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Rose Mackenberg: Houdini's Ghostbuster · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous history is a production of I Heart Radio. If
0:27
Speaker 1: there's something strange in your neighborhood, who in fact should
0:31
Speaker 1: you call? If there's something weird and it don't look good,
0:35
Speaker 1: you just might better call good Ghostbusters. Hi, I'm bad,
0:41
Speaker 1: I'm an old trademark. Um what is it? Huey Lewis.
0:45
Speaker 1: Huey Lewis sued was the Roy Parker, Roy Parker, Ray Parker,
0:51
Speaker 1: Casey on the case with that one that's also a
0:54
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pecker double the double sound cute. Yeah,
0:59
Speaker 1: Ray Parker Junior. Uh, famously sued by Huey Lewis. If
1:04
Speaker 1: I want a new drug fame, if you want a
1:06
Speaker 1: fun little side by side, it's uh, don't don't dug it,
1:09
Speaker 1: dunt dun don't don't dig versus I think I want
1:13
Speaker 1: a new drug is pretty much that dun't don't right.
1:17
Speaker 1: But but it's it's more about the chugging little under
1:21
Speaker 1: there's like stabs that are like dune dunt dunt dunt dune. Well,
1:26
Speaker 1: thank god that litigation did not sink one of my
1:31
Speaker 1: favorite childhood franchises of all time, The Ghostbusters. I mean,
1:35
Speaker 1: it was the most desired Halloween costume by Miles and Miles.
1:40
Speaker 1: You know, did you have the proton pack? Did you
1:42
Speaker 1: have the little suit? Yeah? Oh, I had the whole thing.
1:44
Speaker 1: I had the I had the the station, the firehouse,
1:49
Speaker 1: you had the firehouse, you had the hearse or ambulance?
1:53
Speaker 1: What was it? It was a hearse but it was
1:54
Speaker 1: called it was called the Ecto five. Yeah. I had
1:57
Speaker 1: a lot wrapped up in the Ghostbusters franchise. Even now,
2:01
Speaker 1: one of my cats is named Dr Vankman, So I
2:05
Speaker 1: I carried that. I carried that with me, triumphs and
2:08
Speaker 1: traumas alike. Well, I'll tell you why that is is
2:11
Speaker 1: because it was funny, poignant, heartwarming, and I'm most importantly
2:16
Speaker 1: pretty spooky. Yeah, and I support We're we're continuing with
2:20
Speaker 1: our Halloween in November behind the curve activity here, which
2:24
Speaker 1: is again our men's warehouse asked guarantee we will usually
2:29
Speaker 1: be behind the curve. We hope it's appealing. We were
2:32
Speaker 1: digging into the concept of Ghostbusters and before we traveled
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Speaker 1: to today's episode by way of segue, let's just mention
2:42
Speaker 1: that there was a recent reboot of Ghostbusters where in
2:46
Speaker 1: the four protagonists were all played by female actors. Do
2:50
Speaker 1: you remember that. Did you see that one? I did, Um,
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Speaker 1: I quite enjoyed it. The Internet didn't really like it
2:56
Speaker 1: very much. But the Internet said, you know, toxic hive
3:00
Speaker 1: of scum and villainy, as we all know. Yeah, the
3:02
Speaker 1: Internet is very into not liking things. So so also
3:08
Speaker 1: its relationship with women is very complicated. I would say,
3:11
Speaker 1: I would say terrible. It's like saying in cells have
3:15
Speaker 1: a complicated relationship there. But yeah, I also enjoyed the reboot,
3:19
Speaker 1: the newest reboot. I hope they do more in that vein.
3:23
Speaker 1: But this inspired knowl you and I to look into
3:28
Speaker 1: concepts of ghostbusting, and we found, with the help of
3:32
Speaker 1: our research associate Gabe, we found a story of someone
3:36
Speaker 1: who might be called one of the original ghostbusters, a
3:40
Speaker 1: woman named Rose Macenburg, who was described as a spook
3:46
Speaker 1: spy yeah, or what we might know now as paranormal investigator. Yeah,
3:51
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Ghost hunters and the like, and and
3:54
Speaker 1: the what's the name of the couple from the war
3:58
Speaker 1: Conjuring films, Yeah, the war Ends they were. They were
4:00
Speaker 1: actually real folks who made this their life's mission. And
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Speaker 1: this is a very early example of that, and one
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Speaker 1: of my favorite historical illusionists, escape artists, Houdini, Harry Judini
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Speaker 1: is a big part of this story, right, Um, As
4:14
Speaker 1: you say, Ben Rose Macknburgh considered herself to be a
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Speaker 1: spook spy and Harry Judini himself referred to her as
4:21
Speaker 1: his quote girl detective, which is more than a little
4:25
Speaker 1: bit of a loaded term. Was that him or was
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Speaker 1: that the media of the day. Yeah, that's a good question.
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Speaker 1: It's not quite clear, um, But whoever referred to her
4:33
Speaker 1: as that, it was definitely a name that stuck. Um.
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Speaker 1: There was at the time, as we discussed in the
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Speaker 1: last episode, in the early part of the twentieth century,
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Speaker 1: a renewed interest in spiritualism and spooky stories that was
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Speaker 1: largely a result of again as we as we mentioned
4:49
Speaker 1: last episode, Um, you know this new burgeoning middle class
4:53
Speaker 1: and folks moving from rural areas to more densely populated
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Speaker 1: city areas and um changing up that routine and living
5:01
Speaker 1: in these kind of you know, larger houses, et cetera,
5:03
Speaker 1: and bringing some of those tales that might have been
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Speaker 1: more folk tales into more of a melting pot situation
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Speaker 1: and things ended up getting remixed, right absolutely, And if
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Speaker 1: Harry Houdini's day job and the way he earned his bread,
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Speaker 1: butter and handcuffs was working as an escape artist, a mentalist.
