Ep. 91 | The Mad Gasser

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This is a story about a town paralyzed by fear.

A quiet, peaceful place, until one night, something so strange and terrifying happened that it left the entire community on edge.

People started getting sick, but no one could explain why.

Was it a deadly gas attack?

A madman lurking in the shadows?

Or something else entirely?

The truth?

Well, that's going to be a bit stranger than you might think.

Stay with me because this one's going to make you question everything you think you know about fear and how it can shape our reality.

This is the story of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr.

Ballin, and this is Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies.

So if you like today's story, please take the follow button to the beach on a sunny day, but be sure to swap out their spray sunscreen with cooking spray.

This episode is called The Mad Gasser.

On Friday evening, September 1st, 1944, Aline Kearney curled up on the living room couch with her two young daughters and her nephew Roger at her home in Mattoon, Illinois.

Aline had a picture book open on her lap, and the kids were all cuddled around her, listening to her tell a bedtime story.

A warm breeze was blowing in through the open windows, and in the kitchen, she could hear her sister Martha making tea.

Aline's husband, Bert, was out driving on his taxi route, so Aline had asked Martha and Roger to come keep her company.

Aline was used to her husband's late-night taxi driving, but she still hated being home alone with the kids after dark.

And she'd become even more afraid after the U.S.

entered World War II almost three years ago.

She knew it was probably silly, but there were a lot of rumors about Nazi spies planning attacks on unsuspecting Americans.

And so it just made Aline even more nervous.

She constantly felt anxious, and so having company around helped her nerves a bit.

Soon, the clock above the mantle chimed 11 p.m., and so they all headed for bed.

Aline brought her three-year-old daughter, Dorothy, along with her, to her bedroom.

Dorothy liked to sleep with Aline on the nights when Bert wasn't home.

Meanwhile, Martha, Roger, and Aline's youngest daughter, Carol, stayed in the guest room across the hall.

Aline helped Dorothy climb into bed, then she cracked open the window to let some warm evening air into the stuffy bedroom.

After that, Aline crept under the covers as well, next to her daughter.

But just as she was starting to doze off, Aline noticed the sickeningly sweet odor filling the bedroom.

She sat upright and looked around the room for the source of the smell, but there was nothing obvious, so she figured it must be coming from the flower box she kept hanging right outside the window.

So she laid back down and tried to go to sleep.

However, as the minutes ticked by, the strange smell only grew stronger and more potent.

And so eventually, Aline got up and walked over to the bedroom window to get a better smell.

But as she stood there, her legs suddenly felt really really stiff, like she was becoming paralyzed.

Aline called out for her sister, and seconds later, Martha burst in.

Aline told her to please come over here and shut the bedroom window.

Martha didn't understand what was going on, but immediately shut it.

And then afterward, she reflexively began to wrinkle her nose at the strange smell that seemed to be making her sister sick.

But before either could talk about the smell, Aline shrieked out that she could barely feel her legs.

And so Martha ran to the kitchen telephone to call their neighbor for help.

Aline was rattled.

She grabbed little Dorothy, who was looking pretty shaken herself, and she carried her to the living room on her very shaky, stiff legs.

Soon she could hear police sirens drawing closer, and then a moment later, the neighbor ran in through the front door with a pair of police officers in tow.

Aline told the officers that she wasn't sure what had just happened.

But she was pretty sure she just suffered some kind of gas attack.

She explained how her bedroom had suddenly filled with this weird, sickeningly sweet smell, and then her legs had stiffened up, and then luckily her sister had run in and shut the window and sort of stopped the symptoms from getting worse.

The officers searched the property, but after about 20 minutes, they admitted that they had not found anything suspicious.

They walked the perimeter of the house and the yard, but nothing seemed out of place, and so they had no clue what the smell was or what may have caused it.

The officers did suggest that Aline go to the hospital and get checked out, but she said she was not not about to do anything until her husband Bert got home.

A few minutes later, around midnight, Bert received a call from his dispatcher about a possible chemical attack at his house.

Instantly terrified, he wheeled his taxi around and raced toward home.

All he could think of was Aline and his daughters.

He turned onto a street and pulled up to his house.

And at first, everything looked normal.

The police had already left by this point, and just the family car was in the driveway.

But as he got out of the taxi, Bert saw this figure, a tall man dressed in dark clothing with a tight-fitting cap, standing right outside the living room window.

