Mondo Lizzie Borden

Creative little film by TheUnadoyle. 40 seconds in length.

On May 31, at 3:00 pm at the Polaris Theatre in New York City, paranormal expert Al Rauber will be presenting “The Lizzie Tapes.”

On Sunday, May 31st at 3pm, Sturges Paranormal is pleased to announce a lecture presented by Al Rauber. The price for this lecture is $20 at the door or you can save yourself a couple of bucks by paying $15 in advance (via paypal) when you RSVP.

On the morning of August 4th, 1892, the populace of Fall River, Massachusetts was shocked and horrified by a vicious and gruesome double homicide. The bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were found in their home at 92 Second St. They had been bludgeoned to death with what appeared to be a hatchet. World renown Paranormal Investigator Al Rauber was commissioned by two different production companies for two different TV shows to come up with evidence of reported haunting phenomena at 92 Second St.

Known for his use of Electronic Voice Phenomena in gathering evidence of hauntings, Rauber offers many of the voices collected over 2 separate weekends of filming from this location. Voices of the spirits of The Lizzie Borden House which may shed new light on the infamous case of murder.Hear the detailed story about the two investigations presented in a new lecture entitled: The Lizzie Tapes-A Paranormal Case Study.

Al Rauber
Al Rauber has been in the field of paranormal research for over 40 years and has investigated haunting and poltergeist cases throughout the US and Europe. He has been featured on and consulted for a number of television shows including Sightings, The Other Side, The Paranormal Borderline, Encounters, Unsolved Mysteries and specials for The History Channel and The Travel Channel. He can currently be seen on The History Channel’s program, MonsterQuest. Al is co-founder of Haunted New Jersey and a current member of The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena and the prestigious Paranormal Research Organization. He is a past member of Vestigia as well as the Georgia based Parapsychological Services Institute and The Psychical Research Foundation. Known for his use of Electronic Voice Phenomena in gathering evidence of haunting, Al will offer many different voices caught on-site including one particular voice that he believes could be that of the still unidentified murderer.

Tickets are going fast. Check it out here!

A blogger named Creepy Hallows claims to have channelled Lizzie Borden, after much effort. This is not a spoof site or does the writer present themselves as anything other than serious.

This is an interesting read and worth looking at. While I do not subscribe to the idea that they did, in fact, contact Lizzie, I did think that the insight the author gained by his or her concentrated efforts is extremely interesting. I especially liked the idea that Lizzie had “acted out” in inappropriate ways well before 1892. The details the author presents of that acting out are most interesting.

I go back and forth about Lizzie’s guilt in this case. My leanings these days are that she is innocent. So this psychic reading, to me, does not plug into my reality of the story. However, I present it to you for your judgment and reading pleasure.

Please read the entire posting here.

Here is a portion:

The tides of bitter resentment turned to all-out hatred around her early 20s which slowly evolved from doing petty annoyances to upset her step-mother to indifference in her late 20s when she became more thoughtful of driving a wedge between her step-mother and father. By that point she thought it better noone be happy if she wasn’t going to be. Of course by this time Andrew had shown years of favor to Abby and her family over Lizzie and Emma (her sister) and Lizzie being the intelligent woman she was, was offended.

It led to her doing things that would cause family arguments because no one could decidedly say who did them… like moving objects around the house, hiding things Andrew or Abby needed, cracking dishes over heat, placing soiled linens with the fresh ones, and so on. This caused a rift between the parents and the girls rather than causing the rift between Andrew and Abby which is what Lizzie wanted.

By the time Lizzie’s 30th birthday rolled around she was so distraught, exhausted and mentally stonewalled to a point of being devoid of emotion, she came to a conclusion that seemed logical in her, a warped perception of what reality should be, to be rid of her step-mother and father. She knew that the longer Andrew lived and the older Lizzie and Emma became the chances her father would leave his fortune to Abby’s family increased. Since God had not made her a male heir she felt she was sanctioned, by the fact of her abuse, in killing Andrew and Abby. She would inherit the estate of her father as she felt was right, she had earned every penny and she would do right by the fortune.

Her decision was made months before the actual murders and she had tried, unsuccessfully, to kill her step-mother before. Abby had leaned from the second story bedroom window while attempting to clean the glass and seeing her Lizzie had thought about pushing her out, but was nervous. The second time Abby was in the kitchen and Lizzie was going to stab her with the cutting knife, but they were interrupted. The third time she poisoned Andrew and Abby with polishing liquid, but since she was afraid they would taste the chemical in the food she only put a little which turned out to make them sick, not dead. By this time her fears and anxiety of committing the murders was dissolved and she was more focused.

