Art Bell opens the 1997 Ghost to Ghost broadcast by recounting a terrifying experience from the previous night during his Brad Steiger interview. Something struck his studio door with tremendous force while no living person or animal in the house was responsible. With that unsettling setup, he turns the program over to callers sharing their own true ghost stories as Halloween arrives across American time zones.
Callers report an astonishing range of encounters. A parapsychologist in Syracuse describes cold and hot spots followed by a massive bang in an attic. A truck driver witnesses a bowing shadow figure announce his grandfather's death moments before the phone confirms it. A woman in Boston watches her stalled car restart just long enough for her deceased father to guide her to safety. A man in Minneapolis recalls waking at age seven to find 15 to 20 translucent cocktail party guests from another era gathered in his kitchen, one of whom tucked him into bed.
Among the most haunting stories, a young woman in Texas describes a spirit in a deceased woman's apartment that cleaned the kitchen, opened locked windows, and physically held a door shut against her. A motel desk clerk receives a phone call from the empty room next to a departed guest, hearing a distant elderly woman's voice. Art reads an Associated Press report confirming White House staff have witnessed the ghost of Abraham Lincoln roaming the halls.