The Misery Machine - MONDAY MYSTERY: The Mysterious Mad Gasser of Mattoon [WAS IT ONLY MASS HYSTERIA??]

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (also known as the "Anesthetic Prowler," Friz, the "Phantom Anesthetist," or simply the "Mad Gasser") was the name given to the person or persons believed to be responsible for a series of apparent gas attacks that occurred in Mattoon, Illinois, during the mid-1940s. More than two dozen separate cases of gassings were reported to police over the span of two weeks, in addition to many reported sightings of the suspected assailant. The gasser's supposed victims reported smelling strange odors in their homes which were soon followed by symptoms such as paralysis of the legs, coughing, nausea, etc. Police remained skeptical of the accounts throughout the entire incident. Nevertheless, local newspapers ran alarmist articles about the reported attacks and treated the accounts as fact, going so far as to allege the culprit was an escaped German soldier in World War II. The attacks are widely considered to be a case of mass hysteria. However, others maintain that the Mad Gasser actually existed, or that the perceived attacks have another explanation, such as industrial pollution. So, did The Mad Gasser of Mattoon even exist? Leave a comment and let us know what you think. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Join our FREE Discord Group: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Gasser_of_Mattoon https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/blog/the-mad-gasser-of-mattoon/ https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/madgasser  

Ira, the misery machine. I'm Yergy. I'm Drewby and it's Kitein. And this week were you doing another listener requested case. So thank you, Scooba, for the suggestion. Yes, thank you, scuba. This was a really interesting one that I hadn't heard of before. Yeah, neither of I.

It's the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. So this happened in Illinois around World War II. Allegedly, somebody escaped from Germany was going around gassing people. But we'll get into more about that in a bit. Or did they? Or did they? So if you're listening on YouTube, please it like and subscribe. We just passed

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hit subscribe right now. We'll get more Kighton videos. You'll get more Kighton videos. Without further ado, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon. In September, of 1944, the front pages of the Daily Aligni were covered with updates about the ongoing war. The newspaper readily chronicled major developments in the war as well as the deaths of young men

who, just a few short years before, had once walked the university's halls. Given the amount of bloodshed that was unfolding around the world, it is easy to miss the newspaper's coverage of one particularly strange event. Matune, Illinois is a small town that lies around 49 miles south of Champaign and has a population of around 18,000. In addition to being the alleged bagel capital of the country, Matune was also the site of a suspected case of mass hysteria. In September of 1944, people around town began reporting that they would awake in the middle of the night to smell a strangely sweet smell blanketing their homes. They would become overcome with nausea, with some reportedly beginning. becoming paralyzed for an hour or more.

After some of the victims claimed to see the figure of a man fleeing their yards at the time of the gas appeared, rumors began to spread around town that a mysterious man was sneaking up to the homes and pumping gas in through open windows. The mysterious figure became known as the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, also known as the Anesthetic Prouler, or Frizz the Phantom Anesthetist, or simply the Madgasser. More than two dozen separate cases of gassing were reported to the police over the span of two weeks. In addition to many more reported sightings of the suspected assailant,

police remain skeptical of the accounts throughout the entire incident. No physical evidence was ever found, and many reported gassings had simple explanations, such as spilled nail polish or odors emanating from animals or local factories. Victims made quick recoveries from their symptoms, and suffered no long-term effects. Nevertheless, local newspapers ran alarmist articles about the reported attacks and treated the accounts as fact.

So the attacks are widely considered to be a case of mass hysteria. However, others maintain that the mad gasser actually existed, or that the perceived attacks had another explanation, such as industrial pollution, for example. So most contemporary descriptions of the mad gasser are based on the testimony of a misdemeanor, and Mrs. Bert Kearney of 1408 Marshall Avenue, and they were the victims of the first matoon case to be reported to the media.

They described the gasser as being tall, thin, and male, dressed in dark clothing wearing a tight-fitted cap. Another report made some weeks later describe the gasser as being a female dressed as a man. I think it was only one person claimed that. The gasser had also been described as carrying a flit gun, an agricultural tool for spraying pestis. side, which she purportedly used to expel the gas. The first of the 1944 gasser incidents occurred at a house on Grant Avenue Mattoon on August 31st of

1944. Urban Rafe was awoken during the early morning hours by a strange odor. He felt nauseated and weak and suffered from a fit of vomiting. Suspecting that he was suffering from domestic gas poisoning, Rafe's wife tried to check the kitchen stove to see if there was a problem with the pilot light, but found that she was partially paralyzed and unable to leave her bed. Later that night, although some contemporary accounts referred to the time as the morning of the following day, a similar incident was also reported by a young mother living close by.

