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Halloween Recalls Radio Drama Which Spread Panic in US
Halloween - October 31 - is a time to wear spooky costumes and tell scary stories. Perhaps the scariest tale was told on Halloween eve in 1938, when a radio drama spread panic along the U.S. East Coast.
“Something’s happening!” yelled the “reporter” on the scene of a mysterious collision of an object with Earth in what the audience was told was the little town of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey1.
Screams, shouts of “Stand back” followed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the shaken observer told listeners, “this is the most horrifying2 thing I’ve . . . It’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. Saliva3 dripping from its rimless4 lips. It’s rising up now, and the crowd falls back.” And so forth5, as it became clear that the object was not a meteorite6 but an alien spaceship.
As actors all-too-skillfully performed H. G. Wells’s story, “War of the Worlds” - which he had written four decades earlier in 1898 - many listeners completely fell for the story that Martians were invading New Jersey. People hid in cellars and packed their cars to flee.
So we got to wondering: Could the same thing happen today? Not likely on radio, of course, which has a fragmented audience and airs few dramas these days.
But suppose a diabolical7 television producer or Internet website assembled convincing actors, created believable video footage and added the kind of breathless reporting that Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre troupe8 used to stunning9 effect way back when?
Today we’d probably laugh at the notion that Martians were coming. But what if the invaders10 were ruthless terrorists, and - as in 1938 - thousands tuned11 in a tad late and missed the announcement that this was all make-believe? Would we cower12 under our beds?
Probably not. We’re more worldly these days, more skeptical13. We’ve seen so many action thrillers14 that we would take it for granted that this was merely another one. And we’d quickly switch to a news source we trusted and see that nobody else was bothering to cover this catastrophe15.
Besides, terrorism is such a real menace in our world today that TV producers and popular websites would never dare toy with our nerves on a subject so chilling. Would they?
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