Career
He started a journalistic career and worked between 1928 and 1938 for The Evening Post of Wellington. He later moved from New Zealand to England where he became a columnist for Kemsley Newspapers. MacKenzie was a writer of detective stories.
He was vice president of the Society for Psychical Research and has been described as a leading researcher in the field of psychical research in the 1970s.
He died at his home in Hove, East Sussex in 2001.