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Speaker 1: One of his first loves. In his personal life, one
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Speaker 1: of his primary hobbies was busting what he and Macknburg
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Speaker 1: would go on to call the ghost racket. And I
5:33
Speaker 1: love the idea of a ghost racket. I had afraid
5:35
Speaker 1: to know ghost racket right. Uh. This was in the
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Speaker 1: early twentieth century. Again, as you said, Macknburg would travel
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Speaker 1: to places where Houdini was scheduled to perform, and along
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Speaker 1: the way she would bust frauds, fake ghosts, uh knor
5:52
Speaker 1: is pretending to be mediums, and so on. Interestingly enough,
5:56
Speaker 1: Makenburg was once herself a devout spiritual list, but she
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Speaker 1: became disillusioned throughout her time investigating these things, and she
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Speaker 1: ended up becoming even more skeptical than she was at
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Speaker 1: the beginning. I'm not sure we ever sighted this publication before,
6:13
Speaker 1: but sci fi dot Com has a pretty cool article
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Speaker 1: about how Rose Mackinburg became the first female Ghostbusters when
6:20
Speaker 1: this former believer turned skeptic. And this turn, I don't know,
6:24
Speaker 1: I think, um, what what was the turn in her
6:27
Speaker 1: uh in her life that caused her to go from
6:29
Speaker 1: believer to skeptic. Ben Well, honestly, Nolan, we'll we'll dive
6:33
Speaker 1: into this a little further Intoday Show. Honestly, it's it's
6:38
Speaker 1: more a case of constantly searching for something that purports
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Speaker 1: to be genuine and literally every time seeing it disproven.
6:47
Speaker 1: You think those Scooby Doo kids would have gotten the
6:50
Speaker 1: hang of that eventually, right. It's always an old dude
6:53
Speaker 1: and a mask that owns a private amusement park or
6:57
Speaker 1: abandoned farmers. You were there when always complaining about this
7:00
Speaker 1: last week at the local bar. They should just call
7:03
Speaker 1: it Scooby Doo finds old men. And then once the
7:07
Speaker 1: blonde guy's name who always has the horribleody, Freddie, who
7:10
Speaker 1: always has the worst ideas. He's like to know what
7:13
Speaker 1: gang we should split up? I've got an ascot. I'm
7:17
Speaker 1: a real hunk. Yeah, you know what I mean. And
7:20
Speaker 1: it's such a it's such a rip off because it
7:22
Speaker 1: is so so rarely a supernatural antagonist in Scooby Doo.
7:28
Speaker 1: It's agist. It never is in the original series. Well,
7:31
Speaker 1: in the newer series, which is still Cannon, there there
7:34
Speaker 1: are some supernatural events. But I got so tired of
7:37
Speaker 1: that where it was this ageist stuff against old men
7:42
Speaker 1: like you you heard us talking about that. Yeah, it's
7:45
Speaker 1: all coming back to me now for sure. I believe
7:47
Speaker 1: we saw a young woman dressed up as Velma and
7:50
Speaker 1: then it all went from there. And you asked about
7:51
Speaker 1: was it Fred that was the dumb blonde boy? Yeah, yeah, who.
7:55
Speaker 1: I'm going to go on record and say that the
7:57
Speaker 1: Velma is probably the smartest, uh most well adjusted, just
8:02
Speaker 1: because Thelma is the best member of Scooby Doo, totally
8:05
Speaker 1: the best non canine member of Scoopy. But she has
8:08
Speaker 1: a fatal flaw. She always loses her glasses during the
8:13
Speaker 1: clutch moment where she could really make all the difference.
8:15
Speaker 1: She's always down on her hands and knees searching around
8:18
Speaker 1: those glasses. Just get get one of those headbands like
8:20
Speaker 1: racquetball players have agreed they never really learned their lesson
8:23
Speaker 1: to do that. But yeah, it's unfortunate because Rose Mackenburg.
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Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot of info out there about her.
8:28
Speaker 1: What we do know is that she kind of became
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Speaker 1: disillusioned with spiritualism after again, like you said, Ben, Scooby
8:37
Speaker 1: Doo style, constantly being let down and seeing people swindled
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Speaker 1: um and uh and taking advantage of by folks purporting
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Speaker 1: to be spiritual advisors or mediums of sorts. And starting
8:51
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, she began to make this her
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Speaker 1: life's mission as a private investigator, debunking some of these charlatans. Yes,
9:00
Speaker 1: and there was no shortage of those aforementioned charlatan's during
9:05
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. The world was still recovering from things
9:12
Speaker 1: like the First World War, the Spanish flu pandemic, and more.
9:17
Speaker 1: These sorts of disasters which lead to the breakdown of
9:20
Speaker 1: institutions and rule of law, lad the masses to look
9:25
Speaker 1: for a higher law, some sort of involvable system right
9:30
Speaker 1: that would not be at the mercy of the ebb
9:34
Speaker 1: and flow of the you know, the chaotic turn of
9:38
Speaker 1: events that we call day to day mortal life. And
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Speaker 1: so one of the things people turned to was spiritualism.
