13 Days of Halloween: The scariest radio show

To be fair, I probably don’t know enough scary radio shows to make an informed decision, and radio’s a perfect medium for generating chills. While I’m sure there are many unsung classics, Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War of the Worlds seems an inarguable choice, given that it generated actual hysteria in real life.

Exactly how many people thought Welles’ news report-style adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel really was an actual alien invasion is subject to dispute (some estimates hold the number to be well over a million). The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s War of the Worlds included three disclaimers that it was fiction, and here’s my favorite theory about how it still scared people nontheless:

Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices that the broadcast was fictional, partly because the Mercury Theatre (an unsponsored “cultural” program with a relatively small audience) ran opposite the popular Chase and Sanborn Hour over the Red Network of NBC, hosted by Don Ameche and featuring comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, three of the most popular figures in broadcasting. About 15 minutes into the Chase and Sanborn program the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners began tuning around the dial at that point.  As a result, some listeners happened upon the CBS broadcast at the point the Martians emerge from their spacecraft.

Notoreity aside, Welles’ War of the Worlds holds up very well, particularly the passage mentioned above, when the newly-arrived Martians aim a death ray at broadcaster (allegedly inspired by the famous play-by-play of the Hindenberg crash). Check out the “eyewitness account” at the 7-minute mark, and listen for the blood-curdling scream and even more nerve-wracking silence that follows. Then imagine stumbling across it while dial-surfing in the 1930s: