A small town with a population of about 17,000 would find themselves at the center of a bizarre attack, that to this day still has conclusive answers for what really took place during the two week scare.
August 31, 1944 – Mattoon, Illinois
Mr and Mrs. Urban Raef were asleep in bed, when Mr. Raef woke up in the middle of the night, to a curious odor. They assumed the pilot light on the stove was not functioning properly.
He woke up his wife who then attempted to check but was taken aback by her sudden inability to move her legs. While Mrs. Raef was stricken by the paralysis
of her lower limbs, Mr. Raef had become violently nauseous and began vomiting.
Later that morning the neighbor’s daughter reportedly woke up coughing and was also temporarily stricken by paralysis leaving her unable to leave her bed.
This was the beginning of a series of similarly odd incidents that would quickly snowball into a frenzy. The following night, Mrs Aline Kearney and her three-year-old daughter would become the next victims of the strange odor phenomenon. At around 11:00 p.m. Mrs. Kearney is said to have caught a whiff of a sweet-smelling gas followed by a loss of feeling in her legs. She was paralyzed from the waist down for about half an hour during which her daughter who was sleeping in the same room as her was overcome by an illness that lasted throughout the night.
Mad Gasser of Mattoon described as wearing all black
An account from this particular incident reports that Mattoon police received a call from Aline that someone had pumped gas into her bedroom. According to her husband, Mr. Kearney upon returning home late at night when he received news of his wife’s ailments he spotted a prowler outside the window and chased the figure with no success. Kearney reported that the individual was wearing all black
as well as the tightly fitted cap and was tall. While both she and her daughter recovered quickly, Mrs. Kearney reported that through the next day her mouth
and throat felt parched in her lips felt burned which she attributed to the prowlers’ unknown form of gas.
Word of this attack spread quickly and Mattoon’s daily newspaper, the Mattoon Journal Gazette published the story with the headline: “Anesthetic prowler on the loose.”
Being that the population was so small at the time, the Gazette reached 97% of families in Mattoon, likely making it a prominent source of information for the small town. The publication received a large number of attention from locals, which some could argue only added to an already paranoid populace.
In the context of World War II, D-Day had only just happened. So some sort of retaliatory attack would not have been unfathomable at the time. The press had written extensively about the possibility of gas warfare from the Nazis. So, this type of attack could have potentially been on the horizon, given the current state of affairs.
Mattoon had a threat of an escaped Nazi
Not only did people fear Nazi gas warfare, but the town of Mattoon had even had a threat of an escaped Nazi. Additionally, there had been a recent increase of break-ins in town. The Mattoon Journal Gazettes headline was the beginning of a series of perplexing cases involving a phantom attacker, who was later dubbed the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Astutely T.R. Reid of the Washington Post questioned years later, why in fact, the Mattoon Journal Gazette predicted a string of similar attacks to come after this.
Neighbors of the first victim who reported the gas attack began to report similar attacks in the days following the Gazette article leading to more gazette headlines, such as “Mad anesthetist strikes again.”
Interestingly on September 7th, the gasser made news again, despite there being no reported attacks on that day. The article read: “Mattoon’s mad anesthetist apparently took a respite from his maniacal forays Thursday night. Terrified citizens inclined to hold their breath and wonder when and where he might strike next.
Chicago papers also circulated in Mattoonand soon picked up the story, adding to the growing number of articles also recounting the nightly attacks in Mattoon. For two weeks straight, there was a steady and steep increase in the amount of gasser attacks reported.
Most gas attacks happened at night
It seemed most of the alleged attacks happened during the night ranging from around 10:00 p.m. to the early morning hours. 25 residents all made similar claims. They woke up in the middle of the night smelling heavy gas which would cause them to choke, vomit, and or become temporarily paralyzed. Generally, the only physical evidence was mostly footprints found underneath windows or torn window screens.
In a later report, another citizen reported seeing the gasser suggesting the person in question was a woman dressed as a man and found a woman’s footprints below a window.Despite the great commotion they were causing the town the gasser or any trace of them was yet to be found by Mattoon police who had assigned 10-person team to the case. The state police were also called in and bands of vigilantes also patrolled the night in search of a culprit.