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Speaker 1: Spiritualism was the belief that not only does an afterlife exist,
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Speaker 1: but that through certain means, anyone, whether through an intermediary
9:55
Speaker 1: or through a some sort of device or some sort
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Speaker 1: of ritual, anyone can and communicate beyond that Veil of Tears.
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Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you'll recognize him as the mastermind
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Speaker 1: behind Sherlock Holmes was one of the big time proponents
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Speaker 1: of spiritualism, and he said, this stuff is great. I know,
10:19
Speaker 1: you guys have heard of like falling in love and
10:21
Speaker 1: sliced bread, and those are pretty good, but they're at
10:25
Speaker 1: best to be plus compared to this new thing that
10:27
Speaker 1: I call spiritualism. And his influence was countered by another famous,
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Speaker 1: highly intellectual person, the magician and escape artist Harry Houdini.
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Speaker 1: And Harry Houdini essentially said, you know, Sir Arthur Cronan Doyle,
10:43
Speaker 1: was interesting about what you're saying is that it's absolutely
10:46
Speaker 1: wrong and you're making yourself sound stupid for believing in it.
10:50
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to stop there. I'm gonna put
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Speaker 1: together my own kind of Avengers team and we're going
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Speaker 1: to take it to the streets. We're on a crusade
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Speaker 1: against the ghost racket. These people are not real mediums.
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Speaker 1: They do not have the best interests of their clients
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Speaker 1: at heart. They are con artists and they are out
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Speaker 1: there to build vulnerable people at the most vulnerable moment
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Speaker 1: of their lives. And I, by god, I'm going to
11:15
Speaker 1: put a stop to it. Yeah. And one of the
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Speaker 1: reasons too, that Hudini had such an issue with this
11:19
Speaker 1: is even folks like in his profession as illusionists, which
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Speaker 1: I don't know, like, I don't think anyone purported to
11:26
Speaker 1: be like I'm a wizard. You know. It's like it
11:28
Speaker 1: was like Vaudeville. It was meant to be seen as
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Speaker 1: a craft, you know what I mean, Like you need
11:32
Speaker 1: to not act as though he were some sort of
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Speaker 1: divine character, you know, like he was just a performer
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Speaker 1: who was very, very good at what he did. But
11:41
Speaker 1: some folks that were in his profession would kind of
11:45
Speaker 1: become these self styled kind of doctor Strange type figures
11:49
Speaker 1: and occultists and have these themes behind their shows. Uh.
11:52
Speaker 1: And maybe they didn't go so far as to say
11:55
Speaker 1: they were able to manifest spirits or whatever, but they
11:58
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't deny that they actually had these powers, these
12:02
Speaker 1: infernal powers, right, So that rubbed him the wrong way.
12:05
Speaker 1: And um, I want to make it clear to Rose Macknburg,
12:09
Speaker 1: it was kind of when she again, like you said, Ben,
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Speaker 1: she uh kind of had become disillusioned with this. Uh.
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Speaker 1: The study of spiritualism that she was into as a
12:16
Speaker 1: teenager when she started seeing it being used in the
12:20
Speaker 1: same way that Houdini didn't care for, even though his
12:23
Speaker 1: might have been a little more ego driven than actual benevolence.
12:27
Speaker 1: Right um. But it was when she did her first
12:29
Speaker 1: case um investigating spiritual fraud that she really decided, okay, uh,
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Speaker 1: this is a real problem and I I am now
12:36
Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice my own beliefs in the service of
12:39
Speaker 1: helping others. And Houdini himself, you know, you're right. It
12:44
Speaker 1: was ego driven a bit, but he had a deep
12:47
Speaker 1: personal beef with people claiming to have this, uh, this
12:54
Speaker 1: exclusive access to the spirit world. He thought it was
12:57
Speaker 1: the real thing. At first he did. Yeah. In his
13:03
Speaker 1: mother passed away and Judini was so deep in the
13:10
Speaker 1: grief of losing one of the most important people in
13:12
Speaker 1: his life that he completely stopped performing and he started,
13:18
Speaker 1: despite you know, the best arguments his rational mind could construct.
13:23
Speaker 1: In desperation to alleviate this grief, he started seeking out
13:28
Speaker 1: the Council people purporting to be spiritual mediums, and not
13:34
Speaker 1: only did he encounter, to his mind, fraud after fraud
13:38
Speaker 1: after fraud, but he could also see through it, you
13:41
Speaker 1: know what I mean? He would say, Okay, this person
13:45
Speaker 1: has their hand under the table and there tapping from
13:49
Speaker 1: the bottom of the table and pretending to be my
13:52
Speaker 1: dead mother for what a bit of cash? Yeah, basically,
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Speaker 1: And I mean a lot of this stuff continues today
13:59
Speaker 1: with like cold readings and a lot of these techniques
14:01
Speaker 1: that are have been maybe refined over time, but there's
14:04
Speaker 1: definitely still a market um largely and maybe television. I
14:08
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, you know, the thing is, people should
14:12
Speaker 1: be able to believe what they want and do what
14:14
Speaker 1: they want, unless they're hurting the others while doing it,
14:18
Speaker 1: you know. So Judini after seeing this, is incredibly profoundly offended.
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Speaker 1: He's also concerned that other people may be taken in,
14:34
Speaker 1: other more credulous folks may be taken in by these
14:37
Speaker 1: sorts of Shenanigans. Enter Rose Macknburg. Mackinburg grew up in
14:42
Speaker 1: New York City during the first few decades of the
14:44
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, Like you said, Noel, as a teenager, she
14:49
Speaker 1: did believe in spiritualism. She caught on it was very popular.
