Art: Jerry D. Coleman.

Ripped from the Forteana file, a newspaper report of a version of the “Mad Gasser,” infamous from Mattoon, Illinois, in 1944, has been located in the Lake County Citizen, Florida, on page 1, for November 8, 1935.

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In 1935, Lake County, Florida, was an isolated, sparsely populated area, accessible only by rail, with limited access to outside news.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon is an entity of some Fortean note, investigated by myself and researcher-author Jerry Clark when we lived in separate cities in Illinois over 30 years ago.

Credit to David Hoes who discovered this 1935 item and passed it along to me.