Travel: The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast

In honor of the premier of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story premiering on Netflix on September 17th, I decided to kick off my travel blog posts with my own experience touring the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts.

I’ve visited the house twice for two separate tours, so this post will document those. I have yet to stay overnight at the house, but stay tuned and you might just see a post about an overnight stay at some point in the future!

A little bit of history:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe….”

Most people know how the famous Lizzie Borden rhyme goes. “Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” As it turns out, that rhyme isn’t entirely true….

In August, 1892, in a house in Fall River, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered with a hatchet. Unlike the rhyme states, Abby Borden was struck about 18-20 times instead of 40, and Andrew was struck about 10-11 times instead of 41. Nonetheless, both murders were horrific, and to this day no one was ever convicted of the crime.

The picture to the right was taken on one of the tours I went on. It is a photo of Lizzie not long after her acquittal.

Lizzie was arrested and put on trial for the murder of her father and stepmother, but was acquitted on June 20th, 1893 after a fifteen day trial. The jury, consisting fully of men, didn’t believe that a woman could have committed such a violent crime. After the trial, Lizzie bought and moved into another house in Fall River that she named Maplecroft, leaving the house on Second Street behind.

My first visit to the house was in 2015. It was a regular daytime tour that lasted about 90 minutes and took us throughout the entire house (minus the basement). Our tour guide was really knowledgeable about the history of the house and the case. She even explained how difficult it would have been to see Abby Borden’s body simply by walking past the guest room where she was murdered. The only way that she could have been seen is on one particular spot on the front stairway. If someone were to look to the side while standing in that spot, they would see directly into the guest room and underneath the bed to the other side. Our tour guide even demonstrated this by lying there herself and having us come up the stairs to look for ourselves.

My second visit to the house was in 2021 and this tour was a nighttime tour that began outside of the house and took us on a walking tour around Fall River to visit some other spots that had some morbid history, and ended with a tour of only the first floor of the house. We were also given EMF devices to carry around on the tour that were supposed to light up if any ghosts were detected.

The first stop was the house next door to the Borden house where a woman (who was actually a relative of Lizzie’s), drowned her children in the basement. Another one of the stops was the church where Lizzie taught Sunday school. We didn’t get to go inside, but it was definitely an eerie place, even from the outside. There were only three of us on the tour, plus our tour guide and two of our EMF devices went off wildly in front of the church just as we were leaving, which was a bit spooky.

The Parlor

We eventually made our way back to the house where we did a tour of the first floor. We headed into the parlor first, which is to the left of the front door, and is different from the sitting room where Andrew Borden was murdered. The house is decorated very closely to how a house in the time period would look. We spent a little bit of time in this room beginning the tour and looking at the decor and artifacts displayed.

The Dining Room

We then went into the dining room and saw some of the crime scene photos as well as a stretcher (pictured) that would’ve been used for the bodies (both of which were autopsied in the dining room). We learned more details about the day of the murders and what is known about the morning leading up to them.

The Sitting Room

This is the room where Andrew Borden was murdered. We were shown more crime scene photos in this room and were allowed to sit on the couch. My EMF detector did go off pretty wildly right in the spot where Andrew’s head would have been resting which was interesting. It would only beep in that exact spot and would stop if I moved it even slightly. It was also only my device that beeped, which was also interesting.

We ended the tour in the kitchen where we were shown a photo of Lizzie taken many years after the murders and the trial. She is sitting on the porch of the house she purchased after the trial with one of her dogs in her lap. Overall, the tour was very thorough and brought up some points that had us questioning if Lizzie actually did commit the crime or could someone else have done it. Even though didn’t tour the whole house, getting to tour a bit of the locations around Fall River was really cool and it was great to learn some of the city’s history that I didn’t know before. However, I do think booking a regular tour to see the whole house is worth it as well.

Visitors of the bed and breakfast can also make the short trip over to the Oak Grove Cemetery to see where the Bordens are buried. There are arrows painted on the ground that lead directly to the graves. There are tours of the cemetery offered as well.

I’d be interested to go on another tour to get any additional perspectives on what happened that day—and maybe one day stay overnight!