Halloween Storytelling and the End of the World

Fall is here and Halloween is just around the corner. While some horror fans head to the theater or video store, others will take a trip to the local library. Horror and thriller novelists like the great Edgar Allen Poe and the modern tales of Stephen King have paved the way for all kinds of scary movies and television series. But, no matter what the media, every chill of the story starts in the mind of the writer.

For most writers, it's hard enough to just capture then hold a reader's attention. But writers of mystery, thrillers or horror have an altogether different problem - how to elicit deep even primal emotional responses from the audience. The power of words can be astounding. Horror writing takes many forms and has the potential to terrify the audience all the while keeping them spellbound and unable to close the book.

Television and film writers have captured the imaginations of horror audiences for decades, with the added bonus of visual stimulation to help them along. Before the first fright fest ever hit the airways, however, one man frightened a nation using a brilliantly re-imagined classic and a single microphone.

At 8 PM on October 30^th, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the Air did the unthinkable. With a modernized, abridged version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the theatrical troupe took over the CBS radio network and, whether by accident or design, literally convinced millions of people that New Jersey had been invaded by Martians.

Welles and his company had already brought many classics to life on the radio, including Alexander Dumas', The Count of Monte Cristo. But none were presented in such a realistic fashion and never before had the style and feel of news bulletins been so well duplicated.

The cleverly-timed out script called for only one station break, set about midway through the 60-minute show - the legal minimum for broadcast identification at the time. Because of the realistic portrayals, which included very real-sounding interruptions of regular programming, anyone who had missed the show's opening and disclaimer found the production's fictional news bulletins indistinguishable from the real thing.

The result was a panic that reached all across the country. America was on the brink of war. Hitler was moving across Europe at a rapid pace and many who tuned in to the show late thought that the "falling shells" described in Welles' story might be bombs sent aloft by the German V-2 rockets. Though it's hard to believe now, those who hadn't heard the opening or station break actually thought that America had been invaded by extraterrestrials.

For those who lived in isolated areas, fear took the place of rational thinking. In the hills of southern Ohio, one anecdotal story talks about a group of men who took up shotguns and headed into the woods to hunt down the invading alien beasts. They ended up blasting a hole in a local water tower which had been mistaken for one of the tall, gangly three-legged Martian machines described in the story.

During the broadcast, the switchboards at CBS radio headquarters in New York were completely jammed, as were those at the affiliate stations. Welles was notified about the reaction his broadcast was causing while he was still on the air. His superiors at CBS asked him to make a public apology. He quickly penned a response and read it at the end of the show, but the damage was done.

All writers depend on the imaginations of the reader and Welles was a genius at drawing his audience into the story. Good writing pulls the reader into the story, letting him visualize every nuance - every smell, every sight, every sound that is experienced by the characters. Only in this way can the horror writer at once entertain and frighten.

So have a frightfully thrilling All Hallows' Eve everyone and remember to pick up a book this year. And when you're reading it one dark, cold, fall evening and you hear the doorbell ring but there's nobody there, that was no Martian … it's Halloween.

Gery L. Deer is an independent columnist based in Jamestown, Ohio. Read more online at www.deerinheadlines.com.