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