Lizzie Borden House

History

The House on Second Street

The Lizzie Borden House stands on Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, a city once known for its textile mills. Andrew Borden bought it in 1872 and had it remodeled from a two-tenant dwelling into a home for his family. In 1892, its address was 92 Second Street. It has since been renumbered 230.

Andrew was one of the best-known men in Fall River, and one of the wealthiest. In August 1892, he lived here with his second wife, Abby, and his two grown daughters, Emma and Lizzie Borden. The family’s maid, Bridget Sullivan, had a room in the attic, and they called her Maggie. On August 3, the sisters’ uncle, John Morse, came to visit and stayed the night. He was the brother of Andrew’s first wife.

August 4, 1892

Emma was away from home that morning. Abby Borden was killed in the upstairs guest room, where John Morse had slept. The house’s own account says she was making up the room after his stay when she was attacked. Andrew was killed later in the morning, on the sofa in the sitting room downstairs.

Bridget was resting in her attic room when she heard the City Hall bell and saw that it was 11 o’clock. About 10 or 15 minutes later, by her own estimate at Lizzie’s trial, Lizzie called up the stairs: “Maggie, come down!” When Bridget asked what was the matter, Lizzie answered, “Come down quick; father’s dead: somebody come in and killed him.”

Neighbors came. One of them, Adelaide Churchill, went upstairs with Bridget to look for Abby. “As I went upstairs, I saw the body under the bed,” Bridget testified. Abby’s body was cold and Andrew’s still warm. She had died first, by an hour or more. The medical examiner, Dr. William Dolan, counted 18 blows to Abby’s head and 10 to Andrew’s face and head. The next day, the New York Times ran the story under the headline “Butchered in Their Home.”

A week later, police arrested Lizzie. A jury acquitted her in 1893, and the murders were never solved.

“This Is Not a Museum”

The sightseers came early. In 1893, after Lizzie and Emma had moved out, a couple knocked at the side door and asked to see the rooms where Mr. and Mrs. Borden had been killed. “This is not a museum,” said Mrs. Peckham, who lived there by then, and slammed the door. The man said he had traveled 2,000 miles to see the Borden house, so the pair toured the backyard instead, until a man across the street called the police. WBSM, a news radio station in nearby New Bedford, retold the story in 2024 from an 1893 newspaper.

Tourists weren’t formally let inside until the mid-1990s. Since then, the house has been a museum by day and an inn by night. Lee-Ann Wilber and Donald Woods bought it in 2004 and, using the crime-scene photographs as their guide, restored it to the way it looked in 1892.

In 2021, the house sold for close to $2 million to Lance Zaal, the founder of US Ghost Adventures, a company that runs ghost tours in cities from San Francisco to Miami. US Ghost Adventures runs the house today.

Hauntings & Lore

The people who have run the house tell its ghost stories themselves. Lee-Ann Wilber told the Los Angeles Times in 2008 that she hadn’t believed in ghosts before she bought it. “Things have moved on me. I’ve been touched, pushed, poked and prodded,” she said. Lance Zaal put it more bluntly to Delaware’s News Journal in 2021: “It is haunted.”

The Woman in the Nightgown

Zaal says guests have had limbs and ears pulled, and have seen figures moving about the rooms. One of those figures keeps coming back. “A woman in a nightgown is often seen in the Andrew and Abby Suite, and this figure is believed to be Abby Borden,” he said.

Zaal has his own story. In February 2021, he stayed alone in the house, in the Andrew Suite, and heard voices, footsteps, and furniture moving. He says that one night he felt a presence come into the side room where he was sleeping, surround him, touch his leg, and pull on the comforter.

A Night in Abby’s Room

The guest room where Abby died is now the John V. Morse Room, and it’s the one people want. “The room that Abby was murdered in is probably our most requested room at night,” Sue Vickery, a guide at the house, told CBS News Boston in 2020.

In 2008, Karen Zorn won an eBay auction for a night in that room with a bid of $405. The stay was for August 4, the 116th anniversary of the murders. She and her boyfriend had just checked in. “We went up to the room and it was freezing cold,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “It was the coldest room in the house by far.”

As the night wore on, her boyfriend said he had found a lamp in the room rocking back and forth, turned on by itself. Sitting in bed, the two agreed they would leave if anything else happened. “And just as we said that, the bedroom door swung open,” she said. Within minutes, they were on their way to a Best Western.

Not every guest makes it to breakfast. Sometimes, Vickery said, “the cook gets here and they’re gone. They haven’t even made the night.” She has been scared enough herself to have “run out of the house on a few occasions.”

Bridget’s Room

Bridget Sullivan’s old room, up on the third floor, has stories of its own. Zaal told Fox News in 2023 that guests report a lot of paranormal activity there. Fox’s story adds claims of music boxes going off and of furniture found moved across the room. He slept there himself in May 2021, he said, and a wind-up cat toy on the chest started to play on its own.

“They Imprinted on the House”

The guides have their own views. In an Associated Press story from October 2024, guide Richard Sheridan shows a tour group a mannequin on a bedroom floor, spattered in fake blood. It stands in for Abby. “I believe Lizzie did this,” he tells them. He told the AP he thinks the murders left something behind. “I firmly believe they imprinted on the house. I think it’s what you would call a haunting,” he said.