When the morning of August 4th dawned she was steady. Abby tended the guest room and Lizzie knew that if she behaved just as any other day that there would be no reason for Abby to suspect anything. She walked evenly, with a regular stride coming behind Abby for the first and subsequent blows. She admitted that once she started and the blade sliced the skull it unleashed all the bottled rage she had supressed and when she meant to only strike once it was followed by 19 more blows. She removed her shoes, lifted her skirt and bunched it around her thighs and went immediately to the basement where she washed her shoes and removed the apron over her skirt. She rinsed the hatchet and set it on the second to top stair. There were little blood droplets that went through the apron to the skirt and she tried to smudge them out with water. She wrapped the apron tightly and tucked it next to the wash basin in the basement. She recomposed herself and waited for her father.

By the time Andrew came home she had recomposed herself and Andrew lay down to rest after a day in the heat. Lizzie had greeted him and offered him something to drink but rather than leave the room to get him a refreshment she returned with the hatchet. She said it was easier the second time knowing what it was going to be like and took it to her father’s face. I really felt like her attack against Andrew was far more personal that the one with Abby. She wanted to see her father’s face when she hit him and that in me caused a great tension around my sternum as I was hearing this from her.

Creepy Hallows.

According to Medium Georgia O’Connor, Lizzie Borden did not take an axe and give her mother 40 whacks. Nor her father 41. It was a known person to victim Andrew Borden, a man named Earl Matthews.

She also says that Andrew was first hit in a doorway, then hit again (she says stabbed) on the couch, and died on the floor. The blood was cleaned up. Also, that Andrew died first, as his wife was not home when it occurred.

On Nov. 15th 2008 renowned Medium Georgia OConnor , The Spirit Messenger, was presenting Graveside Chats as part of her Meet The Medium series for The Heritage Hunters of Saratoga County NY at the Ballston Spa Library. One of the audience members was a relative of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie came through and told Georgia the details of the famous murder, that she was innocent and also the name of her parents killer. Georgias website is MeetTheMedium.com

Link.

Our good friend and Hatchet contributor Al Rauber is giving a lecture on May 31, 2009 in NYC at the Polaris North Theatre.

You can read all about it here!

Al is very well respected in the paranormal community and has had a long and distinguished career in studying and recording electronic voice phenomenon.

From his published bio in The Hatchet: .J. Rauber is a world renown paranormal researcher with 40 years of investigative experience under his belt. He is a member of the prestigious Paranormal Research Organization and a past member of The Parapsychological Services Institute, The American Society For Psychical Research, and The Psychical Research Foundation.

Tickets are $15 in advanced, and $20 at the door. If you think you might attend, we suggest you book your tickets soon. Al’s talks are usually sold out well in advanced.

For further info on Al’s work, please visit our Paranormal page at LizzieAndrewBorden.com. Here you can listen to Al’s latest work at the Lizzie Borden B&B.

Paranormal research expert Al Rauber, who recently took part in the Monsterquest investigation of the Lizzie Borden B&B/Museum, will be presenting a live talk on his discoveries there.

The talk, titled The Lizzie Tapes: A Paranormal Case Study.

Presented at 7 pm, Thursday, November 20, at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library in Pittsburgh, PA.

The Lizzie Tapes: A Paranormal Case Study
7:00 PM ,Thursday, November 20
Lizzie Borden took an ax…or did she? On the morning of August 4, 1892, the populace of Fall River, Massachusetts was shocked and horrified by a vicious and gruesome double homicide. The bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were found in their home at 92 Second Street. They had been bludgeoned to death with what appeared to be a hatchet.

World renown Paranormal Investigator Al Rauber was commissioned by two different production companies for two different TV shows to come up with evidence of reported haunting phenomena at 92 Second Street. Hear the detailed story about the two investigations presented in his lecture: The Lizzie Tapes: A Paranormal Case Study.

Known for his use of Electronic Voice Phenomena in gathering evidence of hauntings, Rauber offers many of the voices collected over two separate weekends of filming from this location…voices of the spirits of the Lizzie Borden House which may shed new light on the infamous case of murder.

Al Rauber’s stellar reputation in the field of Paranormal Studies is well deserved. He has spent the past 40 years investigating claims of haunting phenomena all over the U. S. and Europe. He has appeared on a number of worldwide TV productions and has consulted for practically every major TV show on the paranormal.

For those of you interested in a little preview, please visit my site at LizzieAndrewBorden.com where I have added a paranormal tab, taking you to the very EVPs Al will be talking about.

And if you would like to read more of Al’s investigating, please read the August issue of The Hatchet, where Al tells us first hand all about his work and experiences at Lizzie’s house.

On November 4, Colleen Johnson, a tour guide at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum, took part in a lengthy talk about the Lizzie Borden case and its paranormal connections on Spiritfinders Radio.

