PANIC IN AMERICA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 18, 1 November 1938, Page 5

PANIC IN AMERICA

“AN INVASION FROM MARS.” AMAZING SCENES WITNESSED. RADIO PLAY MISUNDERSTOOD. (United Press Association —Copyrignt.) NEW YORK, October 30. New* York residents who, after their Sunday dinners, had settled down to a quiet evening at home listening to the radio, wero mildly surprised when a programme of dance music was interrupted by a news bulletin stating that an observatory professor had just noted a, series of’ gas explosions on the planet Mars.

Surprise became, in turn, amazement, consternation and panic, when bulletins followed relating the landing of a meteor in a nearby New Jersey t-own, killing 15,000 persons. Then came the discovery that it was not a meteor but a metal cylinder containing strange creatures from Mars, armed with death rays to fight the inhabitants of the earth. Hundreds of hysterical listeners rushed from their homes with wet towels and handkerchiefs over their faces to project them from the gas raid against New York which they believed to be imminent. Hundreds of others sought refuge in the city parks, and many began moving furniture from their houses. Thousands deluged police stations, newspaper offices, and radio stations with frightened inquiries regarding the best precautions to take against death. The police, unable to reach the radio station by telephone, sent a squad car there and discovered that it was just a dramatisation of H. G. Well’s fiction fantasy “War of the World.” Listeners had failed to hear, or had misunderstood, the preliminary explanation. Light Failure Increases Panic. The play, which was broadcast over the coast-to-coast Columbia network, imitated a regular radio programme, with “break-ins” for the play’s material just as there would be if an attack actually occurred.

In spite of the fantastio nature of the reported occurrences, many listeners, probably because of the recent war scare in Europe, during which American programmes wero frequently interrupted for the latest news bulletins, did not even question the authenticity of the reports, but madly rushed into action to save their lives.

A telephone company reported that never before had there been so many calls in one suburban area over a single hour. Hospitals and penal institutions reported that they turned off their radios because of the panic among the inmate*.

One man telephoned the police that his brother, rvho was ill in bed, heard the broadcast, leapt out of bed, put on his hat and coat over his pyjamas, and jumped into a car and vanished. Another caller said , he had gone on to .a roof where he could see a huge smoke cloud from bombs drifting over the city. The Associated Press reported that similar panics of a milder nature occurred throughout America. At the same time a partial power failure in one suburban New Jersey district caused lights to go dim and flicker for an hour after the broadcast, thus increasing tho panic. Actual Names Used. The listeners’ mistake arose chiefly from the fact that the adapted used an American instead of an English locale, and also the names of actual American civil and military officials. At Birmingham (Alabama) groups gathered in the streets and prayed. At Indianapolis a. woman ran into a church screaming “New York is destroyed. It is the end of the world.” The services were dismissed immediately.

The Los Angeles police were swamped with calls from persons with relatives in New Jersey. At St. Louis three inebriates heard the broadcast in a restaurant, and it took other patrons, who"were not fooled, 20 minutes to persuade them to get off their knees and stop praying.

At Chicago the newspapers received numerous calls seeking a list of casualties.

Many families at Baltimore moved their belongings into the street in preparation for the of the city'.

A dozen families living in the same flat at Orange, New Jersey, loaded their possessions into cars and drove off to the mountains to escape poison-gas. Officials at the Columbia Broadcasting Studios, irked by the situation, heatedly maintained that it was four times announced during the play that everything was fictitious. One Brooklyn policeman commented: “Those radio guys always used high-falutin’ words nobody can understand.”