Mad Gasser of Mattoon

For about two weeks in late summer 1944, the small city of Mattoon, Illinois – a railroad town in Coles County – was convinced that a mysterious prowler was gassing its residents. The first reports came on the night of August 31 and the morning of September 1, when a man and woman on Grant Avenue were said to have been awakened by a strange odor that left them weak, nauseated and, in the wife’s case, partly paralyzed. Later that night, a woman named Aline Kearney reported a strong, sweet smell coming through an open bedroom window and lost the feeling in her legs. Her husband Bert, a taxi driver, came home to find a man standing near the window; he described him as tall, thin and dressed in dark clothing with a tight-fitting cap.

The story spread quickly through local newspapers. Within days, dozens of people claimed to have smelled the gas or seen a figure at their windows. Over about two weeks more than two dozen incidents were reported to police. Symptoms were a sweet or sickly smell, coughing, nausea, and a brief weakness or numbness in the legs. No one died and nothing dangerous was identified, but many residents were frightened, and armed citizens patrolled the streets at night. Rumors circulated about an escaped asylum patient, a mad scientist and a foreign spy, and agents from the FBI were reportedly called in from Springfield.

Police could find no gas and no gasser. A white cloth left on one porch was the only physical item investigators collected, and it tested negative for chemicals. On September 12, police chief C. E. Cole publicly said no one had been pumping gas into homes, suggesting that shifting winds had carried fumes from a local war plant through open windows and that fear had made things worse. The Daily Illini headlined the news that the prowler had been “claimed fake.” Reports quickly dried up, and the last notable report, from September 13, described the gasser as a woman dressed as a man.

Psychologists have long treated Mattoon as a textbook example of mass psychogenic illness. A 1945 study by Donald M. Johnson in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology argued that newspaper coverage, wartime anxiety and suggestion fed the panic. The story remains a favorite of Illinois folklore, and a staple of books on strange American events. Similar gas-attack scares were reported in Botetourt County, Virginia, in 1933 and 1934.

Described by Bert Kearney as a tall, thin man in dark clothing and a tight-fitting cap. A later witness described a woman dressed in men’s clothing. Victims reported a sickly sweet smell, sometimes a blue vapor or buzzing sound.

Residential streets and open bedroom windows in Mattoon, Illinois, mostly at night, from August 31 to mid-September 1944.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon is one of the best-known cases of mass panic in American history. It has been studied by psychologists and retold in books on Illinois legends and weird history. The University of Illinois Library has written about the case using Daily Illini coverage from September 1944, and a 2003 book by Scott Maruna, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria, examined the case in detail.