She was awoken by the sound of her daughter coughing but found herself unable to leave her bed. So the next day on September 1st, there was a third reported incident. Mrs. Kearney of Marshall Avenue, Mattoon, reported smelling a strong, sweet odor around 11 p.m. She first dismissed this smell, believing it to be from some flowers outside of her window, but the odor soon became stronger as she began to start to lose feeling in her legs. Mrs. Kearney panicked. Her calls attracted her sister, Mrs. Reddy, who was in the house at the time. Mrs. Reddy also noticed this odor and determined that it was coming from the direction of her bedroom window,

which was oathen at the time. The police were contacted, but no evidence of a prowler was found. At around 12.30 a.m. Bert Kearney, Mrs. Kearney's husband, who was a local taxi driver who had been absent during the time of the attack, returned home to find an unidentified man hiding close to one of the house's windows. The man fled and Kearney was unable to catch him. Kearney's description of the prowler was of a tall man dressed in dark clothing, wearing a tight-fitted cap. This description was reported to the local media and became the common description of the gasser

throughout the Matun incident. After this attack, Mrs. Kearney reported suffering from a burning sensation, on her lips and throat, which was attributed to the effects of the gas. Initially, it was suspected that robbery was the primary motive for the attack. At the time of the incidents, the Kearney had a large sum of money at the house, and it was surmised that the prowler could have seen Mrs. Kearney and her sister counting it earlier in the evening. Local newspapers incorrectly reported this incident as being the first gasser attack.

It was not. In the days following the Kearney attack, there were half a dozen similar attacks. though none of the alleged victims were able to provide a clear description of the prowler and no clues were found at the scene of the attacks. The first specimen of physical evidence was found on the night of September 5th when Carl and Bula Cordes of North 21st Street returned home around 10 p.m. After spending a few minutes in the house, they noticed a piece of white cloth, slightly larger than a man's handkerchief, sitting on the porch next to the screen door.

Bula Cordes picked up the cloth and smelled it. As soon as she inhaled it, she became violently ill. She described the effect as being similar to that of an electric shock. Her face quickly began to swell, and she experienced a burning sensation in her mouth and throat. She also proceeded to vomit. As well as other victims, she also reported feeling weak and experiencing partial paralysis of her legs. Mrs. Cordes later hypothesized that the cloth had been left on the porch in order to knock out the family dog, which usually slept there, so that the prowler could gain access to the house unnoticed.

In addition to the cloth, a skeleton key described as looking well-used was reportedly found on the sidewalk adjacent to the porch, along with a large, almost empty tube of lipstick. The cloth was analyzed by the authorities, but they found no chemicals on it that would explain Gula Cortes' reaction. The same night, a second incident was reported, this time at North 13th Street at the home of Mrs. Leonard Burrell. She reported seeing a stranger break in through her bedroom window and then attempt to gas her.

Public concern over the alleged gassing's quickly rose. The FBI became involved and the local police issued a statement calling on residents to avoid lingering in residential areas. Warning that groups set up to patrol for the gasser should be disbanded for reasons of public safety. Chief of police, C.E. Cole also warned concerned citizens to exercise due restraint when carrying or discharging firearms, But despite all this, armed citizens took to the streets, organizing watches and patrols to thwart any further attacks from the gasser. But several took place anyways. The gas attacks were becoming more and more frequent, and the attacker was leaving behind evidence like footprints and sliced window screens. A local citizen's vigilance group did manage to arrest one suspect as the gasser, but after he passed a polygraph test, he was later released.

Local businessmen announced that they would be holding a mass protest rally on Saturday, September 10th to put more pressure on the already pressured Matun police force. Now the gasser was becoming more than a threat to public safety. He was becoming a political liability and a blot on the public image of the city. The gasser, apparently not dissuaded by the armed vigilantes and newspaper articles, resumed his attacks. The first incident took place at the home of Mrs. Violet Driscoll and her daughter Ramona. They awoke late in the evening to hear someone removing the storm sash from their bedroom window. They hurried out of bed and tried to run outside for help, but the fumes overcame Ramona and she began vomiting. Her mother stated that she saw a man running away from the house.

