Many of us grew up with fears of home intruders and prowlers, making sure to keep our doors locked and shades closed. But what if someone didn’t even have to enter your home to harm you?
In 1944, police in the small town of Mattoon, Illinois were inundated with reports of a maniac using toxic gas to target residents.
Nicknamed The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the assailant allegedly targeted over 20 people, often using an open window to inject their homes with a gas that would make them sick or even paralyzed.
Many have dismissed the attacks as a case of mass hysteria but is it possible that there’s a more nefarious explanation? Was the Mad Gasser of Mattoon actually real?
The First Attack of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon
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On September 1st, 1944, a Mattoon resident named Dorothy Kearney had just climbed into bed after putting her kids to sleep when she noticed an odd, sweet odor in the air.
At first, she thought it was coming from the flower bed outside of her window but as the smell got stronger she began to lose feeling in her lower body.
Unable to get out of bed, she called out to her sister Martha, who rushed into the room and instantly noticed the smell. She called the police but they were unable to find the source of the strange smell or any sign of a prowler.
Later on, that night, after the police had already left, Mrs. Kearney’s husband Bert was returning home from his job as a taxi driver when he noticed a tall man dressed in black clothing peering into the bedroom window.
Mr. Kearney gave chase but the stranger got away. The police came back but once again found nothing.
Early Incidents
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Four days later, two other residents, Carl and Beulah Cordes, had just returned home from a night out when they noticed a white cloth sitting on their porch by a screen door.
Mrs. Cordes picked up the cloth, smelled it, and almost immediately fell violently ill. Like Mrs. Kearney, she experienced paralysis in her legs.
Her lips became swollen and her throat was overcome with a burning sensation. The police were called but they suffered no ill effects themselves after smelling the piece of cloth.
The cloth was examined by a chemical expert named John Sutter, but he detected no trace of any chemicals although he indicated it was possible that the chemicals had evaporated.
Mrs. Cordes hypothesized that the cloth had been left there in order to knock out the family dog who usually slept there, which would have allowed the prowler easier access to the house.
After her symptoms had subsided, Mrs. Cordes investigated the area around her home and found an old skeleton key and a tube of lipstick on the sidewalk near the porch.
A man was apprehended by police about a block away from the scene later that night and brought in for questioning but was eventually released.
Increase in Attacks
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Seven attacks occurred the next night. The first one happened at 9 p.m. to a woman named Glenda Henfershott.
She claimed to have seen a dark figure lurking near her home and her 11-year-old daughter became violently ill two hours later, leading Mrs. Henfershott to believe she had been gassed.
At 10 PM, Mrs. Ardell Spangler was overcome with what she described as “sickly sweet fumes” and fell ill shortly after.
At midnight, a restaurant owner named Laura Junken was walking into her apartment when she noticed a strange smell that she compared to cheap perfume and almost immediately felt weak and had difficulty walking.
She noticed that she had left her window open by about 4 inches and surmised that the gasser had used the small opening to inject the fumes.
Shortly after this incident, 60-year-old Fred Goble fell ill from the effects of something he saw being sprayed into his room through his window but his wife, who was lying next to him, didn’t experience any symptoms.
His neighbor Robert Daniels said he saw a tall, thin man running away from Goble’s home.
Chaos
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By the next day, news of the mad gasser had sent the small town into a frenzy, with people speculating about the identity of the culprit and about the kind of chemical that he was using.
Many people thought it could have been chloroform, but the US Army Chemical Warfare Service suggested it could have been chloropicrin, a widely available poison gas with a sweet odor that was used commercially to kill insects.
Mattoon had a very small police force, with only two officers and eight patrol men and they were completely unprepared for the onslaught of sightings.
Police Chief Eugene Cole was initially skeptical of the reports, blaming them on hysteria.
Nonetheless, they searched the streets at night for any sign of the gasser, but the only person they were able to capture was a teenager who was playing a prank on a friend by tapping on her window in an attempt to scare her.