Bert stared at this guy in disbelief.

The man seemed to be spying on his family.

Bert shouted out, and the stranger tore off running into the alleyway behind the house.

Bert dashed after him, sprinting down the side yard and across the back into the alleyway.

But then he looked left and right, and the man was just gone.

Bert wanted to catch his breath, but he didn't have time.

Instead, he turned and ran back to his house.

He went inside and made a beeline for the kitchen phone, all the while yelling out to his wife that he was home.

Then Bert picked up the phone, called the police, and told them that somebody was prowling outside his house.

An hour later, Bert stuffed a duffel bag into his car and held the passenger door open for Aline and his daughters.

He'd already sent Martha and Roger home just to be safe.

The police had arrived quickly and canvassed his property for the second time that evening, but they didn't find anyone matching his description of the strange prowler.

They promised they would file a report right when they got back to the station, but Bert just hadn't felt good about anybody staying at the house right now.

And so he decided to move his family to a relative's house across town.

By this point, luckily, Aline had regained feeling in her legs and so basically was back to normal.

However, Aline and Bert's daughter, Dorothy, said she felt nauseous.

And so the parents' plan was if she didn't feel better by morning, they would take her to the doctor, and they would also, while they were there, have Aline checked out as well.

The following morning, Dorothy was still feeling sick, so Bert took his family to the hospital.

And while they waited for a doctor to see Aline and Dorothy, Bert paced around the waiting room and eventually grabbed a copy of the local paper, the Journal Gazette.

And when Bert saw the front page headline, he was shocked.

It read, Anesthetic Prowler on the Loose.

Bert read that the authorities suspected that his daughter and his wife had been attacked with some kind of anesthetic gas.

They were being called the Prowler's First Victims, and the Prowler, the police believed, was the person that Bert had seen looking in his window when he had come back home.

The article said the Mattoon police were working hard to find this mysterious stranger and apprehend him because they believed he had access to poison gas and would continue to do this to other people.

Now, Bert knew, you know, clearly something bad had happened at his house the night before between whatever happened to his wife and daughter and then seeing that person outside, but at no point had he ever really suspected that his family was being poisoned.

And so the idea that that's what police thought was going on here was terrifying.

He realized that his family was lucky to be alive.

Three days later, 46-year-old Beula Cordas and her husband Carl got home after a nice dinner out.

They'd spent the whole evening talking about the so-called Mattoon gasser.

At least that's what the neighbors were calling the suspected prowler.

Beula knew the situation was serious, but things like this never happened in Mattoon.

So she and Carl let themselves get a bit carried away with all the gossip.

But now, Beulah was ready to unwind and relax a bit before bed.

They came in through the back door, then kicked off their shoes and headed to the living room.

Beula sat down in her usual chair while Carl flicked on the radio.

And Beulah had just gotten comfortable when she noticed something small and white stuck in the screen of their front door.

Curious, she crossed the room and grabbed it.

It was a white rag about the size of a dish towel, and there was a large wet spot right in the center of it.

And without thinking, Beulah raised the rag to her nose and sniffed in to see if she could figure out what the spot was.

The moment she inhaled, she knew it was a mistake.

A feeling like an electric current raced down her body and began to tingle her feet.

Then her knees began to shake like electricity was coursing through them too.

Beulah shrieked, and as soon as she did, she felt this deep burning sensation in her throat.

And that burning sensation traveled up to her mouth, and before long she could feel her lips swelling, and that made her scream even louder.

Carl came running over and asked her what was going on, but she couldn't form words to explain what was happening.

She tried to take a breath, but as soon as she did, she felt something rising in her throat.

And so she ran to the kitchen and leaned over the sink to spit out whatever was in her throat.

But when she did, it was bright red.

She was coughing up blood.

Seconds later, Carl was on the phone with the doctor.

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Beulah was stretched out on the sofa by the time her physician, Dr.

Bailey, arrived to examine her.

She sat up and thanked him for racing over so quickly.

Dr.

Bailey checked her vitals and asked her about her symptoms.

He also put on a face mask so he could safely take a look at the rag Beula had found in her screen door.

Beula just watched as her doctor held up the rag and turned it over in his hand.

Finally, Dr.

Bailey said that he couldn't say for sure, but the rag had the sweet scent of chloroform, an anesthetic sometimes used during surgery.

But he explained that when it's inhaled in high concentrations, it can irritate the nose and throat, it can interfere with coordination, and cause waves of nausea.

