A national case of pre-war jitters, primitive channel-surfing and the genius of an entertainment legend combined to create a panic on Halloween night of 1938.
In an era when radio was the dominant electronic medium, Orson Welle's "Mercury Theater of the Air" not only dramatized H.G. Wells' 1898 novel "War of the Worlds." He did it in a way that created a panic that began in New Jersey and spread across the nation.
That included Fargo, where it was broadcast at 7 p.m. on the Columbia Broadcasting Network on WABC.
It topped the front page of The Forum's Oct. 31 edition under the headline "Radio 'war drama' panics thousands."
A wire story detailed a Federal Communications investigation of the broadcast. More than half the story summarized the show, quoting extensively from the script.
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A short local story talked about two Fargo men, K. A. Fitch and Leonard Schneider, who "admitted they were 'took' by" the broadcast.
"I was shaving when the broadcast came on," Fitch said. "I called Schneider and we listened, me with lather on my face, until the broadcast was ended, when we discovered our mistake. It was so realistic that had the action been any closer we'd have crawled in the lake."
The local story also noted that one of the angry telegrams the network received about the show came from Fargo.
The show played to a nation that was closely watching Europe - and expecting war - as Nazi Germany's power neared its zenith.
Part of what happened also was due to the popularity of radio entertainment.
