Customer Reviews

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria

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Maruna's "Mad Gasser of Mattoon" is a thought-provoking read. Though the book is short, the author has nonetheless gone through lengthy research and painstaking deduction to come up with a feasible explanation behind one of the most mysterious cases in Fortean and cyptozoological studies. Kudos to this worthy debut. Hopefully, the author will share his views in other enigmatic entities such as Springheel Jack or strange beasts like the Dover Demon, Chupacabra, the Flatwoods Monster or the famed Mothman.

This is a shorter book, but man is it a fascinating story! Maruna has written the definitive work on this incident. I had read a little bit about this episode here and there but nothing else comes close to this. I stayed up til 1 AM reading it all in one sitting. He looks at it all very practically and scientificly, and yet keeps and open mind to the paranormal - a rare combination. His conclusion actually seems FAR more logical than what science has believed for the last 6 decades.

Well written, entertaining and factually correct, this is a great little book. Many accounts of the Mad Gasser dismiss the whole affair as a case of mass hysteria. This book reveals the truth. It's a great little story that's begging to be made into a movie.

I am a daughter of one of the gassing victims and I just wanted to thank Mr. Maruna, for myself and for my sisters, for revealing the truth about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Mom and Dad lived under a lot of ridicule for years and also, every few years, they would get phone calls from reporters wanting to drag it up again, always derogatorily.
I was thoroughly shocked when I read his theory; on the other hand, it is such a relief to know the truth at last. I was a toddler at the time all of this took place, and was in a different room, asleep. Knowing my parents and their honest, upstanding ways, I always believed them regarding the Mad Gasser, although they rarely referred to it.
Not being a vengeful person, I would still like to rub the noses of some of the "mass hysteria experts" with his book

Scott Maruna is a nice man and welcome to his views. For anyone wishing to read the case against the reality of the 'mad gasser' I refer them to several books by Dr. Robert E. Bartholomew including Hoaxes, Myths & Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking, and The Southern Medical Journal 92(8):762-769 (1999).