The Night the Martians Invaded New Jersey

On October 30, 1938, the United States experienced one of the most hilarious and chaotic cases of mass hysteria in history. Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The production was so convincingly staged as a series of 'breaking news' bulletins that thousands of listeners across the country—particularly in New Jersey—became convinced that a real-life Martian invasion was underway. Panic ensued as people fled their homes, clogged highways, and even called the police to report seeing 'alien cylinders' and 'heat rays' in the night sky. It turns out that a little bit of dramatic flair and some spooky sound effects were all it took to turn a quiet Sunday evening into a nationwide sci-fi panic! [1]