Lizzie Borden's home

Background

The Lizzie Borden house is a haunted building in Fall River, Massachusetts. It is haunted by many spirits: two children, Maggie--also known as Margret--Abby Borden, Andrew Borden, and Eliza Borden. The house is mostly known for being haunted by the ghosts of Abby and Andrew Borden. They were brutally murdered with an ax in their own home with another family in the building. It is said that their daughter, Abby's stepdaughter, was the killer. Other spirits that are highly active in this house are two children. They were said to be killed after their mother, Eliza Borden, put them in the property’s cellar cistern. After killing herself, she left her spirit there as well. What happened to the family that causes all these spirits? What really killed Abby and Andrew Borden that night? Lots of murders and deaths have happened in this house leaving behind many unknown mysteries. Some we will never know the answer to.

The Parents

On August 4, 1892, a brutal ax murder took place killing both Abby and Andrew Borden. Andrew was found by his daughter Lizzie Borden in a pool of his own blood laying across the arm of a couch in their living room, his head bashed in almost to the point he was unrecognizable. Lizzie is said to have yelled to Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan who was in her third-floor room resting after cleaning the house. Maggie ran downstairs to see what was happening soon going across the street to try and get a doctor. The doctor wasn’t home so she had to get a friend “Mrs. Churchill” from down the street to help. After Mrs. Churchill came back they pronounced Mr. Andrews dead. Maggie had gone upstairs to get a sheet after being asked to be Mrs. Churchill for what I assume is to cover up the body. Maggie had been walking up the stairs and saw Abby Borden dead in one of their guest rooms. She was in a similar state to Andrew, laying across the floor with the door open in a straight eye shot from the stairs. Maggie ran over to her immediately. She walked downstairs finding Lizzie in the kitchen. I don't know how Lizzie found out about her stepmom, but we do know later they had found out that Abby and Andrew Borden were both hit over the head with an ax almost 20 times each. Also learning that Abby was killed almost 90 min before Andrew. We never found out who really killed them; even though there were two in the house they got out with no jail time.

Lizzie

This is Lizzie Borden's story and what she went through after the death of her parents, and why she haunts the house even though she didn’t die in it. Lizzie was accused of killing her parents by hitting them over the head with an ax. Most people know of her from a nursery rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an ax, And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one” (History 6). However it is not known whether or not she was the killer. There are some rumors that a few days before they died she went to her friend and said that something bad was going to happen to her father. There is also some proof that she was trying to buy cyanide. She was seen bringing a dress after their death; it is thought she was burning the dress she was in the night of the murder. Later facts came in saying that when Lizzie came downstairs Margret saw no blood on the dress. The Borden family already had some bad rep in the town, being a very wealthy family and what had happened years before with Eliza Borden and her kids. After Abby and Andrew Borden had died Lizzie was immediately targeted. She had been in jail for 283 nights waiting for her trial to begin. That would end up being the only time she was in jail. Maggie had stood up for her giving the police a play-by-play of the day. This had convinced the police so much they let both Maggie and Lizzie go without any more jail time. Maggie had moved far away and I was not able to find any more information on her, but Lizzie had stayed in that town even though they all hated her. In Fact, she had moved down the street from the original house. There are many rumors about this murder blaming Maggie, Lizzie, or even their uncle but we will never fully know the mysteries of that night.

Eliza

Eliza Borden was Lizzie’s great-uncle’s second wife. She had three children named Holder, Eliza Ann, and Maria Borden. In 1848 Eliza Borden would have killed two of her kids, throwing them down a cellar cistern, shortly there after slitting her own throat behind their chimney in the same house that Abby and Andrew Borden were killed in. Without much context for what happened all that we know is that Eliza took Holder and Eliza Ann Borden and threw them down the cellar cistern. A terrifying fact is that for Eliza to really kill those children she would have had to spend a lot of time drowning them in the cistern, or she just trapped them there, their small bodies not able to find a way out slowly killing them after exhaustion set in. I don't know what happened after that, who found them, or even what happened after Eliza had killed herself, although it is said that Eliza’s husband Lawdwick committed suicide after learning what his wife had done, grief taking over him and leaving four-year-old Maria Borden by herself. I do not know what happened to Maria Borden after that or even if Lawdwick killed himself after the deaths. It is said that the spirits of Holder, Eliza Ann, and Eliza Borden haunt the house to this day. There are more sightings of the kids than Eliza. You can see them playing with toys in their room, mostly staying behind the couch. Some people bring the toys to try and bond with them or maybe just so they don't attach themselves trying to leave the house with you.

The Rooms

After much research I can’t find what exactly the most paranormal room was, but many people that go to the house say the room where Abby Borden was murdered, also known as the murder room, is the most paranormal room. There have been many paranormal experiences that have happened in this room: “‘What was that?’ my sister, Lauren, whispered in the dark next to me. I could barely think straight over the sound of the three 18-year-old girls in the room next to us screaming that ghosts must have set off the fire alarm. I looked at my phone. It was just after 3 a.m. Only a couple hours left before the sun came up. Up until that point, my sister and I had been trying our best (and failing) to get some rest in the same bedroom where Lizzie Borden's stepmother Abby was brutally murdered with an axe” (Matthews 2). Many people have very different experiences in paranormal places: getting headaches, getting physically ill, even losing consciousness. There are many more but Matthews felt dread: “On the drive to Fall River, I kept reminding myself that ghosts don't exist. But as we walked into the Borden house just after 4 p.m. on a warm Sunday afternoon in early September, it dawned on me that it didn't matter if it was actually haunted or not. The fact is, two people were violently murdered in this house that I had committed to spending an entire night in. Dread started to creep its way into my head as our host climbed the staircase and showed us into the room where I had to at least attempt to fall asleep—in a bed just inches away from where a very real person had her skull split in two with a very real axe. Haunted or not, this house was creepy and left me feeling very unsettled” (7). This could have been her realizing that she was going to spend the night in a very creepy place or the haunting starting.

Now

After much research I can’t find what exactly the most paranormal room was, but many people that go to the house say the room where Abby Borden was murdered, also known as the murder room, is the most paranormal room. There have been many paranormal experiences that have happened in this room: “‘What was that?’ my sister, Lauren, whispered in the dark next to me. I could barely think straight over the sound of the three 18-year-old girls in the room next to us screaming that ghosts must have set off the fire alarm. I looked at my phone. It was just after 3 a.m. Only a couple hours left before the sun came up. Up until that point, my sister and I had been trying our best (and failing) to get some rest in the same bedroom where Lizzie Borden's stepmother Abby was brutally murdered with an axe” (Matthews 2). Many people have very different experiences in paranormal places: getting headaches, getting physically ill, even losing consciousness. There are many more but Matthews felt dread: “On the drive to Fall River, I kept reminding myself that ghosts don't exist. But as we walked into the Borden house just after 4 p.m. on a warm Sunday afternoon in early September, it dawned on me that it didn't matter if it was actually haunted or not. The fact is, two people were violently murdered in this house that I had committed to spending an entire night in. Dread started to creep its way into my head as our host climbed the staircase and showed us into the room where I had to at least attempt to fall asleep—in a bed just inches away from where a very real person had her skull split in two with a very real axe. Haunted or not, this house was creepy and left me feeling very unsettled” (7). This could have been her realizing that she was going to spend the night in a very creepy place or the haunting starting.