The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 35

Two Magazine Section of The Vancouver Sun. August Twenty-First, Nineteen Thirty-Seven 0 ii SB Him iM I ij VT if yy Rose Mackenberg dons shabby clothes and tracks down "spirit world" frauds. She has found plenty, too, having been put in touch with 1500 departed husbands she never hsd 4 ir i iO-M -ft- "ft hi 4k 'efV 1 'VSVi L'f I itH i i i-vum s. if Before Miss Mackenberg starts out to debunk a seance, she first must be sure tjat the medium will not recognize her, This very tricky get-up served as one of her recent disguises. By Helen Welshimer si a HEN Rose Mackenberg, the ace detective among those who campaign against fraudulent mediums, enters the spirit world she wp -I, it 'ii i ii goes as a bewildered, irumpismy aressea house How B.C.

Teachers Keep Abreast Of the Times THE SUMMER SCHOOL! i By BERYS HOW would you spend to further education In British Columbia? If this question were asked the citizens of this province Individually, quite a number and variety of replies would be elicited. The teachers of this province have settled this question, settled It In their own way, and they are spending at least this amount ia the method they have chosen. They are attending summer school. Roughly one thousand, or more, particularly 891 at Victoria, and 128 at Vancouver, are attending summer school at these points. The teaching population of this province Is approximately 3700, so It Is apparent that between one-third and one-fourth of the teachers of British Columbia are spending their holidays planning, working and preparing for better things, planning to retura to their schools In September better equipped than they Were before schools closed In June.

Circulating among those attending, one finds that they are of varied ages, from young teachers who have only been out of Normal school for one year, to principals cf schools, who have been principals for years. Some are there because regulations of the Department of Education now rule, that after leaving Normal School, young teachers muSt attend summer school for two years, and some are there because they wish to keep up with the new trend of developments In the educational world. In all cases, however, there is keenness and enthusiasm. Attendance is so great this year, so overwhelmingly great, particularly at Victoria, that those In charge of arrangements had quite a problem to find proper accommodation. To state that In some classes attendance is over three times greater than was anticipated will give some Idea of conditions.

The capacity of the classrooms of Victoria High School, where the Summer School is held, have been taxed to the utmost, so much so, that in some cases the auditorium Is being used, for with over one hundred in a class a classroom is rather crowded. The teachers present represent a cross section of the teachers of the province. They are congregated here from its more remote parts, as well as from Its more accessible points; some from the one-roomed little schoolhouse nestling away back in the mountains, where the long arm of the Education Department reaches out, and where the hardy people who are pioneering, lumbering, mining or homesteading, are determined that their children shall have the best opportunities they can get, and some from large schools of the more congested communities. Teachers are present from the Peace River District, the far outpost of British Columbia, and yet even these have not travelled the furthest distance to be present, for there are teachers ln attendance from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Washington, California and the Yukon; by car, by rail, by waggon road, by steamer, and possibly by other means, they have made their way, with Victoria or Vancouver as their focal point. But the trip, and attendance at the school, In addition to giving advancement academically, have other compensations, for they mean meeting with old friends, renewing acquaintances, and In some cases, once again a sight of civilization, What Is the purpose of the Summer School? Why is It open? Why the large attendance? Quoting from the program of the Provincial Normal School we have this from a letter from Dr.

Weir, Minister of Education, addressed to the teachers of the province: The last two years have been historic in the educational system of British Columbia, first In the preparation of the new Program of Studies for Grades I. to and then in the launching of the program in the schools of the province. I take this opportunity of expressing my profound appreciation of the professional skill and loyal labors of the many who contributed to the formulation of the new program of study, and of the spirit and zeal with which teachers have given effect to it. Though handicapped to a regrettable degree by lack of books and other aids, they have in- -Jccted a new vitality Into the lib- irtr itWdx ill Is ti ii 1 Several newspapermen went along to the next seance with Miss Mackenberg. When the mutterings of Chief White Cloud were heard, a cameraman's flashlight bulb went off in the dark and the medium was caught with a trumpet to her mouth the trumpet was needed to produce the guttural Indian sounds.

