This Day in Horror: Orson Welles Causes Panic With THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
Alyse Wax
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On this day in 1938, Orson Welles read War of the Worlds in a radio presentation that sent the country into a panic.
Orson Welles performed a radio broadcast based on H.G. Wells’ novel about an alien invasion. Though the program opened with a warning that this was a radio play, it played like a series of news reports interrupting evening programming.
The way the story goes, the general public thought that this broadcast was a real news report, and thought that aliens were invading. Contemporaneous reports stated that calls were coming in to the radio station, including the mayor of a midwestern town, stating there was rioting in the streets. Police and press came to the radio station, claiming that there were reports of suicides and stampedes. Times Square ran a lighted bulletin that read, “Orson Welles Causes Panic.” A coincidental blackout in a small town in Washington state only added to the mayhem.
A few years later, it was thought that much of the panic wasn’t so much because people thought aliens were invading, but it was the fear of a German invasion. Tensions were high as German aggression was growing in Europe, with World War II erupting less than a year later. Even more recently, studies have shown that the panic was not nearly as widespread as initially reported. Far fewer people heard the broadcast than was suggested in earlier reports, and it turned out that most of the news articles at that time were aggregated from Associated Press stories, most of which contained “anecdotal” stories that were not properly sourced.
Whatever the truth, The War of the Worlds will live on in history.
Categorized:News This Day in Horror
