“Then his pale countenance is seen gazing into ground-floor windows, and his gaunt form is to be dimly discerned in the gloomiest corners.” – The Weekly Freeman, 8 Sep 1917
In early September 1917, a “spectral figure” was prowling the streets of Mullingar, in County Westmeath. Tall and thin and dressed in grey, it only ever appeared after darkness had fallen, and it amused itself by peering through people’s windows.
Some in the town believed the spooky peerer was a German soldier, escaped from a nearby internment camp. Others believed it was a “wandering lunatic.” And many believed it was a ghost. Whatever it was, it was reportedly giving the people of Mullingar the “shivers.”
But after appearing nightly in the town for about 10 days – the “spectral figure” just disappeared.
Then, at about midnight on 20 September 1917, a Mr Miller, who lived in a cottage on Fair Green in Mullingar, was woken by a noise. When he got up to investigate, he found a man in the next room. The man, wearing “a soldier’s khaki trousers, stockings and shirt,” was brandishing a knife.
Miller immediately tackled the man in an attempt to disarm him, and a “fierce struggle” ensued. During the struggle, Miller claims the intruder attempted to use chloroform – or a similar substance – on him. He said it “had a pungent odour and a somewhat stifling effect.”
Fortunately, the “fierce struggle” woke Mrs Miller, who ran outside and shouted for help.
The intruder untangled himself from Mr Miller and ran outside, too. He stopped to retrieve a cap, coat and boots that he had evidently removed before breaking into the cottage, and ran off into the night.
When the Millers checked their home, they found that the intruder had gained access by removing the bars on a small window “which would only admit the body of a man with great difficulty.”
One of the Millers’ neighbours – Mrs Rooney – had had a similar experience that night. I say similar; Mrs Rooney was actually woken by the intruder standing on her bed. Fortunately, her dog scared him off.
Given the man’s appearance, both police and military were notified of the incidents. But no arrests were ever made. And that was the end of the matter.
Or was it?
2
Just after 11pm on Friday, 1 September 1944, Mrs Aline Kearney went to bed in her Marshall Avenue home in Mattoon, Illinois. Her three-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ellen, was already asleep in the same bedroom.
Shortly after falling asleep, Aline was woken by a “sickening, sweet odour.” At first, she thought it was coming from the flowers outside her bedroom window. “However, the odour grew stronger and I began to feel a paralysis of my legs and lower body,” she recalled later.
Mrs Kearney screamed out for her sister, Martha, who had been staying with her. She came immediately – and was struck by the smell as she entered the room.
Martha ran to the neighbours, the Robertsons, for help. And while Mrs Robertson called the police, her husband ran to the Kearney house to look for an intruder. However, Mr Robertson found no evidence of an intruder. And neither did the police, when they eventually arrived.
Mr Kearney, who had been at work during the incident, had been called home. At 12:30 am, he saw a man at one of the windows at the front of the house. The man was tall, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a tight-fitting cap.
Believing that this was the prowler from earlier, Mr Kearney gave chase. But he was unable to catch him.
The police returned and carried out another – more thorough – search, but again they found nothing.
Mrs Kearney recovered the full use of her limbs after about 30 minutes – but she was left with a parched throat and a burnt mouth. Her daughter had been unaffected by the gas.
Given that they had been keeping a considerable sum of money in the house – Mrs Kearney believed that the incident had been an attempted robbery. And maybe it was.
But it was also the start of a nightmare for the people of Mattoon.
3
On Saturday, 2 September, Mrs Kearney’s ordeal appeared on the front page of the local paper, the Daily Journal-Gazette. “‘Anesthetic Prowler’ on Loose: MRS KEARNEY AND DAUGHTER FIRST VICTIMS,” screamed the headline.
Following the publication of the story, a number of people came forward, claiming to have had similar experiences.
Mrs Rider, who lived on Prairie Avenue, believed that the prowler had called on her immediately after being scared away from the Kearney house. She said that there had been a “peculiar odour” in the bedroom that had made her feel lightheaded and the children “restless.”
A family that lived close to the Riders also came forward. The mother said that she had been woken by the sickly sweet smell and found her children ill and vomiting.
The Raefs, who lived on Grant Avenue, claimed they had been attacked the night before the Kearney incident. According to Mr Urban Raef, he had woken at about 3 o’clock in the morning feeling ill.
