Today we input the Mad Gasser of Matoon into the Curse-O-Meter.

But before that, we discuss

-why a burning feeling in your legs may be caused by slug parasites,

-the difficulties with giving back stolen ritual skulls,

-and an ex-military officer’s alien abduction by a rude 7 foot tall Mantis being.

The News:

Slug Parasites

How to Return Stolen Ritual Skulls

Abducted by a Rude Mantis Alien

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, welcome, probably cursed listeners, to episode 18. Today, we input the mad gasser of Mattoon into the Curse-O-Meter. But before we do that, we discuss why a burning feeling in your legs may be caused by slug parasites, the difficulty with giving back-stolen ritual skulls, and an ex-military officer’s alien abduction by a rude, seven-foot-tall mantis being. He is very rude. I’m your probably cursed host, Sheryl.

I’m your probably cursed host, Chris. As we do at the start of every episode, to calibrate our Curse-O-Meter, we will input our three news stories from local news. Well, not local news. Recent news. I have three stories here, and Sheryl will read you the first story.

I wish these were local news. And Mattoon would be the coolest place in the world.

Well, you might not want the slug parasite story, but, well, you haven’t read it yet, so we’ll see.

Burning in women’s legs turns out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain. This is from February 13th by Beth Moll for ArsTechnica.com. It started with a bizarre burning sensation in her feet. It had to crept up her legs, and over the next two days, any light touch made it worse.

And any over-the-counter medication offered no relief. On the third day, the 30-year-old woman went to an emergency department. Her results were all normal, except she had a high number of esosynophilus white blood cells that become active with certain allergic diseases, parasitic infections, or other medical conditions, such as cancer.

The woman was discharged and advised to follow up with her primary care doctor. Over the next days, the scorching sensation advanced to her trunk and her arms, and she developed a headache she couldn’t get rid of. Seven days into the illness, she went to the emergency room again, but the findings were the same. The next day, she awoke confused, saying she needed to pack for a vacation and couldn’t be reasoned with to return back to bed. After hours, she was brought to the emergency room again, but this time to a different hospital. Her new doctors quickly focused their attention on the fact that the woman had recently been on a three-week trip that included stops in Bangkok, Thailand, Tokyo, Japan, and Hawaii.

You know, the article didn’t say Hawaii America, but it specified the other two cities.

Interesting. I mean, everyone knows where Hawaii is, I guess.

I think everyone would know where Tokyo is. That’s true. This is an American-centric article anyway, I think.

The doctors suspected that an infection, likely a parasitic one, was behind the confusing condition. Most of the tests returned no results, but a spinal tap showed a clear problem. Based on where she traveled and the symptoms she was showing, they deduced that the culprit was likely anemotode or a roundworm. Angiostrongelitis catatensis, also known as rat lungworm. The parasite gets its name from its complicated life cycle, which relies on slugs and snails as well as rats. In rats, the worms reproduce and the larvae are released in rat feces. The larvae are picked up by the slugs of the snails, which later the rats will eat. From the rat’s gut, the larvae will migrate to the brain to mature and then move to the lungs and lay eggs, hence the name. Rats cuff up the eggs and swallow them.

The first stage larvae go on to develop in the rat’s gastrointestinal tract and are excreted, allowing the cycle to begin again. Humans can catch them if they eat undercooked snails or slugs or undercooked creatures that eat snails or slugs, such as land crabs, freshwater prawn, or frogs. The more concerning possibility is that they can be caught from eating raw vegetables or fruits that may be contaminated by the snails or slugs. Once in a human, the worms try resuming their cycle. The larvae move out of the gastrointestinal tract and head for the brain, movement along the peripheral nerves that caused the burning sensation in the woman’s feet. The parasite’s arrival in the central nervous system is often marked by a headache.

From there, a person can develop confusion, encephalopathy, seizure, cranial neuropathy, or eye problems. However, the worms never end up making it to the lungs and typically die in the brain. There’s no clear treatment, and some can recover fully without treatment after the larvae die off. In this case, the patient and her doctors decided to use a 14-day combination of immunosuppressant steroids and antiparasitic drugs. Fortunately, after six days of treatment, the woman’s symptoms cleared and she was discharged from the hospital.

