The Mad Gasser of Mattoon
36:57 Share

You've probably heard someone use the term "gaslighting" before. It's made a resurgence in recent years. But you might not know that the word originally comes from a play that was adapted into a Hollywood thriller. The film was called "Gaslight," and it featured a young Angela Lansbury in her first-ever Oscar-nominated role.

Charles Boyer plays a husband who manipulates his new wife, played by Ingrid Bergman, into believing, among other things, that she's insane for thinking the gas lamps in their house keep dimming. The lamps really are dimming, but he convinces his wife that it's all in her head, so he can send her to a psychiatric hospital and search for jewels that are hidden in the house.

If you like classic cinema and gothic romances, it's worth checking out. But the real reason I mention it is because the movie hit theaters in 1944, the exact same year that a violent and bizarre mystery shook a small Illinois town, attracting international attention. And for the past 80 years, one question has continuously come up.

Was the mystery of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon solved? Or was an entire town of people gaslit?

Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod, and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.

This episode is brought to you by Oli. Back to school means food changes, early breakfasts, school lunches, after school snacks, and let's not even talk about dinner. Oli's here to help you cover all the wellness spaces from daily multivitamins to belly balancing probiotics. Oli's got your fam covered. Buy three and get one free with code bundle24 at O-L-L-Y dot com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. So much of what the world is obsessed with starts out in New York City. It's a place full of style and character that has something for everyone. With a range of flavors to meet any kind of taste, it's no wonder Vitamin Water was born there. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring, Vitamin Water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. Grab a Vitamin Water today. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

- Bocas del Toro, Panama.

Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

After the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, railroads established Mattoon, Illinois as an American destination. It then became the town where General Ulysses S. Grant first took command of troops in the American Civil War. Then it blossomed into a center for coal mining, agriculture, and manufacturing jobs.

But the reason we're talking about Mattoon today is because of a string of events that came to light in September 1944. It's the first of the month, a Friday. Aline Carney spends the evening with her sister Martha. They both have young kids and Aline's husband Bert works late, driving a taxi. Around 11 p.m., Aline heads to bed and takes her three-year-old daughter with her. Moments later,

screams erupt from her bedroom. Martha frantically races in with questions, and that's when Aline tells her sister something is really wrong. She can't move the lower half of her body. She feels a sense of paralysis from the waist down. It started moments earlier when she smelled a sickening sweet odor drift in from her open window. At first, she thought it was just flowers,

But now she's scared and doesn't know what to do. The scent hasn't gone away. Martha can smell it too. Martha calls a neighbor and asks them to help. The neighbor alerts the police almost immediately. He searches Aline's home and yard, looking for evidence of who or what could have caused the sudden attack. Officers comb the neighborhood, but they don't find anything or anyone unusual.

It's not until Aline's husband Bert returns home around 12:30 that a potential suspect reveals themselves. Bert pulls up to the house and sees a figure standing outside one of the windows. From his vantage point, it looks to be a man. They're tall, dressed in dark clothes, and wearing a tight-fitting skull cap. Bert runs at the figure, trying to catch the culprit,

But he's not quick enough. They get away. The police return to Kearney's house that night. Officers conduct another, more thorough search, but still, they don't find anything. Too scared to sleep in the house, Aline and the kids spend the rest of the night at a relative's. The next day, Mattoon's local paper, the Journal Gazette, runs a front-page story under the headline, "'Anesthetic Prowler on Loose.'"

It claims Aline's paralysis lasted for about 30 minutes. According to Aline, her lips still burn and her throat and mouth feel parched well into the next day. She tells reporters her daughter, Dorothy Ellen, who was in the room with her, experienced symptoms too, but made a full recovery by morning. Based on Aline's description of the odor, her symptoms, and the figure at the window,

The author theorizes that a stranger, with unknown motives, may have released some type of gas or fumes into Aline's bedroom through the open window. Maybe chloroform, ether, or a combination of the two. Aline suggests theft may have been a motive. She says that she and Martha had been counting money that night. Someone could have easily seen them from the street.