A short time later that night, the gaster sprayed fumes into the partially open window of a room where Mrs. Russell Bailey, Catherine Tuzzo, Ms. Genevieve Haskell, and Ms. Haskell's young son were sleeping. At another home, Miss Francis Smith, the principal of the Colombian grade school and her sister Maxine, were also overwhelmed with the gas and became ill. They began choking as they awakened and felt partial paralysis in their legs and arms. They also said that the sweet odor began to film the room as a thin blue vapor. They heard a buzzing noise from outside and believed it was the gaster's spraying apparatus in operation. By September 12th, local police had received so many false alarms, mostly from citizens believing that they smelled gas or that they had seen a prowler, that they reduced the priority afforded to

gas or reports and announced that the entire incident was likely the result of explainable occurrences exacerbated by public fears and a sign of the anxiety felt by women while local men were on war service. Because I tend to forget this too when reading about this. This was going on during World War II. Yeah, which is why I felt kind of odd at first reading our notes about all these women in the same bedroom, but it makes sense. I know a fair bit about World War II, but the stuff I know is all overseas. I don't really know about what was life like for people while people were off to war that I'm not really well versed in. So maybe that was the thing.

I mean, I know some small things and it goes back to reading American girls books when I was little. You know, women would get together and all knit together and do different things. But like all having beds in the same room? You know, I don't know. But it makes sense, though. It makes sense if your husband was a way to war, maybe your sister who's also. their husband was away to war and maybe they're all just living communally. Because I mean, back then, a woman can't be alone.

Like, what would she do? Let's keep her company. And maybe it was like stuff like that. It's just easier and it was just nice company. Yeah, this is obviously conjecture. If anybody knows this for sure, please comment and let us know. So after the police announcement, the gasser reports declined. The only incident of arguable note after that date was the case of Bertha Birch, who claimed she saw a gasser who was a woman dressed as a man.

We mentioned this earlier, and this was the only person to say it was a woman dressed as a man. There are three primary theories about the Mattoon Matt Gasser incident. One is mass hysteria. Two is industrial pollution. And three is an actual physical assailant. The events have also been written about by authors on the paranormal thinking that there's some spirit causing these things to happen. Almost two weeks after the mattoon attacks began, the local commissioner of public health, Thomas V. Wright, announced that there had undoubtedly been a number of gassing instance, but that many instances were likely due to

hysteria. Residents' hearing of alarming events and then panicking when confronted with an out-of-place odor or a shadow in the window, etc. Right stated, quote, 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 relative. harmless gas he is spraying. This whole town is sick with hysteria, end quote. And you have to remember to again, this is World War II. I'm fairly certain they probably thought that Nazis were coming to gas them. I'm sure they did. I'm sure I don't know exactly what I'm more familiar with Red Scare propaganda, but I'm sure there was plenty of German propaganda that they were coming to do this.

So on September 12, local police chief C.E. Cole took Wright's hypothesis a step further, announcing that there had likely been no gas tax at all, and that the reported incidents had probably been triggered by chemicals carried on the wind from a nearby industrial facility and then exacerbated by the public panic. Most of the physical symptoms recorded during the incidents, including choking, swelling of mucus membranes, and weakness or temporary paralysis, have all been suggested symptoms of hysteria. Some experts believe the mass hysteria was fueled by the headline in the Matun Journal Gazette. The headline

read, Mrs. Kearney and daughter first victims, end quote. So because of that, a lot of people assume that there was going to be more attacks. On September 12th, police chief Cole told a press conference that odors and symptoms reported may have been the result

of pollutants or toxic waste released by industrial plants and speculated that carbon tetrachloride or trichloroethylene, both of which have a sweet odor and can induce symptoms similar to those reported by the mad gasser victims may have been the substances released. In response to Cole's statement, Atlas Imperial, who was the primary company implicated in this affair, released a statement of its own, saying that their facility had only five gallons of carbon tetrachloride in stock,

