Speakeasies and Spiritualists

Most mediums with their spurious and specious methods, with their ghostly trumpets and spectral hands, hold few secrets–and fewer terrors.
- Rose Mackenberg, Exposing the Weird Secrets of ‘Mediums’ and ‘Spirits’ Rose Mackenberg is unjustly forgotten.

She was Harry Houdini’s chief investigator. She testified before congress about psychic fraud, and discovered all the tricks of the seance trade.

We proudly present the first fiction featuring Rose Mackenberg and her spook-busting career by award-winning mystery author M.H. Norris and James Bojaciuk.

Speakeasies and Spiritualists also presents eight stories inspired by Rose Mackenberg and the spiritualists’ Jazz Age milieu.

Psychic investigators on the trail of the trail of a jazz musician who seems to have crawled from the grave. Amateur, livingroom seances going very wrong when mixed with grief for those who died in the war. Strange men warning out of Florida storms. Dream Demons stalking Chicago, feeding off bar-dwellers, and floors painted with mystic stars.

FEATURING STORIES BY M.H. Norris, James Bojaciuk, Peter Rawlik, Josh Reynolds, John Linwood Grant, Jon Black, Donald J. Bingle, Aaron Smith, Brendan Foley, and William J. Martin. As well as original articles by Rose Mackenberg herself.