather, Oak Island is only open to the public one weekend a year, so this should be quite a happening. Kimball will have his crew of merry pranksters with him, including the infamous Kris Lee McBride, who I am looking forward to meeting. To make matters more intriguing, we'll apparently be camping on Oak Island, which should be interesting, as it has been a long while since I went camping.

I'm expecting a lot of laughs and a nice break from the madness that is here in America. As a result of my international travel, BoA will go dark for the duration of my visit to Canada, beyond the weekend summit with Kimball. Simply put, I need a little rest from updating the site every day and a nice week or so away from the grind of BoA is needed, especially after I spent a large part of my trip to San Diego working on the finale of BoA : Audio in my brother's apartment.

As such, aside from perhaps some blog posts here or there, no BoA updates from 8.9 to 8.17 (or so). We'll have more details as they become available.

End Notes

Finally, this damned column is finished. I was beginning to wonder if it was going to become another victim of the Ouija Board experiment, but I think we survived.

Obviously, no column next week as I'll be in Canada. I expect that we'll be back after I get back with a special recap of Explore Oak Island Days and some stories of the Kimball / Binnall Summit.

Until you hear from me in the future, this is binnall ... signing off.

8.6.7