which was contained in firefighting equipment. Atlas Imperial officials also denied that any quantities of trichloroethylene an industrial solvent used by Atlas could be responsible for sickness in the town, reasoning that it would have taken significant quantities of the chemical to sicken the townspeople, and that factory workers would have experienced similar symptoms long before anybody outside the factory was affected. At the time of the gassing, the Atlas plant had been certified as safe by the State Department of Health. So after analyzing the events, some researchers have concluded that at least some of their gas or instance were the work of an actual attacker who carried out a series of gassing as reported by the witnesses. So I know there's plenty of proof about mass hysteria and I'm not going to

argue with science. Just it was always something that before I looked into it, it would be like, that's not real. It's just people explaining away stuff because they don't want to look into it or they don't want to let the truth out. But to give it some credit, you do have to think about what kind of time this is and we touched on this earlier but i was looking up these ads and one was the grim reaper talking about you never know when the germans are going to come in buy your invasion bonds today or just like stuff like that you know you have that propaganda shoved down your throat known as the internet so you know you get things through radio or what have you or the newspaper that's all the information you're taking in for the day so when that's all you're getting you're hanging

that that is sitting in your head for a while and that changes your worldview this can be hard to comprehend because the world we live in is radically different now the other thing to take into consideration is that while chemical weapons were produced for both sides in world war two i don't believe they're ever really deployed however that's not in people's memories when you're going off to war they're thinking about what happened in world war one and mustard gas so commonly used, people were coming back home with all the scars and the burns from chemical attacks. What do you think is in people's heads is going to happen? Probably this again. So if you're thinking that your family member or your husband is going off to war, you're worried that he's,

one, going to be killed. Two, he's going to be disfigured by mustard gas. So when somebody's like, oh, there's an escaped Nazi from the Peoria internment camp, which did happen. Which did happen, but it Where is he going to get a hold of like mustard gas or something like that? All these Nazis, they can just manufacture it on the room. Yeah, they can just make it out of thin air because German ingenuity. But yeah, you just think of that. So let's say, again, I've set this up, what happened in World War I and what you're seeing in the papers. Now, somebody says an escape Nazi is gassing people.

You're going to believe it because you think that's what Germans do. You've probably never had a conversation with anyone overseas in your life. you probably think Germans are these evil people who just want to gas everybody. So that's a reasonable thing to believe. And, you know, none of these people, and these are mostly women, even know what mustard gas smells like. So it's just some sort of gas and now they feel funny. And of course, it's going to be mustard gas. So as...

Or whatever gas, they're getting gasped by the Germans. Right. So as much as I don't want to give credit to mass hysteria, I like to find other explanations first, personally. I can see how this could potentially be mass hysteria. Now, what were these people that they were supposedly seen? Well, I don't know. I'm going to assume that maybe they saw some, like, shady figure, or they thought they saw something.

I really hate to discount people's testimonies on things, but this really has the perfect workings for some sort of mass hysteria. And it's possible once things got rolling, that you had copycat-type things of people trolling. one another. Right. And I want to be clear, I believe that at least the first couple of gasser attacks were real. I just think that it brought about this huge fear and why wouldn't it? Think about the difference between somebody killing people with gas compared to somebody killing people with a gun. People are going to hear about, people are going to know it's going to make itself known. The thing with gas attacks,

it's silent. You won't even hear the person coming in. they can literally attack you from outside. They can just spray the gas into your house through an open window or something like that while you're asleep and maybe you don't wake up or maybe you wake up just like hacking and coughing. I'm sure people are going to bed every night

and probably checking their windows, making sure everything's sealed, looking out their window, not able to sleep because what if I'm the house that's next? That's a huge psychological burden. And if you have that huge psychological burden, at that point that is the recipe for hysteria. Yeah.

Oh, maybe I smelled something or just have these symptoms. Like it was said earlier in the episode, like any shadowy figure coming across your window probably is the gasser now. Yeah. And I mean, you just think about this. There were vigilante groups patrolling the streets in mass looking to try to catch somebody that looked like the gasser. This reminds me of the Jack the Ripper days. And this is hundreds of years removed from this. People heard about the Ripper and they just got into these groups and they just stormed the streets trying to basically find anywhere.

who they thought was Jack the Ripper. This is hysteria. This is how people react when they're afraid. And I mean, thank God no one was killed by the vigilante groups or thank God no one was killed, period. You know, obviously, I don't think something like this would happen in this day and age. We have a... But you never know.

