In 1938, did the American public panic when they tuned into a radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds, and just how guilty was Orson Welles of staging the play with that very intent in mind? This article attempts to separate truth from fiction.

We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was victim to an astonishing night of terror, as with infinite complacence, people tuned in their radios, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this fragment of solar driftwood. Yet across the airwaves, a voice, cool and unsympathetic, reached out to his listeners with sinister intent, and slowly and surely drew his plans against them. The date is October 30th 1938, the voice that of Orson Welles, and with somewhat liberal interpretation I have just paraphrased the opening monologue from his infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast.

That Halloween night adaptation of H.G Wells' seminal novel of alien invasion has become something of a legend in the annuls of broadcast history, but what is the truth behind the man and the myth? Did Welles really set out to terrify a nation? Did Americans flee to the hills, riot in the streets and fall to their knees in prayer, believing the Martians were coming, or with the passage of time, are we simply victim ourselves to an equally absurd blurring of the truth?

When a young Orson Welles transplanted his hugely successful off Broadway repertory company The Mercury Theatre to the airwaves he considered a number of science fiction novels for adaptation, a genre, that with the notable exception of the juvenile Buck Rogers, had remained largely untouched by radio until that time. Discarding such possibilities as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and M.P Schiel's The Purple Cloud, he eventually settled on The War Of The Worlds, though the resultant script would be so loose an adaptation as to earn the ire of H G Wells himself, who demanded a retraction.

Some degree of controversy surrounds the actual authorship of the script, with Welles subsequently engaged in bitter wrangling to assert his dominance over the production. The problem was that though he routinely made use of numerous people in highly creative collaborative efforts, his ego demanded that he was always recognised as the guiding force, though to his credit, he was willing to acknowledge the contribution of the actors and technicians who helped rework the story during rehearsals, responding to his incessant demands for perfection. However, no matter who or how many people contributed to the script, it was undoubtedly a young playwright by the name of Howard Koch, then on his first professional assignment, who did much of the scribe work, incorporating the fresh ideas as they were generated into revision after revision. It was Koch who was also responsible for turning a small unassuming corner of New Jersey into a battleground where the fate of the world would be decided. Driving home after an infrequent day off, it occurred to Koch that were he to carry out Welles instructions to relocate the English locations of the novel to contemporary America he would need a map. Stopping off at a New Jersey gas station, he not unnaturally bought a local map, and returning home, blindly stabbed a pencil down to select his beachhead. Grover's Mill would never be the same again.

At the time, the unsuspecting Grover's Mill boasted little more than a mill pond, feed store, a general store and a gas station. Located some 8 miles east of the state capitol Trenton and 50 miles south west of New York, the houses around about were the epitomy of a sleepy American townstead, nestling in a time warp of refinement and genteel country living, a character which even now it largely retains. However, at 8.pm that fateful night, Orson Wells launched into a live performance from New York that for the next hour would make Grover's Mill the very centre of the universe.

After his sonorous introduction, the scene shifts to an innocuous sounding weather report before moving to the fictious Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York and the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. This apparent ordinariness was the genius of the production, as the music was then interrupted by the first of numerous news flashes, beginning with reports of mysterious explosions on the surface of Mars. Within a short time the first Martian cylinder had crashed to earth at Grover's Mill and a reporter was on the scene, describing with mounting terror the unscrewing of the hatch. It was at about this time that Sheldon Judson, now emeritus Professor of Geology at Princeton university, became involved, though he was then a student member of the University Press Club. "A few minutes after eight I had a call from the city desk of The Philadelphia Inquirer. "We have a radio report of a meteorite that has hit near Princeteon at a place called Grover's Mills. What do you know about it?"" Sheldon had not been listening to the radio, but he immediately called Arthur Buddington, Chair of the Princeton Geology Department. He had not heard anything either, but swiftly arrived with another professor, and all three men set out for Grover's Mill. Their trip has since become one of the abiding stories of that night, retold over the years to varying degrees of accuracy, but suffice to say they arrived to find a sleepy and apparently unconcerned Grover's Mill.

The trio returned empty handed, but does this then dispel the idea of a mass panic. The answer must be an enpathic no. The overwhelming evidence suggests that Grover's Mill was the calm at the eye of the storm, and when one winnows away the accounts by possible attention seekers, the exaggerations of newspapers and other chaff that has accumulated over the years, one can only conclude that America was in the grip of an epidemic of fear.

For instance, from Trenton police headquarters comes the following illuminating passage. "Between 8:30P & 10PM received numerous phone calls as result of WABC broadcast this evening re: Mars attacking this country. Calls included papers, police depts including NYC and private persons. No record kept of same due to working teletype and all three extensions ringing at same time. At least 50 calls were answered. Persons calling inquiring as to meteors, number of persons killed, gas attack, military being called out and fires. All were advised nothing unusual had occurred and that rumours were due to a radio dramatisation of a play."

