JAD ABUMRAD: This is Radiolab, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: We are in St. Paul, Minnesota, coming to you live from the Fitzgerald Theater. Our subject today is the War Of the Worlds, broadcast originally on October 30, 1938.

ROBERT: Okay, now I'm gonna ask the house for a show of hands. The question for the house is: do you think that somebody else could imagine the broadcast using the exact same script more or less, also with Martians, also invading, also interrupting the musical things, same deal? After all the publicity from the 1938 broadcast, could you do it twice? Show of hands, please. Oh, some of you don't think so! Look, if we—if there wasn't another one of these, what would we be doing for the next 40 minutes?

JAD: Well ...

ROBERT: So ...

JAD: Those of you who've raised your hands—I'd say it's about 75 percent of you—you are correct. Because it has happened again. And I want to tell you a story, an amazing story, really. An under-reported story of a War Of the Worlds reenactment happened in the mountains of Quito, Ecuador in 1949. We were very lucky. We had a reporter, Tony Fields, who happened to be traveling there. We asked him to do a couple of interviews of people who heard it or were there. And he brought back some tape and played it for me in studio.

JAD: All right. So Tony, set the scene for me. 1949, Quito. Where's Quito?

TONY FIELDS: Quito is the capital of Ecuador. Quito's in the middle of the mountains, in the Andes mountains.

JAD: Hmm.

TONY FIELDS: And ...

JAD: Small town, big town?

TONY FIELDS: Quito now is a big city. At the time it was a pretty small city. It had a quarter of a million people, you know, 300,000 tops. The word that everybody who I spoke to used to describe the way that Quito was in 1949 ...

JAD: Mm-hmm?

TONY FIELDS: ... was 'tranquilo.'

[MAN: Tranquilo.]

[WOMAN: Muy tranquila.]

[MAN: Ciudad tranquila.]

TONY FIELDS: And I want to say that: "Muy tranquila."

JAD: Like tranquil?

TONY FIELDS: Exactly. It is what is sounds like: tranquil, calm, chill. And Radio Quito was the most popular radio station. Everybody listened to it.

JAD: So those are your basic ingredients. You got a small town, population 250,000. You have one major radio station, which also happened to be in the same building as the one major newspaper, El Comercio. And the leader of the radio station, the guy who ran it, a devious fellow by the name of Leonardo Paez. One day someone shows up with a script for Orson Welles—not H.G Wells—Orson Welles' version of War Of The Worlds, and gives it to Leonardo Paez. He reads it, says "Brilliant! We've got to do this here in Quito"

TONY FIELDS: They insert local place names, you know? So instead of the Martians landing in New Jersey, they would land in Cotocollao, which is on the outskirts of Quito. They write in parts for government officials—the Minister of the Interior, the mayor of Quito.

JAD: These are actors or real government people?

TONY FIELDS: These would be actors.

JAD: Doing impressions.

TONY FIELDS: Doing impressions, that's right.

JAD: Whoa!

TONY FIELDS: Not only that, Paez got his bosses at the newspaper, El Comercio, to agree to run little articles in the newspaper in the two days leading up to the broadcast reporting that strange objects had been seen in the skies over Quito.

JAD: Wow! So he set out to screw with people, basically. I mean, he was planting paranoia.

TONY FIELDS: It really seems like he wanted people to believe what they were hearing that night. Okay, so Saturday February 12, 1949, the day of the broadcast. All day long, listeners hear an announcement.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Quito newscast: Buenas noches, señoras y señores.]

TONY FIELDS: That there's going to be a special performance by the Duo Benitez Valencia.

JAD: Benitez Valencia?

TONY FIELDS: Yeah. Benitez Valencia at that time were one of the most popular musical acts in town.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Quito newscast: En Radio Quito.]

TONY FIELDS: Why don't you cue up track number four?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Benitez Valencia: [music]]

TONY FIELDS: Eight o'clock rolls around, Benito Valencia launches into their performance. They play a few songs. Then suddenly there's an interruption, some sort of strange kind of interference-like sound.

JAD: What do you mean? Like static?

TONY FIELDS: Yeah, static. The signals, you know, something's wrong with it. It's not coming in quite right.

TONY FIELDS: Eight o'clock rolls around, Benitez Valencia launches into their performance. They play a few songs. Then suddenly there's an interruption.

JAD: Wait, what was that?

