The morning of August 4, 1892, at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts began the way most mornings did — Bridget Sullivan washing windows outside, the Borden family inside. Then Lizzie’s voice came: “Come down quick. Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him.” Andrew Borden had been struck eleven times; his face was disfigured beyond easy recognition. Upstairs, in the rear guest bedroom, his wife Abby had already been dead for more than an hour — nineteen blows, her body found between the bed and the dresser. She had been killed first. No one in the household had remarked on her absence.
The investigation settled on Lizzie, Andrew’s thirty-two-year-old daughter. Her account of that morning shifted slightly between tellings. A druggist confirmed she had tried to buy prussic acid the day before; he had refused. Three days after the murders, she burned a dress in the kitchen stove, telling a neighbor it was paint-stained. No murder weapon was ever definitively identified. At her trial in New Bedford in June 1893 — among the first to attract national press coverage — the jury acquitted her in ninety minutes. The case was never solved.
The house has operated as a bed-and-breakfast for decades, selling in 2021 for two million dollars to a ghost tour company owner. The guest room where Abby was found generates the most persistent reports: a figure standing at the foot of the bed, chest pressure in the early-morning hours, a woman’s weeping heard by guests staying alone on that floor. The sitting room, where Andrew died, produces its own accounts. Audio recordings have captured unexplained vocalizations during multiple separate investigations, and the room’s temperature drops without mechanical explanation. The building, by all accounts, has not finished with what it knows.
Story Source: lizzie-borden.com
Address: 230 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts 02721
Accessibility Rating: Booking Required — Open to visitors but requires advance reservation, ticket purchase, or tour booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
A couple who stayed overnight described being led through the house after dark learning the specific history of each room — who had slept there, who had died there, what evidence had been found where. Spending the night in the room where one of the murders took place proved genuinely unsettling, in a way the visitor said couldn’t be entirely attributed to suggestion.
— from TripAdvisor
A visitor who described herself as no ghost believer before arriving said she came away genuinely unsettled after seeing, hearing, and smelling things during her stay that she struggled to explain. She did not elaborate on specifics but said the experience made a real impression and that she would return.
— from TripAdvisor
A Fall River local who had visited the house on tour more than ten times over several decades said the third floor consistently produced the most activity among their group of friends and family, with multiple people over the years reporting creepy or chilling episodes they couldn’t account for. They said even after so many visits, they still encountered something new on each tour.
— from TripAdvisor
Guests who booked the John V. Morse room — where Abby Borden was killed — have reported the sensation of bedsheets pulling taut or tightening around them in the night. Some describe seeing the figure of an older woman moving through the house whom they initially mistook for staff, only to find no one there when they went to greet her.
— from Lizzie-Borden.com
A paranormal investigator who conducted a ghost hunt at the house reported capturing numerous EVP responses and orbs on a full-spectrum camera throughout the session. They described getting so many apparent responses during the spirit box portion that the group had difficulty keeping up, and said the experience far exceeded what they had encountered at other renowned haunted sites.
— from Lizzie-Borden.com
