The War of the Worlds Murder

Chapter EIGHT





PUNKIN PATCH





IN STUDIO ONE, DAN SEYMOUR was at the microphone, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, here is a bulletin from Trenton. It is a brief statement informing us that the charred body of Carl Phillips has been identified in a Trenton hospital.”

At a nearby table, “Carl Phillips”—that is, Frank Readick—was sitting going over his script; like most radio actors, he had more than one part in the drama.

“Now here’s another bulletin from Washington, D.C.,” Seymour was saying. “The office of the director of the National Red Cross reports ten units of Red Cross emergency workers have been assigned to the headquarters of the state militia stationed outside Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”

Readick felt the show was going well—it had really come together at rehearsal, and tonight the thing was like clockwork—literally: Paul Stewart seemed almost bored in the control booth window, poised at his stopwatch.

“Here’s a bulletin from state police, Princeton Junction—the fires at Grovers Mill and vicinity are now under control. Scouts report all quiet in the pit, and there is no sign of life appearing from the mouth of the cylinder....”

Howard Koch had slipped out perhaps ten minutes ago. Readick could hardly blame the writer—the poor guy was bone tired, and had been worked like a dog by Welles and Jack Houseman. Let the guy rest up—tomorrow would be the start of another week of radio “war.”

Still, this was going well, very well indeed.

Yes, once again, Orson had worked his magic....


From Trenton Police Headquarters report, October 30, 1938: “Between 8:20 P.M. & 10 P.M. received numerous phone calls as a result of WABC broadcast this evening re: Mars attacking this country. Calls included papers, police depts including NYC and private persons. No record kept of same due to working teletype and all three extensions ringing at the same time. At least 50 calls were answered. Persons inquiring as to meteors, number of persons killed, gas attack, military being called out and fires. All were advised nothing unusual had occurred and that rumors were due to a radio dramatization of a play.


“We have received a request from the state militia at Trenton to place at their disposal our entire broadcasting facilities. In view of the gravity of the situation, and believing that radio has a responsibility to serve in the public interest at all times, we are turning over our facilities to the state militia at Trenton.”


In a residential section of Trenton, a Mrs. Thomas went to answer a banging at her door to find her neighbor friend from across the way with her car packed with belongings and her seven children.

“For God’s sake, Gladys, come on!” the neighbor shouted. “We have to get out of here!”

Elsewhere in Trenton, thirteen-year-old Henry Sears, doing his homework, heard the news flashes about the invasion and went downstairs into the tavern owned by his parents. He and a dozen patrons of the bar listened to the broadcast with growing fear and, finally, a well-lubricated contingent proclaimed they were getting their guns and going to Grovers Mill, to find the Martians.

Indeed, as panic spread to pockets of the country, Trenton and its environs were the hardest hit, many residents believing the arrival of the interplanetary invaders imminent. Gas masks from the Great War were dug out of mothballs, while some wrapped their heads with wet towels, to fight the inevitable poison gas. The highways were jammed as cars streamed toward New York or Philadelphia, in hopes of staying one step ahead of the Martian forces.

The Mienerts of Manasquan Park, New Jersey—barrelling down the highway, kids, dog and canary making the trip with them—took a break for fuel and nature at a gas station; the pause also provided an opportunity to get the latest news (their car radio was on the fritz). Other motorists, who hadn’t heard the broadcast, reacted as if the Mienerts were mad people; so did the gas station attendant and cashier.

A desperate Mr. Mienert, hoping for an update, called his cousin in Freehold, New Jersey, praying to get an answer, as the cousin’s farm was directly in the destructive path of the invaders.

But his cousin, right there on the front lines, answered cheerfully.

Confused, Mr. Mienert asked, “Are the Martians there?”

“No,” said his cousin, “but the Tuttles are, and we’re about to sit down to dinner.”

The Mienerts went back home.


“This is Captain Lansing of the Signal Corps, attached to the state militia, now engaged in military operations in the vicinity of Grovers Mill. Situation arising from the reported presence of certain individuals of unidentified nature is now under complete control. The cylindrical object which lies in a pit directly below our position is surrounded on all sides by eight battalions of infantry. Without heavy field pieces, but adequately armed with rifles and machine guns. All cause for alarm, if such cause ever existed, is now entirely unjustified.”


