A Woman to Know: Rose Mackenberg
No number of exposures, in fact, seem to shake the faith of believers. — Rose Mackenberg
I smell a rat before I smell the incense. — Rose Mackenberg
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
In her decades-long career as an undercover detective, Rose exposed hundreds of fraudulent fortune tellers, crooked clairvoyants and swindling psychics. She snuck into séances and palm reading parlors to lift the veil on the sleight of hand and other tricks many used to hoodwink unsuspecting customers.
She worked throughout the 1920s, a time when the Spiritualist movement had hypnotized thousands of Americans into believing that with the right persno, they could rely on ESP to throw off dark forces or connect them to higher powers.
Rose, a steadfast rationalist, made it her mission to break this spell. She partnered with Harry Houdini, another Spiritualist debunker, to infiltrate the world of celebrity psychics. In just two years working with the famous magician, she claimed to have unmasked 300 fakes working across America.
She had a closet packed with hats, capes and scarves to assist in her many disguises. She couldn’t resist a joke — some of her pseudonyms, like “Frances Raud” or “F.Raud” (get it? FRAUD), were sly winks to her true self.
These fake mediums lived in fear of Rose sneaking through the door. I imagine it like a Scooby Doo reveal, with Rose jumping out of her seat and casting off her costume. She described it to a reporter later in life:
It was my testimony, brief and pointed, that touched off the rockets and pinwheels and giant crackers of startled emotion when wrathful persons broke in with protestations and shouts of ‘That’s a lie!’ and ‘We never did such a thing!’
But Rose said her work, while important for the broader awareness of spiritual fraud, rarely disrupted the loyalty of those already at the séance table. “No number of exposures, in fact, seem to shake the faith of believers,” she said.
Add to your library list:
Houdini’s ‘Girl Detective’ (Tom Wolf and Rose Mackenberg)
Read more:
Overlooked No More: Houdini’s Secret Ghost Buster (The New York Times)
The Female Ghostbuster Who Rooted Out Spiritual Fraud (Atlas Obscura)
The original spirit exterminator was a woman who lived 100 years ago (Quartz)
Rose Mackenberg: The Spook Spy (Rejected Princesses)
See more:
Rose Mackenberg (Ridiculous History)
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