Rose Mackenberg, Houdini’s Secret ‘Ghost-Buster’
December 9, 2019 2:45 PM   Subscribe

 
Hey Netflix: if you could get cracking on a fraud-of-the-week series about this, I would totally watch the hell out of it. KTHXBYE
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:54 PM on December 9, 2019 [14 favorites]


I wouldn't mind if this was made into a comedy/drama series, myself.
posted by linux at 3:58 PM on December 9, 2019


This is fantastic. Love all the disguises (and the pseudonyms!) she used.
posted by Mchelly at 4:27 PM on December 9, 2019


Can someone send this link to John Rogers? Kthanxbye.
posted by suelac at 5:13 PM on December 9, 2019


Rosabelle: believe!
posted by jburka at 5:26 PM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


If you can't get past the NYT paywall — or even if you can — see also The Female Ghost Buster Who Rooted Out Spiritual Fraud for Houdini — How Rose Mackenberg took on phantoms and fakes, Atlas Obscura, Tony Wolf, May 5, 2016; and the "Rose Mackenberg"-tagged posts at the great Houdini website Wild About Harry.

Mackenberg's WP bio mentions that she testified [*] in 1926 to the Subcommittee on Judiciary of the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, 69th Congress in favor of an anti-fortunetelling law for Washington, D.C.:
In the first session of the 69th Congress, an anti-fortunetelling law for Washington, D.C., was put forward on the urging of Houdini.[28] The Copeland-Bloom bill[29] (H.R. 8989) came before a House committee beginning February 26, 1926. Houdini was to testify in its favor.[30]

Following the same pattern as during the tour, Mackenberg visited local Washington mediums in the days prior to the hearings. She targeted local mediums including Jane B. Coates and Madam Grace Marcia who were scheduled to testify against the bill.[31] Her testimony on May 18, 1926, included the revelation that Coates had told her that Senators Capper, Watson, Dill, and Fletcher "had come to her for readings" and that "table tipping seances are held at the White House" with President Coolidge and his family.[32] This was met with raucous denials in the committee room, and a "fracas" ensued.[33] The meeting was adjourned. President Coolidge did not officially respond to the accusation but unofficial denials were made known in the press.[33][34] Ultimately H.R. 8989 did not pass,[35] but the hearings received wide press coverage.[29][32][33]
*See the full hearings and specific "Mackenburg" testimony.

Per a related Wild About Harry article, Harry Houdini also testified at the same Committee hearings:
The Fourth Quarter 1995 Mystifier is made up largely of an article by curator Benjamin Filene about Houdini's 1926 Congressional testimony in support of a Bill outlawing Fortune Telling in the District of Columbia. The article includes excerpts and focuses on how the Congressmen continually questioned Houdini about his own "powers". [Excerpt:]
"The issue of Houdini's supernatural abilities repeatedly derailed his efforts to expose spiritualistic frauds before the committee. Repeatedly he tried to demystify spiritualistic effects by showing that he himself could duplicate the illusions. The congressmen instead interpreted these demonstrations as evidence that, for better or worse, Houdini and the spiritualists were in the same camp after all."
Ninety-three years later, this kind of supernatural Congressional thinking is not far removed from what we're hearing now, yes? Who says the dead can't speak?

Which, finally, takes us back to OP's original NYT article subhead: Working undercover for the illusionist, Mackenberg exposed phony psychics who claimed they could connect people to their dead loved ones. Aren't all psychics phony?
posted by cenoxo at 7:47 PM on December 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


“I never married,” a wry Mackenberg told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1937, “but I have received messages from 1,000 husbands and twice as many children in the world to come. Invariably they told me they were happy where they were, which was not entirely flattering to me.”

Sngh. Sngh. Sngh.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:45 PM on December 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


Let me guess - all frauds.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 11:02 PM on December 9, 2019


More about Houdini’s Congressional testimony from WAH, Mr. Houdini Goes to Washington Part I, Part II, Part III:
In his first few minutes of testimony, it is more than apparent that Houdini wasn’t going to pull any punches. While it is left to our imaginations what a “mysterious entertainer” exactly is, as a reader you really have to put yourself into the mindset of the post-World War I era to fully grasp how damning and inflammatory Houdini’s words and actions were.
Considering that the world had recently suffered tens of millions of deaths in the great disasters of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic, many people were looking for answers that Spiritualism claimed to provide.
posted by cenoxo at 5:08 AM on December 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


Aren't all psychics phony?
No. But you hear more about the phony ones so it's easy to assume that.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:47 AM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


You certainly hear nothing about real psychics, which is funny, because if anyone were ever proven real it should be in the news.
posted by stillnocturnal at 7:22 AM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


No. But you hear more about the phony ones so it's easy to assume that.

The James Randi Educational Foundation would like a quick word. On top of the cool million you'd make from demonstrating an actual psychic to them, you could also write up your findings and collect your Nobel Prize, as it would singlehandedly shake entire scientific disciplines to their very core.
posted by Mayor West at 7:48 AM on December 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


You certainly hear nothing about real psychics, which is funny, because if anyone were ever proven real it should be in the news.

Nah. Even if someone wanted to subject themselves to being approved by the media as "genuine" there'd be no fair hearing for such a thing.

And The James Randi Educational Foundation doesn't even comprehend this topic well enough to be taken serisouly as the judge of it.

People who actually live with this phenomenon usually don't give a damn about exploiting it for money or having someone else validate it for them, therefore you won't see them asking for a prize. And that's what many others cannot understand.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:04 AM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Given human nature, that explanation sounds less likely to me than the idea that anyone living with such a phenomenon has been captured and exploited by secret government agencies, as in The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind.
posted by asperity at 8:28 AM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Nah. Even if someone wanted to subject themselves to being approved by the media as "genuine" there'd be no fair hearing for such a thing.

Michael Shermer is fond of saying "Extraordinary Claims require extraordinary evidence" which is true. the James Randi foundation mentioned above has actually gone to fairly good lengths to set a level field for testing claims of psychic ability.
posted by Dr. Twist at 9:03 AM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


omg I want to write about her so bad.
posted by offalark at 11:32 AM on December 10, 2019


Liquidwolf, how would you differentiate between a real psychic and a fake (or as Houdini put it, a “mysterious entertainer”)?
posted by cenoxo at 12:50 PM on December 10, 2019



Liquidwolf, I sent you a MeMail.
posted by annieb at 5:30 PM on December 10, 2019


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