14:53
Speaker 1: It was in the Zeitgeist, uh not the daily one
14:56
Speaker 1: daily Zeitgeist. And excellent show. Do check that out. But
15:00
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist of the time, and she was introduced
15:04
Speaker 1: to Harry Houdini probably as close as we can tell
15:08
Speaker 1: sometime uh in the early nineteen twenties or late nineteen tens,
15:13
Speaker 1: And when she first encountered Houdini, she had been working
15:17
Speaker 1: as a p I, a private detective for a number
15:19
Speaker 1: of years. Their initial meeting came about when she consulted
15:24
Speaker 1: the magician about one of her own investigations, which involved
15:29
Speaker 1: the case of spirit fraud. Yeah, he saw something in
15:33
Speaker 1: her and invited her to join his crack team of
15:37
Speaker 1: around twenty undercover p i s that he referred to
15:43
Speaker 1: as his secret service, and they were all paid a
15:46
Speaker 1: salary and he um enlisted them to travel along actually
15:51
Speaker 1: ahead of him on his touring spots to kind of
15:55
Speaker 1: suss out the towns and and sniff out any of
15:58
Speaker 1: these spiritual frauds that might be there waiting for him,
16:01
Speaker 1: so they were to symbol a brief for him. They
16:05
Speaker 1: would find things like table tipping, that's when furniture appears
16:09
Speaker 1: to move on its own through some sort of ghostly telekinesis.
16:13
Speaker 1: They would also find things called spirit trumpets. This phenomenon
16:17
Speaker 1: which was supposed to magnify the ordinarily inaudible whispers of
16:21
Speaker 1: the dead, but was actually ventriloquism. And table tipping was
16:27
Speaker 1: kind of like weige aboard stuff controlled by the unconscious
16:30
Speaker 1: movements of participants. And there was billet breading, where psychics
16:34
Speaker 1: seemed to know what was inside a sealed envelope. The
16:37
Speaker 1: thing is the envelope was either sealed by a plant
16:41
Speaker 1: or a plant was involved in sort of feeding them
16:44
Speaker 1: the answers. And this wasn't like this was dangerous work.
16:48
Speaker 1: I mean, these were folks that were actually this was
16:50
Speaker 1: their their stock and trade. They were making money, uh
16:53
Speaker 1: in these in these towns, you know, taking advantage of people.
16:56
Speaker 1: It was sort of elaborate form of huckster is them,
17:00
Speaker 1: you know, And they wouldn't take kindly to being debunked
17:04
Speaker 1: in this way, being exposed. I mean, it was the
17:07
Speaker 1: equivalent of shutting down someone's livelihood. Um, obviously it was
17:11
Speaker 1: it was deserved. But this was a problem and it
17:14
Speaker 1: made a Houdini and Rose quite a few uh enemies.
17:18
Speaker 1: And the thing is, it wasn't just the racketeers that
17:23
Speaker 1: had a problem with what Rose and Houdini were doing.
17:25
Speaker 1: It was the ones that actually believed this stuff um
17:29
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly as well, and it would potentially cause like riots
17:34
Speaker 1: in the streets between the phony spiritualists, um, the anti spiritualists,
17:40
Speaker 1: and also the hucksters. Right yeah, yeah, and let maybe
17:44
Speaker 1: let's say pro spiritualists, because as you said, there were
17:47
Speaker 1: the true believers and then there were the con artists
17:49
Speaker 1: were more than willing to get those folks on their side,
17:53
Speaker 1: right for for these riots. That's the thing. This was
17:57
Speaker 1: a community. This was not a situation of isolated scam
18:03
Speaker 1: artists functioning alone. And the fact that was a community
18:07
Speaker 1: meant that Houdini's Avengers would be eventually recognized. You could
18:12
Speaker 1: only bust so many scams before a word got around.
18:17
Speaker 1: Look for this lady, Rose Macknburg, she's after you. And
18:22
Speaker 1: due to the threat of recognition, due to also, as
18:25
Speaker 1: you said, the very real sense of physical danger, Rose
18:29
Speaker 1: and her cohort and her colleagues started wearing disguises. It
18:35
Speaker 1: got to the point where Mackenburgh's first stop in any
18:39
Speaker 1: new town was a department store and she didn't just buy,
18:43
Speaker 1: you know, whatever. She was in the mood to where
18:46
Speaker 1: she would scope out the area first. This is impressive.
18:50
Speaker 1: And she would say, Okay, let me get a sense
18:52
Speaker 1: of the demographics. What do the women in this town where? Uh,
18:58
Speaker 1: you know, what to the school teachers where? What do
19:00
Speaker 1: the what do the widows wear? Maybe? What do the
19:04
Speaker 1: the successful people wear? What do the lower socioeconomic scale where?
19:10
Speaker 1: And then she would figure out what was appropriate. But
19:13
Speaker 1: she didn't stop there. She also aged herself with makeup
19:18
Speaker 1: and I believe that at least a couple of times
19:21
Speaker 1: she wore a fake hearing aid. Isn't that right? Yeah?
19:25
Speaker 1: She had all kinds of props, which is pretty interesting
19:27
Speaker 1: considering the fakery involved in some of the spiritual um
19:32
Speaker 1: you know, hoaxes that she was trying to debunk. Right. Absolutely.