In Manhattan on East 116th Street, a restaurant hosted the wedding reception of Rocco and Connie Cassamassina. No one was listening to the radio in this happily preoccupied private dining room; in fact, almost everyone was dancing to the five-piece band, spiffy in maroon-and-gray tuxes, playing romantic tunes of the day.

The bride and groom were not dancing right now, because Rocco—a singing waiter from Brooklyn—was sitting in with the band, doing a romantic version of “I Married an Angel” just for Connie.

The last verse was wrapping up when some agitated late-comers wandered in and one of them—stone sober, it would later be recalled—snatched the mike away from Rocco and said, “We’re under attack! We’re being invaded!”

The five-piece group stopped playing, in one-at-a-time train-wreck fashion, and the guests at first laughed. But the speaker—another waiter from Brooklyn, who many of them knew and trusted—told in quick but vivid detail of what he’d heard on the radio newscasts.

Murmuring confusion built to complete panic, as the guests ran to grab their coats and flee before the outer-space invaders could crash the party.

Connie, in tears, rushed to the stage and took the mike to beg her friends and family to stay. “Please don’t spoil my wedding day, everyone!”

A handful remained.

Rocco was again at the microphone.

He began singing “Amazing Grace.”





“The things, whatever they are, do not even venture to poke their heads above the pit. I can see their hiding place plainly in the glare of the searchlights here. With all their reported resources, these creatures can scarcely stand up against heavy machine-gun fire. Anyway, it’s an interesting outing for the troops. I can make out their khaki uniforms, crossing back and forth in front of the lights. It looks almost like a real war.”


At the Chapman farm, the children’s father, Luke, had arrived.

Grandfather had been moving from window to window, staring into the foggy night, his old double-barrel shotgun (retrieved from a kitchen hiding place) ready to blast Martians into green goo. He’d already organized the two boys (even the skeptical Leroy) in the effort of barricading the farmhouse doors with furniture—which of course meant unbarricading the front door to let their father, carrying his own double-barrel shotgun, inside.

Leroy gave it another try, tugging on his father’s sleeve. “Papa...”

“Yes, son?”

The boy gestured toward the glowing radio. “That isn’t real—it’s just a show, a story. The Shadow is on it.”

His father, whose face resembled Grandfather’s minus most of the wrinkles, smiled gently and knelt—leaning on the shotgun—to look the boy right in the eyes. “Son—we’ve had this talk, haven’t we?”

“What talk?”

“About make-believe and real life. I know you love your shows. I know you love to play cowboy and soldier and spaceman. I know you love the Shadow. But you simply have to learn the difference between fantasy and reality.”

“I know the difference. Do you?”

And the kindness left Luke’s expression. He took the boy roughly by the arm and almost threw him onto the sofa.

“You just sit there, young man!”

Leroy shrugged; his eyes were filling with tears, but he refused to let any fall.

Les sat before the radio hugging his sister, who had stopped crying and lapsed into a trembling silence. The altar of news continued issuing forth updates, none of them encouraging. Right now the Signal Corps captain was describing the battle scene at a farm that was within a few miles of the farmhouse the Chapmans currently cowered within.

“Well, we ought to see some action soon,” the captain was saying. “One of the companies is deploying on the left flank. A quick thrust and it will all be over. Now wait a minute, I see something on top of the cylinder. No, it’s nothing but a shadow. Now the troops are on the edge of the Wilmuth farm, seven thousand armed men closing in on an old metal tube. A tub, rather. Wait...that wasn’t a shadow!”

And Leroy, over on a sofa now, arms folded, smugly smiling as he brushed away a tear with a knuckle, thought, Oh yes it was....


Passing photographers laden with full gear, who were scurrying toward the elevator he’d just departed, Ben Gross entered a Daily News city room that bustled like election eve.

An assistant at the city desk called out, “Hey, Ben—what the hell’s going on tonight?”

“You’re asking me?”

