Historic Pelham: The Martian Invasion of 1938! How Did Pelham React to The War of the Worlds Broadcast by Orson Welles?

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The headlines the next day in The New York Times said it all: "Radio Listeners in Panic" and "Many Flee Homes to Escape 'Gas Raid From Mars'" and "Phone Calls Swamp Police." For a time on the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1938, some Americans believed a Martian invasion had begun.

Detail from Cover of Classics Illustrated Edition of

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (No. 124).

NOTE: Click Image to Enlarge.

The cause of the supposed "panic," of course, was "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" radio drama "The War of the Worlds" that aired as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 via the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The narrator and co-producer was Orson Welles. His co-producer was John Houseman. To listen to an MP3 file of the broadcast via MercuryTheatre.info, see The Mercury Theatre on the Air: The War of the Worlds (Oct. 30, 1938) (visited Sep. 6, 2015).

Orson Welles was a 23-year-old performer when the radio drama aired. Early in the broadcast, dramatic "news bulletins" announced that an observatory had detected explosions on the planet Mars and that a large metallic cylinder had crash landed near Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Further bulletins included a supposed reporter at the crash site describing the opening of the cylinder and tentacled creatures crawling from the craft. Soon reports described the erection of walking war machines that fired "heat-ray" weapons at humans and fought with National Guardsmen. Other cylinders soon were reported as landing in Chicago and St. Louis.

In New Jersey, some people climbed into cars and fled the area. Phone calls flooded into some police stations. A few reported telephone traffic 40% higher than usual. Some callers reportedly asked for gas masks to save them from toxic gas. According to one famous anecdote, a woman ran into the evening church services at an Indianapolis church screaming "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!"

Years of research regarding what happened that eve before Halloween in 1938 suggests, however, that despite more than 12,500 sensational newspaper reports, there was no panic in the United States. Even many of the anecdotes contained in news reports that followed the radio broadcast have been debunked. Despite news stories to the contrary, there were no hospital admissions for "shock." There were no verified heart attacks brought on by the radio broadcast. There was no widespread panic, nor any "mass hysteria." In short, research suggests that few people were listening to the broadcast and most who heard the broadcast understood it to be fiction and a prank. See, generally Campbell, W. Joseph, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, pp. 26-44 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).

Orson Welles, Besieged by Reporters in a News Conference

on October 31, 1938, the Day After The War of The Worlds

Radio Broadcast. NOTE: Click Image to Enlarge.

Pelham, it seems, was no different from the rest of America. The reportedly momentous radio broadcast and the events that followed merited a tiny reference in the Town's local newspaper, The Pelham Sun, on the following Friday. As that item made clear, "[a]pparently Pelham was listening in to other things or knows its radio well enough to realize that the 'invasion' was only a part of a radio script."

Below is the text of the brief article that appeared in the November 4, 1938 issue of The Pelham Sun.

"No Alarm Felt In Pelham On Report Of 'Mars Invasion'
-----

While radio listeners throughout the rest of the country were scared out of their wits by the realistic 'invasion from Mars,' which was broadcast by Orson Welles, young radio director, Pelham appeared to be unaffected by it all. Local police departments had no calls from frenzied radio listeners. Apparently Pelham was listening in to other things or knows its radio well enough to realize that the 'invasion' was only a part of a radio script."

Source: No Alarm Felt In Pelham On Report Of "Mars Invasion," The Pelham Sun, Nov. 4, 1938, Vol. 28, No. 31, p. 1, col. 2.