You never know. But with close circuit cameras, people have a lot of these things now. They have ring. Things are a lot more closely video monitored. And even if it went undetected, there is more accurate way. to test for gas now, test for chemicals in the air and things of that nature. Yeah, I know what you mean. So I just don't think that's going to happen.

And as far as hysteria is concerned, something like this, I mean, yeah, we've been fighting a war for a long time. We've been fighting, let's see, since 9-11 and then... Almost literally most of my life, we've been in some sort of conflict in the Middle East. So we are conditioned to war. We have normalized war, and therefore war doesn't really scare us. there was a period of time, maybe we were afraid of nukes from either North Korea or the Russians, but it wasn't this thing that completely turned ourselves upside down. I mean, I remember my dad saying in elementary school, he had to do these drills where you tuck your head under the desk and

stuff like that. And the reason was because, you know, the Russians might bomb us. When did we ever do anything like that? The closest thing is people doing shooter drills. I never did shooter drills. I've known people that grades ahead did do shooter drills. We never did anything like that at my school, despite when I was in high school, there was a big mass spree of school shootings. Yeah, and satanic panic was at its height. We had bombed threats. We did have bomb threats. But, you know, freshman year for me was column. They still did not have us do active shooter drills. And I believe the bomb threats that just came from hysteria surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. Because I can't really think of any schools that got bombed. People were just afraid that somebody was going to drive

a rider truck into their school and blow it up. Oh, at my school, it was quite literally just they wanted to mess with people. Oh, the people who called them. Yes. Of course it was. I'm just talking about people who take these seriously. I mean, yes, obviously bomb threats at a school should be taken seriously. But I think there was definitely some fear around it. I remember when Oklahoma happened. I remember how people talked about things. I remember the worries adults would express. And I never fully understood it. I just remember I was home sick that day, and I wanted to watch prices right. And now I couldn't because this building was getting blown up.

I just didn't completely comprehend it. It was a pretty terrible crime. It was. It was absolutely heinous. They put that truck underneath the daycare. Yes, that's true. Like most of the people that died and that were little kids. It's true.

Again, like I never read too much into it. And as I got older, I still don't know as much about it as I feel I should. But I remember just being that young and that happened. I was like, okay, what does this mean? You know, don't places get bombed? Why is this big news? I didn't completely understand it at all. You must have been really young because I was very young when this happens.

I was young. Yeah. When I saw stuff like that, I just didn't get it. Just like when I saw Columbine, I didn't completely get it. I think that's just what happens with your young. But fast forward to now, I guess the point I was trying to make here without being so long-winded is that we are so conditioned to this and we have the internet. There was so many different ways to get information.

And there's positives and there's negatives for that. I overall look at it as a positive. You can find information other ways. You can find information through alternate sources. You don't just have the paper coming to your house or the radio. And then you hear this one thing. And then you just take it for what it's worth. You just assume it to be 100% correct.

And now your whole worldview is revolving around this. That you have to remember wild soldier tales. Yes. Like things were absolutely crazy in hell for the World War I soldiers basically living in trenches. and their body parts rotting off. Yeah, trench foot is not this funny. That was real because we're in a trench forever. So coming back from that war,

there's going to be some particular PTSD and psychosis coming from that as well. And things probably, of course, got even blown more out of proportion when you're telling your war stories. I mean, that's when the 1,000-yard stare, I believe, was first documented. So that was like our first traces of figuring out what PTSD was.

So you have all these people running around sharing these stories. And not to say that these things aren't valid, but they are valid. They are valid. It's just think about the impactfulness of that. You have no idea what goes on overseas. And now you have this guy that was over there, survived it, watched people die. And he's telling you, you're going to hang on his every word. Nowadays, we have war correspondence.

We have people over there reporting. We can communicate with citizens of war-torn country. It may be a little hard in some places. But I've talked to people from the Middle East. When that have happened in World War II, you'd be able to. to talk to a German citizen. You just couldn't. So things are very different now.