19:37
Speaker 1: There's a great book on her by a guy named
19:39
Speaker 1: Tony Wolf. The book is called Houdini's Girl Detective, The
19:42
Speaker 1: Real Life Ghostbusting Adventures of Rose Macenburg, and Wolf says
19:47
Speaker 1: that during her work for Houdini, Mackenburgh would travel to
19:51
Speaker 1: these towns and attend as many seances as she could,
19:55
Speaker 1: disguised as a devout believer. And I hope, folks, I
19:59
Speaker 1: hope that you love these names as much as I do.
20:03
Speaker 1: They're terrible, Uh, she would have aliases such as Francis
20:09
Speaker 1: rod F rod f r a u D, Florence b
20:16
Speaker 1: Rush or Alicia Bunk all is a Bunk And after
20:22
Speaker 1: she attended a ton of these seances, she would come
20:25
Speaker 1: back and report everything she learned to Houdini, and she
20:28
Speaker 1: would also describe what they were purporting to do and
20:33
Speaker 1: what she thought the tricks actually were. Then Houdini would
20:37
Speaker 1: arrive in the same town maybe a week or two
20:39
Speaker 1: later for his show and boom, boom boom, he would
20:42
Speaker 1: bust the medium as a fraud. This became his routine
20:47
Speaker 1: until Harry Houdini died on Halloween in nineteen twenty six
20:55
Speaker 1: in the most underwhelming way imaginable. Right. You picture a
20:58
Speaker 1: guy like this who put himself in these deifying situations
21:01
Speaker 1: all the time, dying in some elaborate way, like falling
21:04
Speaker 1: from a building to his death or you know, drowning
21:06
Speaker 1: in one of those glass dunk tank things that he
21:08
Speaker 1: would always try to escape from. But why did he
21:10
Speaker 1: ultimately die? I think he asked someone to punch him
21:12
Speaker 1: in the stomach when when he wasn't expecting it, and
21:14
Speaker 1: that ultimately is what caused his demise. Yeah, yeah, like
21:20
Speaker 1: a ab flexing Icarus. Uh, he put his belly too
21:25
Speaker 1: close to the fist. Is that even true? Though? Ben? Uh?
21:29
Speaker 1: You know, I just like the Icarus reference. Longtime listeners
21:32
Speaker 1: will know him fun to that one, But what it
21:35
Speaker 1: appears to be is more a ruptured appendix. However, according
21:40
Speaker 1: to multiple sources, the circumstances around how he how he
21:46
Speaker 1: actually expired are still kind of mysterious and hazy. Today,
21:52
Speaker 1: we do know that he definitely died on Halloween and
21:56
Speaker 1: all of this kind of uh was the groundwork for
21:58
Speaker 1: all this was laid well before Halloween of that year,
22:03
Speaker 1: when on October eleven UM, he was injured with a
22:07
Speaker 1: piece of faulty equipment during that very the Chinese water
22:10
Speaker 1: torture sell stunt that he was so well known for.
22:14
Speaker 1: And then on October UM, during a lecture actually in
22:19
Speaker 1: Montreal at McGill University UM, he invited a young man
22:23
Speaker 1: named Gordon Whitehead to punch him in the stomach. Oh,
22:27
Speaker 1: he didn't invite him, Jay. Gordon Whitehead was one of
22:30
Speaker 1: the McGill's students in the dressing room, and Whitehead asked
22:34
Speaker 1: Judy was like, Hey, is it true that you can
22:37
Speaker 1: You know, people can punch you, however, they want in
22:39
Speaker 1: your stomach and he This was a publicly known thing
22:43
Speaker 1: about Houdini. And then, according to the witness, a guy
22:46
Speaker 1: named Sam Smillovitz, Houdini said the rumors were true. He
22:50
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's true. And then without any warning,
22:53
Speaker 1: Whitehead immediately hauled off and punched him multiple time, like
23:00
Speaker 1: four or five really hard times in his stomach. And
23:03
Speaker 1: he needed time to prepare to receive those punches because
23:06
Speaker 1: he was just sort of laying on a couch, and
23:08
Speaker 1: so because he didn't prepare for it, he was in pain.
23:11
Speaker 1: He brushed off the incident, but then later that night,
23:14
Speaker 1: the twenty two, he started to experience stomach cramps and discomfort.
23:20
Speaker 1: His condition got worse and worse. He took a train
23:23
Speaker 1: to Detroit. On the train, he developed severe stomach paining,
23:27
Speaker 1: cold sweats, fatigues. His doctors suspected appendicitis, and it's crazy.
23:33
Speaker 1: According to history dot com, these kind of really mortal
23:37
Speaker 1: cases of appendicitis are super rare, uh and there was
23:40
Speaker 1: a study they cite that they found only a few
23:42
Speaker 1: dozen over a twenty year period. Um. But Houdini's diagnosis
23:47
Speaker 1: was pretty much accepted, and his wife even received a
23:50
Speaker 1: life insurance policy, a double indemnity life insurance payout for
23:55
Speaker 1: this accidental death because it was connected to the punching
23:59
Speaker 1: it exactly yet and so he did expire after a
24:03
Speaker 1: real terrible time on October thirty one, which you know,
24:09
Speaker 1: Houdini is such a fascinating character, but he wasn't entirely
24:14
Speaker 1: a villain. And I want to make you know, we
24:16
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we're fair to Houdini and
24:19
Speaker 1: to Makenburg and to all their colleagues, because they were
24:23
Speaker 1: busting con artists, that's exactly what they were doing. But
24:27
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that they were these uh grim
24:32
Speaker 1: atheist or that they had no belief in the supernatural
24:37
Speaker 1: because wild people like Tony Wolf, where other historians would
24:41
Speaker 1: say that Houdini and Makenburg probably didn't have any real
24:46
Speaker 1: belief and spiritualism, they were always careful to frame themselves
24:53
Speaker 1: as agnostics when they spoke about this in public. It
24:56
Speaker 1: was a article for the Saturday Evening Post where where
25:00
Speaker 1: in Rose Makenburgh said she wasn't really anti spiritualism as
25:04
Speaker 1: much as anti Charlatan, And we have a quote from
25:08
Speaker 1: that article. We do, indeed, I do not impugne spiritualism
25:13
Speaker 1: as a sect or as a sincere religious belief. There
25:16
Speaker 1: are many intellectually honest persons, some mediums included. Who gets
25:20
Speaker 1: solace from a belief in contacts with the afterworld? Um,
25:25
Speaker 1: isn't what what Prince calls it in the speech before
25:28
Speaker 1: Let's Go Crazy the afterworld? Pretty sure? Oh my gosh,
25:33
Speaker 1: I love. That's first only other place I've I've seen
25:35
Speaker 1: it referred to as that I usually see the afterlife.
