The book evolved after the author researched 'talking poltergeists' throughout history, including America's Bell Witch and the U.K.'s Mary Jobson and Isle of Man cases. In 1995 he interviewed a contemporary family dealing with the phenomena, Centrahoma's Bell/Mc Wethy family. Initial interviews feature them discussing their interaction with a variety of disembodied voices - central among them the enigmatic presence known as 'Michael.'
Among the events experienced by the author in Oklahoma were materialization of coins and other objects, spirit laughter and groaning, and insect phenomena. Upon returning to his native Los Angeles, the phenomena continued and escalated. He stopped working as a publicity writer for Paramount Pictures as he began transcribing the tapes.
Bell remarks, ''In the Bell Witch case, there was an incident where the haunting Entity repeated two different ministers' sermons in their own voices after they'd spoken in different locations at the same time earlier that day. In Centrahoma, Twyla Eller told me about an incident where she overheard her sister and a friend talk about a flat tire. Later, Twyla witnessed the same conversation when it actually occurred so she said it was as if their house had recorded it before it happened. I thought of these occurrences following my return to L.A. My TV set started going off whenever I began to watch it. Upon turning on one documentary program, at that precise moment someone was complaining that their telephone service had stopped working and then my TV set went off.''
Photographs document spirits and apparitions, bushes that went up in flames behind Bell's condo, and a Bigfoot. Bell has discussed his experiences during dozens of radio interviews - most recently on ''Now That's Weird'' (London) and ''Speaking of Strange'' (North Carolina).
Bell comments, ''My experiences and research showed that all living things are continuously interacting with an intermediary Superconsciousness or Spiritual Force that may be recognized through circumstances often described as coincidences and synchronicity, intuition and telepathy, prophetic dreams and visions, mediumship and trance channeling, as well as events sometimes associated with hauntings, 'talking poltergeist' phenomena and 'electronic voice phenomena.'''