The switchboard was ablaze, lines jammed, phones ringing like a swarm of mechanical baby birds demanding to be fed. In their cubicles, rewrite men frantically tried to get through to CBS with zero luck.

A harried switchboard girl sounded like she was doing a skit on the Jack Benny program. “No, madam...no, sir—we don’t know anything about an explosion in New Jersey.... Men from Mars?... Yeah, we know it’s on the radio, but...it didn’t happen.... Nothing’s going on, I tell you!... No madam...No sir...there ain’t no men from Mars!”

Nearby, another city desk assistant, frazzled beyond belief, was telling an official from the police commissioner’s office, “It’s just a phony—a radio play!”

The assistant city desk man finally hung up, then turned to Gross and pointed an accusatory finger. “You’re the one always touting this guy Welles! You either get CBS on the line, or get your tail over there and see what in God’s name’s going on.”

Gross walked into the radio room and two phones jangled; he picked up a receiver in either hand.

A female voice said, “Are they abandoning New York?”

“No, lady, it’s just a play.”

“Oh no it isn’t!” she screamed, and hung up.

On the other wire was a guy from the Red Cross. “I hear they’re broadcasting about a terrible catastrophe in New Jersey—do you know where it is, so we can get our people out there?”

“It’s only Orson Welles—he’s on with a fantasy, tonight.”

“That can’t be! My wife just called and said thousands have been killed.”

Gross reassured the man that the show was just a show, hung up, and his young female assistant bounded in, looking far less attractive than usual, her hair tendrils of despair, her eyes pools of frustration.

“My God, Mr. Gross! These calls have been driving me batty!”

The radio reviewer said nothing, merely headed for the door.

His assistant nearly shrieked, “You’re not going to leave me all alone with these...these phones, are you?”

“Yes,” he said, already halfway out.

In moments he was on the street, hailing another cab.

Climbing in, Gross realized the cab’s radio was tuned to WEAF.

“Put CBS on,” Gross said, “would you?”

The cabbie did so.

“It’s something moving...solid metal, kind of a shield-like affair rising up out of the cylinder.... Going higher and higher. What?... It’s, it’s standing on legs...actually rearing up on a sort of metal framework. Now it’s reaching above the trees and the searchlights are on it. Hold on!”

“God almighty!” the cab driver said.

“It’s just fiction,” Gross said.

“Are you sure?”

“You don’t see any panic-stricken people running around the streets, do you, bud?”

And as if to prove the reviewer wrong, the cab passed a movie house on Third Avenue, from which half a dozen women and children streamed, while men poured out of nearby bars, to take root on the sidewalks and stare at the sky.

On Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, a woman sat on the curb, crying and screaming, while a cop in the middle of the street stood mobbed by agitated citizens.

“Fiction or not,” the cabbie said, “something the hell’s goin’ on!”

And yet when Gross was dropped off at the Columbia Broadcasting Building, no sign of outer or inner turmoil could be seen—the usual number of pedestrians strolled by, traffic seemed about normal.

No one would ever guess that this was the County Seat of Hysteria in the United States, right now.


In six weeks, the American Institute of Public Opinion would estimate 9,000,000 Americans had heard the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, a majority tuning in too late to catch the disclaimer opening. The Chapmans, the Dorns, James Roberts and his friend Bobby, Sheldon Judcroft and Professor Barrington, and the troopers at the HQ in upstate New York were among the estimated 1,700,000 listeners who believed they were hearing actual newscasts, including the following one:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.”


State troopers Chuck and Carmine made it back to headquarters, despite a highway filled with lunatics driving north like the devil was on their tails.

But HQ was no better. Everyone was doing their best to follow Corporal Stevens’s orders; previously cool in any crisis, the corporal was on edge, snapping at his men wildly.

The quartermaster sergeant had come in from home to issue the troopers rifles, machine guns and ammunition, and he, too, was caught up in it, yelling like a boot-camp drill instructor.

Then Lt. Flanders showed up. Ol’ Flannel Mouth had loaded up his car with household possessions, leaving room for his wife, a blowsy middle-aged blonde who had a crucifix in one hand and a bottle of rye in the other (she would alternately kiss the cross and swig the bottle).