25:37
Speaker 1: But link continue, that's not the quote. That's just that's
25:40
Speaker 1: just you're talking about Prince. This is me talking about Press. Hey,
25:42
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about Prince. Shut your mouth, my work.
25:45
Speaker 1: This is the quote, and this article concern only those
25:47
Speaker 1: mediums who deceive trusting persons. Is there any medium who
25:52
Speaker 1: can actually call up the spirits of the dead and
25:55
Speaker 1: put them into verbal communication with the living? I don't know,
25:58
Speaker 1: there may be. All can testify to is that I
26:01
Speaker 1: have never met any, which sounds fair, right, It's fair.
26:06
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's not agro, it's not rude. It's
26:11
Speaker 1: just that I I don't know whether it exists. I
26:14
Speaker 1: just haven't found any. So this catches the eye of
26:23
Speaker 1: Congress to Let's let's backtrack a little bit before Houdini's death.
26:27
Speaker 1: On Halloween, Houdini eventually went before Congress to testify about
26:34
Speaker 1: a proposed anti fortune telling bill that was meant to
26:37
Speaker 1: ban people from pretending to tell fortunes for reward or compensation,
26:43
Speaker 1: or pretending to unite the separated. That's as described by
26:47
Speaker 1: William Caluch in his book The Secret Life of Houdini.
26:52
Speaker 1: So before the first hearing begins on February, Houdini sends
26:57
Speaker 1: Rose Macknburg to d see and she is tasked with
27:02
Speaker 1: doing the thing she always does, which is to try
27:04
Speaker 1: to find some mediums. So she does her bit. She
27:09
Speaker 1: finds mediums, she figures out what tricks or techniques these
27:14
Speaker 1: mediums are using, and then Houdini comes into town to
27:19
Speaker 1: deliver this case He's made. He's done this ted talk
27:22
Speaker 1: a thousand times right. It's it's part an expose, it's
27:26
Speaker 1: part snarky entertainment. But word of the anti fortune telling
27:31
Speaker 1: bill Hr. Eight nine eight nine had spread through again
27:35
Speaker 1: the spiritualist community, and local mediums turned out in force.
27:40
Speaker 1: Uh Two of the leaders of the pro spiritualist side
27:44
Speaker 1: of this argument were a minister named Jane B. Coates
27:47
Speaker 1: and an astrologer named Marcia Champney. And that bill HR
27:54
Speaker 1: would have left fine on any quote, any person pretending
27:59
Speaker 1: to tell fortunes for reward or compensation um. That could
28:03
Speaker 1: have also been paired with six months in prison um.
28:06
Speaker 1: And that's in that's within Washington, d C. The nation's capital. Um.
28:10
Speaker 1: And the bill was essentially built on the foundation of
28:16
Speaker 1: these assertions that it's just not possible to see the future. Therefore,
28:22
Speaker 1: it kind of renders the spirituality argument sort of moot, right,
28:28
Speaker 1: it deflates even the true believers position, which is probably
28:31
Speaker 1: was controversial I imagine, yeah, yeah. And spiritualist of course
28:36
Speaker 1: reacted diversely to this. They said, communicating with the dead
28:40
Speaker 1: is a matter of faith, meaning that it is protected
28:44
Speaker 1: under the First Amendment. That's a really good point. I mean,
28:46
Speaker 1: it is separation. How is that any that's like saying,
28:50
Speaker 1: you know, Jesus wasn't real or like you, if you
28:52
Speaker 1: believe in Jesus or or or a priest or a preacher,
28:55
Speaker 1: then you're a fraud or a charlatan. How How is
28:58
Speaker 1: asking people for alms or for uh, you know, donations
29:02
Speaker 1: and the collection played at church any different from this
29:06
Speaker 1: and based on these rules. Yeah, and we have to
29:09
Speaker 1: remember this is very much a legalistic letter of the
29:11
Speaker 1: law situation. Rose Macknburg is also in d C with Houdini,
29:16
Speaker 1: need to testify about the mediums she visited in d
29:20
Speaker 1: C beforehand. She delivers a bombshell that day. She says
29:27
Speaker 1: congressman and senators regularly attended seances and one congressman's wife
29:36
Speaker 1: is in fact a medium. Not only that, she says
29:40
Speaker 1: these seances have been held at the White House hunt.
29:44
Speaker 1: Her testimony rocked Washington. The White House was not happy
29:48
Speaker 1: about this because clearly they you know, they were not
29:52
Speaker 1: an objective party here, and they immediately denied this accusation.
