October 27, 2013

A Nightmare in October

By Susan D. Harris
It was late at night and the warm smell of the flame scorching the top of the pumpkin drifted through the air. It was that quiet time when the excitement was over, the roads emptied of cars and trick-or-treaters, and you sat in the darkness with only the grinning gourds staring back at you. That was when my family would turn on the radio to hear our local station's annual rebroadcast of The War of the Worlds. I would pull out a treat (or two) from my bag and listen to the crackling airwaves and the music drifting from the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza. As a child, I didn't really comprehend the entire plot. I only knew it was an eerie tradition that held in me rapt attention. It wasn't until I got older that I began to appreciate the intensity and creativity of Orson Welles masterful reworking of H.G. Wells classic novel. When we began studying it in a college broadcast class, I was surprised to find most of my classmates were not familiar with it. To them, it was something...(Read Full Article)