The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Mar 11

The summer of 1944 should’ve smelled like cornfields and sweat.
Patriotism, wartime sacrifice, and all the bullshit they sell you to throw your life away for the country.
Instead though, Mattoon, Illinois breathed in something really sour.

In the deep hours of night, people awoke to the sharp sting of a sweet, unfamiliar gas, filling their rooms like a phantom.
Muscles stopped working immediately, and voices struggled to scream. A real life nightmare brought to fruition in their own homes.
And when they looked for answers, they found nothing at all.

They called him the Mad Gasser, but no one ever caught him.
No chemicals were recovered, and no shadow ever held still long enough to be named.

When the Night Turned Toxic

The first report came on August 31, 1944.
Urban Raef and his wife jolted awake to a strange smell that was sickly sweet. Like one of those cheap perfumes trying to cover up something rotten.

Their legs wouldn’t move, and their bodies felt like sandbags stuck in a free-fall overboard.
His wife’s throat burned as she tried to cry out for help.
The odd thing was, no window was broken, no door left open, just that strange choking scent, then nothing.

Doctors blamed a faulty gas stove, but when half the neighborhood started telling the same story, panic began to crackle like static.

Mattoon Descends Into Paranoia

Over the next two weeks, Mattoon’s quiet streets filled with fear.

People reported sudden paralysis, some nausea, burning throats, and more often than not, a shadow fleeing the scene.

But the descriptions didn’t match.
Some said he was tall and dressed in black, others swore it was a woman, one family said they saw a figure vanish into the corn at one point.

The Kearneys (Sept 1): Aline Kearney awoke unable to move, the air thick with that strange sweetness. Outside the window, she caught a glimpse of someone tall, cloaked in dark, while her sister choked beside her, legs numb.

The Riders (Sept 5): A mother and daughter felt their limbs grow heavy after the gas crept in, and neighbors said they saw a figure sprinting away.

The Cloth (Sept 8): A resident found a rag on the porch. Curious, they picked it up, and collapsed moments later with vomiting and muscle weakness. Police took the cloth for testing, but nothing conclusive ever came.

So Who—or What—Was the Mad Gasser?

No suspect, no motive, no clear pattern, just one deeply unsettling truth: something was happening, and no one could explain it.

Here are the theories that still swirl like that sweet smoke:

A real attacker with a real gas is what most insist it was, exactly what it looked like: a disturbed individual using chloroform, ether, or another paralytic gas. Sprayed through screens or windows. Quick, silent, and gone before anyone could react.

But how? How did they carry enough gas without being noticed? Why were there no footprints, fingerprints, or witnesses? How did they vanish into thin air, night after night?

Not a single suspect was ever arrested, not one person found with a gas canister.

If it was a person…they were almost like a ghost with a chemistry degree.

Mass Hysteria is also another theory, and the most common. Mass psychogenic illness is when the body can break under pressure.
The mind can create illness, paralysis, even hallucinations if it’s afraid enough.

And let’s face it, in 1944, the world was already fraying at the edges: WWII was raging, gas attacks were a fresh trauma from the first world war, anxiety, rationing, and the draft churned in every family.

The theory says one person had a panic attack, another misread a chemical smell, the press amplified the fear, and suddenly, a phantom was born.

Fear spread faster than evidence ever could.

Factory fumes was also thought to be blamed, and some quietly speculated that Mattoon’s industrial plants were leaking something toxic, maybe some chemicals capable of causing paralysis or nausea.

A factory mishap, or a cover-up, some sort of collective case of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

But no plant ever admitted fault, no reports filed, and no whistle was ever blown.

Still…isn’t it strange how fast the symptoms stopped when the headlines did?

The last theory is that a prank spiraled out of control. Could it all have started as a joke?
A prankster with a stink bomb or homemade mix?
But could one person sustain it for over two weeks without getting caught?

Could a joke leave 30+ families physically ill?

It’s possible, but it’s also the most convenient explanation, the one we reach for when nothing else fits.

The Police Investigation: A Whole Lot of Nothing

Police took it seriously…at first.

They staked out homes, tested cloths and doorknobs, and questioned anyone with access to anesthetics.

But they caught no one and the stories were too different from each other to make much sense.
The clues too foggy for a real investigation to follow anywhere.

And just like that…the attacks stopped, as mid-September arrived, so did silence.

What Was Left Behind

Mattoon never got its answer.
Just a nickname, The Mad Gasser, and a legacy of unease.

Psychologists cite it as a case study in mass hysteria, and skeptics call it a wartime symptom.
Believers swear something real moved through those homes.

What’s certain is that people were afraid, their bodies reacted, and something crept in through the cracks.

Whether chemical or psychological…the fear was real.

So What Was the Mad Gasser?

A ghost, a hoax, a warning, bad energy in the form of a person, a demon, the list can go on and on.

Not all monsters leave footprints, some leave only feelings…tingling skin, burning lungs, the sense that something was just there.

And not all mysteries want to be solved, some are meant to linger and make you wonder.

Like the faint scent of gas, the burn in your throat, or the face you think you saw, just for a moment, outside your window.