It would certainly be easier to rob a house if the occupants were paralyzed. The story sends shockwaves through the small Illinois town. But the bigger surprise comes when a string of people contact the Journal Gazette saying Aline Carney and her daughter may not have been the first victims of the so-called "anesthetic prowler" or the last. Other Mattoon residents reach out with stories of their own.

The night before the Kearney incident, a man named Urban Rafe and his wife say they woke up around 3:00 a.m. and smelled what they describe as a peculiar heavy odor in their bedroom. At first, Urban thought maybe his wife left the stove on, but she didn't. For the next hour and a half, they felt sick and overwhelmed by a bizarre sensation of paralysis. According to them,

The guests staying at their house, in a separate wing, didn't smell anything or experience any symptoms. On the same night as the Carney's, two other families noticed a strange sweet odor in their bedrooms. One claims the fumes made them lightheaded and their children restless. The other says the gas made her children sick. She woke up to them vomiting. But the reports don't just come from that Labor Day weekend.

The earliest is from a woman named Olive Brown. She reaches out to the Journal Gazette with an account that mirrors Aline Carney's experience. The smell, the paralysis, the fear. Olive says the only reason she didn't report anything earlier was because, in her words, "it all just seemed too fantastic." There are also two other reports made to police that weekend.

Two different witnesses saw a suspicious-looking figure loitering in the southwestern part of town. The descriptions they give police match the figure Bert Carney saw outside his house. It suggests there may very well be a madman on the loose, releasing an unknown gas into residents' homes. But the scariest part is, no one knows why.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the attacks. No clear link between the victims, which means anyone could be next. On the night of September 5th, Carl and Beulah Cordes return to their home around 10 p.m. and find a surprise waiting for them on their porch. A cloth pressed up against their screen door. Beulah describes it as being larger than a man's handkerchief.

Without thinking, she picks the rag up and sniffs it. She's immediately overcome. She describes the sensation as "coming into contact with a strong electric current." Then the paralysis hits, and she starts spitting blood.

When you bring your own phone and switch at a San Francisco Verizon, you get three lines for the price of two, which is perfect if, like, you're a couple with a daughter who's ready for her own phone. Or maybe you have a son who wants to be able to text you and definitely not his girlfriend. Or a brother who wants in on the deal. Or your uncle could really use a line. Or your wife has a sweet but clingy twin sister. Or your best friend from college relies on you.

give him a free line. Or you guys have a roommate who's kind of a mooch, or your dog walker needs a solid, or your wife's ex-boss' dermatologist attorney's best friend could also use a line. Anyway, you get the idea.

Bring your phone and get three lines for the price of two and pay less than $29 a line. Visit a San Francisco Verizon store now and save. $180 BYOD promo credit per phone and $720 local promo credit applied over 36 months. For new customers activating three new lines with your own 4G or 5G phones, an unlimited welcome plan required. Additional terms apply. Auto pay and paper-free billing required. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds.

Around 10:00 PM on September 5th, 1944, Carl and Beulah Cordes find a cloth pressed against the screen door to their house. After Beulah raises the rag to her face and inhales, the symptoms set in. She can't move. Carl has to help her inside. They call a physician to the house, but Beulah is ultimately sent to the hospital.

Her symptoms last for upwards of two hours. She suffers burns on her face. Her throat feels like it's on fire. Her lips swell so badly, they bleed. She spits blood. Even 24 hours later, she has trouble swallowing. It's the sixth known incident, but it's also unique. Besides the severity of Beulah's symptoms, it's the first time any real evidence has been found.

First, there's the cloth. But the Cordes' also find two items near their house. At the edge of their front porch, they find a skeleton key that looks to be well-worn. And nearby, there's a large tube of lipstick. Maybe Bert Carney was mistaken. Maybe the figure he saw outside his house wasn't a man after all. Maybe police should have been looking for a tall woman all along.

Or maybe there's not one person responsible, but many. Officers arrive at the Cordes' house that night and take the cloth in for testing. They also search the area for signs of a prowler, but the few leads they think they encounter turn out to be dead ends. After recovering, Beulah speaks to a representative from the Journal Gazette. She theorizes that the cloth they found on the front porch may not have been meant for her.

