Being a spirit medium has always been a tough market to crack.
No matter what tricks you used, standing out from the crowd meant coming up with something memorable enough to bring in paying customers. During the early part of the 20th century, spirit mediums shifted their focus away from "spiritual realms" by claiming to be in contact with beings from other planets (with Mars being a particular favourite). One of the most well-known of these cases involved "Helene Smith," a spirit medium relied on automatic writing to receive messages from various illustrious spirits as well as retrieving memories from her many past lives. Along with having been Queen Marie Antoinette and an Indian princess, Smith also described her past life as an inhabitant of the planet Mars. She even produced samples of the Martian language, complete with alphabet. While later skeptics, including eminent psychologist Theodore Flournoy dismissed her Martian memories as a form of cryptomnesia (a term which Flournoy coined), many true believers continued to insist that her Martian claims were real.
All of which brings us to the amazing Marxa, the "Martian Medium". ...
It likely added to the appeal that the medium was young and beautiful, as well a making a habit of undressing before the audience to show that she had no tricks up her sleeves (or anywhere else). The scantily-clad Marxa would then sit in the cabinet while her manager provided ropes for audience members to tie her up. Once the audience members were satisfied that Marxa was securely bound, the manager would then draw the curtains on the cabinet and turn down the lights and the Martian would then emerge. While her claims seemed incredible, numerous spectators attested to her supernatural abilities.
Hoping to prove that Marxa was no fraud, her manager even invited professional magician and skeptic Joseph Dunninger to attend one of her seances in 1944. Widely known as one of the most amazing mentalists of his time, Dunninger would later become one of the pioneers in bringing his special brand of magic to television, and his radio performances had already won him a national audience. Not only was he a close friend of fellow magicians such as Harry Houdini but had 
Perhaps more importantly, he was also widely known as a professional debunker who specialized in exposing fraudulent mediums. Much like Houdini, Dunninger worked with Scientific American and the Universal Council for Psychic Research to test any medium or psychic who hoped to win the $10,000 prize he offered to anyone who could produce a supernatural effect he couldn't reproduce or explain himself. As he would later write, "through all these long years, I have sought good honest ghosts, phantoms, spirits, astral beings, banshees, fays, wee folk, apparitions, fetches—the whole pack and passel of the unsubstantial world—and I have always been able to prove them frauds."
Whether he was hoping to win the $10,000 or simply to drum up more publicity, Marva's agent arranged for Dunninger to attend one of Marxa's seances. Already aware of her reputation for materializing supposedly authentic Martian creatures during her seances, he wasted no time accepting the invitation. In explaining his reasons for investigating, Dunninger would write that "these fakers trade upon public credulity. It is easy to gull people, who have already been softened up by superstitious beliefs. Recognizing that fact is the chief trick in a charlatan's bag."
As for Marxa herself, he described her as "young and attractive, a streamlined contrast to the bulky, middle-aged ladies who generally deal in materializations." After being greeted by the medium and her manager, Dunninger also inspected the seance room, including the cabinet in which Marxa would be sitting. He noted that it had bulky outer curtains but also an inner curtain with elastic cords to cover any gap in the middle: "a promise of coming fraud." The seance then began with Marxa's usual routine of disrobing and sitting in the chair to which she would be tied by audience members. Dunninger recalled being given "the longest rope" though other audience members insisted that she was already tied up securely so he just took his seat with the others.
Once the manager drew the curtains and lowered the lights, there was a sudden chill in the room. The manager explained that this was due to the influence of the Martian spirit about to appear. Being accustomed to "polar temperatures", it had arranged for the cold in order to "survive its brief visit." But that was just the beginning. ..
It was then that the outer curtains of the cabinet opened and what Dunninger called the "most outlandish creature I have ever viewed anywhere" popped out. In his account of the seance, he wrote that: "The thing from Mars was round and squatty, with a head that seemed a bulbous protuberance of its body.It hopped around on feet that had practically no legs, and even in the red light, its horrible face was all too plain. The face was an ugly saffron color; the eyes and lips were thin and wide.; and the nose was like a bashed-in melon."