We can know roughly what's going on over during wartime through second, third hand means without having to actually be over there ourselves. So, like all I know about World War I from relatives is that my great-grandfather's legs got blown off. Excuse me. Great-great-grandfather's legs got blown off. I had someone serving the Civil War. I don't know about World War I or World War II.

But besides the point, I guess just my point is that this type of. isn't going to happen nowadays. I'm just trying to stress how different the world is. Now, with that out of the way, do I think Atlas Imperial is leaking these types of chemicals out? No, I don't think so. I think it is

while corporations do cover up for themselves, I don't think that they are just releasing a statement that isn't true. I do believe that people would have gotten sick. And somebody... And you'd know about it way before. Somebody would have let it slip. So, for example, I'll talk about something

local that I know about that kind of ties to this. So we have a lot of paper mills in Maine that run along the rivers. And when you get close to them, they smell terrible. Horrid. They smell like really bad cabbage, sometimes like soarage. And you can tell sometimes on the weekends when it gets a little bit worse. And rumor has it, that's when the EPA people aren't at work and they start just dumping stuff they're not supposed to. Yeah, I mean, the Androscoggan River is criminally polluted. It's had so much waste product from mills dumped in it. It used to be worse. So now you can actually...

It's been cleaned up somewhat. You can fish in it if you want to. Two fish a year. Two fish a year. You can... Which is still laughable, but hey. You can do all sorts of water sports on it. One person I knew who was a little boy in, God, 40s, maybe, 30s, 40s.

He's now since past, but he told me that... You could snow shoe on the Androscoggin in the middle of summer because it was that polluted. Is that true? I don't know. It's not the first I've heard of that. I've also heard in certain portions of the Andrasnog at around where the mills are in Lewiston. You could look down the water and it would fart at you because of all the methane, kind of like, you know, a scene from the labyrinth in the bog of eternal stench. I'd be long story short, because we're talking about Atlas Imperial. Yes, Mills do you cover stuff up, but you know about it.

obvious. What I think is so obvious. What I think is more likely is that somebody could have been a mill worker, smuggled some of this gas out, put it into a sprayer and was doing stuff like this. That is possible. That is the more likely scenario. But if you're going to have some sort of leak, like they said, the millworkers are getting sick and you're going to smell that all over town. I would assume that the first mad gasser attacks was somebody who had a vendetta, a personal vendetta against these people, worked at the plant. did it, was done with it. And even if they were doing it for fun, they were reasonable enough that when this started hitting the papers, they're like, I'm out. I'm not even doing this anymore because so many people were up in arms

and ready to like find this person and string them up. I think that's more reasonable. I think that's a really reasonable explanation. I think that's what it is. And there was one more. What was the three things that they blamed it on? Mass hysteria. Mass hysteria. Germans. The Germans, they had

Blames it on the mill. Yeah. The physical assail. I basically gave that. Yeah. There was some tales about some guy that was obsessed with chemical warfare and chemicals. I know somebody wrote a book about it in 2003. I haven't been able to find the book, but they surmised it could have been that gentleman.

But there's really no proof of any of it. Yeah. So the idea that this is a woman doing this. Now, I could believe that because women are more likely to kill through poison. Yes, they are. They like to kill at a distance. Yes, but however, the person that claims they saw a woman, I believe that was one of the later attacks. So I kind of discount that slightly. But the chew of lipstick.

They found a tube of lipstick. Oh, they did. Yeah, that's true. They did. That's true. That's a good point. But I do think it's possible that the person was a woman. However, where did they get it?

I don't believe at the time there was any female workers at a chemical plant. Maybe there were. Well, okay, let's talk about this a little bit. So that's where you've got like Rosie the Riveter because all the men were off at war. What if there were some ladies working at the chemical plants? Okay, Rosie the Riveter, can you tell me? Is that that? That's the woman doing the muscle.

The muscle being like, yeah, we can do it. Okay, because they all started taking over factory work while the men were at war. So that is when that started happening. Okay. I said this earlier. I know a fair bit about World War II internationally. I don't know a lot about it domestically. I don't know about it.

And please don't judge me on this. I don't know about it domestically because my family's from Germany. I know about that side and I know about the atrocities over there. They did to the German people as well. It was just crap over there. My family's house was bombed. And it wasn't by the Americans. It was by the Germans.

