On Saturday night, dozens of armed farmers joined the citizens and police, thoroughly patrolling the city of Mattoon. Even so, at least six alleged gasser attacks took place, including one couple who had returned late in the evening to their farm on the edge of the city only to find the house filled with a sickly-sweet gas.
The next morning Commissioner Wright issued a statement urging residents to get a grip on themselves; “There is no doubt that a gas maniac exists and has made a number of attacks. But many of the reported attacks are nothing more than hysteria. Fear of the gas man is entirely out of proportion to the menace of the relatively harmless gas he is spraying. The whole town is sick with hysteria and last night it spread out into the country.”
Wright’s statements were aimed at discouraging further reports of the “gas man.” This became even more apparent when he issued a directive ordering those making reports to be examined at Mattoon Memorial Hospital. The burden of responsibility for the attacks was now skillfully shifted from the city fathers to the citizens whom they had failed to protect. But the gasser didn’t notice or care. His attacks continued despite the increasingly dubious opinions of the authorities.
Most of the gas attacks had taken place in the west side of the city, in the more affluent neighborhoods. On Sunday night he struck there again, spraying gas into the home of Mr. Kenneth Fitzpatrick. The lady of the house had nearly collapsed, and when Mr. Fitzpatrick came to help he was almost overcome as well. A short time later three sisters had smelled a sickly sweet gas in their living room. One of them was affected so seriously that medical attention was sought.
That night seemed to be the climax of the gasser events, however, after which the curtain fell swiftly. The papers were now increasingly skeptical and the police were now openly suggesting that people who reported attacks were imagining things.
To all those who had not experienced his malodorous attacks, or chased him across their lawns, the possibility that the gasser ever existed at all seemed more and more remote. The whole thing had probably been, as the police believed, simply a case of mass hallucination brought on by the lurid gasser accounts in the Journal-Gazette.
On the evening of the 11th, police received several calls of possible attacks but, with only perfunctory investigations, denounced them as all false even though, in one case, a doctor who had arrived on scene shortly after an alleged attack noticed that there was a “peculiar odor” in the room. Officialdom, however, was quite unimpressed with the doctor’s testimony.
Police Chief Cole announced at a press conference the next day that his men had cracked the case. “It was a mistake from beginning to end,” he said. “local police, in cooperation with state officers, have checked and rechecked all reported cases and we find absolutely no evidence to support stories that have been told. Hysteria must be blamed for such seemingly accurate accounts of supposed victims.”
Cole then stated that large quantities of carbon tetrachloride was being used in war work done at the nearby Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Company plant, and the smell could be carried by the wind to all parts of the city. It could also leave stains like those found on a rag in one Mattoon home. A spokesperson of the diesel plant was quick to reply that tetrachloride was a chemical found in fire extinguishers and the chemical that they used was odorless and produced “no ill effects in the air.”
The Decatur Review later added its own objections to the statements released by Chief Cole. There was no explanation of why several window screens had been cut prior to reported gassing by multiple persons. ‘Mass hysteria’ doesn’t cut through window screens, after all, and many people wondered why the odor from the Atlas Diesel plant hadn’t caused illness among the townspeople before. This, of course, to say nothing of the tall, dark man that was seen and pursued on several occasions after reported gas attacks.
The last reported attack occurred on September 13th, when a “woman dressed in man’s clothing” was seen spraying gas into a Mrs. Bertha Bench’s bedroom window. The next morning she and her son found imprints of high-heeled shoes on the ground beneath the window.
And then the “Mad Gasser of Mattoon” faded quietly into history. Or did he? Coleman notes that people in other locations also fell victim to ‘mass hysteria.’
Earlier in the year, on February 1st, 1944 three people living in Coatesville, Pennsylvania died after smelling a mysterious “sweet-smelling gas.” Neighbors of the victims also fell ill and had to seek medical attention. And in December, 1961 a Christmas program taking place in a Baptist church in Houston, Texas was disrupted by a “sickly sweet gas” that sent a hundred people rushing outside for air.
The victims then suffered a variety of adverse effects, including nausea, headaches, vomiting and sweating. Eight people, most of them children, were sent to the hospital for oxygen. Local Firemen, apparently completely unfamiliar with the side effects of mass hysteria, could find no cause or trace of the smell.
Costumed Creatures - The Phantom Clowns
Other inhumanoid prowlers that were first mentioned in Loren Coleman’s Fortean classic, ‘Mysterious America,’ are the Phantom Clowns. Once in every great while I have, upon occasion, happened to see a vehicle, usually a van, driving down the street with a clown behind the wheel. Not the ones who cut you off when there’s no one behind you, or turn suddenly without using signals, but actual circus clowns complete with makeup, colorful outfits, rubber noses; the whole works. It’s not that unusual, actually, but it is still odd to see in a small town and it always gave me the creeps for some reason.
I saw one such clown in the summer of 2006, in my hometown in western Kentucky. As a Fortean I was well aware of the phantom clown phenomenon. Even so, I paid little enough attention to this clown-driven vehicle, and I certainly never expected that my own hometown was about to experience a phantom clown scare.