Despite its tiny size (about half the height of the slender Marxa), the sight of the creature terrified most of the audience. Women screamed and men fell out of their chairs as the "living horror" hopped around the room. Dunninger reported that the creature then glared at him - and perhaps for good reason. Unknown to Marxa and her manager, Dunninger had taken advantage of the rope they gave him: secretly hitching one end to a chair at the far end of the room and holding the other end in his hand, Dunninger used it to trip up the "Martian" as it hopped around. After it sprawled "with a very human squeak," Dunninger than screamed out a single word: "Lights."
What followed can only be appreciated in the magician's own words: "As it tried to get up, the creature elongated to almost human size. I stretched it further by grabbing a top-knot above its head. As it lost the unusual robe it was wearing, the witnesses saw the most amazing transformation even accomplished in any seance room. The thing from Mars had become Marxa. Her disguise was simple, but remarkably effective when seen in the red light. She had taken the cabinet's inner curtain, the one with the elastic cord, and drawn it about her. Squatting inside, she had appeared really hideous. With her shoulders doubled down to her knees, she had reduced her height. Marxa was an acrobat as well as a contortionist, and her spry hops around the floor had resembled the steps of a Russian dance. The saffron face with its slant eyes and flat nose had been produced by one of her stockings, drawn over her head. The silk had thinned into a yellow film, and the tightened material spread the girl's face into a hideous grimace. All that was wiped away when I tugged the top-knot, formed by the stocking's toe, and pulled the stocking clear away. "
As for the drop in temperature before the "creature's" appearance, that had been produced by the manager. At the right moment, he had secretly uncorked a double flask containing liquid air, and basic physics did the rest. When Dunninger and the other witnesses checked the chair where Marxa had supposedly been tied, they found that the ropes were still in place but the acrobatic medium had managed to slip out of them. After her performance, she would simply have removed the stocking she was wearing, replaced the inner curtain, and slipped back into the ropes to make it seem as if she had been tied up all along.
While that was pretty much it for the amazing Marxa, the "Martian racket" continued to draw in gullible customers willing to spend their money on other-worldly hijinks.
In the same article in which Dunninger exposes Marxa, he also reported on another bizarre scam which he was asked to debunk. Apparently, a group of financiers sought Dunninger's advice about an "interplanetary motor" that an inventor had reportedly designed in consultation with a spirit medium who claimed to be in contact with the "master minds living on Mars." Though the financiers were skeptical about the medium's involvement, the inventor had a working model that had been running non-stop for an entire month. Described by Dunninger as "an intricate collection of cogs, sprockets, and pistons standing on a square sheet of glass, mounted on four glass legs on a large wooden base", the motor reportedly drew its power straight from Mars from a large interplanetary projector located there. To ensure there was no trickery involved, the financiers had arranged for a team of private detectives to monitor the motor at all times. Working a 24-hour shift, the detectives verified that the motor had been running constantly and was completely self-contained, with no indication of any external power source.
Having asked for 24 hours to make his own arrangements, Dunninger and the financiers then returned to the inventor's laboratory. There, they found the inventor and the medium, who was supposedly translating Martian messages for everyone concerned. Though the financiers were ready to close the business deal, Dunninger simply pointed his finger at the motor and, to the amazement of everyone watching, it stopped suddenly. Taking advantage of his 24-hour grace period, Dunninger had arranged with the electric company to cut off power to the neighbourhood at a pre-arranged time (which must have taken some convincing). With the loss of power, the "Martian motor" had suddenly stopped working and the confidence scheme was exposed.
To avoid prosecution, the two men involved grudgingly revealed how they had pulled off their deception. One of the glass legs on which the motor rested was actually hollow with a glass rod inside connected to an electric motor hidden underneath. The status of the interplanetary projector on Mars was not revealed....
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