The “Phantom Anesthetists”: The famous cases of the “Mad Gassers of Mattoon & Roanoke” Part 2

The Return of the “Phantom Anesthetist”

We move ahead from the bizarre events surrounding the citizens of Botetourt County, Virginia during the winter of 1933/34 and fast forward ten years to 1944. The world has escaped the clutches of “The Great Depression” only to find itself plunged into the full out horror of World War II.  The backdrop of the Mad Gasser’s return would coincide with the height of the war in 1944.  America was in full war time mode, with the majority of the men from the country out in the trenches of Europe or island hopping in the Pacific fighting to protect their homeland from the axis powers.  Fear and paranoia hung in the air like a vaporous poison, and looking back now it seemed a perfectly eerie backdrop to the return of the “Phantom Anesthetist”.  This time though, the Mad Gasser would pick a new location to begin a new reign of terror…..Mattoon, Illinois.

The Terror Begins Anew

     On August 31^st, 1944 in a small house on Grant Avenue in the town of Mattoon, Illinois would become the first stage in the Mad Gasser’s attacks upon the town.  A gentleman by the name of Urban Raef was awoken by a strange odor that had encompassed most of the interior of his house.  Soon Mr. Raef was overtaken by headaches, nausea leading to bouts of vomiting and even myasthenia (muscle weakness).  Urban’s wife, suspecting that perhaps there was a leak in the gas line to the house, attempted to check the gas line for her husband.  Unfortunately, she found herself partially paralyzed and unable to move out of bed.  Mr. & Mrs. Raef would simply be the first victims of the night, with another two (a mother & daughter) being added to the list by the morning. 

    

    September 1^st would bring another group of victims as well as a description of the assailant.  A Mrs. Kearney reported that at around 11 p.m. , a strange odor began to overtake her household.  At first Mrs. Kearney dismissed the smell, but soon the gas became overwhelming, and eventually she began to suffer from partial paralysis along with nausea.  In a panic Mrs. Kearney contacted her sister (whom was upstairs at the time) about her condition, whom in turn contacted the police.  Mrs. Kearney’s husband arrived home around 12:30 a.m. and discovered an unidentified assailant outside of his household.  Mr. Kearney described the assailant as a tall, thin framed man wearing dark clothing and a tight fitting cap around his head.  Mr. Kearney attempted to chase after the prowler, but ultimately the mysterious individual was able to escape.  This would remain the general description of the “Mad Gasser of Mattoon” for the rest of the timeline of the attacks. 

      

     For nearly two weeks the attacks continued, remaining more or less the same throughout.  An unknown assailant would sneak up to houses and through various entryways (usually through a cracked windows, doors, and even holes in the floorboard), would inject some sort of gas into these households.  The victims inside would all suffer more or less from the same symptoms (partial paralysis, nausea/vomiting, headaches, and swelling (of the mouth, tongue, nasal passages, and the trachea)).  From August 31^st to September 13^th, the Gasser’s reign of terror would hold the town of Mattoon hostage until, as mysteriously as the Gasser appeared, the Gasser disappeared without a trace.  The police ultimately found little evidence as to the identity of the Gasser.  Though several misnomers about the identity and the methods used by the Gasser in his/her’s attacks were brought up by the victims, none of them were able to paint a complete picture of the Gasser or of the Gasser’s motives. 

*One of the victims reported seeing blue gas being pumped into her house and also hearing the buzzing of some sort of equipment.  It was hypothesized that the Gasser was using equipment traditionally used by farmers for fumigating crops.

*The supposed final victim, a Ms. Bertha Burch described an encounter with the Mad Gasser, and said that the Gasser was a woman dressed as a man.  While a set of woman’s footprints were found on Ms. Burch’s property that were not the victim’s, the police ultimately were unable to collaborate her story.