You can listen to the whole thing here.

This video appeared as an on-demand movie on Comcast New England this weekend. It is a brief overview of the case and the scary happenings that have occurred of late.

October 29, Wednesday, 8PM, at The True Story of Lizzie Borden Museum, 203 Essex Street, Salem, MA.

Talk entitled: “Lizzie Borden: Heroine to Halloween Horror”

Presented by me, Stefani Koorey, Ph.D.

Cost is $20, which includes entrance into the museum. Snacks and libation will be provided. For information, please telephone 978-666-4416.

Be there or be square.

TEXT OF THE VIDEO: “High society members Andrew and Abby Borden were found murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts in August of 1892. Both of their skulls had been crushed in, and police thought the hatchet they discovered in the basement was the murder weopon. Their 32 year old daughter, Lizzy Borden, who lived in the house with her parents, was the prime suspect, but she was aqquited and the murders were never solved. Over 100 years after the murders, the scene of the grisly crime has been converted into a quaint, yet macabre, bed and breakfast. When guests arrive, they are greeted by a hatchet with Welcome pained on it in blood red. And a darkly funny sign inside cautions please be careful; we’ve already had two fatal head injuries in the house. Photos of the horrifying murder scene are hung in the rooms where they were taken, showing how carefully restored the house has been, and guests love to pose and recreate the gruesome scene. Creepy close encounters like phantom footfall sounds and strangely unnatural wind guts are commonly reported, especially when guests use the Ouija Board in the sitting room. Abby Borden’s death room, where her body was discovered, in the most popular room in the B and B. It was auctioned off for over 400 dollars on the night of the murder’s anniversary this year. And the adjacent Borden Carriage house has been converted into a gift shop which sells hatchet shaped soaps, key chains, and earrings, while grusome Lizzie Borden bobbleheads sell like hot cakes. Check in to this gloriously tasteless and creepy B and B if you dare, but good luck getting a good night’s sleep there. Though, if you do survive, I heard the eggs they serve in the morning are to die for. Im Liesel Hlista for TravelWishTV.com. Keep watching for more quirky, odd, and outrageous American travel destinations.”

THE VIDEO:

A recent story in the travel section of the LA Times has been circulating around the Internet. It tells the tale of ghostly happenings at the house on Second Street and the guest who dare not stay the night, or the entire night, while things go bump in the night.

It is a scary idea, really, to think of the murder house has permanently “occupied” by spirits and spectral beings. Since Halloween is nearly nigh, I thought you might enjoy the details of some of the more recent “happenings.”

Ghostly goings-on at the Lizzie Borden B&B

The family home in Fall River, Mass., is a museum by day, a lodge by night. Which is when things can get creepy.

By Jay Jones
REPORTING FROM FALL RIVER, MASS.
October 21, 2008

Karen Zorn and her boyfriend fled their cozy bed-and-breakfast earlier this year. It wasn’t that the place was dirty or the neighbors noisy. Zorn says they grabbed their bags and left for a nearby motel after discovering that, apparently, some of the other guests were ghosts.

The couple had just finished checking in to the B&B in Fall River, Mass., when things started to go awry.

“We went up to the room and it was freezing cold. It was the coldest room in the house by far. And that kind of spooked us out,” she recalls.

Planning the trip

The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast is open year-round for daily tours and overnight stays.

COST AND LOCATION

Rates: Rooms in the off season (November to April) start at $150 per night. There’s no need to book well in advance. Despite the interest in the house, Fall River is off the beaten tourist path.

City life: The closest town with any sizable tourist trade is Newport, R.I. (25 minutes), and then Boston (one hour.)

Info: (508) 675-7333, www.lizzie-borden.com.

Tales of goblins haunting old houses are nothing new. But the former residents of the home in which Zorn and her boyfriend briefly stayed have more reason than most to be agitated: It’s where the 32-year-old Lizzie Borden allegedly hacked her mother and father to death in the late 19th century. The tale of the grisly slayings remains vivid, thanks in part to the macabre rhyme that children still recite:

Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. . . .

The rhyme may be good for skipping rope, but it’s not accurate. The historically correct version of events is shared with visitors to the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, a rambling, eight-bedroom manse that doubles as a museum during the daytime, before overnight guests arrive. When it was built in 1845, it was one of the finest homes in Fall River, a then-thriving community known for its textile mills.

During tours, visitors learn that Andrew Borden, a wealthy banker, was struck 10 times. His wife, Sarah, suffered 18 blows. They weren’t delivered by an ax, either; the police thought a broken hatchet found in the basement was the murder weapon. Although Lizzie’s name is infamous as a result of the shocking murders, a jury found her innocent.

