Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria.
The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "The Shadow," used to give "the creeps" to countless child listeners.
Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds," led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. Many Flee Homes to Escape 'Gas Raid From Mars' - Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells FantasyĪ wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. Morning papers from coast to coast reveled in the "mass hysteria" it had caused - even the staid New York Times, whose front-page headline blared, " Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact":
The broadcast was legendary overnight for supposedly having been too realistic and frightening for its audience. THEN DEAD SILENCE) "Fake radio 'war' stirs terror through U.S." PHILLIPS: Now the whole field's caught fire. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they're turning into flame! What's that? There's a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. PHILLIPS: A humped shape is rising out of the pit. (HISSING SOUND FOLLOWED BY A HUMMING THAT INCREASES IN INTENSITY) It's a white handkerchief tied to a pole. The Professor moves around one side, studying the object, while the captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands. Oh yes, I believe it's Professor Pierson. More state police have arrived They're drawing up a cordon in front of the pit, about thirty of them. I'll give you every detail as long as I can talk. From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. Ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. PHILLIPS: Ladies and gentlemen (Am I on?). (MORE PIANO) We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grovers Mill. Rather, the show was a regularly scheduled and announced episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio program dedicated to presenting dramatizations of literary works.)Ī brief excerpt from the script by Howard Koch shows why Welles' hour-long production of The War of the Worlds is justly regarded as a mini-masterpiece of horror:ĪNNOUNCER: We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what's happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. (Contrary to common nomenclature, Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast was not a "hoax" sprung on an unsuspecting audience. Keen on cementing his reputation as a theatrical wunderkind (Welles was on the cover of Time magazine only months earlier), the 23-year-old actor-director reworked the plodding Victorian narrative about a Martian invasion of Earth into a gripping faux newscast with real moments of shock and awe. Wells' 1897 science fiction classic The War of the Worlds over the past century, the one that remains most talked and written about to this day was Orson Welles' live radio broadcast on 30 October 1938. Of the countless adaptations made of H.G.
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