Mattoon, IL being encounter — August 8, 1944

The Mattoon entry belongs to the 1944 Illinois “gasser” scare, in which residents reported peculiar odors, illness and suspected nighttime prowlers. Eastern Illinois University’s local-history archive places the main episode in the first half of September. Its victim list begins with reports on August 31, making the imported August 8 date inconsistent with that documented chronology. Contemporary newspaper headlines described an anesthetic prowler and repeated complaints of temporary weakness or paralysis. The university’s symptom compilation also includes nausea, vomiting, throat burning, dizziness and difficulty breathing. These were reported experiences, not a demonstrated chemical identification shared by every incident. Police increased patrols, other authorities assisted, and residents organized watches. No suspected gasser was caught. The archive preserves both the witnesses’ belief in an attacker and the competing possibility that fear and suggestion contributed to the wave of complaints. The catalogue’s compressed description of a figure at windows using a device should therefore be read within a disputed prowler narrative. No craft was reported, and an extraterrestrial identity is not established by the surviving material. Keeping the contemporary complaints, subsequent interpretations and date discrepancy separate avoids turning the entire community episode into a single witnessed alien attack.