Theories on the Mattoon Gasser’s Identity

  1.    Mass Hysteria/Burglar:  It’s been proposed that a possible burglar was using some sort of anesthesia/sleeping gas/ Diethyl ether to paralyze victims while robbing the house.  This may be a copycat burglar whom followed after the potential assailant in Botetourt County in 1934

  2.   Toxic Waste or Pollution/emissions from a nearby factory:  Police investigated nearby factories and released public statements about the possibility of pollution from nearby factories being a potential cause of sickness amongst those in Mattoon.  This may take into account the similarly reported (sweet odor) and symptoms across all the victims.

  3.    An Actual Assailant:  It is possible that the assailant had some connection to the Gasser attacks in Botetourt County and may actually be one in the same.

  4.   Aliens/Paranormal Beings:  It has been hypothesized that due to the bizarre attacks by “The Phantom Anesthetist” and the fact that there were no discernible reasons behind the attacks (burglary, murder, sexual assault, etc) and also the fact that there was no physical trace of the Gasser, some people theorize that the Gasser’s identity may lie more in the paranormal.  People throughout the decades have suffered from experiences of being paralyzed in bed and being visited by “strange beings” that do nothing physically traceable to them except viewing them.  Could the “Mad Gasser” be a precursor or interpretation of such experiences?  
 5. Disturbed Medical Student: Scott Maruna, a former resident that was affected by the 1944 Mattoon attacks wrote a book entitled "The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria", theorized that a medical student from The University of Illinois by the name of Farley Llewellyn may have been responsible for the gas attacks.  Mr. Llewellyn was known as an accomplished chemist student that was ridiculed by the population of Mattoon due to rumors that he was a homosexual.  More information about this can theory can be found in Mr. Maruna's book.
  
  No other attacks were reported after 1944.  At the time of this posting, no information on the identity or the whereabouts of "The Phantom Anethesist" has been found

The “Phantom Anesthetists”: The famous cases of the “Mad Gassers of Mattoon & Roanoke” Part 1

     The evening hours are waning as you prepare yourself for bed.  Consciousness begins to slip away from you as you wrap yourself tightly in the sheets of your bed.  The toils of the day have begun to slowly dissolve away from your thoughts as your mind slips into sleep.   However, a sudden draft of cold air escaping from a raised window stirs you awake. Through the fog of your memory you can’t seem to remember cracking the window open, but then again all of your memories and thoughts at the moment are insubstantial and scattered.  Even though you’re mostly awake now, your thoughts cannot and will not come to focus.  You only think in passing that you can smell something in the air that's unfamiliar.  The smell is sweet yet oddly similar to the smell of sickness. Your eyes attempt to focus out of the dream world and back into reality as you glance at the window.  For a moment, you think you catch the glimpse of a thin framed figure  crawling through the now half opened window.  You begin to think that childhood fears are somehow returning to prominence in your mind.  You feel silly to suddenly be afraid of the dark, and perhaps you try to displace the thoughts. You blink a few times to rid yourself of the fragments of sleep that still cling to your eyelids.  As the world comes to focus, you find nothing there behind the window except the curtains swaying slightly against the draft of the night air.  You decide that the cool air is too much of an inconvenience so you try to get up to close the window.  However, you realize quite suddenly and terrifyingly that your body and mind are disconnected.  Your limbs are weak and brittle and will not respond to the impulses of your brain.  Even your lungs seem to struggle to keep their automatic functions steady and stable.  You want to panic, but something in the air prevents the reptilian part of your brain from activating your primal instincts.  You are alone and paralyzed.  As you lie there with hope ebbing out of your body, you feel the presence of someone or something in the room.  You catch the thing; a tall vaguely human shaped figure wearing a coat and black garbs that give nothing away of what, if any, flesh and bone that may lay underneath. The figure almost seems too thin to be a man, but the fumes in the air are distorting your vision.  The reality around you is bending and contorting in odd forms.  The figure itself ceases for a moment to even resemble that of a man.  Though, your focus keeps jumping from the terrifying delusion and the even more terrifying reality of this thing. A tight fitting hat of some sort obscures the figure’s face, if it even has one, and the only thing truly discernible about the figure is the fact that you can see a sort of tubing hanging out from the figure’s clothes that connects to some sort of sprayer.  It looks almost like a stereotypical insecticide sprayer that maybe someone you know uses on their flowers.  The figure hovers over you for a while as it lifts the sprayer and releases puffs of gas around you.  The smell is familiar now, the same sweet odor you detected before this nightmare began.  You feel nauseated and you can feel your throat slowly swelling.  Consciousness is slipping fast and you close your eyes.  Hours pass like seconds and as your eyes open and you blink between the rays of the morning sun, the nausea remains and along with it a headache that now gnaws away at the sensors of your brain.  You can move now, albeit your limbs are stiff and sore.  You're slowly gaining control back. Whatever poison the thing used to paralyze you has mostly worked its way out of your system…still though the lingering effects are there. You look around and notice that nothing looks missing in your room on from your person. You look to the window and find is completely opened.  The impression of footprints can be seen all around your bed, leading to and from the window.  You’re left with more questions than answers. What was this thing that visited you last night? Why did this person or thing go through such actions and steps to paralyze you without killing you or stealing from you?  Was it merely the act of a deranged individual or something else?  While this may sound a bit like something out of a Weekly World News magazine or a subject on a late night paranormal radio show, an entity/individual known as the “Phantom Anesthetist/The Mad Gasser(s) of Roanoke/Mattoon” commited similar attacks as described above in possibly two separate time periods in 1933/34 and again in 1944. While both events are divided by nearly 10 years and occurring in two places, Botetourt County, Virginia and Mattoon, Illinois, both separated by hundreds of miles, the circumstances of the attacks and the methods employed in the attacks were eerily similar.   