Beula instantly felt like that was exactly what she experienced, like it must have been chloroform.

However, she and Carl did not keep chloroform in their house.

A chill ran through Beulah as she realized that she must have been the newest victim of the mad gasser.

She told her husband to call the police.

Within minutes, a police car pulled into the driveway outside of Beulah's house and a pair of officers came to the front door.

Carl let them in and showed them the toxic rag that Beulah had found.

Beulah watched from the couch as the officers began to search their house.

She was feeling better, her stomach had calmed down, and the electric current sensation had finally left her body.

Her lips were still swollen, but she'd stopped spitting up blood.

More than anything, she was just rattled, knowing the Mattoon gasser had been on her doorstep.

After police searched the inside of the house, they made their way out to the front porch.

And a couple of minutes later, one of the officers came back inside carrying a thin silver key as well as an empty tube of lipstick.

The officer asked if the items belonged to them, but Beulah shook her head and said no.

Someone must have left them on her porch.

Eventually, the police left to go canvass the neighborhood.

It was clear to Beulah that an unwelcome visitor had been on their porch, very likely the Mattoon Gasser.

and that they had clearly wanted to hurt them.

And so Beulah did not feel safe in her own home.

And if she really had been poisoned with chloroform, she felt like she should probably go to the hospital and get checked out.

But just a few minutes later, Beulah saw the police coming back down the sidewalk.

And this time, with them, was a man in handcuffs.

Beula immediately walked over to the window to get a better look.

And while she couldn't make out the man's features, she could tell he was tall and slim.

and so he fit the description of the Mattoon Gasser.

After the police stuffed the man into the back of their patrol car and drove off, Beulah suddenly felt relieved.

She hoped they'd just caught the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.

Five days later, Mattoon Chief of Police, C.E.

Cole, rode shotgun in a police car alongside a fellow investigator.

He was on his way to search an abandoned home on the outskirts of town.

which he thought might be a potential hideout for the anesthetic prowler, or the mad gasser, as the papers were calling him now.

Earlier that week, two of his officers had arrested a suspect, a man they'd found loitering down the road from Bula Corde as his home.

However, after questioning him, they realized that this man had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was only on that block because he was lost and trying to figure out his way home.

So Chief Cole had released him, which meant they were back to looking for the real Mad Gasser.

The Journal Gazette had been reporting on this story non-stop, keeping all of Mattoon on edge.

And the chief was feeling tremendous pressure to catch this attacker.

Over the past few days, five more people had reached out to the police and to the papers, saying that they'd also been victims of the mad gasser.

One couple said they were attacked the night before Aline Kearney.

Another victim was a local fortune teller who said she even saw the perpetrator, but she described him as big with muscular arms that didn't match the description that Burt Kearney had given of the tall man standing outside his home.

Chief Cole also noticed that the method of poisoning changed with each victim, which felt unusual to him.

For instance, it seemed like the gas had been pumped through Aline Kearney's window, while the chloroform cloth had been left on Beulah Cordez's front door.

The chief wasn't sure what to make of that, but in the meantime, the citizens of Mattoon were not taking any chances.

Everyone was on high alert.

The police car came to a stop outside of a corner store.

On the sidewalk out front, a small group of men in their 30s were leaning on baseball bats as they smoked cigarettes.

One of the men kept looking up and down the street.

Cole realized they were a neighborhood patrol.

He'd heard that a lot of men were walking their neighborhoods at night with baseball bats trying to keep their homes safe.

The chief got out of the car and headed into the store and grabbed a couple of sodas and some batteries for his flashlight.

When he got to the register, he glanced over at the newspaper rack that held the Daily Paper.

The headline made him wince.

Mattoon's Journal Gazette had printed yet another story on potential attacks that had happened that week.

It said that two women had already been hospitalized and five more people had fallen ill.

And the article was clearly full of criticism about how the city and specifically the police were mishandling the case.

Chief Cole begrudgingly grabbed a copy of the paper and told the clerk to add it to his total.

When he got back to the car, he showed the paper to his fellow officer, and he read one section aloud.

It said that Mattoon police were too proud to share all the facts with the public, and sometimes denied that crimes had occurred altogether.

Cole had never read a bigger lie in his life.

As they drove through town, the chief saw more men sitting out on their front porches, shotguns across their laps.