Then, a few days later, local newscasts mentioned that area police were on the alert for a white van driven by someone dressed as a clown. The van had apparently approached some local schoolchildren and the “clown” had attempted to coax the youngsters into the vehicle. Terrified, the children fled to adults as the van drove away. Several more incidents were reported in the next few days, after which nothing more was heard. Police never caught up with the clown.
This same “classic” phantom clown scenario has played out many times before in countless cities across America. The phantom clowns seem to have only one interest; children, and, perhaps we only hear about the ones that get away.
A phantom clown appeared in Boston, Massachusetts in the spring of 1981, frightening children and making parents nervous. The first incidents took place in late April of that year, with things really heating up in, appropriately enough, May. On May 6th Boston police, responding to a spate of persistent complaints, warned the community that men dressed as clowns were harassing elementary school students. One of the pedophiles was seen wearing a clown-suit from the waist up. From the waist down he wore nothing at all. The clown was seen driving a black van near Franklin Park in the Roxbury area of Boston between the hours of four and six p.m. The same clown driving the same van also appeared in the Jamaica Plain area near the Mary F. Curley School.
Just the previous day, May 5th, two such “men,” both dressed as clowns, had attempted to lure children into their vehicle, also a black van, with offers of candy. Despite a very good description of the clown’s automobile; older model, black, with ladders on the side, a busted front headlight and no hubcaps, police were unsuccessful in locating it. After the suspicious van had been seen near the Lawrence Elementary School on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, police advised school administrators to be “extra cautious.”
The previous week, Counselor Daniel O’Connell of the Boston Public School District had sent a memo to all the district’s elementary and middle school principals;
“It has been brought to the attention of the police department and the district office that adults dressed as clowns have been bothering children to and
from school. Please advise all students that they should stay away from strangers, especially ones dressed as clowns.”
Very good advice. By May 8th reports of men dressed as clowns harassing children had come in from many locations throughout area, including Charlestown, Cambridge, Canton and Randolph, as well as other cities neighboring Boston. This made for some tough times for the area’s honest, authentic clowns. Police were stopping and checking every clown on the road, but no child molesters were taken into custody. Frustrated, local authorities reasoned that, since nearly all the clown sightings were made by children between the ages of five and seven, they were simply not reliable. The Boston Globe ran the story under the headline, ‘Police discount reports of clowns bothering kids,’ and that, as they say, was that. Or was it?
Fifty miles south, in Providence, Rhode Island, reports of the exact same nature were being made to area counselors and social workers, Coleman reports. Were these simply the fanciful imaginings of youth influenced by the events of the Boston clown scare? Psychiatrists wondered. They probably wondered even more when they learned later that same month that the clowns were at it again a thousand miles to the west.
On the morning of May 22nd at 8:30 a.m. a yellow van drove up beside two schoolgirls on their way to the bus stop in Kansas City, Missouri. Presumably, the driver didn’t know that their mother was watching from just down the street. She saw the van stop, she later said, and someone inside spoke to her two daughters. The girls then screamed and ran away as the van sped from the scene. They described the driver to their mother as a man dressed like a clown and brandishing a knife. He had ordered the two girls to get inside.
By noon area police had received dozens of similar reports. The phone calls didn’t start tapering off until around 5 p.m. As usual, the police were put on high alert and they criss-crossed the city in search of the yellow van; to no avail.
Only a week before, on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Kansas, other schoolchildren claimed that a clown had chased them home from school and threatened them if they didn’t get into his vehicle. Some reports even claimed that the clown wielded a sword instead of a knife. Parents in the twin cities were nervous about letting their children out of their sight for fear of the “killer clowns,” as they were calling the affair. Some were even keeping them home from school. It didn’t take long before our old friend, the “group hysteria” explanation was rolled out for public consumption. Even so, the reports continued.
Sixth-grade student LaTanya Johnson saw the clown near her school, Fairfax Elementary.
“He was by the fence and ran down through the big yard when some of the kids ran over there,” she said. “He ran toward a yellow van.” Since the clown was seen outside the van, LaTawnya was able to provide a more detailed description of his attire; and perhaps a clue if we reason that the only reason he got out of the van was to be seen. “He was dressed in a black shirt with a devil on the front,” Johnson later told a reporter for the Kansas City Star. “He had two candy canes down each side of his pants. The pants were black too, I think. I don’t remember much about his face.” The school principal later remarked, “These kids are terrified.”
Other clown encounters were taking place in quaint little mid-western cities such as Omaha, Nebraska, Denver, Colorado and others. During the last week in May, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police were getting fifteen such reports a day. After a figure dressed as a clown was seen on Bentley Drive in Terrace Village, local police conducted a search using two canine units and 100 children armed with clubs; to no avail. Witnesses insisted that the clown they had seen was real and not imaginary.
During the first week of June 1981, children in the Hill District of Pittsburgh claimed that they had been harassed by two men dressed as clowns and driving a van. Then all hell seemed to break loose. Costumed cretins were being seen everywhere, and they were not just clowns anymore, but came dressed in a ridiculous variety of characters.
