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Ghostly goings-on
at the Lizzie Borden B&B - 20081102
The family home in Fall River,
Mass., is a museum by day, a lodge by night. Which is when
things can get creepy.
By Jay Jones
REPORTING FROM FALL RIVER, MASS.
Karen Zorn and her boyfriend fled their cozy bed-and-breakfast
earlier this year. It wasn't that the place was dirty or the
neighbors noisy. Zorn says they grabbed their bags and left
for a nearby motel after discovering that, apparently, some
of the other guests were ghosts.
The couple had just finished checking in to
the B&B in Fall River, Mass., when things started to go
awry.
"We went up to the room and it was freezing
cold. It was the coldest room in the house by far. And that
kind of spooked us out," she recalls.
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Planning the trip
The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast is open
year-round for daily tours and overnight stays.
COST AND LOCATION
Rates: Rooms in the off season (November to
April) start at $150 per night. There's no need to book well
in advance. Despite the interest in the house, Fall River
is off the beaten tourist path.
City life: The closest town with any sizable
tourist trade is Newport, R.I. (25 minutes), and then Boston
(one hour.)
Info: (508) 675-7333, www.lizzie-borden.com.
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Tales of goblins haunting old houses are nothing new. But
the former residents of the home in which Zorn and her boyfriend
briefly stayed have more reason than most to be agitated:
It's where the 32-year-old Lizzie Borden allegedly hacked
her mother and father to death in the late 19th century. The
tale of the grisly slayings remains vivid, thanks in part
to the macabre rhyme that children still recite:
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FOR THE RECORD:
Lodgings with macabre pasts: An article in Sunday's Travel
section on a B&B at Lizzie Borden's former home misidentified
one of the 1892 slaying victims as Borden's mother, Sarah.
The victim was Borden's stepmother, Abby. The article also
called Borden's older sister her younger sister. An accompanying
article about local lodgings said Sam Cooke died at the Hacienda
Hotel in El Segundo. It was the Hacienda Motel on South Figueroa
Street in South Los Angeles. —
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Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks. And
when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. .
. .
The rhyme may be good for skipping rope, but
it's not accurate. The historically correct version of events
is shared with visitors to the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast,
a rambling, eight-bedroom manse that doubles as a museum during
the daytime, before overnight guests arrive. When it was built
in 1845, it was one of the finest homes in Fall River, a then-thriving
community known for its textile mills.
During tours, visitors learn that Andrew Borden,
a wealthy banker, was struck 10 times. His wife, Sarah, suffered
18 blows. They weren't delivered by an ax, either; the police
thought a broken hatchet found in the basement was the murder
weapon. Although Lizzie's name is infamous as a result of
the shocking murders, a jury found her innocent.
Tourists are shown various crime scene photos
during their walk through the antebellum house. Using those
photographs as a guide, the B&B owners, Lee-Ann Wilber
and Donald Woods, have painstakingly restored the home to
what it looked like in 1892, when the slayings occurred. They
scoured antiques shops throughout New England in search of
furnishings that replicate those in the old pictures.
Intrigued by the legendary Lizzie, Zorn first
stayed in the former maid's quarters at the B&B a couple
of years ago. Earlier this year, when she saw an auction on
EBay for a stay in the room where Lizzie's mother was found,
Zorn couldn't resist bidding. The stay was for the night of
Aug. 4, the 116th anniversary of the murders. A séance
to conjure up the spirits of Sarah and Andrew Borden was included.
When the auction closed, the Crofton, Md.,
woman discovered she had won, with a bid of $405. She now
wishes someone else had bid just $1 more.
"As the night wore on, other weird things
started happening," Zorn explains. "At one point,
my boyfriend went into the room and he claimed there was a
lamp in there rocking back and forth that had turned itself
on."
There was more to come.
"We were sitting in bed talking about
the creepy things that had happened. And I said, 'What do
you say if anything else really freaky happens we just get
up and leave?' And he said, 'OK.' And just as we said that,
the bedroom door swung open.
"We began to scream," she continues.
"Everybody in the house could hear us." Within minutes,
the couple was headed to a nearby Best Western.
Zorn and her boyfriend weren't the first people
to leave prematurely, and they probably won't be the last,
given the home's reported paranormal activity.
"On a scale of one to 10, I'd say it's
a 10-plus," says Christopher Moon, a well-known paranormal
investigator from Denver. Four weekends a year, Moon conducts
"Ghost Hunter University" at the B&B.
"We have full interaction in the Lizzie
Borden house," he adds. "We have the knowledge to
communicate with all the spirits there."
Wilber says she didn't believe in ghosts before
buying the house four years ago. But after many strange occurrences,
she doesn't know what to believe.
"Things have moved on me. I've been touched,
pushed, poked and prodded," she says. "To this day,
I try to explain some of them and there's just no possible
way."
The attraction goes well beyond the spooky
stories. Detectives, law students and others interested in
the celebrated unsolved case are also among the 10,000 people
who tour the home each year. Guests leave with differing opinions
as to whether Lizzie, who with her younger sister inherited
their father's fortune, got away with murder. Moon says the
spirits of Andrew, Lizzie and others have convinced him that
although Lizzie didn't deliver the fatal blows, she wasn't
an innocent bystander either.
"Lizzie was definitely one of the people
involved, but it wasn't just one person," he says. "There
was a group involved in the murder."
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