The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

It’s the witching hour of August 31, 1944. You’re peacefully sleeping in your bed when you’re suddenly woken by a peculiar odor. Through the thick fog of sleep, you begin to feel weak when a sudden wave of nausea wretches through your body causing you to vomit.

Your wife is woken with the haunting sounds of your moans and sobs in between all the dry heaving. Worried that a gas leak could be the cause of her husband's suffering, your wife goes to get up to check the kitchen stove to see if there was a problem with the pilot light.

But she can’t move. Her body won’t listen to her as she mentally screams at her limbs to do something, anything.

“Is this where we die?” Both you and your wife think to yourselves, as what feels like hours pass you by.

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Now I didn’t make this story up. This a real event that happened to Mr. & Mrs. Raef. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t a gas leak from the kitchen stove that caused this.

In Mattoon, Illinois, during the mid-1940s, a series of supposed gas attacks were made by an unidentified person carrying a flit gun. The assailant was later labeled as “The Gasser of Mattoon” by the media of that time.

During a 2 week period, more than two dozen separate cases of these gas attacks were reported to the police as well as many reported sightings of the suspected assailant.

Reported Attacks:

The apparent victims of the gas attacks reported smelling strange odors in their homes which were followed by paralysis of the legs, coughing, nausea & vomiting. Thankfully, no one has died from these events.

Now the first of the Mad Gasser attacks to be reported to the authorities is that of Mr. & Mrs. Raef on August 31, 1944.

Later that night, a similar incident was reported by a young mother living close by. She was woken up by the coughing of her daughter but couldn’t get up to check on her.

On September 1st at around 11pm, a woman smelt a strong, sweet odor that she thought was from the flower bed under her opened bedroom window until the smell grew stronger and she began to lose feeling in her legs. Panicked, she called out for her sister who was at the house at the time. The sister noticed that that smell was coming from the window and called the police. They found no evidence of a prowler, though they did suspect that robbery was the primary motive for the attack.

Later that same night, the woman’s husband returned home from work to find an unidentified man hiding close to one of the house’s windows. The man ran off before the husband could catch him. The husband described to police that it was a tall man dressed in dark clothing, wearing a tight fitting cap. This description was relayed to the media which became the common description of the assailant by other victims.

After that night, there were half a dozen similar attacks reported but none of the victims were able to provide a clear description of the attacker and no clues were found at the scene.

Though, on the night of September 5th at around 10pm, a man and his wife had returned home to find a piece of white cloth, slightly bigger than a man's handkerchief, sitting on their front porch next to the screen door. The wife picked up the cloth and took a big-ol wif. As soon as she inhaled, she felt something similar to an electric shock through her body. Her face began to swell, experienced a burning sensation in her mouth and throat, became weak with partial paralysis in her legs, and began to vomit. The husband theorized that the cloth was left behind in order to knock out the family dog, which usually slept there, so that the prowler could enter the home unnoticed.

A skeleton key described as looking “well used” was reportedly found on the sidewalk adjacent to the porch, along with a large, almost empty, tube of lipstick. The cloth was analyzed by the authorities, but found no chemicals on it that could explain the wife’s symptoms.

The concern over these reports caused the FBI to get involved. The police released a statement calling for residents to avoid lingering in residential areas, and warning self organized citizen patrol groups to be disbanded, as well as for citizens to exercise restraint when carrying or discharging firearms.

During this period, more physical evidence of attacks were being reported, such as footprints being found underneath windows and tears in window screens.

By September 12th, police received so many false alarms that they reduced the priority of the gasser reports and announced that the entire incident was likely the result of an explainable occurrence that was blown out of proportion by the fears and anxieties felt by the public during time of war. After the police announcement, gasser reports declined.

One report after this statement, though, was interesting. Bertha Burch claimed she saw a gasser who was a woman dressed as a man.

Explanations:

There are three primary theories about the Mattoon Mad Gasser incident: mass hysteria, industrial pollution, or an actual physical assailant.

Mass Hysteria-

2 weeks after the gasser attacks began, the local Commissioner of Public Health, Thomas V. Wright, states:

“There is no doubt that a gas maniac exists and has made a number of attacks. But many of the reported attacks are nothing more than hysteria. Fear of the gas man is entirely out of proportion to the menace of the relatively harmless gas he is spraying. The whole town is sick with hysteria.”

Local Chief of Police C. E. Cole took Wright’s hypothesis a step further, announced that there had likely been no gas attacks at all, and that the reported incidents had probably been triggered by pollutants or toxic waste released by nearby industrial facilities and then exacerbated by public panic.

Which leads us to our next theory.

Industrial Pollution-

Chief of Police Cole speculated that carbon tetrachloride or trichloroethylene, both having a sweet odor and can induce symptoms similar to those reported by gasser victims, may have been the substance released.

In response, Atlas-Imperial, the primary company being implicated, released a statement saying that their facility had only 5 gallons of carbon tetrachloride in stock. Atlas-Imperial officials also denied that any quantities of trichloroethylene could be responsible for sickness in the town, reasoning that it would have taken significant quantities of the chemical to sicken the townspeople, and that factory workers would have experienced similar symptoms long before anybody outside of the factory was affected. The Atlas plant had been certified as safe by the State Department of Health during the time of the gas attacks.

Actual Physical Assailant-

All that’s left is that the attacks did happen, though not all reports were true.

Other Suggestions-

Some people who believe in the paranormal would say that maybe it was extraterrestrials.

My Thoughts-

I personally think that there really was an attacker. Maybe someone who was a scientist of sorts, doctor or a wannabe scientist/doctor who was trying to create and perfect a gas for some unknown purpose. They viewed the world as their guinea pig.

What are your theories?

• Mass Hysteria
• Industrial Pollution
• There Was A Mad Gasser
• Aliens!

See All Options

Leave a comment on what you think really happened.