Lizzie Borden's House
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Do you remember the old rhyme? Lizzie Borden took
an ax, Lizzie Borden murdered her stepmother and father in the family's home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Some people now say the Borden house is haunted. |
Andrew Borden was a wealthy widower needing a housekeeper and mother for his two daughters, Lizzie and Emma. Abbey Durfee Gray fit the bill and so the two were married regardless of the girls' passionate objections. The family, if it could be called that, endured an icy relationship. The girls excluded Abbey from their lives, literally shutting her out of their rooms.
On the hot morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden murdered her stepmother with an ax, in the Borden's family house at No. 92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. Abby Borden's body was found between the bed and bureau, in the guest room. Ninety minutes later, she killed her father, Andrew Borden, in the same way. He was found laying with his head on the sofa arm, next to the door, in the downstairs sitting room.
Three people occupied the house the day of the murders: Lizzie, Abbey, and Mr. Borden. The maid was washing windows and chatting with a neighboring maid during the homicides. Lizzie later claimed she was eating pears outside, although this was never corroborated.
While there is little doubt that Lizzie committed the crime, she was acquitted at trial due to a lack of evidence. Although ostracized by the community, Lizzie lived the house until she died on June 1, 1927.
After her death, the house remained a private residence for several decades before being converted into a bed and breakfast. Guests are allowed to view the murder scene and can sleep in Lizzie and her sister Emma's bedrooms, Abby & Andrew's Bedrooms or the guest Room where Abby was killed. Martha McGinn, owner and operator, has lived in the house since her teens. She calls the house "active" instead of haunted, and believes that the spirits of the murder victims may inhabit the house.
Guests have reported ghostly manifestations over the years, including cold spots in many of the rooms, unexplained footsteps clomping up the stairs, and disembodied voices ranging throughout the building. People who work in the house say they have heard many strange sounds, including voices and a woman crying. Some have seen indentations - like that of a body lying down - appear and disappear on the beds. Objects are mysteriously moved out of place, lights go on and off, and doors and cabinets have opened on their own. Others have witnessed Abbey's ghost climbing in bed with them or puttering around the rooms dusting or making beds.
One terrified female guest was caught between two spectral women bickering over a jar of pears one afternoon. "I thought I would faint as one shook her fist at the other, screaming obscenities and the like. When it dawned on me I could see through them, I nearly had a coronary." She later identified the feuding women as Abbey and Lizzie Borden.
Other guests have reported seeing an "older Victorian woman" dusting and making the beds in the guest room as Abby was doing at the time of her death. Still others have reported being awakened in the night to see this same woman pulling the covers of the bed over them as though she is tucking them in. A couple from Connecticut took a photograph in the sitting room that didn't turn out properly. The photo was almost entirely black except for the apparition of an elderly man who looked very much like Andrew Borden.