30:00
Speaker 1: But at the end it didn't matter because the bill
30:02
Speaker 1: never really passed due to some of the you know,
30:05
Speaker 1: the greater concerns we just outlined. And then, as we said,
30:10
Speaker 1: Judini passes away in Halloween of six. But this is
30:15
Speaker 1: not the end of Rose Macenburg. She continues her career afterwards. Right. Yeah,
30:21
Speaker 1: it's crazy she was with him right up until that
30:24
Speaker 1: is his last breath, because she was there with him
30:26
Speaker 1: in Montreal and was participating in the lectures that he
30:29
Speaker 1: was giving, which which which the contents were largely about
30:32
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, debunking these these fraudsters. Um. And
30:36
Speaker 1: there is footage of this that is in a Hudini
30:40
Speaker 1: documentary that Unitpix Productions put out, which I have not seen,
30:44
Speaker 1: what I would love to. You can read a little
30:45
Speaker 1: bit more about this on the Magic Detective dot com
30:48
Speaker 1: in the article Hudini's Mysterious Girl Detective. Um that that
30:52
Speaker 1: that didn't appear to be a moniker that stuck. Um.
30:56
Speaker 1: There's a really interesting detail or really interesting little bit
31:00
Speaker 1: of trivia here. A guy named Julian Proskauer who was
31:04
Speaker 1: another one of these ghost racket investigators. He estimated in
31:09
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two that the number of people taken in
31:13
Speaker 1: by these hoaxes were about thirty million a year. And uh,
31:19
Speaker 1: at the cost personally to these individuals of a hundred
31:22
Speaker 1: and twenty five million dollars, that's insane. That's a huge industry.
31:27
Speaker 1: That's like the economy of scale in those days. That's insane. Man. Yeah,
31:30
Speaker 1: it's a huge industry. And also keep in mind that's
31:34
Speaker 1: a five million total at thirty millions a year, and
31:38
Speaker 1: that's still that's nineteen thirty two dollars. Rose continued pursuing
31:44
Speaker 1: this line of work. This was a passion project for her.
31:47
Speaker 1: It was a personal vocation and she pursued it throughout
31:50
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. She investigated on behalf of insurance companies,
31:54
Speaker 1: law firms, better business bureaus, newspapers, other other institutions of
32:01
Speaker 1: that sort. She was the guide to the Chicago Tribunes
32:06
Speaker 1: approached the spiritualist underworld of Chicago, and she wrote a
32:11
Speaker 1: bunch of cv nex moose articles. She would do demonstrations
32:17
Speaker 1: of common con artists tricks for nonprofits. And she lived
32:23
Speaker 1: long enough to see the cycle continued. Time as a wheel,
32:28
Speaker 1: time as a flat circle. All things come back around again.
32:31
Speaker 1: So the Second World War ushers in another revival of spiritualism,
32:38
Speaker 1: and then she sees it again during the Korean War.
32:41
Speaker 1: And in nineteen fifty one, during an interview, she estimates
32:44
Speaker 1: that there are some hundred and fifty thousand mediums active
32:48
Speaker 1: in the US, and she said the number will continue
32:51
Speaker 1: to rise as long as the war continues. So she
32:56
Speaker 1: had been interviewed in a number of different publications American magazine,
33:01
Speaker 1: Call Yours, Popular Science, and so on. She had eventually
33:07
Speaker 1: given up or retired from investigating this sort of activity
33:12
Speaker 1: because she had quote grown tired of sitting in dark rooms.
33:16
Speaker 1: She said that no number of exposures seemed to shake
33:19
Speaker 1: the faith of believers, and it turns out she was right.
33:23
Speaker 1: As of the modern American psychic services industry is estimated
33:28
Speaker 1: to be worth slightly over to billion dollars. But you know,
33:33
Speaker 1: we should say it's changed as well. There are not
33:37
Speaker 1: many people attempted to use ectoplasm and stuff like that, no,
33:42
Speaker 1: because I mean people are largely because of the you know,
33:44
Speaker 1: things like the Internet and the proliferation of information and
33:46
Speaker 1: people being able to kind of check behind some of
33:48
Speaker 1: these things. Unless you really want to believe and be
33:51
Speaker 1: willfully ignorant, it's a lot harder to get taken in
33:55
Speaker 1: by some of these these tricks, you know. But then
33:57
Speaker 1: you have folks like, um, what's the guy's name crossing over?
34:00
Speaker 1: John John Edwards. I mean, I've I've witnessed situations where
34:05
Speaker 1: I felt as though there was something a little more
34:08
Speaker 1: uh intense than just cold reading techniques going on. I
34:13
Speaker 1: Who am I to say? You know that there isn't
34:15
Speaker 1: uh the ability for someone to have a stronger sense
34:19
Speaker 1: for these kinds of things. And then, you know, with
34:20
Speaker 1: our other show that we do stuffing. I want you
34:22
Speaker 1: to know we run into things like this all the time,
34:23
Speaker 1: and we always have to kind of hedge our bets
34:26
Speaker 1: without coming down too hard and saying no, this is
34:28
Speaker 1: all poppy cock versus you know. Yeah, there's things that
34:31
Speaker 1: we don't fully understand. And I kind of sit somewhere
34:34
Speaker 1: in the middle of those two camps. What what what do
34:35
Speaker 1: you think, ben? So, it's profoundly arrogant and very very
34:42
Speaker 1: human to imagine that we as a species, whereas individuals
34:46
Speaker 1: understand the totality of reality, you know what I mean,
34:50
Speaker 1: We're a species that burned people alive for saying the
34:55
Speaker 1: earth orbits the sun like not that long ago. When
34:58
Speaker 1: you look at time as a big picture, yeah, fingersnap
35:02
Speaker 1: of humanity. One of the best analogies for it is
35:06
Speaker 1: is the following. So our understanding of the world in
35:10
Speaker 1: which we live, and indeed our understanding ourselves, is akin
35:13
Speaker 1: to a guttering sputtering match in the universe, And the
35:18
Speaker 1: universe is a dark room and it's so big that
35:21
Speaker 1: we cannot see the corners. All we can see is uh,
35:24
Speaker 1: the match and maybe part of our hands holding it.