After that 1 go to the remove the ppwder from my face, plaster my hair down in the most unbecoming fashion, place my nat at the most unbecoming angle, probably put on glasses, and tally forth." Sometimes it takes a week of standing around department stores and studying people until Miss Mackenberg is familiar enough with her type to risk an imitation. Now, fully clothed, she begins her detective work. From directories, telephone bookt, and newspapers, and any other way, she gets the names of mediums and spiritualistic centers. "Some cities are hot beds of spiritualism," she explains. "Chicago and Detroit are, and in Boston almost every block teems to boast a medium in a furnished room.

In Philadelphia I wat unable to locate more than about 10 mediums, though we knew that the city had many more. "I had to get a line on them. After visaing five or tix I made an wife who is after nothing more than a message from dear Uncle Ned or poor Cousin Olive. The disguise works. Miss Mackenberg has taken part in more than 1500 investigations and not once has she been questioned.

She can't appear in her own smart wardrobe. Her description is wired on from towD to town and she would be recognized at once. Miss Mackenberg, who has made a most profitable business out of exposing the fakery of crooked mediums, used to believe in such tilings as trumpet messages, dancing tables, and blindfolded messages. Now after an association of several years a advance agent for the late Houdini in his sensational exposes of fraudulent mediums, and her later investigations for newspapers, banks, and lawyers, she says it it all the bunk. Why? Well, first of all, she never has been married but the mediums have given her 1 500 husbands and 3000 children, all of them dead, who have sent her messages from the spirit land.

"All they ever can say is that they are well and happy," the detective comments. "I am not a skeptic and I would be the first to acknowledge a message from the Great Beyond, one that I could recognize as genuine. However, during the course of my investigations, whether the mediums lived in luxurious hotels or in hovels, their messages have followed the same line of bunk. "I have been ordained six times as a spiritualistic minister and now have the right to marry, bury and baptize." enberg. In blindfold reading, she discovered, two discs, supposed to over the eyet more completely, really hold the bandage off so the medium can read.

By rubbing sponge dipped in a certain form of alcoholic mixture over a sealed envelope, its contents become visible. All of these things she hat used many times in her sensational revelations. Miss Mackenberg usually burlesques the dress of the typical housewife of the city in which she. is working. Her outfits above and at the right are two of those she wore to seances.

order to test the psychic powers of the the course of her TN medium, Miss Mackenberg uses the most work, Mist Mack There is a luminous circle around a trumpet seance, too, the detective explains. enberg has attended at many at 20 seancet a Later, Big Chief White Cloud came through. So when the meeting finally ended Mist Mackenberg spoke to Houdini on long distance. Preparations for exposure were made. At the next seance several newspaper men were present.

When Chief White Cloud appeared, a cameraman's flashlight went off in the dark and the medium was caught with the trumpet to her mouth the trumpet wat needed to produce the guttural Indian sounds. Then there was a Mr. Parker in Chicago. "When I called upon him the spirits told him that I was a widow with $3000 cash in hand," she narrates. "He then resorted to automatic writing, which is a spasmodic movement of the wrist, writing words which are legible only to the medium.

After the usual heaving and sighing, he told me to place out my arm because my husband's spirit was standing at my shoulder. The spirit directed him to write the name Wilcox Transportation Com-'pany and wanted me to invest $1000 in this slock. "In reporting to Houdini over long distance that night, he tuggested that I open a bank account and give the medium a check for $100. In order to offset the usual cry of the medium that it was a frame-up, I told Mr. Parker that I could not write very well, and he filled out the check for the stock he wanted to tell me.

He later thowed me blue prints and a very pretty stock certificate with a gold seal that I could buy for only $1000. "When Houdini wat playing at the Princest Theater in Chicago he related this story from the stage, and a representative of the Better Business Men't Bureau who was present came backstage to ask if he would let me testify for them at witness if they brought the man to court. After two dayt on the stand when the attorneys for the defendant tried to prove I never had been to see Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker was fined and Mr.

Wilcox received a suspended sentence." appointment with one of the outstanding men mediums. I was due at his studio at 10:30 but he kept me wailing. 1 cleared my throat and walked up and down the room to let him know 1 was nervous. When he finally saw me he upbraided me for being a nervout wreck. Then he found my husband't spirit, described a scene in an operating room before my imaginary husband died, my fainting at the funeral, and gave me a message on caring for my children and property.

