Dead Air: The Night Orson Welles Terrified America

On a warm Halloween Eve, October 30, 1938, during a broadcast of H G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, a twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles held his hands up for radio silence in the CBS studio in New York City while millions of people ran out into the night screaming, and hid in basements, attics, or anywhere they could find to get away from presumed Martians. As Welles held up his hands to his fellow actors, musicians, and sound technicians, he turned six seconds of radio silence—dead air—into absolute horror.