“There was a peculiar heavy odour in the bedroom and I at first thought it was gas. I asked my wife if she had left the gas stove turned on, but she hadn’t.
“We both had the same feeling of paralysis and were ill for approximately one and a half hours. Persons visiting with us, who slept in another part of the house, got none of the fumes and were not affected in any way.”
And then there was Mrs Olive Brown, who claimed her and her daughter had had a similar experience – but a few months earlier. They hadn’t reported it, said Mrs Brown, because it had seemed so fantastic at the time.
In addition to these reports of alleged gas attacks, there were a number of sightings of a prowler who closely matched the description given by Mr Kearney.
4
“When I inhaled the fumes from the cloth, I had a sensation similar to coming in contact with a strong electric current. The feeling raced down my body to my feet and then seemed to settle in my knees. It was a feeling of paralysis.”
On the night of 5 September, the “Anesthetic Prowler” called at the North Twenty-First Street home of Carl and Beulah Cordes. Fortunately, they were out at the time.
“My husband and I arrived home about 10 o’clock Tuesday night and according to our usual custom entered our home through the rear door,” recalled Mrs Cordes.
“We had been in the house a few minutes and were sitting in the front room when we noticed a white cloth on the front porch against the screen door.
“I picked up the cloth which was larger than a man’s hankerchief and unfolded it. There was a large wet spot in the centre inside the fold and without thinking I brought the cloth to my face and smelled of it.
“When I inhaled the fumes from the cloth, I had a sensation similar to coming in contact with a strong electric current. The feeling raced down my body to my feet and then seemed to settle in my knees. It was a feeling of paralysis.
“My husband had to help me into the house and soon my lips were swollen and the roof of my mouth burned. I began to spit blood and my husband called a physician. It was more than two hours before I began to feel normal again. You can see my lips and face are still swollen today.”
The Cordes believed that the prowler had been attempting to incapacitate their dog, who normally slept on the porch, before entering the house. And that their return home via the back door had taken him unawares.
Their suspicions were confirmed when they found a “well used” skeleton key near their porch.
Police later arrested a man near the Cordes’ house; but released him when he claimed he had just been “lost.”
Later that night, at about 11:15 pm, the prowler struck again. And this time, his intended victim, a young mother called Mrs Burrell, was at home when he called on her.
As with the Kearney incident, Mrs Burrell was woken from her sleep, “coughing and strangling,” by the gas. However, her 18-month-old son, who was asleep in the same room, was unaffected.
5
“The gas gives you a tickling sensation and makes you want to lie down and rest. Then you get sick to your stomach. It smells like gardenias, but not quite so pretty.” – Unnamed Gasser victim
The Gasser was exceptionally busy over the next few nights.
At about 10 pm on 6 September, Mrs Ardell Spangler woke up feeling ill and her arms and legs were paralysed.
Just after midnight, Mrs Lauran Junken had a similar experience. She said the gas smelled like “cheap perfume.”
And a little later, at 1 am, Fred Goble was wakened by “sweet, sickening fumes.” Fred experienced severe nausea; his wife, however, who was sleeping further away from the window, experienced no ill effects.
At the time of this incident, one of Fred’s neighbours says he saw a tall man run off.
Mrs Codie Taylor, also claims to have been attacked that night. And when 11-year-old Glenda Henshott was found unconscious in her bedroom, that too was seen as the work of the Gasser.
Also on the night of 6 September, Frances Smith, who shared a house with her sister Maxine, was woken by strange noises coming from outside her bedroom window. Blaming her imagination, she went back to sleep.
But on the following night, Frances and her sister Maxine Smith both woke up “gasping and choking” from the now infamous sickening fumes. Soon they began to feel the paralysis reported by the other victims.
And that should have been that. But it didn’t end there for the Smith sisters.
A short time later, they could hear a buzzing noise coming from outside. Then “a thin, blue smoke-like vapour” with a “flower-like” odour began to spread across the room. The Gasser had returned; and the noise, they believed, was coming from the “madman’s spraying apparatus.”
They fled their bedroom, but nothing more happened that night.
