On 4th August 1892, someone walked through a middle-class home in Fall River, Massachusetts and delivered 29 hatchet blows to two sleeping people. Abby Borden received 19 strikes to the back of her skull. Andrew Borden took 10 to 11 blows so severe that one eyeball was split cleanly in two…
The famous rhyme claims “forty whacks” but read on to discover the Bizarre But True story behind the Lizzie Borden murder house – and how you can now sleep there for a night…
The 90-Minute Problem
Medical evidence revealed something strange. When the doctor arrived, Abby’s blood had completely congealed whilst Andrew’s was still dripping. She’d been murdered approximately 90 minutes before him. Both Lizzie Borden, Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter and the Irish maid were downstairs during at least one of the attacks.
The day before the murders, someone matching Lizzie’s description attempted to purchase prussic acid from a local druggist. She claimed she needed the deadly poison to clean a sealskin cape. In 1892, this. required a doctor’s prescription so the purchase was refused…
Andrew Borden was a bank president and director of multiple businesses who owned numerous properties. Yet he refused to install indoor plumbing or electricity. He put a two-stall privy in the basement and a chamber pot under every bed. The house was considered middle-class and unusual for someone of his wealth.
Four days after the killings, witness Alice Russell testified she saw Lizzie burn a dress in the kitchen stove. Lizzie claimed it had been ruined when she brushed against wet paint. This occurred after police informed her she was a suspect.
The Courtroom Spectacle
During the trial, prosecutors did something remarkable. They’d removed both victims’ heads during autopsy.
When the actual skulls were presented in court on 5th June 1893, Lizzie fainted. The prosecutor then pulled the suspected hatchet from a bag and demonstrated how it fit into the visible bone crevices.
The jury deliberated for 90 minutes.
They acquitted her. Lizzie appeared in court tightly corseted, holding flowers and a fan. Her defence attorney insisted a crime so brutal must have been committed by “a maniac or a fiend,” not a Sunday school teacher. The community, however, disagreed…
When Lizzie attended church after the trial, no one would sit next to her. For years, children threw gravel at her windows and pelted her house with rotten eggs. She lived 34 more years in Fall River as a pariah, dying in 1927 with only a handful attending her funeral.
Then, she was buried next to the father and stepmother she was accused of murdering.
What Happens At the House Now..?
The building still stands at 230 Second Street. It operates as both museum and bed and breakfast, open daily from 10am to midnight.
The room where Abby Borden was bludgeoned to death, bizarrely, is the most requested bedroom.
You can sleep in the exact location where she fell face-down with 19 hatchet wounds to her skull. Guests lie on a replica of the settee where Andrew was killed for what the house’s website calls “macabre photo opportunities.”
Breakfast costs around an additional $20 per person. The menu includes “a mix of what the Bordens had that morning” – though they’ve excluded mutton and johnnycakes “which most guests dislike.”
The house was purchased in 2021 for $2 million by Lance Zaal, owner of ghost tour company US Ghost Adventures. He’s added ghost hunts, a 24/7 “Lizzie Cam,” murder mystery nights and even markets it as a wedding venue.
The property is grandly promoted as “America’s Most Haunted House.”
Are You Brave Enough To Stay Over..?
The house maintains its 1892 layout. You’ll walk the same stairs, touch the same banisters, sleep in rooms where the floorboards absorbed the blood that medical examiners documented in courtroom testimony.
Tours run throughout the day. Overnight stays require booking in advance.
The room where Abby died gets requested months ahead. Lizzie’s bedroom is also available. So is the guest room where Andrew was attacked whilst sleeping on the sofa downstairs.
The house doesn’t sanitise its history. And that’s exactly the point – its not a sleepover for the faint hearted.
You’re not visiting a reconstruction. You’re sleeping in the actual crime scene where someone, acquitted but never exonerated, may have committed one of America’s most documented unsolved murders…
FIND & BOOK NOW
PRICE: ★★★★☆
SCARE FACTOR: ★★★★★
BIZARRENESS: ★★★★★
