Over at the website of Fortean Times, an excellent article courtesy of my good friend at the Center for Fortean Zoology, Jon Downes, has just been posted. The subject matter: the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.
As Jon states: ?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 an?sthetising 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. Like the incidents reported from London and Aldershot over half a century before, the real events that unfolded in Mattoon underwent a fortean sea change to become items of myth and folklore, and a local lunatic, more to be pitied than censured, became a figure of legend: if 19th-century London hatched ?Spring-heeled Jack?, then 1940s Illinois gave birth to ?The Mad Gasser of Mattoon.??
Anyone with interests in Forteana, Men in Black, how and why rumors spread, and even aliens, should take a close look at Jon?s article. Definitely not one to be missed.
http://www.ufomystic.com/the-redfern-fi ... ad-gasser/
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