On the night of Friday, 8 September, Mrs Violet Driskell and her 11-year-old daughter, Ramona, were attacked in their home. According to the *Chicago Tribune*, they were woken by the prowler when he “attempted to remove a storm sash from the bedroom window.”
Ramona managed to run out on to the porch and call for help – before succumbing to the effects of the gas.
Their neighbours immediately spilled out of their houses to help. None of them saw the prowler – but they could all smell the gas.
6
Come the weekend, “bedlam prevailed” in Mattoon, according to the Daily Journal-Gazette.
Dozens of people called the police claiming to have smelled the gas.
On Saturday night, two women required treatment at Memorial Hospital after inhaling the gas. One had been at home at the time – while the other had been sitting in a theatre – surrounded by other audience members – when she claimed she was attacked. The physician who examined both women found no evidence that they had been exposed to any kind of gas or chemical. In his opinion, they were suffering from “extreme nervous tension.”
The Smith Sisters were attacked – yet again – on Saturday and Sunday night.
And any semblance of normality had packed a bag and gone to stay with its mother. It drove the residents of Mattoon to take drastic actions.
For many, nights were now spent in barricaded houses with all of the lights turned on. Some bought extra lights and strung them up in their gardens to keep the darkness – and the prowler – as far from their homes as possible.
Others armed themselves and either patrolled the streets with other armed residents – or lay in hiding, waiting for the Gasser to appear.
And hundreds of residents were gathering at City Hall each night. When police cars were dispatched to deal with potential Gasser reports, the residents would jump in their cars and follow the police.
Following the weekend of madness, Police Commissioner Thomas V Wright and Chief of Police C E Cole issued a joint statement:
We want the public to know that everything possible is being done in this case, and we are grateful for the confidence of a majority of the citizens. However, we have a few points on which we hope to get 100 per cent co-operation, beginning tonight. They are:
1 Stay off the streets in residential districts unless your business requires you to be there. There is no danger in the business districts.
2 Roving bands of men and boys should disband. They are in grave danger of being shot by some frightened property owner.
3 Put away the guns now in the hands of individuals, because some innocent person may get killed. The only time one should shoot is upon seeing a man peering into a window of one’s home. Then extreme care should be used.
4 Don’t follow the police car when it is speeding in answer to a call. Persons who persist in doing this will be arrested.
On Monday, 11 September, the Daily Journal-Gazette reported that 10 officers from the state police had been dispatched to Matton. Led by Captain Harry Curtis, they were to support the beleaguered Mattoon officers.
But by the time the state police arrived, the attacks – or reports of attacks – had all but ended.
The post-mortem began.
7
Back in 1944, there was every reason to suspect that the majority of the reported Gasser attacks were genuine.
There was consistency in the statements made by the victims. And there were plenty of witnesses who reported seeing prowlers near the homes of the victims at the time of some of the attacks.
And there was some physical evidence – such as the cloth and the skeleton key – found at the at the Cordes’ house.
Additionally, on 10 September, Carus S Icenogle, who was chief of civillian defense in Mattoon, revealed that the materials needed to make a gas with the characteristics of the one being used by the Gasser were in Mattoon. And they were missing. The “important chemical set” – as it was described – had belonged to the Office of Civillian Defense and could be used to produce mustard and lewisite gases, both of which are chemical weapons.
The police on the ground gave every indication that they believed the attacks were genuine – and that someone was behind them.
And public statements made by senior figures in law enforcement indicated that they were taking the attacks seriously and were committed to catching the culprit. On 12 September, for example, Police Commissioner Thomas V Wright told the press that the hunt for the prowler had identified four chief suspects: two of those suspects were amateur chemists – while the other two were “crackpots.”
But at the beginning of the second week of the Mattoon Gasser scare, the authorities began to suspect that something else was going on.
8
“… a perfect example of the working of mass psychology in which rumours of a gas spraying prowler, spread by a community whispering campaign, blossomed into mass hysteria.” – Captain Harry Curtis
On Wednesday, 13 September, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that according to Captain Harry Curtis of the state police “the whole thing is a mistake.”
That it was “a perfect example of the working of mass psychology in which rumours of a gas spraying prowler, spread by a community whispering campaign, blossomed into mass hysteria.”
Curtis had investigated all of the reported Gasser attacks – and had found no evidence of a prowler spraying gas.