The lieutenant took over from the duty corporal, who had clearly been enjoying the power and disliked having it taken away from him. After Lt. Flanders gave several orders that Corporal Stevens disagreed with, the latter decided he’d had enough of the former.

“Lieutenant, I know we’re all going to die,” the corporal said. “And I’ve been waiting seven long years to tell you something.”

“Well, spit it out, man! We have things to do.”

They were outside the front of HQ, the troopers all around, weapons in hand, waiting for their orders.

The corporal was saying, “Nothing is more urgent than me saying this: you are a flannel-mouthed son of a bitch, no-good, rotten bastard. I have half a mind to grab you by your miserable neck and squeeze it till your tongue turns black.”

That wouldn’t take long, as the lieutenant was already turning purple; in the background, his wife toasted the corporal with her rye bottle, in “hear hear!” manner.

Corporal Stevens had more: “I’d be doing everybody in this troop a favor by shoving this .45 up your tail and pulling the trigger. But I just hate the thought of wasting a good bullet on your miserable carcass, when we have an enemy to fight.”

The corporal folded his arms, held his chin high and waited for a response.

The purple left the lieutenant’s face. He seemed to be working hard to retain his composure.

All the men had gathered around as the confrontation had built, and now Lt. Flanders said to them, “Men—this is no time to pull old chestnuts out of the fire. Let’s let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, that’s what I’ve always said.”

If so, no one assembled here remembered hearing it.

“Let us pool our energies,” the lieutenant said rousingly, “and fight the common enemy that threatens us. We will make our last stand on the hill. Get to your posts.... You men with machine guns will concentrate your fire on the approaches to headquarters, and you men with rifles will make the last-ditch defense from high ground.”

Shouts of support and even applause came from the troopers—with the notable exception of the stiff-necked corporal.

Then the lieutenant showed his true colors: as his troopers were busy setting up the defenses, he got into his car with his missus and roared off into the foggy night. Heading north.

Corporal Stevens was shaking his head. Carmine and Chuck were standing nearby, and he said to them, “I knew it!... I’ll never regret telling off that worthless son of a bitch.”

Then Rusty, corncob pipe puffing smoke signals, leaned out from a second-floor window and shouted, “Come on in, you guys! The whole thing is a phony! It was just a radio show by some joker named Orson Welles!”

Carmine smiled at Chuck and Chuck said to Stevens, “ ‘Never,’ Corporal?”

And the troopers sheepishly shuffled back inside HQ to put their firearms away.


As the Buick hurtled at top speed, James Jr. and Bobby kept the car radio blasting.

What they heard was unsettling, to say the least.

“The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by an army in modern times—seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors...the rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray.”

Bobby was smoking; he had his window down. James told him to roll it up.

“Why, James?”

“The Martian gas...I think I can smell it.”

“The monster is now in control of the middle section of New Jersey and has effectively cut the state through its center. Communication lines are down from Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean. Railroad tracks are torn and service from New York to Philadelphia discontinued except routing some of the trains through Allentown and Phoenixville.”

James began to pray, watching the headlights cut through the foggy darkness as best they could. In his mind, he said, If there is a God, please help us now!

“Highways to the north, south, and west are clogged with frantic human traffic. Police and army reserves are unable to control the mad flight. By morning the fugitives will have swelled Philadelphia, Camden, and Trenton, it is estimated, to twice their normal population.”

Bobby was sitting forward, frowning. “James—we were just in Trenton. We didn’t see any crowds like that....”

“Martial law prevails throughout New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.”

Bobby began to twirl the radio dial, trying to find other reports.


Walter Gibson remained clueless as to the imaginary invasion having spread nationwide; but he was seeking a clue to something else by having a conversation in the eighteenth-floor men’s room.

As elevator “boy” Leo had predicted, Louis didn’t get talkative until Gibson offered him a couple of dollars. Louis, in a gray uniform that would have been at home in a prison, leaned against the door to a stall, plunger in hand, bell down.

“I don’t know Mrs. Welles, but I didn’t see no woman who looks like that in the building. I’d remember. I got an eye for the ladies.”

