Bristol native and author William B. Van Huss has completed the latest writing about Botetourt County’s Mad Gasser.

Huss’s 107-page book is titled “The Mad Gasser of Botetourt County: Reconsidering the Facts.”

It’s available from Amazon in print and Kindle versions.

Huss holds a degree in history from King University and has been involved in independent publishing as an artist, author and musician for nearly 30 years. He’s also the author of “Saucers Over Appalachia!”

For the unfamiliar, the Mad Gasser dates to the 1930s when there was a bit of hysteria around the county and eventually in Roanoke when it was suspected someone was pumping some sort of gas into homes.

As Huss describes it, “In the winter of 1933, rural Botetourt County, Virginia residents were attacked by a phantom menace. An invisible gas filled the homes of unsuspecting victims, causing illness and resulting in a mass hysteria that reached the city of Roanoke. Despite the best efforts of local law enforcement, the Mad Gasser somehow evaded capture.”

Huss asked the question: “Who was this Mad Gasser?” as he recounts the incidents primarily from newspaper and other written accounts from those days.

As others have wondered, Huss also asks, “Was it simply a case of mass hysteria or was there a sinister attacker responsible for these unsolved crimes?”

In his promotion for the book, he says, “For the first time, this mystery from Virginia’s past is explored here, in detail, by historian William B. Van Huss. Go beyond the legend of the Mad Gasser; retrace the timeline of events, decipher the evidence, and explore the theories that have been proposed to explain this enigmatic cold case.”

Huss covers the first attack on the Cal Huffman family three days before Christmas. The family lived on the historic McDonald property in the Haymakertown area.

Others followed in Troutville, Carvin’s Cove, Cloverdale, Bonsack, Vinton and Roanoke.

In his book, Huss notes, “A tale such as this one, shrouded in mystery and transformed by time, poses many questions that may never be fully answered. Bizarre, disturbing, and enticing, this story stands in the history of unsolved mysteries as one that will probably never fully be explained.

“There are many unsolved murders that horrify us with their brutality. The Mad Gasser did not kill, but instead violated victims with an invisible weapon. The safety of their homes was breached without the intruder even entering through a door. The fear that was struck in these families and their communities was genuine. No one was ever arrested, much less convicted, and the Mad Gasser was free to laugh and possibly even continue these sinister deeds in another state, years later. We may never know.”

The book is $9.95 in paperback and $5.95 Kindle