“Let’s take a ride in the car,” my dad said the other
day. “I want to show you something.”
He wouldn’t tell me where we were going or what we were going
to see (My dad can be frustrating that way. He likes surprises.)
He took me to Van Nest Park in a tiny town called Grovers Mill, New
Jersey. In the park, he showed me a monument with a flying saucer on
it.
“MARTIAN LANDING SITE,” it said.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Martians came to New Jersey?”
I asked, excitedly, jumping up and down. “To Grovers Mill? They
landed right on this spot? Right here?”
My father laughed. “No, Martians didn’t really land in Grovers
Mill. It was all just a hoax.”
“Oh,” I said, calming down. I felt a little silly about
getting so excited, but when I heard the whole story, I didn’t
feel so bad.
In 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air broadcast a
radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel ‘War of the Worlds’.
Welles decided to make the radio play sound like an actual news broadcast
announcing that Martians were invading. An exclaimer at the beginning
informed listeners that ‘War of the Worlds’ was a work of
fiction, but many people missed that part of the program. They tuned
in to hear fake news bulletins about a spaceship crash, and about death
and destruction at Grovers Mill.
Six million people heard the broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’.
Many believed the attacks to be real and panicked. The result was mass
hysteria.
In Grovers Mill, some residents grabbed what they could and packed their
cars, hoping to escape. Others barricaded themselves indoors. Local
astronomers from Princeton University searched in vain for the non-existent
crash site. Shotgun-wielding mobs formed to defend themselves against
the aliens. Someone even started shooting at a local farmer’s
water tower, mistaking it for a giant Martian robot.
Afterwards, the inhabitants of Grovers Mill were embarrassed by their
hysterical behavior, ashamed at how gullible they had been. To them,
‘War of the Worlds’ was a tender subject for many years.
More recently, however, they decided to accept the event as part of
their town’s history. The ‘War of the Worlds’ monument
was erected on the 50th anniversary of the radio broadcast.
I asked my grandmother if she remembered listening to the show when
she was a little girl.
“Of course, I do,” she replied. “I was hiding under
my bed the whole time.”
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