More than a Magician's Assistant

by Kat McLeod
May 6, 2025

A hundred years ago, the Spiritualist movement was experiencing a revival; mediums and mystics claimed to summon the supernatural, weaving illusions that left many in awe — and often in debt. The name Rose Mackenberg, once drew fear into the hearts of charlatans. You may not have heard of her, but she was a woman who was ahead of her time. Dubbed a 'ghost buster' by the press in the 1950s, she was far more than a cynic of the psychic world. She was a bold trailblazer who challenged deception, exposing frauds with skill and tenacity. However, despite her remarkable legacy, she remains a hidden hero in history.

In the early 1920s, a young, Brooklyn-born Rose Mackenberg was working as a private detective at an agency in New York — unheard of for a woman at the time. She was working on a case about a psychic who had recommended worthless stock to a local banker when she introduced herself to the man who would become her mentor, the magician Harry Houdini. The press was reporting on Houdini, who was waging a crusade against psychics and Spiritualists, which inspired Mackenberg to seek his counsel. Houdini's advice was enough for Mackenberg to ensnare the psychic and have him convicted.

Like Houdini, Mackenberg started out as a believer in the paranormal. Houdini wanted to spare others the grief he'd experienced after failing to contact his mother after her death. Impressed by her investigative and acting skills, Houdini hired Rose Mackenberg in 1924 to be part of his small investigative team, to work undercover and expose the charlatans who prospered in the years after World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic. Mackenberg quickly became his chief investigator; she would dress in various disguises, create fictitious backstories, often posing as a widow or a grieving mother, and use false names (like the pun-intended Frances Raud, F. Raud) when making appointments with psychics. She would arrive in cities a week or two before Houdini's tour, and meet with psychics to determine which tricks they were using when performing their readings. She took comprehensive notes, would report back to Houdini, and then would appear on stage with him when he came to town, and they would discredit the local medium during Houdini's show by exposing their trickery. In the two years she worked with Houdini, she investigated and helped expose approximately 300 mediums. Her very detailed manuscripts for Houdini have been studied and exhibited in museums.

The Vancouver Sun wrote, "Rose Mackenberg dons shabby clothes and tracks down 'spirit world' frauds, she has found plenty, too, having been put in touch with 1,500 departed husbands she never had."

In May 1926, Houdini and Mackenberg testified before the United States Congress in favour of a bill that would outlaw professional spiritualists, séances-for-money, and charlatan mediums. Mackenberg's testimony was brief but explosive: She spoke about politicians who frequently visited mediums in Washington, and she reported that one medium swore that President Calvin Coolidge had attended seances in the White House. (the Coolidge administration denied holding seances). The New York Times reported about her testimony noting "Today's session was unusually disorderly and came near winding up in a free-for-all fist fight." Unfortunately, the bill failed to pass, likely because of lobbying from the Spiritualist community and because Mackenberg exposed several Senators who were regularly visiting psychics for advice. The hearing marked the end of her work with Houdini who would sadly die unexpectedly just 5 months later, however, Mackenberg continued on with the crusade for decades.

In addition to her investigations, Mackenberg attempted to educate the public by touring the country giving lectures on psychic fraud. She attended spiritualist camps and took classes which ranged from twenty minutes to three days in order to be "ordained" as a medium half a dozen times, under false names of course. Mackenberg unmasked how spiritualists used theatrical tricks to produce some of their illusions. In the light of day with a bit of insider knowledge, these gimmicks don't seem very convincing, however, they proved highly effective in the darkness of a séance room, in the hands of skilled deceivers. It also helped that the sitters were motivated and willing to suspend their disbelief or any doubt in the hope of contacting a lost loved one. We can all look back at photos of purported ectoplasm now and understand it is a trick with cheesecloth, but in their day they were very convincing.

Because of her investigative work, Mackenberg was considered an expert on the practices of fraudulent psychics. Mackenberg worked with police, Chambers of Commerce, newspapers, insurance, and trust companies and testified in countless civil and criminal lawsuits involving spiritualism in an attempt to end the corrupt practices and help victims.

A witty Mackenberg told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1937, "I never married, but I have received messages from a thousand husbands and twice as many children in the world to come. Invariably they told me they were happy where they were, which is not entirely flattering to me."

Mackenberg appeared on the Steve Allen show on Halloween, 1955. She was written about and authored numerous newspaper and magazine articles, as well as an unpublished autobiography titled, "So You Want to Attend a Séance?" A 1949 Hearst syndicate article described her as "perhaps the only woman 'ghost-buster' in the world."

In her 1951 article, in The Saturday Evening Post, titled "I've Unmasked a Thousand Frauds" she wrote:

To these charlatans, who take a cruel advantage of human grief and anxiety, war brings boom times. The anguish of friends and relatives of dead, wounded or missing servicemen offers a fertile field for heartless deception.

Fathers, mothers, wives, sweethearts and others close to those in the armed service flock to the séances of these counterfeit dealers in the occult. They receive "messages from the beyond," plenty of them, provided the usual "offering" is donated.

I do not impugn spiritualism as a sect or as a sincere religious belief. There are many intellectually honest persons, some mediums included, who get solace from a belief in contacts with the afterworld. My work and this article concern only those mediums who deceive trusting persons.

Is there any medium who can actually call up the spirits of the dead and put them into verbal communication with the living? I don't know. There may be. All I can testify to is that I have never met any.

Of the well over 1,000 mediums I have investigated who claimed to have this power, I have never found one who was not a fraud.

I have also never found one… who hesitated to give a message, purportedly from "beyond the veil"… even when the one presumably talking from "spirit land" was a mythical friend or relative of the sitter, or a real person who was alive and well on earth. I have many times received "spirit" communications from some person I had taken along to the séance with me and who was sitting right beside me while her "spirit" on the other side of the grave was telling me not to worry, because she was happy and well in her new home.

Before his death, Harry Houdini devised a secret code, a carefully prearranged message that he entrusted to his wife, Bess, and a select circle of confidants — one of whom was Rose Mackenberg. Houdini, a staunch skeptic of the spiritualism movement, had spent years debunking self-proclaimed mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead. His hope was that if an authentic connection between the living and the beyond existed, his code would serve as an irrefutable test of true communication from beyond the grave, and undeniable proof of an afterlife.

For thirty years, Mackenberg infiltrated séance rooms across the country, posing as a willing believer while meticulously documenting the tricks of fraudulent spiritualists. Despite decades in the company of supposed conduits to the afterlife, Mackenberg never once heard the prearranged words Houdini had promised. No spirit, no medium, no whispered message from the beyond ever provided the code. Instead, what she uncovered time and time again was deception — exploiting hope, grief, and desperation. Houdini had been right.

Mackenberg's work became a lasting legacy of skepticism, reinforcing Houdini's crusade against fraudulent mystics long after his death. In a world eager to believe in spirits, she stood as a relentless force for truth, proving that even Houdini himself — master of escapes — had never managed to break through the veil between life and death.

Like Harry Houdini and James Randi, Rose Mackenberg spent her lifetime exposing fraudulent mediums, tirelessly trying to discredit dishonest manipulators who would exploit grief for their own financial gain and educating the public about their deceptions. Her work resulted in arrests and fraud convictions; who knows how many people she saved from falling prey to psychics. This remarkable woman has not received the attention or recognition she deserved. Rose Mackenberg died in 1968, let's ensure she is not forgotten.

By Kat McLeod