Louis weighed around two hundred fifty pounds, was perhaps five-eight, had greasy black hair, bulging cow eyes, yellow crooked teeth, and cheeks and chin so blue with the need for a shave that it was safe to say the ladies did not have an eye for him.

Descriptions of Balanchine and the three thugs also fell on deaf ears.

Gibson, smoking his umpteenth Camel, had a stray thought. “Louis, are you the only janitor on duty?”

“One and only.”

“When did you come on?”

“Around one P.M.”

“You know Mr. Houseman?”

“Sure.”

“You loaned him your passkey, right?”

“Sure.”

Well, that was a dead end.

But Gibson pressed on: “And he returned it?”

“Sure. First thing.”

Gibson asked a few more questions, then hitched a ride with Leo back to the twenty-second floor.

In the lobby, where security guard Williams remained seated at his desk, Miss Holliday—the shapely, sturdy girl was in a blue dress with white polka dots and white collar—stood waiting to catch the elevator.

“Miss Holliday—hello.”

She flashed her infectious smile. “Hello, Mr. Gibson.”

“Got a minute?”

“Sure. I was just heading over to the theater, to get things ready.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah.... There’s a Danton’s Death rehearsal right after the broadcast.”

“Ah. A few questions?”

“Shoot.”

“Let’s sit...”

They took two chairs in the reception area. Williams was within earshot, but it didn’t seem to matter to Gibson, who asked Miss Holliday about Virginia Welles and George Balanchine, who she too had not seen around here today...“though I’ve been in and out, back and forth, ’tween here and the theater, running errands, ya know?”

But the three thugs, strangely enough, got Miss Holliday’s pretty brow furrowing.

“Describe them again,” she said. “In more detail.”

Gibson did, best he could.

“Those sound like actors.”

Gibson frowned. “Actors?”

“Yeah—spear-carrier types. Mr. Welles uses them in crowd scenes, sometimes.”

“You’re sure?”

She made a funny smirk. “No, I’m not sure—you don’t have a picture to show me, right? But your descriptions are good—you’re a writer, aren’t you? And those three goon types sound like minor actors Mr. Welles uses, from time to time.”

“Thank you, Miss Holliday.”

“You can call me Judy.”

He walked her to the elevator, his mind abuzz.

Finally he had clues—but what he’d learned from the janitor seemed to contradict the direction Judy Holliday’s information indicated....

Quiet as a mouse, heedful but not halted by the bold ON THE AIR sign over the door, the writer slipped into Studio One, passing through the vestibule, into the live broadcast, and padding carefully up the short flight of stairs into the control booth.

Kenny Delmar was being introduced as “the Secretary of the Interior,” but the voice he did was a dead-on impression of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Citizens of the nation—I shall not try to conceal the gravity of the situation that confronts the country, nor the concern of your government in protecting the lives and property of its people. However, I wish to impress upon you—private citizens and public officials, all of you, the urgent need of calm and resourceful action.”

On his podium, Welles was grinning like a big gleeful baby.

Delmar continued: “Fortunately, this formidable enemy is still confined to a comparatively small area, and we may place our faith in the military forces to keep them there.”

Gibson had paused in the sub-control booth, and CBS executive Dave Taylor was shaking his head, sighing—Welles had been told not to invoke the president, and (technically) he hadn’t; and yet of course he had.

Delmar was wrapping up: “In the meantime, placing our faith in God, we must continue the performance of our duties, each and every one of us, so that we may confront this destructive adversary with a nation united, courageous, and consecrated to the preservation of human supremacy on this earth.”

Delmar took a dramatic pause, then: “I thank you.”


The bulletins continued at breakneck speed: from Langham Field, scout planes reported a trio of Martian machines visible above the trees, heading north; in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, a second cylinder had been found and the army was rushing to blow it up before it opened; in the Watchung Mountains, the 22nd Field Artillery closed in on the enemy, but poisonous black smoke dispatched by the invaders wiped out the battery.

Eight bombers were set on fire by the tripods in a flash of green. More of the lethal black smoke was leaching in from the Jersey marshes, and gas masks were of no use, the populace urged to make for open spaces.

