IL - In search of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon

This actually was Weird and Off-Beat News....in the 1940s. But the mystery remains. Couldn't think where to put this extremely odd subject so it's here. Mass hysteria? An actual physical presence dementedly attacking home sites? Still unknown.....

The Wiki entry also has much info on similar incidents which occurred in Botetourt County, Virginia, about ten years earlier.

Very good article here:

In Search of the Mad Gasser. (Fortean Times)
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon is often held up as a classic example of mass hysteria and has led to even more extraordinary claims of Nazi or alien involvement. But is the case really as mysterious as it seems? Jonathan Downes ventures to the American Midwest to investigate.

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In September 1944, a series of peculiar events rocked the town of Mattoon, Illinois. For almost two weeks, the town’s police department received dozens of reports from terrified residents that a mysterious prowler, dressed entirely in black, was haunting the streets and squirting anæsthetising gas into the faces of his victims. The reports got weirder. One described the mysterious felon as wearing a strange metal helmet or mask; another spoke of a Bigfoot-type creature.

Although the attacks petered out in mid-September, the events of that fortnight have since achieved near-mythical status.
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Click to expand...

much more at the link

Wiki: Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Many other internet sites include coverage of the events also.

Yes, and in 1968 the Mattoon High School was attacked by hoards of deadly brown recluse spiders! That town is right out of a 1970s drive-in movie.