Sorry, I forgot to include the word hospital at the end there. No worries. You know how in the cordyceps mushroom, the one from the last of us, it encourages ants and spiders to climb to the highest branch in order to spread the germs? The fact that she was expecting to go back on vacation, was that the parasite getting her to spread it all around? Oh yeah, 100%. Whole flaw in the plan is those that people don’t eat other people’s poop.

Well, actually the whole flaw in the plan is that it sounds like our brains just kill, like our body just kills off this parasite. So it enters our body and then dies. Yeah. So it had no way of continuing its cycle.

Maybe it’s just too far. Yeah. Like if you’re a parasite and you’re going through a rat, it’s maybe like six inches from the belly to the head. Yeah. But in a person, it’s like a couple feet. Yes. It’s like ten times the distance.

And during that process, like they said, her white blood cell count was high, so that meant her body was trying to fight off whatever it was, so it already knew that there was a problem. So it’s basically being attacked while it’s trying to finish its mission of laying eggs.

It’s not having a good time. Shells loaded the first story in and I will feed it the second titled tribe refuses to accept cursed ritual skulls after museum offers to return them.

This is by Tom Sanders for Metro.co .uk on January 13th. A Papua New Guinea tribe has refused to accept cursed ritual skulls made by cannibal headhunters after a Dutch museum offered to return them to make amends for colonialism. The skulls crafted by the Latmol people were initially used in ceremonial practices and incorporated human skulls into their base. Each skull was taken from the graves of the tribes ancestors, covered in clay and were used in a number of spiritual rituals, including mourning, hunting, and invoking religious favors. German Roman Catholic missionaries collected them at the beginning of the 20th century, regarding them as the epitome of native savagery and justification for civilizing the tribes through colonial intervention.

Leave it to the church to ruin everyone’s fun. The skulls became highly sought after collectibles by wealthy Europeans. Apparently didn’t care how savage these things were. I think it’s more savage to steal someone else’s shrunken head. I mean, or not shrunken head stolen skull.

I was going to say the Papua New Guinea doesn’t want it back. So is it is it really that bad? They don’t want it back.

I guess we’ll see. Yeah. Yeah, it became highly sought after and many eventually found their way into museums. The Missy Museum in state, Netherlands, owned a number of the sacred skulls and recently offered to return them in an attempt to make amends for their colonial past. But the communities declined the offer. When asked why, they would say, it was such a long time ago. We don’t know anymore who they were. They’ve lost their power for us and they are just objects. We have no use for them. Some of them also said it’s dangerous because we don’t know who they are and if they are the skulls of enemies. If we bring them into our village, this could cause harm to the village, a curse. Currently, the museum has said they will continue to research and display the skulls. The incident demonstrates that the process of restitution is not a straightforward process and the legacy of colonialism is not a black and white issue. They also asked both in the villages and in the local museum whether they had any problem with the Missy Museum exhibiting the skulls. Everybody said no. They were made for that purpose. Some were proud to have their hair to John display.

Well, good job, Papua New Guinea.

Those not glad were probably thinking, yeah, curses of our enemies will just invade that museum. You can have them. You can keep them.

To be fair, we want our own cursed museum. It’s true. If Germany doesn’t want them, they can send them to us.

It’s true. Germany? Yeah. A couple of Canadian podcasters here. If you have too many ritual skulls in your display, we can take them off your hands. That is the second new start for the Curse Summoner. Sheryl will give it the third.

This one is titled, X military officer abducted by aliens had conversation with seven foot mantis being. This is from January 27th by Joe Ferrata for dailystar.co .uk

I got to say when I’m pulling news articles, the ones from the UK have titles that are practically a paragraph long. Yes. Wordy, wordy.

A retired military officer has claimed that he had a conversation with a fuming seven foot praying mantis looking being. In an interview with News Nation, Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch claimed that he was abducted and told by his alien abductor that the body is just a machine that houses the soul and they can’t steal his soul or his consciousness. So quit griping. Yeah. So we’re like meat mechas. Yeah. I gotcha.

