Radio waves, UFOs, and the return of panic

Or, “how intergalactic history is repeating itself.”

Listening to the beautiful wireless fuzz of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast War of the Worlds – granted, on Youtube – it becomes clear how performance art, music, science, and news offered a true spectacle way back yonder.

“It is reported that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton,” went the transmission, and such factual poise had begun to set its hooks into the rural and gullible:

WILMUTH: I seen a kinda greenish streak and then zingo! Somethin’ smacked the ground. Knocked me clear out of my chair!

PHILLIPS: Well, were you frightened, Mr. Wilmuth?

WILMUTH: Well, I – I ain’t quite sure. I reckon I – I was kinda riled.

This vivid delivery convinced the masses that Martians were invading first New Jersey and, mere minutes later, all of the US. The broadcasters played with the “breaking news” format and interspersed other simulated angles like military deployment to fend off the Martians, scientific descriptions of the spaceship, and plausible breakdowns in communications, as the broadcast collapsed about half an hour in.

But when we zing to the present, there is a spectral parallel going on that provokes fabulous attention. Far from listening to this wonderful frenetic texture of War of the Worlds, it seems that the hysteria in locations like New Jersey has been passed down generations and has gathered up quite the storm in 2024.

Sure, we have 86 years of hindsight to romanticise the transmission when back in the day it caused a stir with its playful scaremongering – but to listen to this recording in its entirety – just short of an hour – draws an eerie evocation of present times in which you scratch your head wondering, which one is the throwback exactly?

So, is the reaction to the broadcasting of War of the Worlds all that different from today? Not really, with the meta-alien narrative going on, assassination attempts on the president-elect, Neuralink trials, 5G conspiracy theories, artificial meat fears, and Barbie Vs. Oppenheimer. The main difference is that nowadays, there are too many chefs spoiling the broth, that’s all.

We still act in a reactive fury to lock up Kevin Spacey or ridicule Britney Spears again based on a few seconds of their hot-blooded reactions, too, just like Charlie Chaplain had his mixed reactions.

Orson Welles had to announce it was a hoax immediately after. The storm in a teacup had already happened, but as America calibrated itself after the Great Depression – 1929-1939 – many ideologies could understandably whip the population into delirium.

However, the key difference today is that the delirium is much more fragmented. Instead of UFO sightings being part of an eccentric subculture, 2024 has seen sightings being brought to the forefront of social media discussion

Perhaps New Jersey should rename itself to The Starship State. Stephen King set a lot of his novel The Mist there, and the TV shows The X-Files and The Leftovers were situated in NJ. Well, at least in part for Mulder and Scully.

The Garden State is almost a character within itself and was the first place on the interactive map I homed in when reporting on the pick of this year's sightings.

What lingers when I complete the listening of this glorious broadcast is that both back then and right now governments and huge corporations use broadcasters to fan the fire for a bit before they decide to throw gasoline on it. The trouble is however, that sometimes the public blurt out absurdities to make the ridicule so bizarre that I think my brain is a rotting coconut.

As the galactic pot of hype continues to get stirred in a myriad of ways – the years ahead for sure won’t be barren. What is for sure – the next time you blurt out:

“There’s something out there!” – you most likely won't get mistaken for some crazy “hinterland dweller.” And that’s the polite term.