Tag Archives: 1890s

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The infamous Lizzie Borden House is said to be one of New England’s most haunted homes after a brutal ax murder happened inside. After the murders, there are tales that ghosts are still haunting it.

Lizzie Borden took an ax
and gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Step back in time to the home of one of America’s most notorious unsolved crimes – the Lizzie Borden House on Second Street in Fall River. Experience its creepy atmosphere and listen to its spine-tingling tales as you explore this legendary haunted house full of secrets and the occasional supernatural surprise!

Grab a candle, journey upstairs and learn the history of the infamous New England home. Find out how in 1892 Andrew and Abby Borden were discovered brutally murdered in this very house, passing down stories for generations to come.

Who was Lizzie Borden?

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in 1860 in Fall River Massachusetts and was given the name Andrew as well because her father so wanted a son. She grew up in an affluent family in what would later be known as the Lizzie Borden House. Although a rich family, her father was well known for being frugal and they had a complicated relationship to say the least.

She grew up with her sister, Emma Lenora Borden and was involved in church activities such as Sunday school, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union as well as the Ladies’ Fruit and Flower Mission.

Two years after her mother died, her father remarried. They didn’t get along and Lizzie believed she had married her father for his wealth. Their live in maid, Sullivan claimed that both Emma and Lizzie rarely ate meals together with their father and stepmother.

Before the murders, tension grew in the family inside of the Lizzie Borden House. Her father kept gifting real estate to her stepmother’s family. Days before the murders the whole family was violently ill, and her stepmother feared poison as her husband was not really a popular man.

Her father had also killed pigeons in the barn with hatches that Lizzie was upset about. She had built a roost for them and after a family argument, she was even sent away to New Bedford and didn’t return until a week before the murders.

The Ax Murders in the Borden House

On August 4, 1892, her stepmother and father were found murdered by an ax in their home in broad daylight. When they questioned Lizzie Borden she made answers that were both strange and contradictory.

The police investigation were later criticized for their lack of diligence as they did not even check her for bloodstains, only search her room superficially and let them stay in the house the following night after the murder. They also had a hatchet they thought could be the murder weapon, but never bothered to take fingerprints even though it was a method the police had started with elsewhere.

**Abby Borden:** Lizzie Borden’s stepmother, Abby was found upstairs and had suffered 17 hits on the back of her head.

**Andrew Borden:** Her father, Andrew were found in the couch in the downstair sitting room murdered after being hit 10 or 11 times with a hatchet like weapon.

Lizzie Borden was arrested and put on trial that received a lot of media coverage nationwide. During the trial there was also another ax murder that looked so similar to the Borden house, and many started to take Lizzie Bordens side and claim her innocence.

In the end Lizzie Borden was acquitted on all charges and let off after many had come to her defense, including her maid, her sister and neighbors all testified that she never could have done it.

Life After the Murder Trial

After she was acquitted from the trial of the murders she moved into a house with her sister and they stayed in Fall River. When coming out from the courthouse she said she was ‘The happiest woman in the world.’

But for the remainder of her days, she was an outcast in the Fall River society. Even if she by trial was found innocent, the fact that they never found the killer and the strange rumors about her continued and fuelled the idea that she might have done it after all. Even her maid, Sullivan confessed on her death bed allegedly that she had lied on the stand to protect Lizzie Borden.

No one was ever arrested for the murders, but Lizzie Bordens guilt and motive has ever since been debated without any answers being found.

The Hauntings in the Lizzie Borden House

After the gruesome murders in the Lizzie Borden House, the house itself has drawn attention to itself of being a haunted house where a lot of paranormal activity is going on. The house is preserved as it was and is hosting tours to continue to speculate what really happened that fateful and hot August day.

It is said that the ghost of Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother, Abby and Andrew is haunting the Lizzie Borden House, still trying to get the truth about their murder out.

One long time guide though has another explanation for the strange sounds many attributes to ghosts. After they put air conditioning in the house, the sound travels in a strange manner as Lizzie Borden House is filled with holes and cracks.

**The Lizzie Borden House:** The busy street were the murder happened on 92 Second St, Fall River, MA, the home of Lizzie Borden at the time of the murders as it appeared in 1892.

Another haunting that is said to be going on is the death next door of a mother that murdered her children. A woman named Eliza Darling Borden had three children. She murdered two of them before taking her own life in 1848. One of the theories is that she killed herself in the house that would eventually become Andrew Borden’s in 1872.

Even Lizzie herself is rumored to haunt the place. It is not only in the Lizzie Borden House she is said to haunt tough as she is also said to haunt the place known as Maplecroft, the home she lived in on French Street after the trial. For what is she haunting the place for though? Is it because of the grief and trauma after the horrible murders that happened. Or is it perhaps guilt as she herself really was the killer?

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References

Murder in the Well – Lizzie Borden

https://eu.heraldnews.com/story/lifestyle/travel/2021/10/26/lizzie-borden-house-fall-river-best-haunted-hotel-ghost-paranormal/8546497002/

https://lizzie-borden.com/history/

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The Sunken House at the Bottom of Gardner Lake

12. December 2022 Mirror 1 Comment

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Can a house itself be a ghost? Strange tales have been sung of the sunken house at the bottom of Gardner Lake since it went through the ice so many years ago. And on quiet nights if you really listen, you can sometimes hear the piano of the house play music from underwater.

