Otherworldly FM

'Noetic traveler' Carol Bennett sends spooky vibes across Chesapeake skies with her metaphysical talk-radio show

It's late on an autumn evening, slate-colored clouds are gliding across the face of a nearly full moon, and in a dimly lit studio about a nautical mile from the South River, a woman who may or may not have traveled through time fingers her lapis lazuli pendant, sits at her microphone and begins to speak very softly.

"Our waxing gibbous moon shines over the Chesapeake Bay tonight, and 'Chesapeake Moon' shines on WRYR," she says, her voice as tranquil as a breeze on the waves. "I'm Carol Bennett, inviting you to participate in metaphysical talk radio. Share your supernatural experiences. Call in your questions. It's Monday night — day of the moon — and I'm live. Let's have fun."

It's a time of year when many look forward to the ghoulish joys of Halloween, but Bennett needs no excuse to explore the macabre. Once a week for the past seven years, the 66-year-old has worked the sound board of this all-volunteer station near Deale, sending her musings on the paranormal across the skies of southern Anne Arundel and beyond.

"I don't see myself as a psychic," says Bennett, who left a NASA career 16 years ago to focus full time on the phantasmagorical. "I simply explore phenomena that do not fit into conventional scientific models. I'm sharing words, images, feelings — alternate ways of knowing."

The phone rings. "This is Megan," a caller says. "I called in before and asked you about my baby. You were the only one to predict she would be a girl. She's going to be!"

Now Megan wants to know if the baby will arrive early. Yes, Bennett says, and she's sensing the number three: three days, three weeks — it's not quite clear. "It's hard to see beyond the veil of forgetfulness," she says. Megan thanks her and rings off.

"Hello on the Eastern Shore," Bennett says. "How about a call?"

Hooey?

As many as 10 listeners check in per "Chesapeake Moon," a show that airs between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. most Mondays on WRYR (the call letters stand for "We Are Your Radio") and is rebroadcast the next Saturday night.

"She has very regular listeners," says Phil LeCroy, the station's program director. "I don't know if her advice changes their lives, exactly, but they do seem to like relying on it."

Megan's call was Bennett's first of the night, and she's fretting she might not be "at level" — clairvoyant-speak for warmed up and ready to go. "The inner pendulum can take a bit of time to balance," she says.

Her own rhythms began conventionally enough. Born in San Francisco to a military family, Carol Elizabeth Kendall moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, before the age of 1 and lived there, amidst her dad's relations, through high school.

Her grandmother, Elsie Elisabeth Gravatt Kendall, shaped her view that the universe is too vast to be understood by conventional means. She taught her to read tea leaves at age 7 and gave her the blue stone necklace she still grips when meditating (or when a call gets tricky).

Kendall women, it turned out, passed their supernatural leanings along — but only to girls who bear the name Elizabeth. "I was among the elect," she says.

As she grew up, she wasted little time on "the hooey" — her jocular nickname for the supernatural. She moved East with her then-husband, a Marine, in 1970, won an internship at the Army Security Agency and spent the next quarter-century climbing the ladder at the National Security Agency and NASA, riding her IT skills to a six-figure income.

Bennett loved the perks — Rolex watches, a Mercedes sedan, the house on a quiet cove near Annapolis — but she also felt "shot out of a cannon at 5:30 every morning," pressured by the demands of travel and raising two sons by herself.

In time, her mind began to wander. "There had to be more purpose to human existence than I had discovered," she says.

A safe bet

WRYR, 97.5-FM, a licensed low-power station, sits atop a Domino's restaurant in Churchton, a community halfway between the bayside burgs of Shadyside and Deale.

"We celebrate the diversity of our community, and we provide access to all, within the guidelines of radio," says founding director Mike Shay, a board member and the Green Party's candidate for Anne Arundel County executive.

Bennett, the station's longest-running host, won her unpaid gig after an audition and started on the air in February 2003.

She arrives a half-hour early and spends some time adjusting the levels on the sound board — a skill she learned on the job. "The talk part is [intuitive]," she says. "Working with this stuff is purely left-brain. It can get stressful."

In her hand is a CD containing her theme music, a song from "Evita" called "On This Night of a Thousand Stars." As introductions go, it's positively celestial. "On this night of a thousand stars, let me take you to heaven's door," croons singer Jimmy Nail. "On this night in a million nights, fly away with me!