From the mid-1950s until his death in 1978, Nebel was a hugely popular all-night radio host, with millions of regular listeners and what Donald Bain described as "a fanatically loyal following" to his syndicated program, which dealt mainly with anomalous phenomena, UFOs, and other offbeat topics.

At his auction barn in New Jersey,[1] he was billed as "Long John, the gab and gavel man", and people would attend just for an evening's entertainment.

Over several years, Nebel had many friends at various New York radio stations when he bought commercial time to advertise his auction house.

Building on the modest fame of his auction house (and also hoping to generate more business), he used the same name, Long John, when he went on radio.

To the surprise of WOR's management, Nebel's show was a quick success among New York's night-owls and early risers.

Unidentified flying objects were discussed[1] almost daily, alongside topics such as voodoo, witchcraft, parapsychology, hypnotism, conspiracy theories, and ghosts.

This resulted in a delay of several seconds, enough time to hit the "stop" button to avoid airing foul language.

Thus the tape loop, transported counter-clockwise, would record the microphone output, and then have to go all the way around to play it back over the air before being erased.

The Way Out World, published in 1961, covered his years at WOR and included UFO contactees, a stage magician, the Shaver Mystery, Edgar Cayce, and much more, which Nebel said he had gleaned from his "twenty thousand hours of interviewing and research".

His second book, The Psychic World Around Us, co-written with Sanford M. Teller and published in 1969, dealt more specifically with tales of the paranormal and the guests whom he had interviewed while at WNBC.

Due to Jones's mood swings, shifts in her personality and some unusual and otherwise-unexplainable events in her life, Nebel said that he had come to suspect she had been a victim of a CIA mind control plot.

[citation needed] Her story, with its conspiracy theory overtones, had a definite influence on the content of Nebel's radio program during its final six years.

Nebel's program gave the impression of being freewheeling and unpredictable, prone to sidetracks and digressions; very different from the precise, mannered approach of most contemporary radio.

Nebel, along with his regular guests and panelists, would interview various personalities and claimants (such as psychic Kuda Bux), and take occasional telephone calls from listeners in the New York area.

[8] Some critics attacked Nebel for allowing crackpots free rein on the program, but he responded by saying his was not a traditional news or investigative journalism show, and that it was up to listeners to determine the validity of any guest's claims.

Another memorable show found Gleason undertaking a sharp, occasionally even savage, debate with publisher Gray Barker.

The two most frequent guests on his radio show were science fiction writers Lester del Rey and Frederik Pohl.

Nebel gave a forum to Otis T. Carr, an Oklahoman who claimed to have discovered the secret of flying saucer propulsion, by studying the works of Nikola Tesla.

During a Thursday afternoon matinee at New York's Paramount Theatre, Nebel's friend, William Neff, a well-known conjuror, stepped into a spotlight in front of the curtain and began his performance.

Neff seemed surprised at the question; he was not aware that he had "faded", but he admitted that the same thing had happened three years earlier at a theatre in Chicago.

[10] Nebel was not above a few pranks, all in the name of showmanship and ratings: on one occasion, for example, he colluded with a friend to offer testimony supporting a guest's claims of astral projection.

Nebel spent weeks on his show developing a tale for his audience that the Empire State Building was rotated on giant ball bearings in the wee hours of the morning.

As the prank developed over time, Nebel began telling callers that if they visited the Empire State Building very late at night, they would find the shops at ground level had switched location to the block around the corner.

The fact that Nebel's second wife, Candy Jones claimed to have been the subject of CIA experiments in mind-control was discounted as a prank by those who pointed out his history of promoting hoaxes.

He represents one of post-World War II radio's creative high points and another example of the special nature of overnight programming ...