I like that mecha. And also went on to say that the extraterrestrial was angry at him, but said it had no intention of causing him any physical harm. The alien was angry. He said because it was wrong to perceive any UFO in Earth’s airspace as a threat, adding there was no threat of any collision with our planet. John Blitch went on detailing his objection by aliens where they explicitly told him that they meant him no harm.

And they were just trying to help him. He said it was a seven foot tall praying mantis looking being. It was upset with me and chastising me. It came through the door and was standing over me and I was terrified and frozen paralyzed on my bed. He was just looking at me very intently and explained to me, look, this body that you’ve got is just a soul housing group. It is a brain housing group. It is a machine that your soul occupies for this lifetime. Meat mech.

Meat mech. So yeah, we’re going to mess with it. We’re going to get up under the hood.

We’re going to adjust the carburetor. We may swap a couple of parts out, but we can’t steal the essence of you. We can’t steal your soul.

We can’t steal your consciousness. So quit screaming and writhing around and just let us do our fricking jobs. And it’s like the equivalent of a surgeon telling the patient stops warbing. It’s just like the veterinarian to my Labrador retriever. And so I got that very condescending and vigorous instruction.

This is quoted from what he was saying. So it does sound weird.

It sounds weird. Okay, just checking. His mandibles were kind of behind a casing or a shell that opened up. And he started grabbing chunks of my cheeks and ripping it. Like his butt cheeks or his face cheeks. His face cheeks.

Okay. And there’s buds battering all over the wall. And I’m feeling the tug and I’m feeling this flesh. And the whole time he is conveying to me, we can’t get to your soul. We can do a lot of damage to your body if we want to. We don’t. We’re trying to help you. But this is how bad could get. So stop squirming and just let us get this job done.

I’ll bite you in the face again. Mm-hmm. Sounds like the bird. Birds like to bite you in the face.

It’s true. When asked if the physical damage to his cheek was real, Lieutenant Colonel Blitch said, No, I felt the tugging. And I had the visual. A false fuzzy memory. The full interview can be seen on News Nation.

Uh-huh. I like that the alien was just… Apparently this alien has just done too many abductions and he’s just sick and tired. He can’t empathize with the puny humans that he brings aboard a ship anymore.

Yeah, but like, he never explained his motives as to why he’s there. What experiments are they doing? Like, yeah, okay, they can move stuff around and they can mess with his body. But why?

I got the impression that he’s just going through the motions. Just doing his job. Maybe it’s part of the fuller interview. This was just, I guess the article just picked and chose from the interview what they wanted to talk about. And being bitten in the face by a seven foot tall mantis is a good headline.

Yeah, that’s fair. It worked on me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it will sell newspapers.

Well, we have three stories loaded in the Curse-O-Meter here to calibrate it for a main topic. Get it to spit out the results now. Please stand by. And the results for the first news story about parasitic brain, or slug brain parasites, causing burning, tingling sensation in your feet.

The Curse-O-Meter says… Probably cursed. You’re not destined to become part of the life cycle of the parasite. And it is curable. And as long as you go to the hospital in time.

Yeah, besides which burning sensations in your legs and visual hallucinations and feeling like you’re going to go on vacation, etc. It feels like a little bit like a possession, which I guess technically having a parasite would be like a possession.

Getting possessed. Yeah. And what’s better than that feeling like you’re about to go on vacation? Mm-hmm. They’re using it against us. That’s true. And the second news story about the Papua New Guinea tribe refusing to accept the skulls that were stolen from them by German missionaries. The Curse-O-Meter says, definitely cursed.

Yeah, the tribes don’t even want those skulls back.

It’s true. And they’re happy enough to let the museum keep them.

Yeah. Because they’re worried about what could happen. And so if the people who made these heads don’t want them back because they’re like, yeah, you know what, those are probably not a thing we want anymore. It’s probably a bad sign.

Is this their revenge? Uh-huh. And it’s definitely served cold. Yep. And I bet all those missionaries are dead now. Yeah, that’s true. The curse. Mm-hmm. The curse of the pilfered skulls. Yep. And the results for the third news story about the seven foot mantis.

