RADIO

"Boo!"

In Newark more than 20 families wrapped their faces in wet towels to save themselves from the gas raid, tied up traffic with their calls for gas masks and ambulances. In Harlem the godly gathered in prayer. Eight hundred and seventy-five panic-stricken people phoned the New York Times alone. St. Michael's Hospital, Newark, treated 15 people for shock. A man called the Dixie Bus Terminal, shouting "The World is coming to an end and I've got a lot to do!" In Providence frightened townsfolk demanded that the electric company black out the city to save it from the enemy.

The cause of this amazing nationwide panic last Sunday night was a broadcast by Orson Welles's CBS Mercury Theatre of the Air of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (no relative). Author Wells's classic pseudo-scientific thriller about how the men from Mars invade earth in a flying cylinder was first published in 1898. That its broadcast on Halloween Eve 1938 caused something pretty close to national hysteria was not entirely due to the timelessness of the Wells story, the persuasive microphone technique of Orson ("The Shadow") Welles or the stupidity of the U. S. radio audience. Recent concern over a possible European Armageddon has badly spooked the U. S. public. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.