Sunday, October 30, 2005

Scent of mystery

Many published reports have discussed the overpowering sweet smell that engulfed a large part of Manhattan yesterday. I've even received a first-hand description of the phenomenon. Although no-one considers the smell harmful, investigators have yet to discover a source.

Being of a fanciful turn of mind today, I'd like to mention a couple of points:

1. In August, the Department of Homeland Security conducted a test of New York's subway systems in order to determine their susceptibility to chemical attack. The testers used harmless substances -- or so we were told.

2. This strange event has a parallel -- of sorts.

In September of 1944, in Mattoon, Illinois, many residents described a "Mad Gasser" who would attack homes during the night. The Gasser sprayed an overpoweringly sweet substance into their windows, leaving the homeowners temporarily paralyzed. A few victims claimed to have caught a glimpse of the miscreant -- who (but of course!) was a man dressed in black.

The case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon became a classic of sorts. Sociologists ascribed the incidents to wartime hysteria. The whole bizarre episode was filed alongside the mad reaction to Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

However, in the 1980s, researchers discovered an exact parallel. In 1933-34, the "Mad Gasser" -- or his twin -- seems to have attacked residents of Bottetort, Virginia. The details of both cases matched with precision. No-one involved in, or reporting on, the 1944 escapade seems to have known of the earlier attack.

A couple of years ago, a researcher named Scott Maruna claimed to have solved the mystery of the 1944 incidents. He identified the Gasser as a local loon named Farley Llewellyn (sounds like a name out of a bad '40s novel, doesn't it?). Farley was the son of a respected grocer. The community had angered him, and he hungered for revenge.
Maruna, a Jacksonville chemistry and physics teacher who grew up in Charleston, said the gas Farley used could have been nitromethane, a sweet-smelling, clear and highly volatile liquid that can cause nausea, burning of the mouth, swelling of the lips and minimal eye irritation.

Because nitromethane evaporates quickly, little to no evidence would often be left by the time police arrived at the scene of the attacks. Following almost all of the attacks, victims described the gas as smelling "sweet," with one person comparing it to the smell of cheap perfume.
Maruna doesn't tell us if Farley ever lived in Virginia.

Could nitromethane be the culprit in New York?

The scenario doesn't seem likely. Most observers (if that is the right word) compared the Manhattan smell to maple syrup, not perfume. Besides, how could any bar sinister make the gas spread throughout so much of the city?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The New York event smells like a publicity stunt gone wrong - perhaps some coffee shop employee broke or spilled a bottle of scent meant to be sprayed around the entrance to draw in customers!

However, FWIW, that same morning, here on the Pacific Coast, not knowing about the New York event, my roommate was awakened by an overpowering smell that he described as "like old ladies' powder"! Following which, he felt unwell and "weird," slept for about 20 hours straight, and today seems to be back to normal. This is the first time anything like this has happened, so it's a strange coincidence. But we live on an upper floor and had the windows closed, so mad Halloween gassers are an unlikely scenario!

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