Recommended routes of escape were shared with listeners.


When the phone rang, the Dorn sisters—kneeling before their living-room radio as if taking communion—yelped in surprise and fear.

Miss Jane rose, patted her sister’s shoulder, and went to answer it, in the nearby hallway.

Her friend Mrs. Roberta Henderson, a third-grade teacher, was calling to ask about the upcoming bake sale. Could Jane and Eleanor provide their usual delicious cherry pies?

“Haven’t you heard?” Miss Jane asked, frantically, amazed that her friend could be caught up in such mundane matters at a time like this.

“Heard?”

Miss Jane’s words tumbled out on top of each other, uncharacteristically, as she told of the news reports of the Martian invasion.

“You can’t be serious, Jane—that’s the radio.”

“Of course it’s the radio!”

“No...no, I mean, it’s just a play.”

“A...play? Why, that’s nonsense! It’s, it’s...news!”

“No—just a play. A clever play. Jane, you need to settle down. Is Eleanor handy?”

“She’s in the living room. Praying. Roberta, surely you understand that the forces of God are overpowering us, and we are at last being given our deserved punishment for all our evil ways.”

“Hmm-huh. Listen to me, Jane. Call the newspaper office. Promise me you will.”

“Well...all right.”

“Do it now.”

Miss Jane said good-bye, hung up, and asked the operator to connect her with the local paper.

“We’re getting a lot of calls,” a male voice said. “It’s just a radio show. Kind of a...practical joke.”

“Well, it’s not very funny!”

“I agree with you, lady. Have a happy Hallowe’en!”

“No thank you! It’s a pagan celebration!”

“Ain’t it though. Good night.”

Miss Jane went into the living room and, as Miss Eleanor looked up at her like a child, shared what she’d learned.

Soon they were sitting in their rockers, the radio switched off.

Miss Eleanor cleared her throat and said, “I’m glad I asked for forgiveness, even if I didn’t have to.”

Miss Jane shared that sentiment, adding, “It was a good opportunity to atone for our sins. The end will come, and those who have freely indulged will face a horrible reckoning.”

“It is the life after this life which is important,” her sister added.

“I don’t mind death,” Miss Jane said, “but I do want to die forgiven.”

The two women smiled at each other, serenely. They again began to knit. In silence.

But within themselves, they were furious—though they were not sure why. A vague sense enveloped them that they had been duped by the sinful world.

Well, the joke was on the sinners. Though the Martians hadn’t come, one day sheets of God’s vengeful fire would sweep over this wretched land.

And the girls had that, at least, to look forward to.


Gibson was sitting in a chair behind John Houseman, who sat between stopwatch-watcher Paul Stewart and the sound engineer. That polished scarecrow, CBS exec Davidson Taylor, stepped in, his expression grave.

“We’re getting calls,” Taylor told Houseman. “Switchboards are swamped downstairs—people are going crazy out there.”

Houseman, who swivelled toward Taylor, asked, “Crazy in what manner?”

“If it’s true, deaths and suicides and injuries of all sorts, due to panic.”

“How widespread?”

“I don’t know, Jack, but you have to force Orson into making an explanatory station announcement. Right now.”

Houseman, despite his misgivings about Orson’s approach, took a hard line. “Not until the scheduled break.”

“This isn’t a request, Jack—”

“I don’t care what it is. We’re approaching the dramatic apex of the story, and the announcement will be made, as written, just after that. It’s a matter of minutes.”

Taylor shook his head. “Why do I back you people? You’re insane!”

Houseman made a little facial shrug, and turned away.

Amiable Ray Collins was out there, stepping up to a microphone, saying: “I’m speaking from the roof of Broadcasting Building, New York City. The bells you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as...the Martians approach. Estimated in the last two hours, three million people have moved out along the roads to the north...”

Gibson leaned forward and whispered to Houseman, “So you stuck up for Orson, after all?”

Houseman offered a small, dry chuckle. “That is my fate, I’m afraid.”

“Jack—I know you did it.”

Houseman looked at Gibson.

The writer said, “I’ve finished my investigation. And I know you’re responsible.”