Their dog usually sleeps on the front porch. She suggests maybe they were the Prowler's intended target. They planned on knocking out the dog to gain entrance into the house, but ran away when she and her husband showed up. She says they entered the house through the back door that night. It's possible their arrival caught the Prowler by surprise, so they left to find a new target.

Around 11.15 p.m. on September 5th, another resident of Mattoon woke up coughing and smelling fumes. They were apparently so strong it felt like she was being strangled. Her husband was at work at the time, but she and her young son left to go to a neighbor's house. She experienced persistent soreness in her chest afterward.

Regardless of who or what is causing the attacks, one thing becomes clear: they're not slowing down or going away. What's worse, the town's police force is currently severely understaffed. Most of the town's men are fighting in the war efforts overseas. Mattoon's Commissioner of Public Health and Safety contacts state officials and asks for assistance.

He addresses the director of public safety directly, asking him to send men to report to the chief of police. Meanwhile, officials float new theories about the nature of the gas being used. Mattoon's mayor, who happens to be a physician, tells reporters that he doubts it's chloroform or ether. He says both require close contact to have any significant effect.

Instead, he thinks it might be oil of mustard. A spokesperson from an Army chemical warfare service in Chicago has a different opinion. They suggest it might be chloropicrin, a commercial gas used by exterminators, often on rats. It's easy to procure and apparently has a sweet smell that can linger on cloth.

Soon, the rag found at the Cordes' house is taken to a state crime lab for analysis by a chemical expert. But time isn't on their side. State officials warn it could be days before results come in. It's around this time that the story of what's happening in Mattoon really snowballs. By the 8th of September, news spreads across the country.

It's been one week since Aline Carney first smelled a sickening sweet odor in her bedroom, and the total number of reported victims has risen to 18. Dozens of papers from New York to California run articles about the mentally unstable person who uses a spray gun to release a mysterious gas into strangers' homes.

Its fumes smell like gardenias and cause paralysis and illness. They call the culprit the Anesthetic Prowler, the Mad Anesthetist, the Madman of Mattoon, and the Phantom Chemist. Some even use the term "Boogie Man." But eventually, the world settles on the Mad Gasser.

On the weekend of the 9th and 10th, police receive dozens more calls from persons claiming to be victims of the Mad Gasser. Some check themselves into hospitals with symptoms, but no doctor can determine what's wrong. They're sent home with prescriptions for sedatives to ease their nerves. Residents spiral into a panic. Citizens take safety measures into their own hands.

Bands of vigilantes patrol Mattoon's streets with guns and other weapons. Women leave their homes with bats and clubs. People begin following police cars out of the station as they answer calls, curious if they're responding to a mad gasser attack. Soon, five state police squads touch down in Mattoon to maintain order. They're told to patrol the streets downtown, while local officers protect the more residential areas.

An FBI agent even arrives in Mattoon. They're allegedly not there to play an active role in the ongoing investigation, but they do want to learn more about the mysterious gas. As tensions in Mattoon reach a fever pitch, the police commissioner releases a statement on the front page of the Journal Gazette. It asks for residents' 100% cooperation on four points. One,

Stay off the streets in residential areas unless absolutely necessary. Two, disband any and all roaming bands of vigilantes. They're in danger of getting shot by a frightened property owner. Three, don't shoot at anyone unless you happen to be staring at a man outside your window and even then use extreme care. And four, stop following police cars or you'll be arrested.

Officials are right to be concerned. The citizens of Mattoon are so on edge that a man mistakes a stray cat at his window for the mad gasser. A woman accidentally blows a hole in her kitchen ceiling with a gun her husband gave her for protection.

And police don't really have a choice. They have to take every threat seriously. A young kid apparently goes over to a girl's house one day and makes a joke about being the mad gasser. He says something to the effect of, "'Mind if I leave my skullcap and spray gun with you?' And because he doesn't let the joke go, officers arrest him, take him into custody, and give him a polygraph test."

