What happens
Professor Pearson, an astronomer at the Princeton Observatory, is interviewed on a live radio broadcast after strange explosions are reported on Mars. Carl Phillips reports on the situation as a mysterious object falls on a farm near Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Part of the Mercury Theatre on the Air series, this episode was first broadcast on October 30, 1938, and is presented as a series of news bulletins, interviews and on-the-spot reports. Witnesses describe a cylinder half buried in a pit and strange creatures emerging from it, while Professor Pearson and the authorities try to understand what has landed.
Radio studios in New York and Princeton, New Jersey, and the Wilbur farm at Grover's Mill, New Jersey, on the evening of October 30, 1938
Characters: Professor Pearson, Carl Phillips, Mr. Wilbur, Captain Lansing, Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, Harry McDonald, Dr. Gray, Professor Farrell
Listen for: The on-the-spot reports from Grover's Mill, and the shift from calm news bulletins to growing alarm as the cylinder opens
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.