Yeah. You know a lot about the Germans. I know a lot about the German side. But I've obviously seen the Rosie, the Riveter poster. I never really understood what time period that was for. For some reason, I thought it was the 50s and 60s to be like, hey, women's empowerment, you can do these jobs if you want to. I didn't know it was around World War II.

Yeah, so the reason I know a lot about that, obviously she's a feminist icon, but back to the American girls' books, Oma when I was growing up, really like to read the ones about Molly, who was the little girl growing up in World War II. Oma is my grandmother. Yeah, but she really, like, identified with it because she was a little girl growing up during World War II. Yeah. Okay, yeah, so could there have been a female factory work there as possible? This is just stuff we don't have a lot of information on. Yeah, we're just kind of like throwing out ideas. And I think that's reasonable.

I think it could have been a female assailant who has. working at the factory. I think it was just personal vendetta against a couple people. I don't think this was just some person that wanted to kill people in mass, though reasonably could have been somebody trying to be a serial killer. But I think this person would have been discovered eventually. Usually with these unknown serial killers, they don't just stop. They end up getting arrested for another crime and dying in prison.

This just doesn't seem like the type of person that this would happen here. Is it possible? Yes. Probable? No. I don't think it was a possible serial killer. because if a person has access to this gas, they must know it's non-lethal.

I think they were just doing it to scare people. True. Well, maybe it's lethal in higher quality. I mean, a lot of gas is lethal in higher qualities. Maybe they thought they were able to administer that amount and underestimated. I mean, these people aren't chemists. They're just factory workers. There's a difference.

So there's probably some assumption they are gone wrong. And without the internet, without a lot of access to this information, I can think that somebody probably overestimated their ability to inflict damage onto people. That's all I got. I think that's not a bad episode. Yeah, no, I think this is really good.

Okay, I really enjoyed doing this. We recorded this on Monday, so it's not Christmas yet. I really hope that you had a good Christmas, good holidays, still having good holidays, as this is going to drop the 28th, I believe. By then, it will be my birthday already. Yergy's birthday will have passed.

listening to this, you know what a good present you could give, Yergy, is subscribing to us. And it doesn't have to be YouTube. If you don't listen on YouTube, hit the follow button on Spotify, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts. So one, you don't miss an episode. Two, this really helps us get bigger. We're at a year and a half now doing this and we're not stopping. It would be really wonderful if you could do that for us. And it doesn't cost you anything just to click, just to click. And it can help us so much. So officially my birthday is on. the 26, but when this drops on the 28th, drop me a happy birthday in the comments. So happy early and belated birthday, Yergave, as I'm speaking from the future. The future and the past.

Okay, so do that. And I guess we'll just get into the end of this. If you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe. Last week I said, you know, hey, we just passed 2,500. I think by the time this drops, we're going to be over 3,000. And if not, pretty close. I have one. if we're going to be over 3,000 today. Well, it's possible. It's possible. I don't exactly know what's happened. I very much am grateful for this. There's some older videos gaining traction again.

They're not monetized, so we're getting no money for them, if you're wondering. So that's why these likes and subscribes, they go a long way. We tried with one of them. They said absolutely not. Yeah. YouTube does not like true crime. They don't. Podcasters. I will probably release a video on this in the future.

And I will do some other videos on like, because people have been asking me, well, how'd you get to a thousand subscribers? What did you do? How do you be a podcast on YouTube? I was told YouTube is a horrible place for podcasts. I plan to give back to the community in some way. And I'll be working on that soon. I'm just like trying to figure out lighting and that sort of stuff. Yeah, it's the last video we had. The video kind of just came out a little grainy. It wasn't quite the lighting I wanted. And the sound quality wasn't. Wasn't 100% what I was looking for. It seemed like a lot of times, We do them just on my phone. It comes out better. I may have to invest in a really expensive shotgun mic or a boom mic of some sort. Maybe we'll put that in our Amazon wish list. We don't really have the money for these things right now. But if it's something that you want to gift us, we can put our Amazon link. We can get something together and we can start including it.

If there's anything you want to donate to us, who 100% appreciated, you would get shouted out. You would be considered contributor in the description. So we should give a shout out to Scuba. Shout out to Scuba for one, suggesting this episode, a wonderful episode, one that I love things like this. And two, giving us a very, very nice Apple podcast review. It was a very, very kind of you. Really appreciate you taking the time to write that out. Yeah.