The seven foot mantis abduction experience. The Curse-O-Meter says, definitely cursed. And I could see why. I mean, this mantis clearly doesn’t really care about the terror the lieutenant colonel was going through. He was eating his face. Although the article didn’t really specify if it was his face cheeks or his butt cheeks. Either way. Not a good time.

I don’t like the idea that the alien is somehow communicating with this guy when like the mouth of like a mantis doesn’t have a voice box. So it’s clearly using telepathy. They don’t make noises like people. So that’s the only way it can communicate, which that to me is kind of cursed. Yep.

Maybe they have Google translate. Mm-hmm. So just like making insect chitiness clicking noises and it’s just translating into a happy robot voice. Voice.

Yeah, maybe.

Stop squirming. We cannot take your soul. We can only hurt your body, which is just the thing you ride around in.

Either way. Sounds unpleasant.

Definitely unpleasant. We have the Curse-O-Meter nice and calibrated here for the main topic. Before we go into that topic though, we’re going to head over to the probably cursed museum and gift shop for the first news story. So the article we’re releasing with today’s episode.

So today I have artifact number 18, which I’m going to call the funeral, although Chris might come up with a better name when he puts it on our store. So this photograph Chris and I found at our local antique mall. It’s a black and white photo of a funeral possession, procession.

Funeral possession. Uh-huh. I mean, it could be.

Let’s be honest. There are two men lifting a coffin out of the back of a truck and a group of women looking on from the ground based on the details in the photo. It appears that the photo was probably taken in the early 1900s and the women onlookers are likely Ukrainian.

One, because we have a lot of Ukrainian settlements in and around Alberta. Yeah, we can spot them. Yeah, so that’s probably pretty likely. And two, because of the colors slash decorations on the headscarves that some of the women have. So the coffin itself doesn’t look really fancy, which makes me question or I guess theorize that the deceased might have been a victim of the Spanish flu, which was rampant at the time in the early 1900s.

Uh, just made of reclaimed wood or something.

Yeah, because it looks like it’s just a plain wood coffin and it’s got an X painted on the top. So it kind of makes me think it was like hastily constructed. Or if not that it was maybe all the family could afford because it’s not even a cross if you take a look passing Chris the photo.

Oh yeah. Yeah, it definitely looks like they made it themselves.

I wish they weren’t there. They’re like the women are blocking like the name on the truck. I wish they weren’t because my other thought was military. Oh military. Because the men are wearing gray jackets. Perhaps. Yeah, either way, either way, this photo could be yours. If you’d like to head over to our Etsy shop.

Yep, probably cursed dot Etsy dot com. You can see that and all of our other released artifacts that we release, at least the ones that haven’t sold yet. Make sure you get yours now. Wink wink nudge nudge.

And one of my other favorite segments about our probably cursed Etsy shop is the spooky updates.

If you’ve listened to our past episodes, you know that we have had some paranormal experiences here in our own home since we started putting the museum together.

And it comes and goes there are some months where it feels like nothing is happening and then there are other months where it’s like, oh my gosh, everything keeps happening. So I try to keep track of it all, but also it’s kind of getting to the point where sometimes it happens so often that I’m just like, yeah.

The ghosts, you got to amp it up ghosts. Yeah, we watched all these horror movies where like the hauntings and possessions escalate, but like at least in our own house, it seems to escalate for a little bit. We’re excited to see what’s going to happen next because we’re paranormal enthusiasts and then nothing. Nothing. Maybe the fridge would make a weird noise, but that’s about it.

Yeah, but luckily for you, I do have an update. A couple weeks back, Freddie was lying on the floor near the table where we record our podcast. And I was watching TV SIG on the couch just across the way. He had been lying in the same spot for about 20 minutes. When all of a sudden he jumped to his feet and sulked away. His like ears were down and his tail was down. And he doesn’t normally act like this, except for when he’s either like, we’ve accidentally spooked him or he’s gotten hurt, and he just kind of laid down over near the base of the stairs. And I was like trying to call him to come over because I was like, Oh, are you okay, buddy?