On his table I saw a copy of "Psychic World." Finally, when I pleaded, he sold it to me for a nickel, and from it I got the names of 150 mediums. I wired to New York for assistance and in three days we had visited every one of them." SPHERE are specialty branches in the trade, Mist Mackenberg has learned. There is the "inspirational," where the medium puts her hand to her forehead, and says, "Aunt Mary it here. She it happy and doesn't want you to worry." Boston likes this method. The "trumpet," Philadelphia's favorite, consists of a circle in which a tin horn is supposed to be lifted from the floor by divine power.

ridiculous names she can make up when the wants to be ordained. Once she called herself Alicia Bunk. "All is a bunk," it read. The medium accepted it. and ordained her.

An "ordination" taket from 20 minutet to 3 days, she says, and costs anywhere from $5 to $25. Miss Mackenberg's work usually consist! ot preparing tht way for the taking of flashlight pictures of the astonished mediums in the dark, or of acquiring information which later is used against them. She hat testified in courts on stock swindles where a spirit made the suggestion and the medium profited, on wills made under a medium's influence, and other formt of faked spiritualistic work. An 'expose it planned for a certain city. Mist Mackenberg taket a train there.

Then her disguise begins. "I enter a town," she tayt. "Then I visit the local department stores, observe the manner of dress of the typical housewife, and purchase an outfit similar to that with heavy flat-heeled shoes, cotton stockings, an ill-fitting coat, and a hat of 1898 vintage. "A luminous circle on the mouth of the horn plays around the dark room and the spirit supposedly hits the people over the head. You alwayt must tay, 'Thank you, kind or he will think you didn't appreciate the bump." Detroit liket "pellet twitching," where you write your name and address and question and put the name of the spirit on paper.

The medium answers your question. Mist Mackenberg found that the could tign any name and that wat the name by which the spirit alwayt addressed her. No medium ever wat farsighted enough to see through her disguise. "Then there is the continues, "where the mediums say that body cells, coming from their mouths, produce the visible spirit of the dead person. It it really only a piece of cloth which the medium conceals on her per-ton, I have discovered.

It is dipped in luminous paint." Slate writing, spirit photography, and blindfold reading have been exposed by Mist Mack- day, and all of them have told her conflicting things. The mediums have advertised one price and the has talked them into varying lowered rates. "I wat instrumental in involving Houdini in a million dollart' worth of law tuits," she remembers. "Not one ever was won against him. At the slightest provocation the medium would sue fqj $50,000 or $100,000.

Houdini usually engaged two stenographers and timet a court reporter and took down everything that was taid. "No medium who claims he hat worth-while contacts with the spirit world would be without an Indian Guide." Take a typical seance, and follow Miss Mackenberg. The one at an outstanding trumpet medium's, in Chicago, will do. Here the medium adjusted powder pufft over her eyes, which to the uninitiated, appeared to thut out, not let in, light. Then everyone tang a hymn and the medium answered questions they had written en slips of pper.

schools and have aroused a public Interest and approval which will grow with the years. It has long been recognized that for the Improvement of teaching there is need not only for training for service, but for training In service. The best ol teachers and the vincial Summer School which Is now Issued has been arranged to be as of much service as possible In this connection. The instructor, are well qualified for their tasks, Many of them played an Important part In the formulation of the courses of study In the subjects which they will teach in the Summer School. This letter covers the ground fully the wishes, the expectations, the hopes entertained by the Department of Education.

Again, quoting from the foreword most ripe In scholarship have not hesitated to seek this further training. The new program must necessarily be accompanied by provision for the training of teachers In those matters whjch they fool the need for greater skill or additional knowledge. The program of the Pro These' teachers listen to lectures, participate in class discussions, and read professional and general literature more intensively than is possible for them when they are absorbed In their regular work. Broadened by their summer experiences, they return to their classrooms In the same program of studies, we have this: Each summer an increasing number of tcaohers are turning to Universities and Summer Schools of Education for Intellectual and cultural stimulation and the professional preparation in new fields, better able to discharge the great responsibility which is theirs. We have a new course of studies in British Columbia.

How effective this will prove to be must depend upon the teacher. Teachers can Improve the educational service which the schools provide only by experiencing real personal growth along significant lines. In the many courses offered in the Summer School of Education emphasis will bo placed upon the fundamental philosophy underlying the Continued on Page Sil.