Mass panic and hysteria swept America on Halloween 1938, when the all-too-believable radio drama War of the Worlds so frightened people that many of them sought refuge on the streets or in the surrounding hills.
The radio show that so terrified them was about an invasion of Martians using deadly flame rays and is remembered like no other.
Or more precisely, it's misremembered like no other.
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Radio unreality
Panic and terror often associated with The war of the worlds they didn't have anywhere near those proportions in the night 82 years ago.
Surely some Americans were frightened or disturbed by what they heard. But most listeners, however, did not. They recognized that it was a smart and entertaining radio drama.
Dramatization War of the Worlds was the brainchild of Orson Welles, director and star of what was then radio's Mercury Theatre, a one-hour program that aired Sunday evenings on CBS radio.
Wales was then 23 years old. Achievement will bring eternal glory to this prodigy Citizen Kane of 1941..
His adaptation War of the Worlds, written by H. Dz. Wells and published in 1898, it was almost brilliant.
What made the show so impressive was the use of supposed radio reports of the first landing of Martian invaders near Princeton, New Jersey, and their rapid and deadly advance to New York.
American audiences have become accustomed to the news interrupting the radio program. They were often heard during the pre-war years in Europe in the late summer and early fall of 1938.
Wales played that card to stunning effect. In doing so, he created a delicious and tenacious media myth.
Newspaper columns across America were filled with stories of the horror allegedly caused by Wells's show.
"Panic listeners take drama seriously," wrote the New York Times. "Radio lies frighten nation," cried the Chicago Herald.
"Americans terrorized by human Martians on radio," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
Exaggerating the effect
We now know from several sources that the reports of thousands of Americans panicking are greatly exaggerated.
Hadley Kentrill, a psychologist at Princeton University, estimates that about six million people listened War of the Worlds. Of that number, perhaps 1,2 million were "scared" or "shocked" by what they heard, Kentrill found.
"Frightened" or "shaken," of course, can hardly be synonymous with "panic attack." In the end, this psychologist's data suggests that most listeners were not, after all, upset by the radio show.
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A careful reading of the press of the time reveals that the story of the scare that night was greatly exaggerated.
Newspapers wrote extensive reports of thousands or even millions of Americans panicking, but offered little to back it up.
Most of them printed dispatches from agencies like the Associated Press, which calculated that there was widespread fear based on a small number of scattered examples and anecdotes.
The newspapers, however, did not report any injuries or deaths that are linked to The war of the worlds, and if there had been panic and hysteria throughout America that night, there would certainly have been many injured and dead.
For the press, the so-called "broadcast panic" was an excellent opportunity to attack radio, still a new medium that was becoming serious competition for news and advertising.
The leading newspaper columns in the days following the broadcast contributed to the impression of hysteria.
"Radio is young, but he has the responsibilities of adults," grumbled the New York Times. "He has not yet mastered himself or the means he uses."
Despite its shaky foundation, the mass panic myth remains firmly attached to the program War of the Worlds. This is partly thanks to Orson Welles, a naughty boy genius who made his best works before the age of 30.
And it's a story too good to be true.
Joseph Campbell is a professor at the American University in Washington. In the book Misunderstood (Getting It Wrong) wrote to this one. He often engages in myth-busting on the blog Media Myth Alert.
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