It was the night before Halloween in 1938, and most of America was huddled around their radios, probably expecting a typical Sunday night of light entertainment. Instead, they got a report about Martians landing in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. The broadcast by Orson Welles The War of the Worlds has since become the stuff of legend. You’ve likely heard the stories. Mass hysteria. People jumping off bridges. Thousands of families fleeing their homes with wet towels over their faces to ward off "gas" attacks.
But honestly? Most of that is a total exaggeration.
If you look at the actual data from that night, the "panic" wasn't nearly as widespread as the newspapers claimed the next morning. It’s one of those instances where the media created a narrative about media influence that wasn't entirely true. Yet, the 60-minute broadcast changed broadcast history forever. It turned a 23-year-old Orson Welles into a household name and scared the living daylights out of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The Brilliance of the "Fake News" Format
Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air didn't just read H.G. Wells' Victorian novel. They updated it. They made it feel local. They moved the setting from 1890s London to 1930s New Jersey. But the real genius—and the reason some people actually did freak out—was the structure.
The show started like a boring music program.
Ramon Raquello and his Orchestra playing "La Paloma." It was intentionally dull. Then, a "special bulletin" interrupted. Then more music. Then another interruption. By mimicking the way real news was delivered in the 1930s, Welles tapped into a deep-seated anxiety. Remember, this was 1938. Hitler was on the move in Europe. The Munich Agreement had just happened. People were already primed for a world-shattering announcement. When the announcer, played by actor Frank Readick, started screaming about a heat ray, it sounded exactly like the reports people had been hearing about the war in Europe.
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It wasn't just "theatre." It was a simulation.
Why the Panic was Overblown
So, if it was so realistic, why do I say the panic was a bit of a myth? C.E. Hooper, a ratings service at the time, polled about 5,000 households during the broadcast. Only 2% of those people said they were even listening to the Orson Welles The War of the Worlds broadcast. Most people were listening to The Chase and Sanborn Hour on another station, which featured the incredibly popular ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy.
The "mass hysteria" was largely a creation of the print newspapers.
Newspapers hated radio. They saw it as a threat to their advertising revenue and their dominance as the primary source of information. By splashing headlines about "Radio Panic" on the front page, they were trying to prove that radio was dangerous and irresponsible. They wanted regulation. They wanted to show that you couldn't trust what you heard on the airwaves.
The Real Casualties of Grovers Mill
While the world didn't end, some real-world chaos definitely happened. In the actual town of Grovers Mill, locals actually fired guns at a water tower, thinking it was a Martian tripod. To this day, you can still see the "bullet holes" (or at least the legend of them) in the area.
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One woman in Pittsburgh reportedly tried to swallow poison, claiming she’d rather die that way than be killed by Martians. There were also plenty of phone calls. Hundreds of them. People called the police, the newspapers, and the radio stations to ask if the world was ending. But "asking for information" isn't the same thing as "running screaming into the streets."
Most listeners who missed the introduction—which clearly stated it was a play—figured it out pretty quickly. The second half of the broadcast isn't even a news report; it’s a long, poetic monologue by Welles' character, Professor Pierson. If you were still scared by the 45-minute mark, you probably weren't paying much attention to the words.
The Aftermath and Orson's Career
The morning after the broadcast, Welles was a villain. Or at least, he played one for the cameras. There is famous footage of him looking "shook" and apologetic during a press conference. "I had no idea," he told reporters with a straight face.
He was lying.
Welles and his team knew exactly what they were doing. They had even been told by the station's legal department to tone down some of the realism. They didn't. They wanted to see if they could pull it off. The controversy didn't ruin Welles; it made him. Within a couple of years, he was in Hollywood making Citizen Kane, widely considered the greatest movie ever made. The "panic" was the best marketing campaign he could have ever asked for.
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The Legacy of the Martian Invasion
The Orson Welles The War of the Worlds broadcast remains the most famous radio play in history for a reason. It serves as a permanent case study in media literacy. It’s about how we process information when we’re scared and how easily the "vibe" of authority—the deep voice, the breaking news alert, the scientific jargon—can bypass our critical thinking.
The FCC eventually stepped in. They didn't ban fake news, but they did ensure that broadcasters couldn't use "bulletins" for dramatic purposes in a way that could be confused with reality.
Lessons for the Modern Age
We live in an era of deepfakes and AI-generated content. In some ways, we are just as vulnerable now as people were in 1938. The medium has changed, but the psychology hasn't. We still tend to believe things that look and sound "official."
If you want to truly understand the impact of this event, don't just read about it. Listen to it. The original recording is widely available in the public domain. Notice how the pacing speeds up. Notice how the actors' voices get higher and more frantic as the "invasion" progresses. It's a masterclass in tension.
How to Explore This History Further
To get the full picture of the 1938 event, you should look beyond the sensationalist headlines.
- Listen to the full 60-minute broadcast. Pay attention to the first 20 minutes; that's where the "news" format is most effective.
- Read "The Invasion from Mars" by Hadley Cantril. This was a 1940 study that attempted to quantify the panic. While some of its methodology has been questioned lately, it’s the foundational text on the event.
- Visit Grovers Mill, New Jersey. There is a small monument in Van Nest Park dedicated to the broadcast. It’s a quiet spot that highlights just how surreal the whole situation was.
- Compare the script to the H.G. Wells novel. You’ll see how Howard Koch (the scriptwriter) stripped away the Victorian fluff to create something that felt immediate and terrifyingly American.
The story of Welles and his Martians isn't really a story about aliens. It’s a story about us. It’s about our relationship with the boxes in our living rooms—whether they are radios, televisions, or smartphones—and our willingness to believe the unbelievable if the narrator sounds confident enough. Orson Welles didn't just give us a scary story; he gave us a mirror. And nearly a century later, we’re still looking into it.
To dig deeper into the actual mechanics of the night, check out the archives at the Smithsonian Institution or the Library of Congress, which holds the original scripts and many of the letters written to Welles by angry (and terrified) listeners. Knowing the difference between the myth and the reality makes the actual achievement of the Mercury Theatre even more impressive. They didn't need a real panic to make history; the performance was enough.