Like, are you hurt? And he wouldn’t come back to the side of the room that I was sitting on. He just stayed by the stairs and looked sad. And it wasn’t until Chris came down later to play fetch with him that he like, moved from his spot on the stairs.

Yeah, I guess it was the only safe place in the house. A ghost took his bed.

And I guess so. They poked at him or tugged his tail or it’s a ghost of the magpie from the yard. Yep.

The magpie is in our neighborhood like to toy with Freddie. When he’s napped in the yard in the past, he’ll grab his tail and make him jump up and move. Yep. Perhaps it was a ghost magpie. Doing what they loved in life. Yep.

Nothing much from my end other than a few snaps and cracks I’ve heard around the house that I can’t really figure out where they’re coming from or what’s causing it. But that’s not that exciting.

Depends who you talk to. There are some people online who just love those cracks and creaks and…

Yeah, it’s full of meaning. And here it’s like, I’m wondering if the house is breaking or if it’s ghosts. Please be ghosts. Please be ghosts. Ghosts are cheaper than your house breaking. Let me tell you.

And I suppose the other kind of update slash non update is if you’ve listened to us talk about our mystery ram’s head, you’ve probably also seen on the social media with the weird runes that were found on the bottom that we found out were actually Cornish witchcraft. We did try to take it with us to the convenience store because we found out the rooms are meant to bring us wealth. So we bought a lottery ticket and we didn’t win. So I assume either the magic has run out or the person who did win had two ram’s heads and then ousted us out of our prize.

I’ve taken on a different strategy. I’m starting to leave offerings with the ram’s head. So when I find coins while I’m lying around, I’ve just been putting them near the ram’s head.

I saw that. I was wondering what that was about.

I mean, it doesn’t hurt.

It’s true. We’re a long way from Catholic school, so we definitely know it doesn’t hurt.

That’s right. That is it for the probably cursed museum portion of our podcast. We’re going to head on to our main topic.

For today’s topic, we return to the Thunderbird State, Illinois. Yay. This time to the small town of Mattoon in August of 1944. It was in the early morning hours on a Thursday when a couple, the raifs, woke up to smelling a heavy odor in their bedroom. Immediately they felt ill, nauseous, and weakened, almost to the point of being paralyzed. Thinking they had left the gas stove on, they staggered from the bedroom to the kitchen to find the gas was indeed turned off. Not only that, but their house guests sleeping in a separate room were unaffected. Unable to find the source of the gas, they initially shrugged off the experience, blaming it on food poisoning. However, the raifs were the first of many victims of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.

I don’t know if that was the right noise, but I’m trying.

We got to experiment this podcast, see what works. At this point, I’ll say my episode has been derived from Scott Maruna’s The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, dispelling the hysteria from 2003, as well as the 1972 February issue of Fate Magazine.

Ooh, Fate Magazine.

They might be a source of future paranormal stories. Excellent. It’s basically a whole magazine of paranormal stuff. Nice. It’s like if they did our podcast in magazine form. Cool, I’ll have to check it out. In the next 48 hours, Mattoon was about to experience a gassing spree. Three more houses were targeted, all within eight blocks of each other. At 11 PM, later that same day, two sisters, Aileen and Martha, were finished counting their money and were getting ready to go to bed. Aileen went to her bedroom she shared with her daughter Dorothy, and as she climbed into bed she was aware of a powerful, sickly sweet odor.

But convinced herself it was just the flowers outside the window. But as time went on, the smell became stronger. Aileen noticed her lips were starting to burn. Her throat was going dry, and she was losing sensation in her legs. She panicked and screamed for her sister Martha, who, after smelling the pungent odor, ran to the neighbor’s house to call the police and Aileen’s husband.

This is why they tell you not to wear a sense to work people. Don’t do it.

Exactly. Everything that happens to these people, you could be doing it by trying to cover up your unshowered body with perfume. And here’s where we get a first peek at the mad gasser. When Aileen’s husband pulled into the driveway, he noticed a tall man in black, wearing a tight fitting cap standing at one of the windows. The husband gave chase, but lost him. Was it Slender Man? This was before Slender Man. I don’t think Slender Man wears a hat. I think he just has a featureless head outside of a suit.

