The Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts
One of the most famous crime scenes in American history, the Borden House, has now become the Lizzy Borden Bed and Breakfast.
Most everyone knows the story of Lizzie Borden, the 32 year old thought to have murdered her parents in the Fall River, Massachusetts home they shared in August 1892. As the rhyme goes, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”
A former crime scene seems like the location of a bed and breakfast slated for failure, but the space draws enough history fans, thrill-seekers, and supernatural aficionados to keep the spot in business.
All bedrooms of the house are available for overnight stay. Guests can also rent out an entire floor, or the whole house, with rates ranging from around $250 all the way up to $1,650 a night.
The most popular rooms to stay in are the Lizzie and Emma Suite consisting of the sisters’ rooms, as well as the John V. Morse room, the room in which Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby Borden, was found dead.
The room of Lizzy’s sister Emma Borden, who was 15 miles away in Fairhaven, Massachusetts visiting a friend when the murders took place. Source: Itinerant Wanderer
Property owner Lee-Ann Wilber says that while many guests have bolted out of the bed and breakfast, it’s likely of their own fear production. Said Wilber, “Sometimes I think some come in already worked up about it. It could be something as simple as a light bulb burns out, and their mind starts going into overdrive. Some guests scare themselves out of here.”
However, Wilber does admit that in the time she has owned the Borden House there was one night that she was too afraid to sleep there.
A staged recreation of the discovery of Andrew Borden’s corpse, boldly and unapologetically displayed in the sitting room of the bed and breakfast.
In 2004, not long after she had purchased the home, Wilber looked down the front entryway, illuminated by an antique chandelier. “As I’m looking at it, it walked up the staircase,” Wilber said.
The lights flickered for a few seconds and then burnt out simultaneously. Everything went dark, Wilber said.
“I said to no one in particular, ‘You win tonight,’ and went to sleep in my car.”
“Living here,” said Wilber, “very quickly, I became a believer.”
For more haunted destinations, check out real life photos of the Shining Hotel.
