Paranormal record / 1944
Mattoon, Illinois. 1 September 1944. Around 11 p.m., Aline Kearney noticed a scent drifting into her bedroom. She took it for flowers from the garden. It was not flowers. Paralysis struck her legs. When her husband Bert came home from his taxi shift, he thought he saw a tall man in dark clothes and a tight-fitting cap at the bedroom window. He gave chase. The man got away. Within two weeks, more than two dozen people reported the same sickly sweet smell, the same useless legs, the same burning throat. Police doubled their patrols. State agents arrived. The FBI became involved. Then, as suddenly as it began, the Mad Gasser was gone.
Late summer, 1944. Mattoon, Illinois, was a town of about 15,000 people in Coles County. The world was at war. On 30 August, the Charleston Daily Courier ran a story about possible German poison-gas threats. Two days later, Mattoon believed it had its own.