In the Garfield neighborhood someone driving a blue van and dressed in a white and pink rabbit costume allegedly frightened children and eluded capture. Another such ‘rabbit’ was seen haunting a local cemetery. One extremely bizarre report from Arlington Heights alleged that ‘Spider-Man’ joined forces with a ‘gorilla’ and a ‘clown’ and attempted to entice a young boy into a vehicle. Fifteen such instances every day. That’s a lot of childish fear. And not a single one of them was ever caught, despite their outlandishly noticeable garb.
Something peculiar was indeed happening in America back in 1981. Strangely, the clown scares went unreported by mass media outlets, and largely unnoticed until Coleman wrote about the subject back in 1983. They are still happening. They are still reported in local newspapers and newscasts throughout the U.S., and still remain as isolated, unconnected events except in the eyes of Forteans everywhere.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported on June 20th, 2000:
“A man dressed in complete clown costume and holding three helium balloons tried to lure children into woods near King James Court Apartments at about 12:30 pm. Monday, Fitchburg police said.”
Then, two days later, the same publication ran this article:
Suspicious Clown Had Unique Face Paint:
Fitchburg police, investigating a man in a clown costume who tried to lure children into woods on Monday, have concluded he’s not a “legitimate” clown.
Detective Todd Stetzer, who said he’s learned a lot about clowning since the man appeared near King James Court Apartments, said the man’s black face paint set him apart from any of three mainstream styles of clown customary.
“That’s extremely, extremely unique,” he said. “It isn’t in the legitimate style of clowning, which kind of leads us to believe the person was using it as a costume only for this purpose (enticement).”
Police have ruled out several clowns who were in the Fitchburg area on legitimate business, such as a clown at a Boy Scouts picnic, he said. “We’ve been tracking tips down as they come in, but we have nothing definite yet. Children reported that the man, who was holding three helium balloons, tried to call them over to the woods where he stood. His hair or wig was white. He had a round, red nose, a black face, huge red shoes and yellow overalls.”
Part Five:
The Subterraneans
“I will tell you a secret. I have seen the ‘new man.’ He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him.”
-Adolf Hitler
Could there be a race, or races, of inhumanoid creatures living beneath our own feet? Some people would argue yes and, indeed, the idea is a very old one as we have seen. Nearly every culture on earth has traditions and legends which speak of underground dwellers. Some people even believe that the Earth is a hollow sphere which contains an ‘inner world’ peopled by intellectual and technological “supermen,” some benevolent, some malevolent, who constantly seek to ensnare and enslave surface-dwellers for their own nefarious purposes. Entrances to this underground kingdom are said to exist hidden away in various locations all over the world. Buddhists believe in the subterranean empire of Agharta, also inhabited by superhuman entities called the ‘ancient masters.’
One extremely ancient Indian text; the epic Ramayana, even describes an emissary from Agharta who traveled aboard an aerial vehicle, or UFO. The notion of an inner Earth was and still is believed by a great many people, including Edmund Halley, Edgar Allen Poe, Horace Greeley and Adolf Hitler. In fact, it can be argued that the whole of the reasoning behind Hitler’s merciless attempts at world domination was simply to be found “worthy” of acceptance by the superhuman subterranean inhumanoids which ruled the inner world. Members of this secret race, he believed, sometimes emerged to walk amongst us. He even claimed to have met one of these super beings whom he called the “New Man.”
“The new man is living amongst us!” Hitler claimed. “He is here!” Far from being a pleasant meeting with a representative from a superior underground race, however, the incident had left the Fuhrer shaken and af
raid. According to one biographer, the dictator often awoke during the night screaming and in convulsions, crying out that the ‘new man’ had come for him. If only those nightmares would have come true.
The Shaver Mystery
As the power-mad, bloodthirsty dictator’s reign of terror was nearing its end in Europe, the notion of subterranean inhumanoids was enjoying a resurgence in popularity in America, thanks largely to the literary efforts of one man; Ziff-Davis Magazine editor Ray Palmer. According to Palmer, he had received a strange letter in September, 1944 from a man named Richard Shaver who claimed to be in possession of an ancient language that “should not be lost to the world.” Palmer’s first impression was that Shaver was some kind of “crackpot” but, on a whim, printed the letter along with examples of the language Shaver provided in the next issue of Amazing Stories.
The publication of the letter caused an avalanche of mail, all from people wanting to know more about the subject and, more particularly, where Shaver had acquired the alphabet he had produced in the letter. When Palmer relayed his readers’ curiosity to Shaver he received a 10,000 word manuscript entitled, “A Warning to Future Man” in reply. Fairly impressed with the account, Palmer polished it up, adding a few literary embellishments of his own, changed the title to, “I Remember Lemuria” and published it in the March 1945, issue of Amazing Stories.
The story caused a sensation, to put it mildly, and the magazine received more than 50,000 letters in response. The print run of the very next issue of Amazing Stories increased by as much as well, and Palmer knew that he had struck a chord with the American people.
The Inhumanoids Page 24