It was like they were daring the mad gasser to trespass.

Cole had also heard that women had begun carrying golf clubs with them whenever they left the house.

The whole city was terrified, and the chief knew it was up to him to close this case fast.

Cole knew they were nearing the edge of town when the stench of burning diesel fuel hit his nostrils.

Most of the industrial plants were out this way, including a diesel engine manufacturing plant that employed about 500 of Mattoon's residents.

On a windy day, the whole town could smell like these factories.

Eventually, they pulled up to a dilapidated house on the outskirts of town that the chief suspected could be the gasser's hideout.

It looked like nobody had lived there for years.

Cole and his fellow officer began searching the outside of the property, but nothing seemed out of place.

So he walked up the rickety steps to the front door and pushed on it.

And it didn't take much pushing to wrench the door wide open.

Inside, the house was covered in a thick layer of dust.

Chief Cole and the other officer split up and began searching the house.

While the other officer quietly tiptoed upstairs, The chief found the door to the basement and began going down the steep, narrow steps.

When Cole reached the the bottom, the basement was pitch black, except for a little light that filtered in through a dirty window.

The chief clicked on his flashlight so he could see into all the dark corners.

The basement was like a cement box and smelled like mold.

The chief half expected to find some kind of makeshift laboratory down here, or maybe even the gasser himself mixing up different chloroform weapons.

But there was nothing.

Just a dank, dusty basement.

Not even a set of footprints along the floor.

The house wound up being completely clear.

It was obvious nobody had been in the structure for years.

And so by the time Cole and his partner were back out in the car, Cole realized he had zero leads on who the mad gasser was and where he was hiding.

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The following evening, Chief Cole arrived at the station to find five squad cars from the Illinois State Police parked outside.

He'd asked for their help after he had searched that abandoned house and found nothing.

He hoped they wouldn't have to stay for too long, but for now, he needed their help.

Chief Cole went inside the station and made his way right to his office where he sat down in his seat.

Then he flicked on the radio and poured himself a glass of whiskey.

Once the evening news started, as expected, the mad gasser of Mattoon was their main story.

However, tonight, instead of just updating the public on details of the attacks, the announcer would also be reading a statement that Chief Cole had issued that afternoon.

Chief Cole smiled to himself, confident that this entire fiasco would soon come to an end.

All day, his team and the state police had been interviewing people non-stop, anyone they felt might be connected to the case.

case.

But nobody emerged as a viable suspect.

And that's when the chief started thinking, and a new theory came to him.

So after lunch, he'd taken another trip to the outskirts of town.

And as he was driving by the manufacturing plants, a strong breeze had filled his car with this odd, sweet smell.

It was coming from the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company.

Cole had done some investigating and learned that recently, Atlas had begun making supplies for the soldiers overseas.

And to make some of these supplies, they used a large amount of carbon tetrachloride, a clear, non-flammable liquid that produced a sweet odor when it evaporated.

It also smelled a lot like chloroform.

To Chief Cole, it was now clear to him that there was no mad gasser.

Instead, the balmy late summer breeze had been carrying this chemical vapor into town and causing all these illnesses.

So he'd asked all the local radio stations to read his statement, laying out his findings.

And Chief Cole hoped that after everyone heard it, they would finally have peace of mind.

And sure enough, at some point, the radio announcer did read the statement.

And at the end of it, he laid out Cole's simple fix for the so-called gas attacks.

Basically, all people had to do was simply close their windows at night and they would be okay.

When the broadcast finally ended, Chief Cole turned off the radio and left his office feeling better than he had in days.

But that good feeling lasted less than 12 hours.

The next morning, Chief Cole was once again feeling very stressed as he shook hands with two physicians at Mattoon's Memorial Hospital.

Overnight, his confidence in having solved the case was shaken.

The Atlas Diesel Company had released a statement of their own.

pointing out a flaw in Chief Cole's theory.

None of their plant workers, who spent all day surrounded by those fumes, had ever gotten sick from the carbon tetrachloride.

So there was no way the tetrachloride was responsible for poisoning people in town.

Chief Cole knew that if the factory fumes weren't causing the problem, well, then realistically, there might be a mad gasser, and his investigation would be back at square one.

And he needed answers fast.

Because by this point, at least seven households had been targeted by the mad gasser.

People were calling the police department with all kinds of of leads, and the newspaper had been reporting on the attacks daily.

