[title]
It’s not that often you get a chance to spend the night in a home where two brutal murders happened—and ‘chance’ may not really express the reluctance with which I undertook the stay. I’m talking of the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts, which operates as a museum by day and a hotel/experience by night. In this house in August 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were brutally murdered by multiple hatchet blows to their heads. They were murdered separately, about an hour and a half apart—Abby the stepmother died first, which is important. Why? Because her inheritance passed to Andrew, who held it for that scant period of time before dying himself, whereupon everything went to his two daughters: one of whom was believed to be the murderer.
Lizzie really wanted to be a society hostess, but the threadbare home didn’t really support entertaining on the scale that she hoped for. However, once her coffers filled (when Andrew and Abby’s coffins filled), Lizzie and her sister were able to purchase a fine home in a nicer neighborhood. That other home, Maplecroft, sold fully furnished in July for $700,000 and was also intended to be, like the murder house, an overnight paranormal experience, but is instead currently a single family home.
Paranormal, you ask? Yes. Because the murder house (which also recently sold, in May 2021, for close to $2 million) is reputed to be haunted to the gills. Both murder victims are said to haunt the premises, as is the (acquitted but possibly plagued by guilt) daughter/stepdaughter Lizzie Borden, as is the maid Bridget Sullivan who was the only other person in the house that fatal day. Throw in a few child ghosts who were killed in the house next door by their mother drowning them in the basement well, and you have a phantasmagorical overnight ahead of you.
When I showed up for my stay, a bad omen greeted me in the parking lot: a black cat slumped on the pavement, seemingly dead. This was the house cat, who luckily did revive (but has since passed) and perked up to greet me. I entered into the kitchen, where a skulking cast iron stove was reminiscent of the original one in which Lizzie Borden had, upon learning she was a suspect, burned one of her dresses. That weekend, the stove was used to cook breakfast, included in the night’s stay and intended to replicate the original breakfast eaten by the Bordens (in two shifts, served separately by the maid, since the daughters hated their father and stepmother) that August morning.
Along with the few overnight visitors, I joined our tour guide for a more extensive tour than day visitors receive. We all sat on the replica sofa where Andrew was found, his face so damaged and bloodied that it was difficult to identify as a head, and some took campy photos holding a hatchet while standing over someone reclining on the sofa as Andrew did. In the dining room, we saw replica skulls that showed all the hatchet strikes endured by the unfortunate couple—the real skulls had been displayed in court when Lizzie went on trial. A doctor had decapitated the couple after their autopsies and boiled the heads in his own kitchen to produce the fleshless skulls as evidence; upon her first sight of her father’s skull, Lizzie fainted.
The staircase was an important part of the tour. The maid Bridget had reported that the day of the murders, Andrew had come home from his morning jaunt and couldn’t seem to come in via the side door, nor the front door. In frustration, he had run the front doorbell, and as she bent to undo the many locks, she heard Lizzie on the stairs behind her, laughing. At that point, Abby was already dead but undiscovered. To me, the most chilling point of the whole story is this detail: as Lizzie stood halfway up the stairs, she could look across at eye level to the floor of the front room, whose door was open, where her stepmother lay face-down in a pool of blood. The jurors in 1893 all filed up the stairs, single file, to determine if they thought Lizzie could see Abby, and on my tour, the tour guide obligingly lay down in the same spot so we could also make our determination.
You can spend the night in this room where Abby was killed. Eep!
You can also sleep in Lizzie’s room, her sister’s room (the sister was in another city the day of the murders), the parents’ room, and upstairs in the attic, Bridget’s room. That’s where I chose to stay, thinking it was far enough away from the bloodshed on the ground floor and the first floor.
But!
Our tour guide told us the third floor is actually the most haunted floor of all. The child ghosts roll marbles, laugh, move objects and jostle coat hangers in the closet. There are now two other rooms up there besides Bridget’s, named for the attorneys, created as part of the B&B although at the time of the murders there would simply have been trunks and furniture and attic things next to Bridget’s room (come to think of it, a great place to temporarily stow a murder weapon or bloodied clothing).
That night, I was scared. Not only of the potential of ghosts, but the fact that I was sharing this house with a handful of strangers. The tour guide had given us cookies and then departed, telling us we could call 911 if anything went down. I couldn’t believe we were given free range of this historic and possibly haunted home. Bridget’s bedroom door locked only with a hook and eye, and I started to wonder if I might be part of a Vincent Price ‘House on Haunted Hill’ plot. I will say that when someone used the restroom next door to my chamber, it literally sounded like they were wrenching open my door, and I shrieked.
Two levels below me, a camera was trained on Andrew’s sofa to capture any spirit activity. I was aware that some people were trying to communicate with ghosts via the ouija board (our tour guide had simply requested that we ‘close the session down’ when finished, so that no entities would remain behind). One couple was even on their honeymoon! I had to hope we were all sane, and that we would all live through the night (I was there because my editor had told me I had to; I wrote a novel about Bridget, ‘The Murderer’s Maid,’ which has a modern day component where characters spend the night at the B&B).
It was creepy to be in the house, especially way up on the third floor. I would've had to pummel down several flights of a narrow, dark servant's stairs to reach safety if I had to. Knowing that two people had met their demises in such a violent way was definitely disturbing. I kept thinking about how in the basement, we had looked up at the ceiling to see where Andrew had bled so much that it stained the ceiling below. This house wasn't a happy place. It lamented its own misfortune in being a place of so many dark and twisted doings.
I’m sure you’re wondering, did a ghost whisper in my ear? Did I glimpse a murderess in long skirts going up the stairs, a dripping hatchet in her grip? Does someone perpetually walk the dank cellar, Bridget doing her laundry with a pail of bloodied cloths (yup: accurate. Lizzie had her period—alibi for murder garb)?
No.
But I did have a nightmare about a little girl trapped in the same closet I’d heard was haunted. When morning came, sunlight coming in through the lace attic curtains, I was finally able to turn off the bedside lamp I’d left burning all night.
Curious about other haunted houses to visit? Check out the 21 most haunted houses in the US, guaranteed to give you the creeps.