Heir to the Air

Is the next great paranormal radio show broadcasting from a basement in the Northeast?

“Art Bell’s going down the tubes,” says Lou Gentile, paranormal investigator/demonologist/radio talk-show host. “He’s been going down the tubes for a while.”

Of course, at heart, Gentile’s a fan of Bell, who pioneered the paranormal radio format in the pre-X-Files era and currently boasts more stations airing his overnight show than Larry King ever did. But money, age and personal problems slowed the revered broadcaster in recent years and he officially announced his impending retirement from Coast to Coast A.M. (heard locally on 1210 AM) last week.

What separates him from other talk show hosts in the genre, he says, is his information-oriented approach. Where others might tackle the unexplained as a form of entertainment, he sees such a show as an opportunity to search for truth and to help people.

“I look at the reality of it all,” he says. “I bring guests on, find out if they’re fakes, if they’re phony. If they’re psychics, you know, prove it to me.” A typical show is an hour of guest interviews followed by an hour of unscreened calls from listeners with questions and comments.

Because of his experience as a paranormal investigator, he figures he’s equipped to recognize cranks and fakes from the real deal. “You talk to somebody for 10-15 minutes, and you get to find out a little bit about ’em,” he says. “But you have ’em on for two hours, you get to find out if they’re a wacko or not.”

Of course, “wacko” is a relative term. “Paranormal investigator” and “demonologist” are hardly accepted, recognized professions. Gentile claims to have traveled around to haunted houses, witnessing exorcisms and other abnormal phenomena. He calls it reality radio. “This isn’t made-up crap. People might be skeptics, but [if] you’ve had an experience, you know what I’m talking about.”

In that line of work, the strange is apparently commonplace. “My job is to go in there and collect evidence and submit it to clergy. And usually when I say something to clergy… they will come out and check it out because they know from my past experience and track record that what I’m doing is legitimate.”

“I’m not there to do an exorcism, although I have been trained in different rituals, being a religious demonologist.… I know what to do if an exorcism goes wrong or if it has failed.” Although his expertise lies in Roman Catholicism, Gentile says he’ll work with any religion apart from Satanism.

The general public might not buy into it -- although Gentile believes the world is more open-minded about such things than they were just five or 10 years ago -- but there is obviously an audience of believers out there. Gentile boasts 500-1,200 listeners nightly via www.lougentile.com. He’s also on the actual air in a few places around the country. And the sky might be the limit; more radio stations are expected to be added as the show prepares for syndication thanks to his recent affiliation with the broadcast group, IBC.

Still, Gentile’s disappointed that, outside of the Web, you can’t hear him in his hometown. As of yet, local talk stations have not embraced the idea of a locally based paranormal talk show.

In the four years The Lou Gentile Show has been on the air, the host claims many highlights. He’s particularly proud of the week of exclusive interviews he conducted with the witnesses, key players and investigators associated with the famous Amityville murders of 1975. “We had anywhere from 6-7,000 people listening to the live shows, so it really rocked. And we had a really cool time because we had people that were there. This isn’t like I’m asking for somebody’s opinion. These were the people who lived in the house and who were involved.”

Gentile makes his living doing web development, when not making complimentary haunted housecalls and doing radio shows. The latter has only recently started making any money, and as for the former: “I don’t make a dime, all my services are free. If anybody’s out of my two-hour range, I charge for gas and tolls, that’s it.”

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August 10, 2006
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