I mean, I love things like this. This kind of is like a throwback for me to the Gloria Ramirez episode that we did, which I found wicked interesting. I was about to ask you about that, the Gloria Ramirez episode. I mean, that one definitely was not mass hysteria. There is an actual medical and scientific reason that was like one in a billion that occurred to cause the chemical reaction in her body that poisoned so many people. It basically turned her into a biological weapon. Yeah. But it, you know, pulls me back to that.

It pulls me back to the 3X episode that we did very early on. Yeah, because political war, some spy from from Russia. Yeah. That is killing people. All these things tie together in this. So it's just shades of all that. And I want to redo 3X later. Yeah, I mean, stories like this are great because there's no real concrete answer so you could sit there and speculate.

And sometimes I'm not into that, but like the subject matter is just so interesting with this one. Yeah, absolutely, especially when we get to connect it to what was life like during this point in history. I like to be able to not just cover the cases, but what was the environment, what was the impact of the community, what was going on in that period of time because it's so easy to superimpose modern day standards. onto the past. I am guilty of that as well. We are guilty of this. A lot of times we talk about child abuse cases, especially ones from the past. We're like, where was social services? It's so different. Yeah, everybody was beating their children back then, even if you were in a good family. Yeah, it's true. When I hear adults be like, yeah, my dad beat me with a switch every day in a woodshed.

You're like, oh, geez, okay. But yeah, I don't know. Is that really all you got? No, so we should. No, that is all you got. Thank you all, everyone for getting us over 3,000. Yes, thank you so much. I can't believe it. How fast it's been. Yeah, and this is the end of the year. This is the last episode of the year and we're ending on 3,000.

At the end of last year, I believe we were just over 100 or something like that. Or not even. It's been a really. I don't think we were. Yeah, it's possible. It was a very ridiculous ride. And, man, I want 100,000 by the end of next year. That's the goal I'm shooting for.

I think it's possible. I'm going to try to give you like more content, better content. More frequent content. And more frequent content. Please join us on this journey by hitting that subscribe bell and hitting the bell notification. This helps us even further. It signals to YouTube to push our videos more into other people's suggested feeds and further up into their algorithm. It really helps if you could hit that bell notification.

And it lets you know as soon as we drop something. So please, this is my last plea for you. I appreciate that. I do want to do a special thank you, though, because when searching our analytics, we found out some very interesting stuff. We have a lot of listeners in Poland, in India. Yes. Which was very unexpected. We've had a lot of plays from this Polish website, and I don't understand it.

It looks like a search engine. I don't know how people are finding us, but they're finding us. And then India, I got us onto this platform called Ghana and Geosavon, I think it's pronounced. I'm sure I butcher that. But India is our second most listened country behind the U.S. at least on the streaming platforms, I think the UK is our second most listened on YouTube. If you're listening from India, drop us a comment, say hi. If you want to send us an email, Misery Machine Podcast at gmail.com, but I appreciate all the new listeners.

And if you're one of our Polish listeners, let us know how you found us. Yeah, absolutely. Because I don't know a lot about this website. Yeah, I couldn't figure it out. So I would love to know about this as well. With that, let's thank our patrons. All right. So thank you, Eddie, Rowan, Marky, Holly, Ashley, Vue, Anna, Serena,

Chloe, Mark, Tara, Sophie, Karen with an EA, Neil and Karen, Dave and Karina, and Levi. Yes, thank you, Levi, and I'll put up Levi's lovely picture right now. And if you want to be a patron as well, patreon.com slash the misery machine, you get all our secret episodes. You get access to our Snapchat groups. You get access to us more. And you get a free sticker, which you can get for $1. If you don't want to be a patron, PayPal.m e.

slash the misery machine. And they're beautiful. They're holding up very well in the winter. The one on Yergy's car looks brand new. Quite literally, I have a lot of stickers in the back of my car. I mean, I have a Subaru. That's what Subaru people do. And this one hasn't budged.

It's pretty insane. I might have to put one over my old goat yoga one that's peeling off like crazy. Yeah, it is. All right, well, until next week. We love you. We love you. Bye. And happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year.