Soon, the victim count is up to at least 35 people. News reaches overseas. As one soldier fights a war abroad in England, he reads about a different kind of warfare happening in his small Midwestern hometown. Word travels as far as Southeastern Asia to India,

By September 15th, it's been two weeks without answers. But police are now able to reach Holmes within seconds of receiving a call. Officials have claimed they've narrowed their investigation down to four chief suspects. They say two are amateur chemists. The other two are, in their words, crackpots. They still believe the gas is most likely chloropicrin, the stuff exterminators use to kill rats.

Concerned citizens write a letter to the Journal Gazette's editor. They want more lights installed around town. World War II has caused gas rationing in the states. More people are walking these days and it's not safe to walk in the dark. The darkness, they claim, encourages prowlers. The lights, though, probably never get installed.

By the time the letter reaches its intended audience, the number of Mad Gas reports have slowed to as few as one call in a given night, a far cry from days earlier, which might have something to do with the fact that the chief of police made a declaration. They found the responsible party.

In mid-September 1944, Mattoon's chief of police declares the Mad Gasser investigation a mistake from beginning to end. He believes officials have found the source of the town's problems. It's not a person. It's a business. Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company runs a plant in Mattoon. They make gas and diesel engines for boats, trains, farm equipment, and more.

Their business has boomed in recent years as demand for wartime technology soared, so much so that their employee numbers have more than quadrupled. According to the chief of police, the plant is the likely cause of the Mad Gasser attacks.

His statement reads, "We have found that large quantities of carbon tetrachloride are used in the work done at the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company plant, and that has an odor which could be carried to all parts of the city as the wind shifts."

On some level, it makes sense. Carbon tetrachloride is a non-flammable liquid that evaporates quickly. It has a sweet smell reminiscent of ether, and it's widely used as an industrial chemical. Exposure to air containing high levels of carbon tetrachloride can cause nausea, vomiting, dizziness, confusion, nerve damage, and more. But on another level, it makes no sense at all.

If the odor was being carried on the wind, why was it only affecting certain people at certain times? In some cases, victims who were sleeping in one room of a house fell sick, while people staying in another didn't. The attacks seemed much more targeted than a bunch of chemicals carried by the wind. And people are quick to poke holes in the police chief's explanation. The backlash is almost immediate.

As representatives from Atlas Imperial point out, officials never visited their facilities, never conducted an investigation, never ran any tests, and none of their on-site employees have suffered an illness from fumes. So, holding them responsible for the events of the past few weeks is not only an enormous leap of logic, it's irresponsible. The chief is forced to rescind his comments,

Investigators are back to the drawing board at a time when things continue to get even stranger. After a few days of little to no sightings or reports, a 44-year-old inn owner named Edna James comes forward with what should be major news. She came face to face with the mad gasser. Her story starts off like all the others. She was in bed when she smelled a strange odor.

Trying to find the source, she went to the kitchen. And that's when she saw him. The Mad Gasser. He was holding a spray gun, crouching on the other side of her kitchen table, and he was covered in hair. Because, according to Edna, the Mad Gasser was an ape man. He sprayed her three times and then left. Edna claims she felt sick for the next two days.

But that wasn't the last time the Mad Gasser reared his simian head. A few days later, he came back to Edna's inn, but disappeared almost immediately because he saw four men in the lobby. In addition to being the owner of an inn, Edna is Mattoon's only fortune teller. And as you might imagine, her account doesn't go over well with police.

They warn that anyone who comes forward with complaints of strange visitations in the future will be investigated and examined themselves. And it's around this time that Mattoon really starts to become the butt of jokes. A nearby newspaper, the Decatur Herald, publishes a piece poking fun of Mattoon for the Mad Gasser. They basically accuse the town and everyone in it of completely overreacting.

Which definitely hurt some feelings. But the idea that the Mad Gasser attacks may have been a hoax or some sort of giant coincidence didn't start with Edna's account or the Herald's mocking article. That actually started about a week after the Journal Gazette published their first article and possibly earlier.