TONY FIELDS: Well, it turns out that Leonardo Paez, in addition to the other tricks he had up his sleeve, he had a sound effects guy in the corner that was ...

JAD: [laughs] No!

TONY FIELDS: ... creating this sound.

JAD: Like one of Garrison Keillor's guys kind of thing?

TONY FIELDS: That's right.

[laughter]

JAD: Dylan Keefe, everyone!

[applause]

TONY FIELDS: Eventually, the music stops and Leonardo Paez comes on the air and says ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Leonardo Paez: (speaking Spanish)]

TONY FIELDS: "Please, dear listeners. Excuse the technical difficulties. There seems to be some sort of atmospheric conditions interfering with the Radio Quito signal. But you are listening to Radio Quito, brought to you by, you know, such and such. And now back to Benitez Valencia."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Leonardo Paez: Benitez Valencia. (music playing)]

TONY FIELDS: So we hear another couple songs and then there's another interruption.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Leonardo Paez: Atención! Atención!]

TONY FIELDS: That's Leonardo Paez again. And this time, this time it's a news flash.

JAD: So, now we're on script, basically.

TONY FIELDS: That's right, that's right. They send Paez out to report from the scene.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Leonardo Paez: Cotocollao.]

TONY FIELDS: And Paez is doing the play-by-play. You know, what is this thing? Oh my god, the top's unscrewing! Here come the tentacles! And here come the heat rays. And zap!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Quito newscast: Aah!]

[laughter]

TONY FIELDS: Paez is fried.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Do we have—forget reenactments, do we have a copy of the real broadcast from that night?

TONY FIELDS: All we have are descriptions. There is no existing recording of what was broadcast that night. And—and you'll understand why in a second. So while I was down there in Quito, I interviewed a bunch of people about what happened that night. By all accounts, it worked. Outside, it was sheer mayhem. Everything that happened next happened extremely quickly. People poured out into the streets. People were running, but they didn't know where to run. The spaceship supposedly was in the north of the city, but this black cloud of gas was in the south. And a lot of them actually did what any good Catholic would do, they made a beeline for the church.

JAD: The church, because they were—they thought they'd be safe there? Or ...?

TONY FIELDS: Perhaps? Or perhaps they wanted to get right with God before the world ended. There are even reports—and I wasn't able to confirm this, but there are reports of men confessing to adultery right there in front of their wives.

[laughter]

JAD: Wow!

TONY FIELDS: And priests absolving whole crowds at once. Cue up track—track 10.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jorge Ribadeneira: (speaking Spanish)]

TONY FIELDS: This is Jorge Ribadeneira, who was a long-time journalist. Worked for many years at the newspaper. He was listening with his family. They all believed it. They all ran outside, found a taxi cab, threw the kids in. The rest of them ran behind the taxi cab.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jorge Ribadeneira: (speaking Spanish)]

TONY FIELDS: They were gonna ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jorge Ribadeneira: (speaking Spanish)]

TONY FIELDS: ... flee the city.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jorge Ribadeneira: (speaking Spanish)]

TONY FIELDS: And he tells me that he sees, going the other way, this convoy of military trucks filled with soldiers.

JAD: Wait, real trucks? Real military vans?

TONY FIELDS: Real military vans with real soldiers. And cops behind them. And they're screaming towards the north of the city.

JAD: Where are they going?

TONY FIELDS: They're going to Cotocollao to fight the Martians.

[laughter]

JAD: Get out! [laughs] So if you had any doubt at this point that this was a—well, maybe it's real, maybe it's not, once you saw those military vans, you were like, "Oh, bleep! I've got to get the hell out!"

TONY FIELDS: Right.

ROBERT: Wait, wait, wait. Does—does everybody in Quito believe—didn't someone call the general beforehand and say, tonight we're having a broadcast ...?

JAD: Well, they—the mayor or someone who sounded an awful lot like the mayor was on the radio saying Martians were invading. And so if you're the army guy, you're gonna go check it out. You've got to protect the ...

ROBERT: The mayor didn't call the general before?

JAD: No. No.

ROBERT: So—so then what happens at the end of the show? Assuming it ends the way they always do, "Ha, ha, ha. This was a joke." Then what?

JAD: Well, they stormed the radio station.

[laughter]

ROBERT: [laughs] Good!

TONY FIELDS: By the time the broadcast ended and it was announced that the whole thing was a play ...

