HAUNTED PLACES / MASSACHUSETTS
LIZZIE BORDEN HOUSE,
FALL RIVER.
The house at 230 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, is where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed on August 4, 1892. It is now a museum and bed and breakfast. Here is its history, what guests and staff report, its television visits, and how to see it.
The history
Andrew Borden bought the house on Second Street in 1872 and remodeled it from a two-family dwelling into a home for his family. He was a bank president and landlord, but the house stayed plain, with no hallway apart from the upstairs landing, so each room opened into the next. It was number 92 then and became 230 in 1896.
In 1892 the household was Andrew, 70; his second wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, 64; his unmarried daughters Emma and Lizzie, Lizzie then 32; and the maid, Bridget Sullivan. On the morning of August 4, 1892, Abby was killed in the upstairs guest room and Andrew in the sitting room downstairs, both with a hatchet. Emma was away in Fairhaven; Lizzie and Bridget were at home, and a visiting uncle, John Morse, who had slept in the guest room, was out.
Lizzie was arrested on August 11. Her trial opened in New Bedford on June 5, 1893, and on June 20 the jury found her not guilty; no one else was ever charged. She and Emma bought a larger house on French Street, which Lizzie named Maplecroft, and she died there on June 1, 1927, aged 66. Both sisters are buried at Oak Grove Cemetery, in the family plot with Andrew and Abby.
Martha McGinn's grandparents bought the house in 1948, and in 1996 McGinn and Ronald Evans restored the interior and opened it as a bed and breakfast and museum. Donald Woods and Lee-ann Wilber ran it from 2004 until 2021, when it was sold to Lance Zaal, founder of the tour company US Ghost Adventures, which runs it today. The rooms are furnished to match the photographs taken in the house in 1892. The courtroom exhibits from the trial, among them the hatchet presented as the alleged weapon, belong to the Fall River Historical Society.
What people report
The guest room where Abby Borden died, now the John V. Morse Room, is said to be the most requested room, and the account repeated most often is of overnight guests waking to a heavyset woman at the foot of the bed, whom many take for Abby. Footsteps on the stairs when no one is on them, doors that shut on their own and one room colder than the rest complete the guest accounts, which go back to the first owners in the 1990s.
Staff add their own. In 2020 a staff member who plays Emma Borden in the house's reenactments told NBC 10 in Providence that she had seen a shadow figure on the back staircase and heard footsteps, voices and slamming doors in an empty house. In an Associated Press story from October 2024, a tour guide said he believed the murders had left a mark on the house, and visitors described shivers on the stairs and a camera that stopped working.
The basement, where police found a hatchet head in 1892, is kept for the evening ghost hunts, and some visitors say they have seen a figure there. The skeptical investigator Joe Nickell put the claims down to personal feelings that cannot be checked and to the ideomotor effect behind Ouija boards.
Accounts of hauntings here are folklore and entertainment, not verified events.
On television
The Lizzie Borden House was filmed for Ghost Hunters (2005), Ghost Adventures (2011), BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural (2017), Kindred Spirits (2017) and Project Fear (2026). The Ghost Hunters visit, "The Lizzie Borden House", first aired on October 12, 2005, in the same episode as the Ohio State Reformatory; Ghost Adventures aired "Lizzie Borden House" on October 21, 2011. In September 2017 Amy Bruni and Adam Berry also filmed "The Legacy of Lizzie Borden" there for their own series, Kindred Spirits.
BuzzFeed Unsolved's "The Murders That Haunt The Lizzie Borden House" came out in May 2017: Watch the BuzzFeed Unsolved visit on the BuzzFeed Unsolved Network's official channel.
Visiting and running your own session
A 90-minute house tour runs daily through every room, including the two where the Bordens died. After dark there is a nightly walking ghost tour of Fall River that ends on the first floor, a two-hour ghost hunt on the first floor and in the basement with shared equipment, and an unguided overnight hunt in the basement until morning. The six guest rooms are on the second and third floors. There is also a tour of Oak Grove Cemetery and a run of themed evenings. Hours and bookings are on the venue's site; children must be 10 or older for the house tour and 7 or older to stay the night.
Photographs are welcome at any time, but video and audio recording are not allowed on any tour; Ouija boards and seances are not permitted; quiet time begins at 11 pm, and the basement is open only in supervised activities. Two people were killed in these rooms and a third lived the rest of her life under suspicion, and the staff ask guests to treat the house with respect.
On a tour, the recording rule settles it: leave the phone in your pocket and save the session for an overnight stay. Guests have the first floor to themselves once the ghost hunt leaves at midnight, and the sitting room, with the phone on a side table away from the kitchen and the shop, is the natural place: still, dim and far from the street.
Try a session there
Run a Spirit box session with Spooky Box once the house is yours for the night. Your phone's sensors decide the moment and chance decides the word, and each word shows the reason it came up. Record the session as audio or video and replay it from any word the next morning.
Read next
- Villisca Axe Murder House, Iowa: the Iowa farmhouse where eight people were killed in 1912, also open for overnight stays.
- Ohio State Reformatory, Mansfield: the prison Ghost Hunters paired with the Borden house in its 2005 episode.
- Taking a phone on a ghost hunt: what its sensors can and cannot measure, and how to run a session.
- The Spooky Box home page, and every place on this site.
Sources
- Lizzie Borden House, the official site: tours, rooms, house rules and the recording policy.
- Wikipedia: Lizzie Borden and Lizzie Borden House: the case, the trial and the house's owners.
- Fall River Historical Society: Lizzie Borden: the society's collection, including the exhibits from the trial.
- NBC 10 WJAR: Lizzie Borden Museum offering special night tours (2020): staff accounts from the night tours.
Questions
Is the Lizzie Borden House really haunted?
No one can say. Guests and staff have reported a woman at the foot of the bed in the room where Abby Borden died, footsteps on the stairs and doors that close by themselves. They are reports and folklore, not verified events, and a skeptic who studied the claims found nothing that could be checked. What is certain is that two people were killed here in 1892.
Can you stay overnight at the Lizzie Borden House?
Yes. The house is a bed and breakfast with six rooms on the second and third floors, including the guest room where Abby Borden died, now the John V. Morse Room. Check-in is in the late afternoon and check-out mid-morning, and overnight guests have the first floor to themselves once the evening ghost hunt ends. Children must be 7 or older, and bookings are on the venue's site.
Can you tour the Lizzie Borden House without staying overnight?
Yes. A 90-minute house tour runs daily through every room, a walking ghost tour of Fall River leaves nightly, and a two-hour ghost hunt covers the first floor and the basement. Photos are welcome, but the house allows no video or audio recording on any tour, and children under 10 cannot join the house tour.
Spooky Box is paranormal entertainment. It uses device sensor activity and a word engine to create atmospheric sessions. Generated words and sensor readings do not establish the presence of spirits or verified communication.