Here then is proof positive of a panic, though perhaps not on the vast scale that has been suggested. However, remember that the broadcast was carried nation wide and so perhaps we should multiple those 50 calls by a factor of several thousand? Certainly the panic was more pronounced in the area of New Jersey where people genuinely believed they were about to be attacked at any moment, but in his analysis of the event, Princeton psychology professor Hadley Cantril estimated that some 6 million people across the country had heard the broadcast. He concluded that over a million were at the very least severely alarmed, as the following amazing stories aptly demonstrate.

From Trenton comes the account of a Mrs Thomas. "We were petrified. We just looked at each other, scared out of our wits. Someone was banging on our front door. It was our neighbour across the street. She had packed her seven kids in their car and she kept yelling, come on, lets get our of here." Also a local at the time, thirteen year old Henry Sears was doing his homework when he heard the first news flash of the invasion. Taking the radio down into the tavern below which his mother owned, he and a dozen or so patrons listened with mounting fear to the broadcast, until the men jumped up and announced they were going to get their guns and join in the defence at Grover's Mill. The panic was equally pronounced in New York city, as one Bronx resident describes. "I lived in an apartment house. Everyone ran out and looked at the sky to see if they were landing. Can you imagine all those people coming out of their apartment houses?"

But why so profound a reaction? Any self respecting explanation has to start with the broadcast itself, a drama that has stood the test of time remarkably well, and when put into the context of simpler times, stands revealed as a truly terrifying piece of work. The moment when the Martian war machines wade across the Hudson river spewing their poisonous black gas, as described by a lone reporter atop a nearby skyscraper is simply chilling in any age, but the hair-raising nature of the broadcast is not enough to entirely explain the panic?

One key factor is that radio was relatively new. Nothing else can explain why a ventriloquist and his dummy could become the number one rated show in the USA, but that was exactly what the Charlie McCarthy show was. As was normal for this show, about ten minutes into the broadcast the host took a break to drink a glass of water and a singer took over. At this point several million listeners are estimated to have twiddled their dials for something better to listen to, suddenly finding themselves hearing an apparently live broadcast from the scene of a battle, in fact just as the Martians were unleashing their heat ray. Believing the worst, many rang friends and family, knocked on neighbours doors or otherwise drew attention to themselves, rushing into bars and churches to proclaim the end of the world, and so the ripples of panic spread.

Think of almost any major disaster movie of recent years and you can't help but notice the number of moonlighting newscasters drafted in to give proceedings an air of realism and authority. Of course we don't for a minute think we are watching a real news broadcast, but in 1938 American radio listeners had become used to hearing live broadcasts of the latest war scares from Europe, and the voices that came over the airwaves were considered beyond reproach. Often in fact, these reports broke in on regular programming, so Welles technique was disturbingly familiar. In creating a series of false news flashes, in using authoritative sounding figures, real place names and official sounding institutions such as the Secretary Of The Interior and the State Militia, Welles took full advantage of his listeners naiveté, though if this was with malice of forethought, it is harder to say. Looking confused and apologetic he appeared before the assembled press the next morning and expressed remorse at the effect of the broadcast, though in a 1955 BBC television radio interview, he actually took credit for planning the effect. However, take note that Welles himself proclaimed in a 1962 interview that "seventy five percent of what I say in interviews is false" so perhaps we will never know for sure if he did plan the biggest Halloween fright in history.

Unquestionably Welles took full advantage of his new found fame, moving on to make the groundbreaking movie Citizen Kane, but what about Grover's Mill? The town has not yet capitilized on its infamy and made itself into another Roswell, but there is obviously a certain amount of pride amongst the residents that they were the epicentre of such an incredible event, and the 50th anniversary was celebrated in some style, with parties, costume parades and the dedication of a monument in a local park. The name Grover's Mill has also become something of a science fiction icon. In the X-Files episode War of the Coprophages, the name of the town where Mulder encounters mechanical bugs from outer space is called Miller's Grove. Similarly, the cult movie Buckaroo Banzai posits that the broadcast was cover for a real invasion, a theme also taken up in the War Of The Worlds television series episode "Eye For An Eye", in which a group of old timers from Grover's Mill reminisce about fighting off the vanguard of the Martian invasion.

Perhaps the best way to end this investigation is to ask, could it ever happen again? It seems unlikely on first analysis. With so many channels of up to the minute news available, from cable, radio and the now the Internet, how could anyone make such a mistake, but then many people heard only a few minutes of the War Of The Worlds broadcast, or indeed not at all, and blind panic then took over. Were some enterprising producer to air a fake newscast today, perhaps suggesting the imminent impact of an asteroid, would viewers today really take time to check? Lets hope we never find out, but in the unlikely event, my advice is to check the calendar, and if the date happens to be October 30th, think again.

Orson Welles