JAD: Hmm.

TONY FIELDS: ... crowds were in the streets. And word that it was a hoax spread pretty quickly. All that fear turned pretty quickly to anger. By 9:30, there's a few hundred people outside the station. At some point this boxer shows up. There had just been a match in the central plaza, and the boxer shows up and he's driving this truck and the truck is full of rocks.

JAD: It's full of what? Rocks?

TONY FIELDS: It's full of rocks. Yeah.

JAD: Huh!

TONY FIELDS: And people start hurling the rocks at the station, at the windows. And windows are shattering. They manage to break into the ground floor where the printing presses are. They're smashing printing presses. At some point, some people in the crowd materialize, and they have these flaming torches. And it just goes up like a match.

ROBERT: So—so were people hurt during this?

JAD: Six people died.

ROBERT: Oh, really?

JAD: Yeah. Most escaped. There was about 50 people in the building. Most got up to the roof, jumped to adjoining buildings, but six people died. According to reporter Tony, one guy stayed behind. The last guy on the air that night was a man by the name of Luis Beltran. Maria, are you there?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Yes, I'm here.

JAD: Okay, this is Maria Beltran Testagrossa, Luis Beltran's daughter. Maria, you were listening to everything that just came before this?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Yes.

JAD: Tell us the story from your dad's perspective from here forward. He was on the air. What was he doing?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Well, he was—he was on the air. He was, I guess, hosting the music program, and also doing some of the interruptions with the bogus Martians.

JAD: At the point—at the point at which the fire started, what was he saying?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Well at that point, when he realized the magnitude of the situation, he went back on the air and began pleading for help, pleading for assistance from the police and the fire department. But as you said before, no help came because the police were going to fight the Martians.

JAD: Yeah.

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: And eventually, he was the last one left, and—and he jumped out the window. I guess from either the third or fourth floor onto a second-floor balcony.

JAD: Hmm.

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: And to break the fall, I guess, instinctively you want to break the fall, he grabbed onto the railing of that balcony, and he was completely engulfed in flames at that point and the skin on his hands just remained on the balcony. It was like a barbecue grill.

JAD: Wow!

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: And from there he jumped to the ground, but before he jumped he was pleading to the crowd to, I guess, catch him. But they didn't. He landed on cement.

JAD: Oof.

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Broke legs, arms, ribs, everything. And compounded by the very, very serious burns that he had all over his body.

JAD: So he landed at the feet of an angry mob. What did ...

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: An angry mob. And he—he recalled that as he's losing consciousness, he just heard somebody say, "Just let him die in peace." Although some of the articles that I read, they tried to throw him back into the building.

JAD: Really?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Someone grabbed him and put him in a Jeep to take him to the hospital. Just a bystander. And, you know, he had so many scars, he—as children, my brother and I would play with his scars. We would trace them with our finger and ask him what happened. You know, how he got the scars. And he would tell us about the fire. You know, the building had burned, and he would tell us about that.

JAD: Would he tell you the whole story? Or how much of this did you know?

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: No, he didn't tell us the whole story. He would just give us just in broad terms that he had been in a building that caught fire. He also told us, you know, he had been a radio announcer, but as children, we didn't really ask him. Maybe had we been older and asked him, he would've told us the whole story.

JAD: Hmm. And we should say that your dad stayed behind to try and help other people get out of the building. Let me ask you a question, though. Your dad obviously is a hero, but given the fact that he was one of the voices that created the panic ...

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Mm-hmm.

JAD: ... do you feel some ambivalence about—did he feel some sort of ambivalence about ...

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: I don't know in retrospect whether he did or not. I'm sure there must've been some ambivalence. But from what I understand, the story was kept—it was very top secret, so that even the employees did not know what was going to be broadcast during that music program.

JAD: Oh, really? Wow.

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: I don't know at what point he was informed of the details, though. I don't know really how he felt about it. I wish I had had an opportunity to ask him.

JAD: Hmm. Well listen, Maria, thank so much for your time in joining us here. And ...

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Sure.

JAD: You know, thanks.

MARIA BELTRAN TESTAGROSSA: Take care.

[applause]

ROBERT: I just want to know what happened to the guy who planned the hoax.

JAD: Well, he—he got out through the roof like a lot of others. He hopped to the next building, hid out for a few days and then fled the country to Venezuela never to return.