Probably true. I can only remember the Slender Man artwork that was all over the internet once upon a time. Two other houses were hit afterwards that night. At least I think there were two, because both stories are pretty much the same. A mother notices an oddly, sickly, sweet smell coming from the children’s bedroom. And when investigating, they found their children sick and vomiting. But one of the stories notes that the gas didn’t smell like chloroform. It’s good to know. I think back then in popular culture, chloroform was the only gas you could use on a person to make them pass out.

If I remember correctly. Because they would just jump up from behind you and hold the rag over you, and then you just immediately go limp. Yeah, there. Which is apparently not how chloroform actually works. No. And as suddenly as the gassings started, they briefly stopped. I looked at the calendar for 1944, and it would have been the Labor Day long weekend, so the Mad Gasser probably had vacation plans. No.

It’s definitely a military experiment. Oh yeah? Labor Day long weekend, the military was off, because it’s a holiday. Government employees, they’re not going to pay them for that. That’s my theory. Military experiment. Military experiment.

A lot of people think it was a military experiment. I thought it was excellent. Because this was like World War II. And you know, militaries during wartime, they’ll throw anything against the wall to see what sticks. But if it was the gasser growing on vacation, I wonder where he does vacation. Yeah.

Good question. It’s the gassiest place to visit. Probably a volcano. It’s true. Oh, they probably went to Yellowstone. Yeah. All those gassings bubbling up from the ground. It was a smelly place when we went. Over the weekend, a local newspaper got the story.

Thank you, Freddie. Over the weekend, the local newspaper got a hold of the story and published an article alerting people to amad and nest the tits on the loose. And as for police action, they decided the gasser saw the sisters counting their money through the window and devised a novel way to rob them. Thwarted, they attempted it on the other victims. And since no new reports came over the weekend, they assumed the perpetrator skipped town and there was nothing to worry about.

Good job, police.

But as soon as the long weekend was over, the mad gasser returned. Mr. and Mrs. Cords came home around 10pm Tuesday evening and settled down to relax when they noticed a damp white cloth hanging on their screen door. Mrs. Cords gave it an investigatory sniff and immediately experienced a sensation like an electric shock through her body that seemed to paralyze her legs. Her lips began to swell, crack in bleed, and her throat burned and she began spitting blood.

So, bad allergic reaction?

Possibly. She’s not the only one to experience this though. A doctor was called and she recovered after a couple hours and brave lady she was went back out to the front porch to look for any clues as to what happened. But all she found were a well-worn skeleton key and a used lipstick.

So the mad gasser was a lady?

Maybe. One of the sightings, they thought, looked like a lady in man’s clothing. Police eventually arrived but by the time they were able to get the cloth to the lab, the chemical had evaporated and couldn’t be identified. And it was this point the police started to take things more seriously. They had their officers pull double shifts and not completely equipped to deal with this unique problem. The next day they brought in agents from the Illinois Department of Public Safety and FBI agents had also arrived to try to determine the chemical being used. Even armed vigilantes were starting to roam the streets looking for the gasser. With this much heat on the mad gasser, you’d expect them to go into hiding. Of course not. It’s only been barely a week since the first incident and now it’s Wednesday and started last Thursday. And he’s already got three investigative organizations after them, plus vigilantes. So that night, as you said, of course not. They struck seven times.

Wow. At 10pm, a restaurant manager went to bed and smelled what they described as cheap perfume that immediately made their legs feel weak. At 11pm, a little girl became sick in her sleep. Their parents had seen a suspicious prowler by her bedroom a couple hours earlier.

There’s no description there. At midnight, a woman woke up smelling a sickly sweet odor. She became nauseous and her lips and throat started to burn.

At 1am, a 65 year old man had something sprayed onto him from his open window that made him violently ill. A neighbor witnessed a tall, thin man running from the house at the time of the attack. And so on until he got to seven houses. This man had a lot of gas to pass. Geez. That Thursday night, the gasser strikes again.

