Tuesday’s column about the crazy calls radio broadcasters get from listeners, conspiracy theorists, Rush Limbaugh fans, and the occasional inmate generated so much reader mail that we’re going one more inning on the topic and publishing five of the best letters. If you missed the original story, you can read it here.

• “It was years ago while working mornings. I would get a daily phone call from a guy who would consult with me, and ask what he should have for breakfast! I learned after a short period of time that there was only one correct answer, and that it wasn’t eggs.

“Only I was supposed to give him suggestions, not my female partner. He would get so angry with me for ruining his day if I gave him the wrong answer or [if] she answered him. So, for safety’s sake, from that point forward the correct answer was pancakes, and only I answered him. Every day for years he called, and every day I suggested pancakes. That’s as weird as it got, thankfully!” —Mark Vaness, AC WBZZ Albany, N.Y.

• “I had a listener in San Antonio that started out as a contest player/request caller. That evolved into several calls a shift. When I put her off, that turned into long letters sent to me at the station. Then, she figured out my voice mailbox and would leave 15-20 voice mails a day.

“When I left there for my first PD gig in Chattanooga, I told everyone [in San Antonio] if she was to call, do not tell her where I went. About six months into the job in Chattanooga, the request line rang and it was her. Someone in San Antonio didn’t keep the secret. After just constantly hanging up on her, I guess she got frustrated and quit calling for a while.

“When I left Chattanooga and went to Wisconsin, I was there about nine months, and one day the office phone rang and it was her. That station had a much smaller, tighter staff, and I told the front desk receptionist to block all female calls and take a message. The receptionist finally learned the woman’s voice, and one day—at my request—asked if it was ‘my friend from San Antonio.’ She said ‘yes,’ and the receptionist said, ‘I guess you have not heard, Joel was hit by a bus and is no longer with us.’ The calls stopped, and I bought the receptionist a bottle of wine for the great acting job.” —Joel Dearing, VP affiliate relations, Virtual News Center

• “Our sister station is a news/talk that runs Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Especially during election season (but it happens all year), our front desk gets calls about how the Democrats are the reason the station’s signal keeps dropping out. And last election season, our receptionist got a call from a man who wanted to come out and look at the towers behind the station because he said an alien disc had landed there.

“About 10 years ago, I was working at KYKX in Longview, Texas, and there was a listener who wrote down every single song we ever played, 24 hours a day. Her name was Norma. I could never figure out when she slept, but every once in a while she would miss some for whatever reason, and she would call and say, ‘You played George Strait at 2:37 a.m., and at 2:53 you played Neal McCoy. I need to know what songs played in between them. Can you look that up for me?’ And when we did a top-whatever songs of the year countdown, she always called and asked for a printed list of the songs so she didn’t have to write them all down.” —Jess Wright, PD/afternoon host WFRE Frederick, Md.

• “[I remember] Lois, the over the top John Michael Montgomery fan. She would leave these 10-minute, rambling voice mail messages at WCTO [Allentown, Pa.] at three in the morning. She would discuss rotations of songs, that John Michael deserved to be a ‘B’ or medium, and [say] another group of songs already in the rotation sucked. We would tell Atlantic and then Warner Bros. when his songs would come out [that] we wouldn’t consider them unless they got her under control. She left threatening messages to the air talent. His management company was concerned enough about it in 2001 to send her a letter.” —Chuck Geiger, managing editor, Full Throttle Country, Fresno, Calif.

Finally, my favorite letter of the week adds a valuable new perspective to the whole “crazy listeners” thing.

• “Just two weeks ago, the front office staff forwarded a call to me from a lady who described herself as ‘the Lady Christ,’ who [said she] had been here in town long before any other human arrived, even longer than the old train trestle. She proceeded to ramble on about having equally deified siblings. After about a minute and a half, I asked her if there was a point in her story, and she said, ‘Yeah, I wanna get on the radio’ … She then informed me she was a three-star general in the U.S. Army. I asked her if she was currently on medication, and she screamed, ‘No, I am …you can call Washington!’ and hung-up.

“While it was a weird phone call, it reminded me there are a lot of mentally ill people roaming the world looking for help, whether they know it or not. Their families are exhausted, both emotionally and economically, as caring for—and keeping a mentally ill family member ‘stable’—is a 24/7 job. Often, family members just give up because they’ve got nothing left to give. Mental health programs often find themselves victims of state and local government budget cuts. Long story short, next time you get a call from somebody who’s ‘way out there,’ think about the power your stations wield to make a difference, and consider mental health advocacy in your fund raising support efforts.” —Rick Healy, OM, Results Radio, Redding, Calif.