He was released after being questioned and being forced to take a lie-detector test. Many more attacks were reported and by the time the state investigators arrived, the town was in a full-blown panic.
Police cars constantly drove by with their sirens blaring, answering call after call. The police cars were often trailed by cars filled with Mattoon residents hoping to catch a glimpse of the mad gasser.
This became such a big problem that the Police Commissioner ordered his officers to arrest anyone caught chasing a patrol car.
Crowds of people gathered at city hall and demanded news of the gasser. Other citizens took a more proactive approach, patrolling the streets with guns.
Other Reports of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon
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There were so many vigilantes that the commissioner worried innocent people would be killed, stating that he wouldn’t dare walk through anybody’s backyard at night, not even for $10,000.
Luckily no one was killed during this time, but there was a report of a woman who blew a hole in her kitchen wall with her husband’s shotgun out of fear of the gasser.
By the time the final attack occurred, over 20 homes had been targeted. Many of the attacks followed a similar pattern.
They would always occur at night, the victims would smell a sweet odor and shortly after fall ill, often to the point of becoming paralyzed for a short amount of time.
On several occasions, a dark figure was seen near a window or fleeing the scene.
Usually, the gasser was described as a tall, thin man but one woman named Bertha Burch described the gasser as a woman dressed like a man, and a woman’s footprints were also found near the scene.
The most unusual report came from a local fortune teller named Edna James, who said that she was lying in bed at night when she noticed a strange odor coming from the kitchen.
She went to investigate and came face-to-face with the gasser. She claimed that the gasser wasn’t a human, but instead a strange ape man with long arms and a deformed face.
It pointed its spray gun at her and doused her in a cloud of gas. This report was not seen as credible by police and it was becoming obvious that many of the reports were simply caused by peoples’ anxiety over the possibility of an attack.
Panic
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There was even one woman named Eaton Paradise who called the police in a panic, claiming that her house had just been gassed.
When police arrived, they quickly discovered that the unusual smell was coming from a spilled container of nail polish remover.
On September 12, Police Chief Cole made an announcement: the mad gasser never existed and all of the reports were simply due to mass hysteria.
The odd smells that permeated the town were simply coming from a nearby plant that produced army shell casings.
This announcement angered and divided the city. People thought that the police weren’t taking the case seriously.
Furthermore, not all police officials agreed with Cole, some believed that the initial reports were true and that the later attacks were false alarms.
The plant that Chief Cole blamed for the sickening fumes also refuted the claim. They said that their facilities had been recently inspected and that if fumes really were leaking, their workers would have fallen ill before the residents of Mattoon.
Despite the Chief’s attempt to disregard the attacks as hysteria, authorities were investigating several suspects, going as far as putting one of them under 24-hour surveillance.
Mass Hysteria or the Mad Gasser of Mattoon?
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The man who was being surveilled was Farley Llewellyn. He was an amateur chemist who was described as brilliant by his university professors but was an outcast in Mattoon due to his unusual behavior and rumors about his sexual orientation.
He lived in a trailer behind his parents’ store where people claimed he conducted chemical experiments. Shortly before the attacks started, there was a small explosion in Farley’s home lab that did considerable damage to his trailer.
Illinois historian Scott Maruna claims that it’s possible Farley had been synthesizing Tetrachloroethane, which is a chlorinated derivative of ethane with a sweet smell that is known to cause headaches, dizziness, and drowsiness.
All of the attacks occurred within a few blocks of Farley’s home however the police were never able to find enough evidence to charge him for the gas attacks.
The lack of physical evidence is the main problem with this case. Aside from the handkerchief found on the Cordes’ porch, there’s really nothing linking the attacks to a real person.
Every other piece of evidence is vague. It’s also worth noting that the attacks occurred during World War 2 when fears of chemical attacks were everywhere.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that none of the reports were real, in fact I think the earliest attacks did possibly happen, but most of the later reports were almost certainly due to hysteria.