This time, three times at the same house. A school principal and her sister were sleeping in the same room when they were awoken by a sweet smelling odor. Their arms and legs became paralyzed and they were trapped in bed where they watched in horror as a blue vapor twice more poured in through their window, all the while accompanied by a buzzing noise from the outside.

Blue vapor? Hmm.

Maybe like burning smoke or burning oil. So Mattoon is in a panic. It’s been a week of attacks and friends and family are now making plans to sleep in each other’s company that night. Cause that’ll help.

Exactly. If we’re all in one place, they can’t gas us all. Kids are forbidden from playing outside after dark.

And even though the weather has been stifling hot, no one dares sleep with their window open. The newspapers were attacking the police in articles for not doing enough. The state investigator declared it was the strangest case he’d ever worked on, describing the gasser as mentally unbalanced, but intelligent, possibly brilliant. And no one is getting robbed or molested, they’re just getting gassed in their beds. And the mad gasser continues his gassing spree. One night, a taxi driver drove through a cloud of blue gas and reported it. Police, reporters, and the usual looky-loos crowded the area and all felt the usual mad gasser symptoms.

The source was tracked to right outside a bedroom window and was considered a failed gassing attempt as no gas was detected inside the home. Neighboring counties all over were also briefly gassed. And remember that school principal and her sister? The ones who got gassed three times? They got gassed again.

At a certain point you would think you would learn to close your window.

It’s true. Sleeping in a different room in the house, sleeping in the kitchen.

Maybe go on vacation for a while.

Yeah, like with all this going on, just leave town until the problem goes away. Yep. The police were desperately trying to find a suspect. Following amateur chemists and local crackpots, but had to remove them as suspects as the mad gasser would strike as the suspects were surveilled. And at this point, the chief of police wants this mad gasser business over with.

The town is in a panic and no progress is being made. He announces if anyone makes a mad gasser report to the police, they have to submit to a physical examination or be arrested.

Kind of physical examination.

I assume they want a doctor to look at them to match up the symptoms with the other people?

I could agree to that.

A lot of people say that this was just a discourage people from calling in because they don’t want to be poked and prodded by a doctor. There are worse things. He also announces that any nosy people following police cars would be arrested. He also declared that none of the previous reported cases had any supporting evidence, or that it was the work of a perpetrator and that it was likely mass hysteria.

I mean possibly, but not all those cases. Yeah.

Like there was evidence there was like cut open screens, like there was the gas, there was the rag at the one person’s house.

Like you can definitely see some people being affected by that, but like not everyone.

Yep, doesn’t make sense. No. He blamed the chemical smell on being blown in on the wind from the nearby Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company and stated it could feasibly stain clothing like the rag at the cord’s home. The factory owner did refute all of that. The chemical the police chief had blamed for everything, carbon tetrachloride, was only used in fire extinguishers. The owner was also backed up by the state health department who said it would not be possible for the gas to reach town and remain concentrated enough to be felt.

I mean there was lead in that gas. Carbon tetrachloride? No, in like gas gas there would be lead in there. Gas gas? Yeah, like if because wait what was the company? Oh diesel. Yeah diesel. There should be lead in the diesel.

Oh yeah, I’d say what you’re saying. Yeah. It would taste sweet.

It would taste sweet. It would. Sweet sweet lead. And if you’re, I mean I’m just trying to put together strings of thoughts but if it, if you lit it on fire it would produce like a bluish gray smoke. Possibly.

I’ve never lit diesel and lit diesel on fire. Have you seen it?

No I have not but I, again I’m just trying to theorize things. I would have to do some more research.

A lot of theorizing goes on by the author. He is a, so the author wrote the book that I took notes from. He was a high school chemistry teacher. Okay. So he did take a stab at what he thought the chemical might be. He did also, I don’t think he actually mentioned the diesel being a factor. He did say it was unlikely to be carbon tetrachloride due to it having like other side effects that would have definitely been reported. Too hard to ignore.

Fair. I would like to point out that I guess diesel is not normally blue but apparently our government dies. Some forms of diesel blue. So there you go.

Maybe it’s Alberta.