“Ah. Might I request you keep that information to yourself, just for the present? If Mr. Taylor is correct, we may have a crisis on our hands, first.”

“You can’t be serious...”

“Oh but I am. And don’t forget—I’m the one who signs your expense-account check.” He smiled beatifically and returned his attention to the window through which Ray Collins could be seen.

The actor was saying into the mike, “No more defenses. Our army is wiped out...artillery, air force, everything, wiped out. This may be the...last broadcast. We’ll stay here, to the end.... People are holding service here below us...in the cathedral.”

Ora Nichols blew through a hollow tube, approximating a ghostly boat whistle.

“Now I look down the harbor. All manner of boats, overloaded with fleeing population, pulling out from docks. Streets are all jammed. Noise in crowds like New Year’s Eve in city. Wait a minute, the...the enemy is now in sight above the Palisades. Five—five great machines. First one is...crossing the river, I can see it from here, wading...wading the Hudson like a man wading through a brook...”


Around the country, listeners—the fooled and the merely entertained—heard the “last announcer” speak from the CBS Building rooftop of Martian cylinders falling all over America, outside Buffalo, in Chicago and St. Louis.

Among the radio audience were Professor Barrington and the student reporter, Sheldon Judcroft, who arrived at the quaint, pre-Revolutionary War hamlet of Cranbury, New Jersey (pop. 1,278), to find half a dozen State Trooper patrol cars parked in front of the post office.

“So it is real,” Sheldon said breathlessly.

The professor pulled over, got out and went over to talk to the troopers. Sheldon stayed behind, to monitor the news on the radio.

The announcer was saying, “Now the first machine reaches the shore, he...stands watching, looking over the city. His steel, cowlish head is even with the skyscrapers.... He waits for the others. They rise like a line of new towers on the city’s west side....”

Sheldon watched the professor talking to a trooper who was shaking his head. Then it was the professor who was shaking his head....

“Now they’re lifting their metal hands. This is the end now. Smoke comes out...black...smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They’re running toward the East River...thousands of them, dropping in like rats.”

The professor returned, got in the car and just sat there, wearing a stunned expression.

“Now the smoke’s spreading faster, it’s reached Times Square. People are trying to run away from it, but it’s no use, they...they’re falling like flies. Now the smoke’s crossing Sixth Avenue...Fifth Avenue...a...a hundred yards away...it’s fifty feet....”

The sound of the collapsing announcer on the roof was followed by ghostly boat whistles, and then...silence.

“My God,” Sheldon said.

“Good, isn’t it?”

Sheldon blinked. Twice. “Good?”

“It’s a radio show, my boy. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre. Only question, is—how big a fool should you make out of us when you write up the story for the school paper?”

“Oh, I don’t believe it—”

“The trooper says the countryside is crawling with farmers with shotguns, looking for Martians. The fire chief has checked out half a dozen nonexistent fires, already.”

“Why are these troopers here, then?”

“To calm the populace, son. To find and disarm these ‘defenders’ before somebody gets hurt.”

They were halfway back to Princeton before the laughter started—the professor kicked it off, but the student joined in heartily. They were laughing so hard, tears coming down, they almost hit a deer, in the fog.

It was the second-most frightened they’d been that night.


All around America, newspaper offices, police departments, sheriff’s offices, radio stations, as well as friends and relatives, received calls from believing listeners. The New York Times received 875 calls from its highly sophisticated readership. The worldly reporters of the New York Herald Tribune donned gas masks when they went out to cover the story. The Associated Press found it necessary to alert its member newspapers and radio stations that the invasion from Mars was not real. Electric light companies were called with demands that all power be shut down to keep Martians from having landing lights to guide them.

In Manhattan, hundreds jammed bus terminals and railroad stations seeking immediate evacuation; one woman calling a bus terminal asked a clerk to “Hurry, please—the world is coming to an end!” In Harlem, hundreds more poured into churches to pray about that very thing. Every city in New England was packed with cars bearing refugees from New York. Many people living within sight of the Hudson River reported seeing the Martians on their metal stilts, crossing.