[laughter]

ROBERT: Never to return?

JAD: Never to return. But I should say that among the six people who died that night was his girlfriend and a nephew of his.

ROBERT: Okay. So the 1949 Quito broadcast caused a whole lot of trouble. The 1938 New York broadcast caused a whole lot of trouble. Now everybody here before who raised their hand and thought that this could happen again, you are right. Again. Now, Buffalo, 1968.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, WKBW broadcast: Halloween night!]

ROBERT: It's the height of the Vietnam War. WKBW broadcast its own fascinating version of The War of the Worlds updated for the times. It sounds kind of like your basic DJ set until you hear this.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, WKBW broadcast: What is this? Joe Downey has handed me something here that I'm supposed to read. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Let's see, the NASA, the National Space and Aeronautics Administration, those people, have alerted all their space watch and—facilities to be on the alert for unusual communication difficulties tonight. A spokesman for the federal agency referred to the explosions on the planet Mars and said it was not known if they would have the same effect on Earth communications as similar explosions on the surface of the sun. I guess they're talking about sunspots and things like that. So I don't know, it means that it's gonna be hard to hear communications from NASA. Can you hear me down in South Carolina? As long as you can hear KB, what difference does it make about communications? Rock ‘n roll! WKBW Jackson! Halloween night, getting all together where it is. WKBW.]

ROBERT: The WKBW broadcast followed the same structure as the original broadcast we've heard tonight. Long stretches of music then the news bulletins then the semi-realistic field reports. Here's one of them.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, WKBW broadcast: What have you got? You got walking injuries or—you got real bad ones?]

ROBERT: You got the same vivid descriptions of Martians.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, WKBW broadcast: I can hardly look at it, Don. I can hardly look at it. It's dripping saliva!]

ROBERT: And according to the station manager, Jeff Kaye, you get the same outcome: people bought it.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jeff Kaye: The Buffalo police and telephone company reported to WKBW that they received more than 4,000 phone calls. The Canadian military authorities dispatched military units to the Peace Bridge, the Rainbow Bridge, and the Queenston Bridge to repel invaders. The story was carried the next day by 47 newspapers countrywide, and on the night of the show and during the show United Press bureaus up and down the east coast of America were besieged by phone calls asking about the Martian invasion in Buffalo. Incredible? You're absolutely right, it is incredible.]

ROBERT: Thanks to the folks at WKBW Buffalo for that. What is this music by the way?

JAD: This is the disco version of War Of The Worlds, 1978.

[laughter]

ROBERT: [laughs] There's a disco version.

JAD: Still sells a lot of copies. You'd be surprised. Here's the obvious question to ask: why does this keep working?

ROBERT: Well, that's a difficult question. I came across a psychology professor.

RICHARD GERRIG: I'm Richard Gerrig. I'm a professor of psychology in the Cognitive Experimental Program at Stony Brook University.

ROBERT: He has this notion, Richard Gerrig does, that at root, people are suckers for stories. We just cannot help ourselves. When a story starts, you just kind of go, whoop!

RICHARD GERRIG: I think the norm is to fall into the story. And that it's unusual to sort of keep yourself from falling in. My favorite example is, there's a scene in Goldfinger.

ROBERT: (singing) Bum, bum, bum.

RICHARD GERRIG: Yeah, the all-time best James Bond movie, I think. Where Bond is tied down spread-eagle on a piece of metal and there's this laser coming toward him, which really looks like it's gonna cut him in two. And even as I'm saying that right now, I'm starting to feel a little bit of anxiety because I'm picturing it in my head. I'm picturing that laser coming toward him. And, you know, spoiler alert, he doesn't actually get split in two by the laser. Yeah, sorry. But here's the thing. Go and watch the movie now and see if you can get through that scene without experiencing suspense. And it really seems to say something very powerful and strong about how immersed we can become in the narrative world.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Goldfinger Theme" - Shirley Bassey: [singing] But don't go in. But don't go in. But don't go in.]

ROBERT: The thing is we do go in. We all fall into these stories, he says. It's just the way we are built. For hundreds of thousands of years, our memories, our friendships, our sense of family, our kinship, we build our identities from stories—stories that we tell and stories that we hear.

JAD: Let's take a break. Coming up: terror in the toilet, python in the potty, and more scary stories on this edition of Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: We will continue in a moment.

[applause]

 

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