Yeah it might have been Alberta. They’re making diesel for Alberta. Yeah. So the police chief as basically said if you’re calling in you’re seeing the doctor and the doctor’s going to poke you or if, and if you refuse you’re getting arrested.

Don’t follow the police cars or you’re getting arrested. And this was all mass hysteria. And he got the result he wanted. The police reports went from a torn to a trickle. The very last gas attack was on September 13th. A 54 year old woman was gassed in her bedroom. Her sons, alerted by her cries for help, ran outside the house to see the gasser running away down the alley.

But this time, describe them as a short, heavy set, darkly dressed figure, which they did describe as a woman in man’s clothing. Definitely the military. Yep. Sticking to the military. So many different descriptions of different types of people.

Whole crew working. Yeah. When they inspected the bedroom window they saw a cut in the screen and the imprints of women’s shoes in the dirt below. And to this day, no one has ever identified the gasser.

The author of this book thinks he deduced the identity as the son of an influential family in town who dabbled in chemistry and that this particular suspect had an axe to grind with the community who shunned him for being a loner and homosexual.

Well, that was rude of the community.

It’s true. And that he had been committed to an asylum at the same time the gassings stopped. And weirdly, Matoon is not the only place to experience a mad gasser. Earlier the same year as the events in Matoon, Pennsylvania had a similar style of mad gasser attack. And a decade earlier in Virginia, an eerily similar series of events occurred over a month starting around Christmas. The same sweet smelling gas, same symptoms.

And by the end, the same response from the police who eventually declared there was no gasser in the whole event was mass hysteria. Weird. So maybe you are right about it being military? Because maybe the heat was getting too much and the military got involved and they said you need to shut down any inquiry into this.

Yeah, like and then they just up and moved to another town when they’re done their experiment and pick a new one.

And that is my topic about the mad gasser of Matoon.

Very nice.

Thank you. I was trying to come up with fart jokes throughout the whole thing but it felt cheap. I did want to say that the town had organized the foul air response team.

Very nice. Yeah.

But yeah, I didn’t want to inject too much silliness into it.

That’s fair. It was already silly enough as is.

It’s true. Mad gasser. Just the name alone.

Do you know who coined the name of the mad gasser?

Not quite sure. It might have been one of the newspaper articles that got published because like the story went around. The first local news stories like I mentioned they blamed it on a mad anesthetist. Yeah.

Because I guess they call them that because people are going numb. Yeah. It’s an interesting story. The book he also thinks that the reason why you saw different people or why the reason why they saw different suspects is because his suspect had sisters who would have likely helped him out had he been going around gassing people on purpose.

Well would your sisters do that?

Oh heck no. Yeah. I’ve seen to that. Yeah. I wouldn’t help my brother with that either. It seems a little bit weird. Apparently the suspect he had in mind had gone to school with a lot of the first victims. So they were known to each other but it’s also like it’s a tiny town in the Midwest. So everyone kind of knew everybody.

Yeah anyway.

That’s my topic on the mad gasser of Mattoon. I will run it through the Curse-O-Meter now. And the Curse-O-Meter says the mad gasser of Mattoon is definitely cursed.

I would agree. I don’t like the idea of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to feel my legs. That would be disturbing.

Definitely with a weird perfumey smelling smell. The story didn’t actually mention anybody’s pets so I wonder what the effect would have been on like an animal. I bet it would have killed something smaller if it had that effect on a person.

Oh for sure. To be fair at the time most people probably had like dogs maybe cats. Like I don’t know how likely you were to have like birds or other types of animals. I bet they had dogs.

The around this time the book makes a lot of mentions about how most of the men were out fighting world war two. Yeah. So it was like if there were men around like they’re either farmers or older folk who were of drafting age. Yeah. I bet some people had a dog around for protection. Oh for sure. Especially once a mad gasser was on the loose. Yeah. Dog sales probably went up over those two weeks.

I was going to say during world war two I don’t think you want to feed a dog if you can’t feed your family.

That’s true. Yeah. Either feed the dog or you feed your family. And that wraps up today’s episode of the Probably Curse podcast. We will be back to you at the first of next month. Rachael brings us her next topic.

Until then stay spooky everyone. Stay spooky.