If he didn't figure this out soon, he could have a riot on his hands.

So, Cole had called a meeting with the doctors who were treating the latest victims to see if they had found any medical evidence to help him figure out what was going on here.

And when Chief Cole spoke to the physicians, something immediately stood out to him.

All the victims had already been sent home.

But as the doctors explained their reasoning for sending people home, Cole began to understand why.

He started to remember small details about each of the poisonings, inconsistencies that he'd ignored at the time.

But now they were fitting together and painting a very different picture of what could be going on here.

Despite the chief's embarrassment over yesterday's radio broadcast where his statement was read and was so clearly wrong, Cole realized he did need to speak out again, this time directly to the public.

It was time to call a press conference.

Later that day, on September 12th, 1944, Chief Cole and the Mattoon Commissioner of Public Health stood together in front of City Hall.

Several journalists and concerned citizens spread out on the steps below them, clearly anticipating a big announcement around the mad gasser.

The commissioner began his speech, saying that sooner or later, This mad gasser frenzy was going to get someone killed.

But they weren't going to die from a gas attack.

Because

there was no mad gasser of Mattoon, just like Chief Cole thought.

However, Chief Cole did not have everything right when he first came out with that public address on the radio.

When Chief Cole met with the doctors at the hospital, they told him that they had ran tests on the people who had supposedly been attacked by the gasser.

But these tests showed no evidence of poison gas or any other chemical in their stomachs or their blood.

In fact, all of the victims were perfectly healthy.

The only way the doctors could explain this was to conclude that there never was a gas attack at all.

They agreed their victims had truly suffered from something,

but what they suffered from was extreme nervous tension.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon was actually a case of mass hysteria.

Matun had been enduring wartime deprivations for years.

Half of the men in town were fighting overseas in World War II, And every day, the papers ran stories about the war and hometown soldiers who had died.

The entire town was afraid and anxious.

Aline Kearney, the first victim, was intensely afraid of being alone in her home at night.

It's possible that stress and anxiety created physical symptoms like nausea and dizziness.

When Beulah Cordas, the second victim, saw a rag in her door, it's likely she remembered Aline's story about poison gas.

and then her body sort of unconsciously mimicked Aline's symptoms after she smelled it.

And once Aline and Beulah's stories got out, more people just began thinking they'd been poisoned too.

And it sort of made sense, because suddenly normal symptoms like getting a headache or feeling a little bit dizzy and some fatigue quickly became symptoms of a gas attack and only added to the rumors about a malevolent stranger prowling the streets of Mattoon.

And remember, the whole town had heard about how Bert had come home, you know, shortly after the gas attack on Aline, And he saw that guy standing outside his house looking in the window and he chased him off into the alleyway.

They never caught that guy, but he quickly became sort of like the boogeyman.

He was the mad gasser and it sort of solidified this idea that this was a real thing, that somebody was literally targeting people in this town with poisonous gas.

However, once the media began reporting on the mass hysteria theory, the police did not receive any more phone calls about gas attacks.

Sociologists now use Mattoon, Illinois as the textbook example of mass psychogenic illness, where fear itself can fuel physical symptoms that can quickly spread through an entire community.

Also, local media can play a large role in shaping and amplifying these narratives.

There are still some who believe that Aline and Beulah might have been genuine victims of a prowler who maybe attacked them with gas, who then skipped town once the media started reporting on his attacks.

And then from there, maybe the five additional victims were actually suffering from mass hysteria.

But there's no way to know for sure what truly happened.

And so for now, the evidence suggests it was all just in their heads.

Now that you've finished this episode, I know you will love what Luke Lamana is doing over at Redacted, Declassified Mysteries.

Go ahead and start with the episode titled The Secret of Churchill's Anthrax Island.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr.

Balin.

A quick note about our stories.

They're all inspired by true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

This episode was written by Aaron Lam.

Our editor is Heather Dundas.

Sound design is by Ryan Potesta.

Our senior managing producer is Callum Pluse, and our coordinating producer is Sarah Mathis.

Our senior producer is Alex Benedon.

Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Taja Palaconda.

Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson.

For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen and Evan Allen.

Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins.

Production support by Avery Siegel.

Executive producers are myself, Mr.

Bollin, and Nick Witters.

For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villipando.

Senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota and Dave Schilling.

Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr.

And our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherity and Marshall Louie.

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We were made to track flight prices to out of office.

Expedia, made to travel.

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