Several theories exist about whom or what was responsible for these attacks including 1: (For both places) A panic created from a mass hysteria induced by a single/multiple  perpetrators' attack on a family, 2: (In the case of Mattoon) At least one chemical leak in a nearby factory, 3: A potentially mentally disturbed individual (Roanoke) or mentally disturbed medical student (Mattoon), and even 4: the possibility of extra-terrestrials visiting and conducting experiments on individuals in these specific locations.  We’ll explore some of those theories as well as have some recounts from the events involving the “The Mad Gassers of Roanoke/Mattoon". 

On December 22^nd, 1933 one family’s terrifying encounter with the entity that will eventually be known as “The Mad Gasser of Roanoke” made headlines.  The story goes as follows…

     In Botetourt County, Virginia at roughly 10 p.m., the matriarch of the Huffman family reported smelling an unusual sweet odor that was seeping into and through her home.  Within minutes of coming into contact with the gas, she became overwhelmed with nausea.  Within a half an hour from the first appearance and fading of the odor, another wave of the mysterious gas overtook the home and its occupants.  The father of the household, Mr. Hoffman, contacted the police after noticing the unusual odor and gas that was seeping into the house.  After the gas dissipated, Mr. Huffman and his family, along with a guest Ashby Henderson retired to their individual bedrooms for sleep.  The true nightmare began around 1 a.m. as the house again began filling with the nauseous gas.  The symptoms from the gas intensified, resulting in all 8 members of the Huffman family along with their guest suffering from headaches, nausea, and swelling of the face, mouth, and throat.  One of Mr. Huffman’s daughters, Alice Huffman suffered a severe reaction and eventually passed out, having to be ultimately resuscitated back to life.  Remnants from the gas attacks would affect her for subsequent weeks after the bizarre incident.  Neither the Huffman family or their guest were able to identify who or what was behind the incident. Nearly two days later another family was attacked  via gas being injected into their household.  The bizarre assaults by the Mad Gasser were only beginning.