35:27
Speaker 1: So to assume that we know anything about the darkness
35:30
Speaker 1: beyond the little bit of light we have is again
35:34
Speaker 1: just the word I keep coming back to is arrogant. However,
35:38
Speaker 1: it's also true that our species will rip off each
35:41
Speaker 1: other whatever the opportunity presents itself, you know what I mean,
35:46
Speaker 1: Whether it's magical water that will make you live forever,
35:49
Speaker 1: whether it's a belief system that is impossible to disprove, right,
35:55
Speaker 1: or whether it's you know, a car that runs on
35:59
Speaker 1: positive thinking. There's there's no shortage of examples. That sounds nice.
36:04
Speaker 1: Then it does sound nice, right, and just saying that,
36:07
Speaker 1: would you know, get you some better mileage. But in
36:11
Speaker 1: this case, what we see is uh, the story of
36:15
Speaker 1: one person's crusade, which was to a large degree effective.
36:21
Speaker 1: And and again it sounds like you and I are
36:24
Speaker 1: kind of on on the same page. There's there's more
36:27
Speaker 1: to the workings of reality and the universe than humans
36:31
Speaker 1: currently understand. And anyone who's listening to this podcast thousands
36:35
Speaker 1: of years from now, we envy you. Hopefully, hopefully the
36:40
Speaker 1: house of cards called civilization is not collapsed, and you've
36:43
Speaker 1: learned a lot about the world beyond the one in
36:47
Speaker 1: which we currently live. And hey, you know, what the
36:49
Speaker 1: weird trippy thing is. If any of this afterlife after
36:53
Speaker 1: world stuff turns out to be true, then the people
36:56
Speaker 1: listening to this from thousands of years in the future,
36:59
Speaker 1: as linear times can, they don't have to hit our
37:02
Speaker 1: social meats man, they can just call us up directly,
37:05
Speaker 1: like invoc us electric word life. It means forever and
37:08
Speaker 1: that's a mighty long time. But I'm here to tell
37:10
Speaker 1: you there's something else the afterworld, a world of never
37:13
Speaker 1: ending happiness. You can always see the sun day or night.
37:16
Speaker 1: So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills,
37:18
Speaker 1: you know the one doctor, everything will be all right.
37:20
Speaker 1: Instead of asking him how much of your time has left,
37:22
Speaker 1: ask him how much of your mind? Baby? Because in
37:25
Speaker 1: this life things are much harder than in the after world.
37:28
Speaker 1: In this life you're on your own, and if the
37:31
Speaker 1: elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. I wanted
37:34
Speaker 1: to jump in. Uh. The only other abuse of after
37:37
Speaker 1: world that immediately jumped to mind for me, give me
37:39
Speaker 1: a Leonard Cohen after world. So I ken's I eternally
37:44
Speaker 1: That is Penny Royalty by Nirvana. Al Right, well, we
37:49
Speaker 1: got some literature in there, we got some science we've
37:51
Speaker 1: got some spirituality. We got one of our favorite troops
37:54
Speaker 1: are ridiculous History. Uh, good old fashioned con artistry. I
37:59
Speaker 1: think that makes this our episode. Thank you so much
38:03
Speaker 1: for tuning in everybody. By the way Makenburgh did inherit
38:07
Speaker 1: Judini's crystal Ball, you don't need a crystal ball to
38:10
Speaker 1: get in contact with us before our next episode. You
38:13
Speaker 1: can find us on everybody's favorite technological impression of clair voyance,
38:20
Speaker 1: the Internet, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Ridiculous History is all over it.
38:24
Speaker 1: We highly recommend one of our favorite sites on the internet,
38:27
Speaker 1: which is our Facebook community page, or Ridiculous Historians. But
38:31
Speaker 1: we're not just a show. We're also individual people and
38:34
Speaker 1: you can find us online as ourselves. It's sure. You
38:37
Speaker 1: can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am at
38:39
Speaker 1: how Now Noel Brown, and you can find me on
38:42
Speaker 1: Twitter where I am Ben bolland hs W. Or you
38:45
Speaker 1: can find me on Instagram where I am named as
38:50
Speaker 1: I like to say in a burst of creativity at
38:52
Speaker 1: Ben Boland spelled how it sounds huge. Thanks to super
38:55
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme, Christopher
38:59
Speaker 1: haciotas here in Spirit, Gabe Louisier Research Associate eve's Jeff Cote,
39:04
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Dr Vankman, both
39:09
Speaker 1: the character played by Bill Murray and my cat shout
39:12
Speaker 1: out to you. I can go to the Carpathian Vigo,
39:15
Speaker 1: the Carpathia, what is it? The sorrow of Carpathia, the
39:19
Speaker 1: scourge of Moldolva. I think that's the one I got close.
39:22
Speaker 1: That's a great speech. And of course, Yadush, lovely, lovely, Nash.
39:28
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
39:37
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
39:40
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.