This is American Histories After Shock, where I share with you a story that didn't make

it into the main episode.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber-Smith, and today we're talking about the Mad Gasser of

Matoon.

In the summer of 1944, Americans saw bold headlines across newspapers announcing the Allied

powers' first major victories against the Nazi Party.

But they also saw headlines about a possible chemical weapons strike against the US in

the form of poison gas, as well as horrifying reports of gas chambers killing hundreds of

thousands of Jews, Romani people, homosexuals, and others deemed unfit for society.

But underneath these loud headlines, sat reports of a confusing series of events in

the small town of Matoon, Illinois, the apparent anesthetic attacks by the mysterious figure

that would come to be known as the Mad Gasser of Matoon, who seemed to be either a sadistic

psychopath trying to poison a town with invisible gas or an urban legend leading to a town-wide

hysteria manifesting symptoms with the power of this fear.

Here are the events as we know them.

The first incident started with a strange smell that reminded residents of a cheap perfume,

a smell strong enough to wake urban raf in the middle of the night on August 31.

Urban began to feel weak and nauseated to the point of vomiting, suspecting a gas leak

to be the culprit.

When Urban's wife decided to check the pilot light on the kitchen stove, she too found

she could not get out of bed, finding herself partially paralyzed.

Mr and Mrs. Rafe would fully recover, but before the night was through, in a second household

...