Radio's War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938)

Radio's War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938): "Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact
Many Flee Homes to Escape 'Gas Raid From Mars'--Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy
This article appeared in the New York Times on Oct. 31, 1938.
A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells's fantasy, 'The War of the Worlds,' led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.
The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, 'The Shadow,' used to give 'the creeps' to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria. "