 A depiction of the "Phantom Anesthetist"

     On December 24^th, a house in Cloverdale, Virginia would be the next target of the bizarre Gasser.  The household of Mr. and Mrs. Hall along with their two children were exposed to an unknown gas agent.  Similar symptoms were reported being suffered by the Hall family as those experienced by the Huffman family. However this time, police were able to track the source of where the gas was emanating from.  Police believed that an unidentified individual had removed a nail from a rear window of the Hall’s house and used this hole to inject the gas.  Forensic evidence, including high concentrations of residue left by the gas in the area of the nail hole showed that the gas was being pumped into the house from that area of the home.  Mr. Hall rallied several other men from nearby homes and formed a search party in order to track down the assailant, but no suspects were found.  Soon after the incident with the Hall family, numerous other incidents were reported to the police that followed along with a strange and similar pattern to the first two attacks.  For three days the Gasser continued upon his or her's bizarre rampage.  On December 28th, the Gasser's attack abruptly ended.  The local police were offering a $500 reward for any information on the Gasser, a sizable sum considering the Great Depression at the time. The reward was never claimed.   It would be nearly two weeks before the Gasser's attacks would begin again.Hhhh
     One report to the police by a local resident on January 10^th mentions that she heard voices before she watched a billow of gas being injected into her house through a cracked window.  No description of the assailant was given though. The Gasser's attacks quickly escalated over the following weeks, leading to an all out police investigations as well as several mobs searching in vain for the "Phantom Anesthetist".  January 22nd would prove to be the height of the mad Gasser's devious attacks as within a span of an hour the Gasser attacked three sets of individuals before disappear into the night.  Raymond Ette and his son, the second group to be victims of the Gasser, claimed to have pursued the Gasser into the woods near their house, even going so far as to fire upon the fleeing Gasser. Though, no evidence that the Gasser was wounded or killed was found.  The most frightening aspect of the Gasser's attack was the fact that it seemed as if the Gasser was experimenting on various new types of chemical compositions for his gas.  
     On February 3rd, the Skagges family was attacked by the Gasser.  Mr. Skagges, his wife, and children all suffered from the same effects previously reported by past victims as well as the additional effects of hallucinations and temporary mania.  Even the family's dog was reported to have been affected by the gas .  The Gasser was evolving in his technique, and it was bringing the people who called the area home to their knees in terror.  
     February 9th would be considered to be the final day the Gasser would strike before disappearing into obscurity.  A gentleman by the name of  J.G. Shafe reported a run in with the Gasser in his own home.  Mr. Shafe chased the assailant through the snow drifts that covered his land, eventually cornering the Gasser in a barn.  However, as Shafe moved in for the kill, The Gasser had mysteriously vanished.  Police were called to the scene and followed the footprint trail from Shafe's house to the barn.  No evidence was found of footprints leaving from the barn.  The Gasser vanished without a trace.  It should be noted though that the vague imprints of women's shoes were found nearby on Mr. Shafe's property.  However, the distance between the woman's shoe prints and the barn were inconclusive.
     Nearly a dozen cases from the advent of the Gasser's attacks on December 22^nd through the final one on February 9^th were reported.  Some of the reported incidents mentioned the possibility of several Gassers working in congruency.  One report even mentioned that a family that was affected by the Gasser(s)' attack saw four unknown individuals fleeing from their home and into some nearby woods.  Whether or not this was a hallucination from the gas or a real coordinated assault by multiple individuals is unknown.    While the police say that several additional claims were made in concerns to the Mad Gasser, several were written off as hoaxes or hysteria. Theories ranged from a panic caused by a potential burglar to a mentally disturbed individual(s) attempting to poison people through the use of insecticides and a flit gun.  One unique theory that I'd like to mention that was thrown around at the time was the possibility that the attacks were a form of lashing out by formers soldiers whom were the victims of gas attacks in WW1.  A sort of PTSD/shell shock formulating into a psychosis that led the soldiers to act out the abuse they suffered on the battlefield upon others.  No matter the theories, as abruptly as the “Phantom Anesthetist” appeared, the entity disappeared forever into the night, leaving more questions than answers. It would be 11 years later and hundreds of miles away in Illinois that a similar string of attacks would occur.  This time, a portrait of whom or what was behind the attacks would emerge.

 

 A Flint Gun used in the early 20th century for spraying insecticides.