“I am inclined to believe a prowler may have been seen in some of the cases, but merely by coincidence,” he said. “No one, however, actually saw a prowler spraying gas thru windows and the idea of the prowler undoubtedly just grew with rumour.”
But what about the sickly sweet gas that many in the town had smelled?
“In the northwest part of the city, where most of the cases were reported, the fumes could have been from carbon tetrachloride used by the Imperial Diesel Engine company for cleaning greasy surfaces,” said Curtis.
The Imperial Diesel Engine Company’s factory was currently producing munitions for the war effort. And, seemingly, this chemical they were using could cause some of the symptoms – dry lips and parched throat – reported by many of the victims.
Matton’s Chief of Police C E Cole agreed with his colleague’s findings – and suggested that carbon tetrachloride could readily explain the incident at the Cordes house.
“Carbon tetrachloride will leave stains on a cloth such as that found at the Cordes home,” he explained. “Many workers use carbon tetrachloride in cleaning shell casings and it may be possible that one of them tossed this cloth away.”
Of course, not everyone agreed with the Curtis and Cole’s conclusions.
“There are less than five gallons of carbon tetrachloride, mentioned by Chief Cole, in the entire plant,” said the Imperial Diesel Engine Company’s plant manager. “All of that is used in sealed fire extinguishers.
“There is some trichloroethylene in the plant but the concentration is so small that the fumes wouldn’t travel more than 10 feet.”
State’s Attorney William Kidwell called the Curtis/Cole conclusions “ridiculous.” Kidwell, while acknowledging that some of the cases were caused by hysteria, believed that many of the cases were genuine. He also believed that the police failed to act quickly when the attacks began.
On 15 September, Kidwell announced that he had hired private investigators “to dig out the truth about the case.” These investigators – who would be unknown to any of the police officers who had previously worked on the Gasser case – would be given the powers to interview all of the alleged victims and all of the police involved in the investigations.
“I intend to get to the bottom of this affair no matter whose toes are stepped on,” he explained. “If there has been sloppy police work the public has a right to know about it, and if some of the victims are spreading stories just to create excitement, that should be brought out, too.”
9
Today, the events at Matton are widely considered to be an episode of mass hysteria.
In their book Panic Attacks, Robert Bartholomew and Hilary Evans theorise that this outbreak of hysteria, which occurred during World War II, was caused by the fear of a German gas attack.
“By mid-1944, the poison gas scare reached new heights,” they write. “As the tide had clearly shifted in favour of the allies, it was widely feared in both civilian and military circles that the Germans might resort to chemical weapons. While this never occurred, in the study of social delusions perception is everything.”
Back in 1944, the mass hysteria theory was firmly embraced by the authorities.
Even William Kidwell came to accept that the events in Mattoon were due to hysteria.
However, Kidwell didn’t believe that the hysteria had been caused by the fear of a German gas attack.
On 11 March 2005, the Journal-Gazette and Times-Courier printed an interview with Marge Maxey.
“I know all about the Mad Gasser,” claimed Maxey. “I know the real story.”
Maxey had been a secretary in the Coles County State’s Attorney office during the Gasser panic, and William Kidwell had been her boss.
“My boss said a woman had gambled away her husband’s paycheck and didn’t want him to know it. So she made up something about being gassed and said the money was stolen. That started the thing going.”
Not everyone accepts Maxey’s claims. And not everyone accepts that the Gasser attacks were just mass hysteria.
There are many who believe that the victims were telling the truth about very real and very terrifying experiences – and that someone was responsible for those experiences.
In 1944, the Mattoon police had identified 4 strong suspects for being that someone.
Perhaps one of those suspects spoke with a Westmeath accent.
IOW
Recommended Reading
If you enjoyed this post and would like to know more, you might enjoy the following book:
Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation and Mass Delusion – by Robert E Bartholomew & Hilary Evans
In 1835, thanks to a series of articles in New York’s Sun newspaper, people around the world – including eminent scientists – came to believe that the moon was populated with beaver people and bat-men. This and a number of other hoaxes and scares – including the Mad Gasser of Mattoon – are dismantled in Panic: Media Manipulation and Mass Delusion. Like many writers with strong opinions, Bartholomew and Evans have a tendency to overlook evidence that contradicts their position – but this is still a great read, and it covers some truly fantastic cases.