12. The Inadvertent Hoax That Sowed Widespread Panic
The Columbia Broadcasting System’s radio network hosted The Mercury Theatre on the Air during the 1930s. It was a live radio drama series created by director and producer Orson Welles, that presented classic literary works. On the evening of Sunday, October 30th, 1938, Welles directed and narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as a Halloween special. It ended up causing widespread panic, when many listeners mistook the radio play about a fictional alien invasion for a news broadcast describing an actual alien invasion.
H.G. Wells’ original War of the World described a Martian invasion of Victorian Britain, in which the aliens swiftly crush humans with advanced technology such as unstoppable death rays and lethal poison gasses. Orson Welles’ adaptation converted the novel into a series of news bulletins, describing an alien invasion of 1938 New Jersey. Welles’ broadcast made it clear at the beginning that it was a radio play. However, not everybody got the message: many listeners had tuned in mid-broadcast, and thus missed the notification that what they were hearing was a play, not actual news. For such listeners, what they heard was alarming, as Welles, playing the part of a news announcer, fired off a series of news bulletins describing the arrival of Martians in The Garden State.