At this point, the gasser became a national figure, fighting with headlines about war, the presidential election and other big topics during that time.Even Times wrote about the gasser. The Army’s Chemical Warfare Service also got involved attempting to determine what the supposed gas could have been.
Mad Gasser of Mattoon led to many false reports
By September 12th the police had been reportedly overwhelmed by what they now believe were false reports and thus, they decided to reduce the priority of the gasser investigation. Later that day the Mattoon police chief C.E. Cole released a statement the police’s shocking decision regarding the case in which they told the public that, The entire incident was likely the result of explainable occurrences exacerbated by public fears and a sign of the anxiety felt by women while local men were on war service.
The police investigation had led them to believe that the gasser did not actually exist, but that the way in which the wind shifted at night was causing the gases created from a local war plant to end up inside people’s homes. They also believe that the mass outbreak of cases was likely the result of the hysteria that had overtaken the terrified town. Additionally, the police investigation also led them to theorize that the various footprints that were found by victims and glimpses of the gasser fleeing the alleged victim’s homes may have actually been bystanders who had taken it upon themselves to investigate homes that were increasing erupting with hysteria and chaos.
Whether or not this report truly broke the spell of fear and hysteria is unknown but the reports of attacks ended abruptly after its release. A suspect was never named and files were never charged. The ambiguity surrounding this case has left some highly dubious believing that the mad gasser of Mattoon never really existed at all. Alternatively and naturally many have theorized possible answers to such a bizarre episode in history. The three most commonly accepted theories about the mad guesser Mattoon include mass hysteria, industrial pollution, and an assailant who has never been found.
Many believe it to be a case of mass hysteria
The theory of mass hysteria is generally the most popular theory especially in correlation with theories about industrial waste affecting their community. Additionally, both of these theories don’t necessarily rule out the idea that there could have been a gasser but that the reported cases hit unrealistic numbers. At the time local commissioner of public health Thomas V. Wright stated in regards to the outbreak of cases, There’s no doubt that a gas maniac exists and has made a number of attacks, but many of the reported the attacks are nothing more than hysteria. Fear of the gas man is entirely out of proportion to the menace at the relatively harmless gas is spraying. The whole town is sick with hysteria.
The Illinois Crime Bureau and professor D.M. Johnson a psychologist at the University of Illinois performed a detailed investigation of the attacks and found that there was never any real gas used in the attacks as well as finding there to be no evidence of a prowler.
The report, however, did find that the physical symptoms many victims faced were real and in line with classic symptoms of mass hysteria. Fortunately the symptoms from these attacks were not deadly nor severe and had no long-term effects. Professor Johnson wrote in his report that the string of attacks were largely started by the imagination of that first woman who claimed to be a victim.
Mad Gasser of Mattoon may be a supernatural being
In the case, the Phantom anesthetist was entirely psychogenic. An exciting uncritical story appearing in the evening paper. As the news spread, other people reported similar symptoms more exciting stories are written and so the affairs snowballed. He believed largely that the case of the mad gasser was a testament to the influential power of the press on public opinion as well as on public health. Two women were even admitted to the hospital claiming to be victims of the gasser but were eventually labeled as having nervous tension. Johnson claims that such hysteria would not have broken out if the Mattoon Journal Gazette hadn’t published that headline the day after one person reported being gassed.
Experts, also point to the precedent of mass hysteria taking over communities throughout history, perhaps best evidenced by the various dancing plagues in Europe in the 1300s, through the 1500s during which towns of people claim that they found themselves dancing against their will, compulsively dancing, sometimes in public for extended periods of time to exhaustion. There are still some researchers who believe that the gas attacks could have been done by an actual attacker.
There is also a faction of people who believe that the gasser may be attributed to paranormal activity. According to the Washington Post, the original lady who reported being gassed eventually returned to her normal life and did not discuss anything about her initial report about the gas attack incident. The case of the mad gasser Mattoon is now widely used as an example of mass hysteria in psychology classes and if the mad gasser really existed, the motive alone which is unclear and perplexing is enough to leave one guessing.
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