Tourists are shown various crime scene photos during their walk through the antebellum house. Using those photographs as a guide, the B&B owners, Lee-Ann Wilber and Donald Woods, have painstakingly restored the home to what it looked like in 1892, when the slayings occurred. They scoured antiques shops throughout New England in search of furnishings that replicate those in the old pictures.

Intrigued by the legendary Lizzie, Zorn first stayed in the former maid’s quarters at the B&B a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, when she saw an auction on EBay for a stay in the room where Lizzie’s mother was found, Zorn couldn’t resist bidding. The stay was for the night of Aug. 4, the 116th anniversary of the murders. A séance to conjure up the spirits of Sarah and Andrew Borden was included.

When the auction closed, the Crofton, Md., woman discovered she had won, with a bid of $405. She now wishes someone else had bid just $1 more.

“As the night wore on, other weird things started happening,” Zorn explains. “At one point, my boyfriend went into the room and he claimed there was a lamp in there rocking back and forth that had turned itself on.”

There was more to come.

“We were sitting in bed talking about the creepy things that had happened. And I said, ‘What do you say if anything else really freaky happens we just get up and leave?’ And he said, ‘OK.’ And just as we said that, the bedroom door swung open.

“We began to scream,” she continues. “Everybody in the house could hear us.” Within minutes, the couple was headed to a nearby Best Western.

Zorn and her boyfriend weren’t the first people to leave prematurely, and they probably won’t be the last, given the home’s reported paranormal activity.

“On a scale of one to 10, I’d say it’s a 10-plus,” says Christopher Moon, a well-known paranormal investigator from Denver. Four weekends a year, Moon conducts “Ghost Hunter University” at the B&B.

“We have full interaction in the Lizzie Borden house,” he adds. “We have the knowledge to communicate with all the spirits there.”

Wilber says she didn’t believe in ghosts before buying the house four years ago. But after many strange occurrences, she doesn’t know what to believe.

“Things have moved on me. I’ve been touched, pushed, poked and prodded,” she says. “To this day, I try to explain some of them and there’s just no possible way.”

The attraction goes well beyond the spooky stories. Detectives, law students and others interested in the celebrated unsolved case are also among the 10,000 people who tour the home each year. Guests leave with differing opinions as to whether Lizzie, who with her younger sister inherited their father’s fortune, got away with murder. Moon says the spirits of Andrew, Lizzie and others have convinced him that although Lizzie didn’t deliver the fatal blows, she wasn’t an innocent bystander either.

“Lizzie was definitely one of the people involved, but it wasn’t just one person,” he says. “There was a group involved in the murder.”

A new talk on Lizzie Borden has been scheduled for October 29 in Salem at The True Story of Lizzie Borden Museum.

Titled “Lizzie Borden: Heroine to Halloween Horror,” the multi-media presentation will begin at 8PM.

Even though Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the double murder of her father and step-mother, her celebrity has permutated from being the innocent victim of police incompetence to a national figure of Halloween horror. How did this happen? And in what ways has Lizzie Borden the hatchet-wielding murderess become ingrained in our collective memory?

Presented by Stefani Koorey, Ph.D., Editor/Publisher
The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery & Victorian History

True Story of Lizzie Borden Museum, 203 Essex in Salem, MA. $20 admission fee includes snacks and admission to the Museum. Seating is limited and reservations are suggested. You can call 978-666-4416 for reservations or email leonardpickel@gmail.com

UPDATE: THE NEW WEB ADDRESS OF THE TRUE STORY OF LIZZIE BORDEN.

From an article dated today, Oct. 16, 2008:

Marblehead Historical Society website.

XPLORING THE UNKNOWN: Nick Smith speaks on “Paranormal Investigations: Fact? Fiction? Or Somewhere in Between?” at the Marblehead Museum and Historical Society next Thursday. [October 23]

Smith, a summer resident of Marblehead, is founder of Crypto Paranormal Investigations, a nonprofit research group dedicated to what it describes as the scientific study of ghosts and hauntings. He and his assistants use electronic equipment such as night vision cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, and audio enhancers.

He has led studies of the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Lizzie Borden house, and an abandoned mental hospital in New York, and has done preliminary research at several sites in Marblehead.

Smith is also a bioengineering student at Green Mountain State College in Vermont.

His presentation begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15; $10 for museum members. Space is limited so reservations are suggested. Call 781-631-1768.

Here is the section on the Tee Vee show Sightings that detailed the Lizzie Borden case.

Season 2, Episode 3, First Aired 10/21/1992

Here is a blast from the past. Unsolved Mysteries on the Lizzie Borden case. Of course they take the paranormal route, not the unsolved murder route. This show added to the whole belief that the house is somehow haunted. From episode #462, first aired 7.23.2001.

Enjoy.