Moon Mausoleum
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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