BY KAREN BOSSICK

Relive that night on Oct. 30, 1938, when Martians invaded Grover’s Mill, attacking the New Jersey town with a heat-ray—or so we thought.

The Wood River High School Drama Department and Mountain Country 107.5 FM will present an encore presentation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, at 107.5 FM.

Drama students recorded the famous broadcast at Silver Creek High School recording studio in the Fall of 2020 as way to exercise their creative juices and learn about theater and radio during the pandemic when they couldn’t stage a live play.

The play, originally recorded by the Mercury Theater Radio and featuring Orson Welles, was said to cause panic among its listening audience, although just how much panic it actually created is questionable. It’s said that English author H.G. Wells got the idea for the sci-fi fantasy from reading accounts of the British invasion of Tasmania  and wondering what would happen if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the indigenous Tasmanians.