Chicago Herald-American, Sept 19

Credulity Seat of Mattoon's Terror

BY EFFIE ALLEY
MATTOON, Ill. Sept. 19 -- Theme song of panic is "I believe!"
I believe this, I believe that. I believe the neighbors, the children, total strangers. I believe anything anybody wants to tell me.
This will to believe, according to Dr. Harold S. Hulbert, psychiatrist investigating the case of Mattoon's phantom gas man, is not only the hallmark of mass hysteria, but also the chief means by which the infection of fear is spread through a community.

ADD NEW DETAILS

One believes and tells another. This other passes on the story--and the infection--to one or two or maybe three and each new believer unwittingly adds new details. When Mattoon's scare first started nobody saw or even thought they saw the "mad anesthetist". At first, he moved about his work unseen, virtually unheard.
Then here and there people appeared who had heard a hissing noise as of a spray gun. By the time the phantom got around to paying a stealthy visit to the home of Mrs. Bertha Bence at 2605 Champaign av., not only the clump of his approaching feet could be heard, but also the whirring noise of his "gas machine" in action.
Dr. Hulbert's interview with Mrs. Bence was enlightening.
Still upset by her experience, Mrs. Bence first told the doctor that she isn't well and then added:
"I just can't stand all this excitement. And then I'm worried about my oldest boy. That's his picture there--he's overseas and I haven't heard from him since July."
Had she made any inquiries about him?
"Oh, yes. I've been to the fortune-teller. She says he's in the hospital. She says I mustn't worry too much. I can't stand it."
And now about the gas attack.

HEARD FUNNY NOISE

Well, she had gone to bed in the front room. All at once, she heard a funny noise like a machine whirring and the room began to fill with gas. Believing she was "passing out", she screamed and her three boys came running and helped her out on the porch. "We stayed out there till 4 o'clock in the morning. I was afraid to come back. That stuff would kill you. Junior said if he had got another whiff of it, he would have died. He has asthma. He'd have died if he'd smelled that stuff another minute."
When the police came, could they smell it, too?
"No, I don't know why, but they couldn't. It's funny though. My neighbor could and she didn't get here till after they had gone. But she could smell it--plain. And a boy who had been to five other places could. He said it smelled just the same. Just exactly the same.
"Junior chased the fellow that night but he couldn't catch him. The next day, though, we found four little holes in the earth under the window where he had set up his machine."
Why would the gas man want to attack her?
"Well, sir, that's something I just can't figure out. It couldn't have been money. We haven't got any. Everybody knows that. I guess it's sabotage--or an escaped German. And I'm afraid he'll be back."
There was terror in her voice as she said it. Why the trail of sabotage should have led to her neat little home or why a fleeing Nazi should take time to indulge in such risky practices were things Mrs. Bence just hadn't thought about.
There, said the doctor afterwards, you have the picture of the whys and wherefores of community terror.
A woman so honest and well-meaning herself, she is completely uncritical of others or what they tell her. Deeply troubled, far from rugged, a woman of this type, according to Dr. Hulbert, is a typical example of the basically insecure and hence, the highly suggestible person--ripe to become a victim of terror at the slightest stimulus.
A prey of constant fears, she seeks reassurance, even in the visions of a fortune-teller, who would "tell more for a dollar" as Mrs. Bence so frankly said than for the 50 cents she had to spare.

WARTS ON FACE

And yet, one wonders. For the climax of that credulity which serves so well to keep alive and to spread community hysteria was reached in the story told police by that very fortune teller, Mrs. Edna James, the only prop on which Mrs. Bence in her anxiety had to lean. Mrs. James maintained she had not only smelled the sickening perfume-like gas, but saw its sprayer, crouched "ape-like" with his spray-gun in his hands staring at her with evil, yellow eyes. The light was faint, she said, but it was enough to reveal an ugly face made more repulsive by the presence of warts! -- Tuesday, September 19, page 5