The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

On this episode of Expanded Perspectives Elite the guys start the show off talking about how a man in New South Wales claims a bipedal creature attacked him at a camping site. Craig R., a 47-year-old traffic planner and Army reservist, told Cryptozoology News that he was near Waterfall, Sydney, when the incident took place. Then, curses are frightening things. They can take hold in an instant or wait decades to strike, take on all manner of devious phenomena from back luck to death, and they don’t discriminate between those ignorant of their existence and those who know better. Places can be cursed by terrible events, people can be cursed by scorned strangers, and even sports teams can find themselves the victim of bad mojo, but the most common curse comes from removing haunted objects from their rightful place. These types of cases never seem to end well. A woman tells a story about her grandmother removing a mummified hand from a Peruvian cemetery, only to be haunted for years afterwards.

Then, people from Papua New Guinea and north-east Australia carry small amounts of DNA of an unidentified, extinct human species, a new research analysis has suggested. The analysis suggests the DNA is unlikely to come from Neanderthals or Denisovans, but from a third extinct hominid, previously unknown to archaeologists. Then, they discuss how in the tiny Arctic hamlet of Igloolik, Nunavut, hunters say a mysterious sound, seemingly coming from the bottom of the sea, is driving wildlife away. According to the CBC, locals have different theories about its source, and have attributed this “ping” or “hum” to a mining company that has operated nearby, or even to sabotage by Greenpeace. Both entities denied having anything to do with the phenomenon that hunters allege has made an area once teeming with wildlife a bit more barren over the course of the summer.

After the break Kyle brings up the odd Mad Gasser of Mattoon! In case you are wondering, on September 2, 1944, as the Second World War was in progress in Europe and the Pacific, some strange happenings were reported in the small town of Mattoon, Illinois. The front page of the town’s newspaper described a mysterious attack by an “Anesthetic Prowler” the previous evening. A young housewife named Aline Kearney had been laying in bed reading the newspaper when she noticed a strong, sweet odor seeping into the room. The smell made her and her three-year-old daughter feel ill, but when Aline tried to get out of bed, she found that she couldn’t move her legs. Aline’s sister was staying at the house, and upon learning of the strange odor and its ill effects, she dashed to a neighbor’s house to have them contact the police. When the police investigated they found nothing out of the ordinary, but when Aline’s husband arrived at home at 12:30am from his job as a cab-driver, he discovered a prowler outside the bedroom window. He gave chase, yet the unknown lurker escaped. When the police were summoned back, they again found nothing. Real or imaginary, the dark figure would soon come to be known as the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, and this ambiguous individual would be blamed for dozens of such attacks in the following weeks.

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Music:

All music for Expanded Perspectives Elite is provided by permission from The Black Angels http://theblackangels.com and Pretty Lights http://prettylightsmusic.com

Songs Used:

• Young Men Dead
• My Only Hope
• If I Gave You My Love
• Something’s Wrong