Five chemical experts from Chicago suggested the attacks were possibly the result of a rumor combined with 98% imagination. And as answers continued to escape officials, more and more reports seemed like coincidences. Like the one alleged victim who lived near a bike shop that used a particularly strong-smelling paint remover.

or another who didn't realize she spilled a bottle of nail polish near her open window. Over time, the theory that the Mad Gasser never existed at all becomes the only theory. And that's still the official explanation to this day. The events of Mattoon have widely been cited as an example of what we now call a mass psychogenic illness,

sometimes shortened to MPI and commonly referred to as a panic. An MPI is a phenomenon in which a large group of people succumb to the same apparent disease, one that isn't caused by germs. It's a psychological response to a stressful situation. But MPIs can cause real physical symptoms.

Outbreaks can usually be traced to a traumatic event within a community, and they commonly occur in populations experiencing severe anxiety. For example, experts generally agree that a series of scarce harvests and peasant uprisings in the 16th century led to what we now call the Dancing Plague of 1518. That summer, in the town of Strasbourg in what is now modern-day France,

Hundreds of townspeople took to the streets and danced feverishly until they collapsed. Some even died. They weren't celebrating. Their pain and distress was clear. They just literally couldn't stop themselves. The climate of Mattoon in 1944 may have been just as stressful as Strasbourg in 1518.

Many residents had loved ones fighting in the war, and a particularly nasty strain of the flu had swept through the region. With so many people on edge, experts believe it didn't take much to ignite a panic in Mattoon. Just a few sensationalized reports of a madman on the loose. But even still, people haven't stopped asking the question.

Is it possible the mad gasser was real and local officials gaslit the residents of Mattoon into believing otherwise? After all, they were under a lot of pressure to get the situation under control, and a panic sounds a lot better than, we have no idea what's going on and we're no closer to catching the culprit. There's a lot in this story that feels real.

And not just the physical symptoms like paralysis and spitting up blood. What about all the eyewitness accounts? What about the cloth? The skeleton key? The lipstick? What happened to the four suspects police were after? Did the forensic reports ever come back from that state lab? According to the Journal Gazette,

Some of the nation's most noted chemical investigators were in Mattoon for three days and agreed that gas was present in the first few cases. They just couldn't identify it. In the paper's opinion, mass hysteria could explain some, but not all, of the reports. They said there was indisputable evidence that there was a real gasser at first. They believed the culprit wasn't caught because, one,

The police didn't take the case seriously at first, and two, by the time they did, the town's panic and outside forces made the investigation impossible. Of course, the Journal Gazette helped fuel the rumors of the Mad Gasser in the first place, and their reputation was on the line. But even a superintendent with the State Department of Public Safety, who suspected that many of the reports were the result of a panic,

qualified his statement by saying he believed the gas itself was real. And if the mad gasser attacks were the result of a panic in Mattoon, and they weren't the only town in America, this happened too. About a decade earlier, a county in Virginia experienced an eerily similar string of gas attacks. They all occurred in the middle of the night, two to three times a week for several weeks.

A doctor who treated some of the victims believed they specifically came in contact with chlorine gas. Like Mattoon, the county believed someone was behind the attacks. Figures were spotted outside, running from affected houses. On one occasion, a man was seen fleeing and jumping into an already running car, and a woman's footprints were discovered outside that car.

as well as many of the other houses. No culprit was ever found. Could that have all been a coincidence too? Absolutely, it definitely could. But we'll leave you with this. In December of 1944, a couple months after everything calmed down in Mattoon, after it was all chalked up to panic, a store clerk in Springfield, Illinois, less than 100 miles away, left work.

It was late at night and as she walked outside, the stranger on the street handed her a small vial and asked her to smell it. Assuming it was perfume, she inhaled and spent the next several hours in a hospital recovering her ability to breathe. Who handed her the vial? We don't know, but it reportedly contained chlorine gas.

Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or email us at conspiracystories at Spotify.com. Until next time, remember...

The truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written and researched by Connor Sampson, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Kelly Geary.

Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson. And Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy. This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. When you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, providing dogs and cats in need with science-led nutrition that helps make them happy, healthy, and ready to be adopted.

It's an initiative that Hills has supported since 2002. And since then, the Food, Shelter and Love program has helped more than 14 million pets find new homes, changing their life forever so they can change yours. Science did that. Learn more at hillspet.com slash podcast.