The house of Gardner Lake was supposed to be moved over the lake when it was covered in ice in the cold winters of Connecticut. Thomas LeCount was a grocer from Connecticut that wanted to move his beloved and fully furnished two-story summer house over the lake to the east side for the perfect spot back in 1895.

He thought moving the house over the ice would be more efficient than by land, but miscalculated how much the ice could take and on its travel it slipped and the ice cracked. They tried to get the house back on track, but gave up in the night to try again at first light. But they never managed to get the house over the lake and it remained stuck.

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The Piano Playing from Underwater

But it took years to reach the bottom of the lake though and children would fish and swim around it in the summer and skate through it in the winter until it eventually disappeared forever under the dark water.

The moving of the house didn’t demand any human lifes, neither were there any rumours of the owners circulating of hauntings and ghosts. So where do the haunting rumours come from then?

By now, most of the sunken house has rotted away, but the local fishermen still tell the legend that the sound of music, og the piano of the house can still be heard on quiet nights.

**The Sunken House:** The house remained for years dipping in the Gardner Lake before it became fully submerged and sank to the bottom.

Horror Movie Inspired by the House

In 2021 a movie based on the story of the house at the bottom of the lake was released. Called Deep Dive the movie takes the legend further and makes it a haunting horror movie set in France.

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The Ghost that Designed Iulia Hasdeu Castle

18. May 2022 Mirror Leave a comment

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Through the power of spiritualism, the bereaved father built a castle designed by the ghost of his dead daughter. And today, the Iulia Hasdeu Castle still stands as a mysterious and haunted place.

Iulia was the beloved daughter of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838-1907) in Romania. He was a Romanian scholar of both history, philology and a great writer. Iulia was somewhat of a prodigy child as well and read by the age of two. Like her father, she was fluent in many languages and spoke French, English and German fluently by the time she was eight. At only 16, she got her degree in philosophy with plans to continue her studies in Latin and Greek Languages at the prestigious University of Sorbonne.

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But then on the 29th of September 1888, just a month before her 19th birthday, she tragically died of tuberculosis, a tragic but common way to die in this time. She left behind her many poems, manuscripts and plays to her father who couldn’t move on with his life. That is when he turned to less common ways to keep in contact with his dead daughter.

The Seances to Get in Touch with her Spirit

He was deeply in grief and turned to spiritualism to get in contact with his beloved and missed daughter. There are recordings of over a hundred summaries of these sessions, saying something about his obsession with it.

**The Ghost:** Portrait of the young prodigy Iulia Hasdeu.

And after he moved to Câmpina which is a bit further north from Bucharest , he spent the time at seances together with the metropolitan bishop, three generals and a processor. All in hope to get a glimpse of his daughter.

Read about more people that dabbled in spiritism and held seances in the MoonMausoleum: Georgiana Houghton and her Spirit Drawings in Watercolor

He also built an altar for her in their family vault at the Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest that looks more like a Greek temple to pay tribute to her. But this altar was not enough for him to keep as a memento and after six months of trying to reach her in the spirit world, he made contact, and she gave him instructions to build a castle that would later be known as Iulia Hasdeu Castle.

Together with his wife, they went to a mansion in Câmpina they decorated as almost a temple to their dead daughter to sort of keep a part of her with them in this world after it was built. He named it Second of July after his two Iulias as his belated daughter was named after his beloved wife.

Then the plans of the castle started to take form. Hasdeu claimed that he had received messages about the building plans for it through the spiritualism seances he took part in.

The Building Designs of Iulia Hasdeu Castle from Beyond

Work on the Castle began in 1893 and took a lot of Hasdeus’ time, energy as well as wealth. It is more of a folly house than a full fledged castle. She would advise him to use the numbers three and seven, something she considered to be magical numbers. That is why these numbers repeat themselves throughout the building with three underground rooms, three towers and seven steps to every staircase.

The building was completed in 1896 and has since seen its fair share of tragedy befall it. It required a lot of reparation, even when Hasdeu was alive. During the first world war as well as the second world war, the earthquake in 1977 where it suffered many damages. But the castle fought back. There even is a legend to this that during the second world war, the Germans tried to loot the place, but failed as they were ‘struck by some mysterious force.’

**Spiritualism**: During the turn of the century, seances and spiritualism was a big thing. This is a Seance scene in the classic German silent film Dr Mabuse (1922). People would get together with a medium in hope to make contact with a spirit beyond the grave.

Today the Iulia Hasdeu Castle is still a sort of altar in Iulias memory. With her personal belongings as well as transcripts of the seances that her father attended. The castle itself is described to have a spooky vibe over it, perhaps because there are entire rooms designed specifically for spiritualists rituals, with seats made for the attending ghosts. A shrine like this was bound to get more sinister rumors about it, and it was claimed that Hasdeu used it to worship Satan rather than memorializing Iuelia.

The Ghost of Iulia

The Iulia Hasdeu Castle is not the only place she is reported of haunting. Also back at the cemetery in Bucharest, the ghost has been spotted, dressed in all white while walking through the cemetery in Bucharest holding daisies.

Back In Câmpina at the castle they have also felt her presence. In the night there is the sound of piano playing with the applause and cheering from an old man. So many rumors that the museum itself had troubles finding someone to take the nightshift at the museum.

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