Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Haunted Writer

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958), often hailed as the “American Agatha Christie,” built a literary empire by writing thrilling mysteries and spine-chilling narratives. In uncanny twists of life imitating art, her own reality brimmed with strange events that blurred the lines between the rational and the supernatural. From haunted mansions to brushes with Spiritualism, Mary’s encounters with the paranormal shaped both her fiction and her legacy.

This updated resource guide aims to put all relevant information about Mary Roberts Rinehart’s contributions to fields of paranormal study in one place.

What did Mary Roberts Rinehart do that was so influential?

Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote candidly about her paranormal experiences.
Mary Roberts Rinehart wasn’t afraid to call out frauds.
Mary Roberts Rinehart maintained a balanced perspective toward the paranormal throughout her lifetime.

1. Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote candidly about her own paranormal experiences.

In her 1931 autobiography My Life, Mary chronicled eerie phenomena at a Long Island mansion she rented in 1918. Footsteps echoed in empty rooms, a spectral figure materialized in the pantry during a dinner party, and a rocking chair rocked on its own. Her sons armed the household, convinced a burglar must be tormenting them.

Servants reported a man climbing the stairs who vanished upon pursuit, while Mary herself witnessed a lamp shift inexplicably on her desk. The phenomena crescendoed when a glowing white orb floated across the property, disappearing into a nearby swamp. Only then did Mary learn the home had a decades-long reputation for hauntings.

Years later, in Washington, D.C., Mary’s family endured similar disturbances in Senator Boies Penrose’s former apartment. Servant call bells rang spontaneously in patterns matching the senator’s habit of summoning aid, typewriters operated by unseen hands clacked in the middle of the night without, and a potted plant relocated itself over 30 feet. Staff whispered that the ghost of Senator Penrose, the apartment’s former occupant, was to blame. However, Mary considered the possibility that the disturbances were more likely caused by a poltergeist originating from her mother’s own frustration over being left paralyzed and mute from a stroke.

After her mother died tragically in an accident, the strange manifestations immediately ceased, supporting Mary’s poltergeist hypothesis. However, the mystery of the manner of her mother’s death was never solved. The maid had been running the bath when she was called away to answer the door. Somehow in those few unattended moments, Mary’s mother got into the bathtub by herself after being barely able to move for 14 years. The question of how she managed to get into the scalding water has never been suitably answered.

2. Mary Roberts Rinehart wasn’t afraid to call out frauds.

Mary’s curiosity about the afterlife led her to explore Spiritualism, the early 20th Century’s obsession with communing with the dead. She hosted séances in her homes and even corresponded with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes as well as a fervent believer in spirits. However, when the lights unexpectedly came on revealing that medium George Valiantine, whose alleged spirit contacts included Mary’s deceased husband, was producing the “spirit” raps himself, she was quick to denounce him as a fraud.

This duality—skepticism intertwined with fascination—fueled her 1918 psychical thriller Sight Unseen. The novel follows a club investigating a medium’s trance revelations about a murder, blending forensic analysis with metaphysical intrigue. While Mary dismissed most mediums as charlatans, her work helped popularize paranormal themes in detective fiction, combining Sherlock Holmes-like logic with the era’s occult fascinations.

3. Mary Roberts Rinehart maintained a balanced perspective toward the paranormal throughout her lifetime.

Mary’s life was punctuated by eerie coincidences and violent turns. The trope “the butler did it” came from her 1930 novel The Door, which famously concludes with butler being revealed as the murderer. Years later, in 1947, an employee who played a similar role at Mary’s estate in Bar Harbor Maine suddenly became homicidal. In a deranged state, he pointed a gun at Mary and pulled the trigger. But miraculously the gun misfired, so he came at Mary with a carving knife, but was subdued by other staff. Unfortunately, Mary’s assailant soon hung himself in jail.

A few months later, as if cursed, Mary’s Bar Harbor mansion would burn to the ground during a devastating statewide 1947 wildfire. Mary later mused that her former butler, who’d taken pride in the estate, might haunt its ashes. These events—her mother’s mysterious death in a haunted space, her servant’s violent breakdown, and her estate’s fiery demise—echoed the unresolved tensions in her fiction, where domestic settings often hid lethal secrets.

Mary maintained a balanced attitude toward unexplained phenomena. She famously said, “Now I am not a spiritist, or a spiritualist; although to say that nothing exists which we cannot see has always seemed to me nonsense. We do not see the wind.”

Although Mary Roberts Rinehart’s life mirrored her fiction, today these epic circumstances are seldom recalled. However, Mary should be remembered as skeptic who remained logical even though she was often dogged by unbelievable occurrences. While Mary documented the hauntings she experienced meticulously, she often proposed rational explanations first—electrical malfunctions, drafts, or overactive imaginations. However, she also refused to dismiss anomalies when she could find no rational explanation.