The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

During the sweltering late summer of 1944, the quiet industrial town of Mattoon, Illinois became the epicenter of one of America's most bizarre and unsettling mass hysteria events. What follows is the true account of these disturbing incidents, drawn from newspaper reports, police records, and eyewitness testimonies.

August 31, 1944, 11:03 PM: Urban and Beulah Raef were asleep in their modest home on North 21st Street when Beulah was suddenly jolted awake by a sweet, sickening odor filling their bedroom. Her legs began to tingle, then grew numb and paralyzed. As she struggled to call out to her husband, her throat constricted, making it nearly impossible to speak. "It felt like someone was holding a cloth over my face," she later told the Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette. "I couldn't move my legs. I thought I was dying." By the time Urban awoke and called the police, the mysterious assailant had vanished into the night, leaving behind only the lingering, nauseating odor.

September 1, 1944, 12:30 AM: Less than two miles away, Thomas and Ardell Wright were awakened by the sound of someone at their bedroom window. Thomas rushed to investigate and glimpsed a tall, thin figure dressed in dark clothing fleeing across their yard. Seconds later, a sickly sweet smell permeated their home. Ardell began gasping for breath, her lips tingling before she collapsed onto the bed, temporarily paralyzed.

Police arrived within minutes but found only footprints beneath the bedroom window. Detective James Hensley noted in his report that the prints appeared to be from "a man's dress shoe, approximately size 10, with an unusual wear pattern on the left heel."

September 2, 1944, 10:47 PM: Carl and Beulah Cordes reported a prowler attempting to enter their home through a bedroom window. As Carl approached the window, he was hit with a blast of gas that left him nauseated and unable to stand. He described the assailant as "a tall, thin man dressed in black, wearing a tight-fitting cap."

The local physician, Dr. William McNally, examined Carl and noted unusual pupil dilation and elevated heart rate inconsistent with typical fear responses. "Whatever agent was used," he wrote in his medical report, "appears to have properties similar to both a mild paralytic and a hallucinogen."

September 5, 1944, 2:25 AM: Mrs. Frances Smith and her daughter reported waking to find a man standing at the foot of their bed, holding what appeared to be a tube or spray gun. Before they could scream, he sprayed a mist into the air that left them choking and paralyzed for nearly thirty minutes. "His eyes," Mrs. Smith later told investigators, "they were almost glowing in the dark, like an animal's."

Curiously, the Smith family dog, kept in the backyard, had not barked during the intrusion. When interviewed by the Mattoon Police Commissioner Thomas Drysdale, neighbors reported seeing a black sedan with its lights off parked down the street approximately twenty minutes before the attack.

September 6, 1944, 4:10 PM: The Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette published its first front-page story about the attacks with the headline: "Anesthetic Prowler on Loose." Within hours, local hardware stores sold out of window locks and the town's single gun shop reported selling twelve firearms in a single afternoon.

September 8, 1944: By this date, more than two dozen similar attacks had been reported throughout Mattoon. The town was gripped by fear. Men formed neighborhood patrols. Families slept in shifts. Children were kept indoors after sunset.

A pattern emerged in the attacks: most victims were women, and most incidents occurred in the working-class north side of town. State chemist Willis Johnson, brought in to analyze residues found at three different homes, reported finding traces of an unknown compound containing elements of both chloroform and tear gas. The Mattoon Police Department, overwhelmed by reports and finding no physical evidence beyond footprints, issued a statement: "We are dealing with either a dangerous, methodical attacker or a case of mass hysteria. Either way, the threat to this community is real."

September 10, 1944, 7:30 PM: FBI Special Agent Robert Doherty arrived from the Chicago field office. His declassified report, released decades later under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that the Bureau had taken interest due to concerns that the attacks might be the work of Axis saboteurs targeting workers at Mattoon's defense manufacturing plants.

September 12, 1944, 11:15 PM: In what would become the final reported attack, Robert and Hortense Daniels described a "mechanical buzzing sound" outside their window followed by a "sweet, chloroform-like odor" that caused immediate respiratory distress and temporary lower-body paralysis. When police arrived, they found a white cloth saturated with an unidentified chemical substance beneath the bedroom window. Laboratory analysis revealed traces of tetrachloroethylene, a cleaning solvent, mixed with an unidentified compound. The attacks stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Despite an intensive investigation involving the FBI, no suspect was ever apprehended.

The Aftermath: In the years following the incidents, several theories emerged: Dr. Donald Johnson of the University of Illinois published a psychological study in 1945 suggesting the attacks were a case of mass hysteria triggered by wartime anxiety and sensationalist newspaper coverage. He pointed to the fact that reports increased dramatically after newspaper coverage began.

Others noted the similarity between symptoms reported and those caused by carbon tetrachloride, a chemical commonly used in Mattoon's Atlas-Imperial manufacturing plant. Plant worker and chemistry enthusiast Farley Llewellyn became a person of interest but was never formally charged.

A 1952 interview with retired Police Commissioner Drysdale revealed that he believed "at least the first three attacks were genuine," but that most subsequent reports were likely copycats or hysteria. He took the unusual step of keeping the original case files in his personal possession until his death in 1963.

Some investigators later suggested mass hysteria amplified by sensationalist newspaper coverage. Others pointed to industrial chemicals from Mattoon's factories causing isolated health incidents. But many victims maintained until their deaths that they had encountered something truly inexplicable that autumn.

What remains undisputed is that for two terrifying weeks in 1944, the citizens of Mattoon lived in fear of an invisible attacker who came to be known as "The Mad Gasser" - a figure who, whether real or imagined, left an indelible mark on this small Midwestern town and stands as one of America's most chilling unsolved mysteries.