Rose Mackenberg: First Female Ghostbuster

Who ya gonna call? Rose Mackenberg! That’s right. Long before Peter Venkman and his crew showed up with their proton packs to fight the supernatural, there was Rose Mackenberg, Houdini’s top undercover spy in his war against crooked psychics and mediums. Rose Mackenberg was described in a 1949  Hearst syndicate article as “perhaps the only woman ‘ghost-buster’ in the world.” In this episode, you’ll hear about the seance-gone-bad that essentially ended the friendship between Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and escalated Houdini’s crusade against Spiritualism, the tactics used by the famed magician to expose psychic con artists, and the important role Rose Mackenberg played in that battle. We guarantee you’ll be fascinated by the story of this truly fearless female.