Florida “Mad Gasser”: 1935
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 5th, 2011
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.
Click on image above for larger version
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.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Excellent find!