Lizzie Borden House

The story

The house on Second Street in Fall River was built in 1845 as a home for two households. Andrew Borden bought it in 1872 and turned it into a single-family house, chosen, it seems, because it was a short walk from his business interests on Main Street. For a man of his wealth it was a modest, middle-class address, and he refused to modernize it: there was no indoor plumbing and no electricity, just a basement privy with two stalls and a chamber pot beneath every bed. He lived there with his second wife, Abby, his two daughters from his first marriage, Emma and Lizzie, and a live-in maid who slept in the attic. By most accounts it was a quiet household, and Lizzie, who moved in more fashionable circles, was said to be embarrassed to bring friends home.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and Abby Durfee Gray Borden were killed with a hatchet inside the house. Abby died in the guest room, Andrew in another part of the house. The maid, Bridget Sullivan, was on the property, and John Morse, an uncle, was also part of the picture that day. Lizzie was charged with the murders, tried, and acquitted in June 1893. No one else was ever convicted, and the case remains officially unsolved. The schoolyard rhyme about "forty whacks" exaggerates: Abby received roughly 18 or 19 blows and Andrew about 11.

The house passed to the two daughters, but Lizzie and Emma soon left it. Lizzie bought another house, on French Street, which she called Maplecroft, and remained there until she died on June 1, 1927. She did not die at Second Street. In 1896 the house's street number was changed from 92 to 230.

The building stayed in private hands for decades; one family bought it in 1948. In 1996 it opened as a bed and breakfast and museum devoted to the case. Later owners filled it with material about the murders, among them a mannequin placed in the room where Abby was killed, autopsy photographs laid on the dining room table, and memorabilia from films and shows the case inspired. The house was put on the market in May 2021 and sold for about $2 million to the owner of a ghost-tour company, who announced plans to add ghost tours and other themed events while keeping the historical tours and the original furnishings and hardware.

The legend

The ghost stories at the Borden house are inseparable from the murders, and almost all of them belong to the years since it opened to the public as a bed and breakfast in 1996. No dated report of a haunting from before that era is known. In 2004 guests could even borrow a Ouija board.

The guest room where Abby Borden died is treated as the center of activity. According to a Syfy recap of Ghost Hunters, a cleaner reportedly quit after finding the shape of a body pressed into the freshly made bed, and a tour guide said something shoved him from behind there, while the night manager reported a black mist in the room where Andrew's body was found. A psychic visitor noticed a strong smell of perfume in Lizzie's former bedroom, and staff have described loud banging from the floors with no obvious cause. A 2009 book, The Ghost Chronicles by medium Maureen Wood and Ron Kolek, who calls himself a paranormal scientist, recounts further experiences in the house.

Television has returned again and again. TAPS investigated for Ghost Hunters in season 2, episode 12, broadcast in October 2005, and their findings were notably deflating: they put the dent in the bed down to an ordinary sagging mattress and traced the banging to the air conditioner switching on and off, judging most other claims inconclusive. Ghost Adventures locked down in the house for season 5, episode 5, in October 2011, an episode that also raised a murder-suicide said to have been committed by a Borden relative in 1848. The Dead Files followed in season 2, episode 2 (April 2012), looking into reports of attacks and apparitions from owners, staff and guests; Amy, the show's medium, said she believed she saw Lizzie's ghost. Kindred Spirits came in 2017 for season 2, episode 3, after a tour guide described frightening experiences.

The most pointed critique comes from the paranormal investigator Joe Nickell. Writing in Skeptical Inquirer in April 2020, he argued that the house's ghost claims rest either on personal impressions that cannot be checked or on techniques such as table-tipping which, like Ouija boards and dowsing rods, are explained by the ideomotor effect, small unconscious movements by the participants themselves, rather than by spirits. It is also worth remembering that the business has openly embraced its reputation, and that the house is now run by a company built around ghost tourism.

What remains today

The house still stands at its original address in Fall River and is operated as a museum and bed and breakfast. Recent owners have aimed to keep it close to how it looked in the Bordens' time, with original furnishings and hardware alongside reproduced decor, though bathrooms were added at some point and a 2021 report in Smithsonian magazine said the old iron stove was due to be replaced for safety. Overnight guests stay in the house where the murders took place, and the murder memorabilia remain part of the experience. Maplecroft, the house where Lizzie spent the rest of her life, is a separate property elsewhere in the city.

Visiting

This is a famous haunted house where you can legally spend the night. It operates as a bed and breakfast with historical tours, and ghost tours of 90 minutes and two hours were planned when it changed hands in 2021, along with other themed events. Check the official website for current tours, prices and booking, as formats change.

Keep in mind that two real people were killed here, and the house is also a place of history. The historical tours are the best introduction to the case itself. Please treat the rooms, and the story of the Borden family, with respect.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Borden House (Fall River, Massachusetts) — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Providence, RI 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Fall River, MA 1888 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1888 · Public domain (USGS)
4. "Episode Recap: The Lizzie Borden House" — Syfy — Syfy
5. "List of Ghost Adventures episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
6. "List of Ghost Hunters episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
7. "Lizzie Borden" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
8. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.