Our world is made up of stories.
We cannot experience every single event on Earth by ourselves. At this point in time, it is humanly, and physically impossible. So we rely on the telling of stories to learn about the world in which we live.
It is an essential thing for us. It helps us to grow as humans and to become more enlightened as individuals, both mentally and spiritually. Stories also help protect us from dangers or tribulations. They have to ability to entertain us.
But stories are not always positive. Sometimes, they invoke fear or even hatred. It all depends on the “joining” of words. Those stories.
I’m reminded of the power of storytelling because it was on this date, October 30, 1938, when The War of the Worlds, the science fiction novel by English author HG Wells came through the speakers of countless radios all across America. It was the telling of a spaceship from Mars landing on Earth.
This particular story caused panic. It was said at the time that the entire nation was in a frenzy, but this was vastly exaggerated. It seems that most households were tuned into the popular NBC comedy program, “Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour.” A rating service determined that only two percent of the potential audience was listening to Welles’ show.
But that 2% were in a panic.
Dance music had been chirping right along on people’s radios, tapping feet and all. But that music was suddenly interrupted by an announcer.
The newscaster reported that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the show cut back to the music, swirling once again with its happy beat. A few minutes later, another announcement stopped the music. This time the man drilled out the words: “At 8.50 pm, a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in New Jersey.”
Another report crackled through the radio, this one from New Jersey by newsman Carl Phillips. He spoke of a 30-yard-wide metal cylinder on the ground, making a hissing sound. The next thing he said was that the top of the cylinder began to “rotate like a screw.”
His report:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed. . . Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling. Someone or . . . something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks . . . are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be . . . good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake.
“Now it’s another one, and another one, and another one. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it . . . ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable.
“I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”
Many of those listening had missed his announcement at the start of the program that this was a story by actors. People believed it was real, especially as Welles had decided to present things in a newscast format.
And when it was reported that seven thousand members of the state militia had been obliterated by a Martian “heat ray” and that New York was being evacuated, there was widespread panic, according to reports at the time.
Whatever happened that night just goes to show the power of the story. These days, people believe a different version of these “martian invasion” stories just because they are being broadcast from their “favorite” news network. The network might use foxy techniques to make their stories believable. Like this one. Of a martian invasion.
All of this would be funny, but people these days believe stories that are stranger and more untrue than anything Orson Welles broadcast.
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“Perception is reality to the one in the experience.”
― Danielle Bernock, Emerging With Wings
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“First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose.”
— Yoda
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Today, there are new wars of the worlds. And words.