In Pittsburgh a husband discovered his wife about to swallow pills from a bottle marked POISON because she would “rather die this way than that!” A woman in Boston reported seeing the fire in the sky. In Indianapolis, a woman ran into a church, interrupting the service to scream that the world was coming to an end—she heard it on the radio!—and hundreds of parishioners scurried into the night. In sororities and fraternities, especially on the East Coast, students lined up at phones to call and tell their parents and boy- or girlfriends good-bye. In Birmingham, Alabama, the streets were rushed en masse.

In Concrete, Washington, the coincidence of a power failure served to convince the populace that the Martians had indeed landed.

James and Robert were nearing the city when the chilling, solitary voice of a ham radio operator emerged, pitifully, from their car radio’s speaker.

“Two X two L, calling CQ.... Two X two L calling CQ.... Two X two L calling CQ, New York. Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there—anyone?... Two X two L...”

A horrible vacant silence followed, and James (at the wheel) glanced over at Bobby; both college boys looked bloodless white. In their minds was posed the question: Should they head north? Did they dare enter the ravaged city, to save Betty and her sister?

Then, suddenly, another voice emerged from the speaker, a pleasant, even good-natured one, saying, “You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air in an original dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.... The performance will continue after a brief intermission. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.”

The college boys, drenched in perspiration, looked at each other in astonishment. They didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or cry, feel relief or anger.

So they stopped at a diner and had burgers.


Leroy Chapman was laughing and laughing. His little sister was, too, somewhat hysterically.

Les was shaking his twelve-year-old fist at the radio, saying, “What a gyp!”

“I told you so! I told you so!” Leroy did a little wild Indian dance. “It was the Shadow! It was the Shadow! Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of man—yah hah hah hah hah! Leroy does! Leroy does!”

Meanwhile, Grandfather and his son Luke and several other farmers they had stumbled into, in the woods, managing not to shoot each other, were taking aim at a Martian, which rose above them on its giant metal legs, frozen against the sky, clearly about to strike.

Grandfather and Luke and the three other farmers let loose a volley of shotgun fire, but the water tower they attacked did not even seem to notice. The tower itself, with the Grovers Mill water supply therein, was safely out of firing range.


The remaining twenty minutes of the broadcast abandoned the “news bulletin” approach as Welles, playing Professor Pierson, recounted his adventures as one of earth’s lone survivors. The traditional conclusion as written by H.G. Wells was reached—the Martians defeated by “the humblest thing that God in his wisdom had put upon this earth,” bacteria—and Bernard Herrmann directed his orchestra in a dramatic crescendo, finally utilizing the power of the composer/conductor.

Houseman, becoming more and more aware of the chaos they had unleashed, had sent Welles a note on the subject.

This may have influenced Welles, who—having had to cut seven minutes on the fly—somehow managed to scribble a rewrite of his closing speech, even as he performed the bulk of the final section of the show, solo.

Now, Welles on his podium—smiling but perhaps a little shaky—again spoke into his microphone.

“This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen—out of character to assure you that ‘The War of the Worlds’ has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be—the Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo!”

In the sub-control booth, Dave Taylor had his face in his hands. Gibson noted that Houseman’s expression was as unreadable as an Easter Island statue’s.

“Starting now,” Welles was saying, “we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates, by tomorrow night, so we did the best next thing—we annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the CBS Building.... You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business.”

The cast was on its feet, smiling at Orson. They had no idea what they had turned loose on America, and only knew that a mediocre show had been transformed into something special, by their gifted leader.

Who was saying, “So good-bye everybody, and remember please, for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight—that grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the punkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there...that was no Martian, it’s Hallowe’en.”

Welles cued Herrmann for the Tchaikovsky theme, and Dan Seymour returned to his mike to make the farewell: “Tonight the Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations coast-to-coast have brought you ‘The War of the Worlds,’ by H.G. Wells, the seventeenth in its weekly series of dramatic broadcasts featuring Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air.... Next week we present a dramatization of three famous short stories.... This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.”

When the clock hit nine P.M., the OFF THE AIR sign switched on.

That was when men in blue uniforms began to stream into the studio, and the grin on Welles’s face froze, like a jack-o’-lantern’s.