Ghosts of the SouthCoast (16 page)

Andrew Borden was found in the sitting room, a victim of ten blows to the head with an ax.
Courtesy of Stefani Koorey.

During this séance, I was videotaping when someone noticed that my T-shirt was lifting up over my stomach. At first she thought it was just because my arms were holding the camera, but she could see that even as my arms remained steady (I like to think of myself as a more than adequate cameraman, so I know my shot was true) my shirt continued to lift. Someone else snapped a picture of it, and it shows streaks of a mysterious orange light right over the part of my shirt that was being lifted.

That's not the only weird photo that has come out of the sitting room, either. Whenever we bring anyone there for the first time, they've got to stop for the “photo op” in the parlor. A small hatchet is in a woodpile in the kitchen, and the women usually want to swing the hatchet while a man pretends to nap on the couch, in a re-creation of Andrew's murder. Yet every time, the pictures come out with weird anomalies, including a complete vanishing of the ax itself while in motion—even when the shutter speed is set very high, which it should be for fast-motion capture. Even professional photographers have been baffled by this phenomenon.

The sitting room as it looks today. With Luminal and a black light, traces of Mr. Borden's blood can still be seen under the floorboards in the basement.

In the sitting room, there is a mantel clock with a very loud tick to it. When the house is deathly silent, you can hear the tick all the way up on the third floor. It is a beautiful decorative piece, but if I had to sleep there, I'd probably end up going downstairs and smashing the thing!

One particular night, we had been investigating for about eight hours and everyone was getting pretty loopy, so we decided to take a break. I sat on the floor of the sitting room with a handful of other people, and we decided to see if we could get the spirits to slow down the clock's tick. Amazingly, within a few minutes it happened—to the point where the clock stopped ticking
completely. Then, after a few seconds, it began ticking back furiously in an effort to catch up, before finally returning to normal.

One of the best parts about the access we have to the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast is the ability to be the only ones there during the off-season. Often, we'll go there to record paranormal television shows, on-site episodes of our radio show or just to investigate with the bare minimum of people around. Jeff Belanger wrote about one incident that happened under those circumstances in the introduction to this book, but it's not the only time we've heard noises like that.

Once, Matt Moniz, a few others and I were seated at the dining room table when upstairs, we could clearly hear the sound of a baby crying. Thoroughly creeped out and knowing nobody else was up there, we tried to ignore it. When we later went to the second floor to continue our investigation, we heard the sound of a woman singing on the third floor.

People often report hearing a loud thump every so often on the third floor. This was also featured on the episode of
Ghost Hunters,
where investigators Donna LaCroix and Andy Andrews heard it while in the Knowlton room. We had the opportunity to investigate the house with Donna on a separate occasion, and we were able to tie what she heard into the reports of those who stay in the Andrew Jennings room right next door—the sound is produced by the heavy foot pedal of the old-fashioned sewing machine slamming to the floor. The question is what slammed it?

One of the scariest sounds we've heard there came one night when we were conducting an EVP session in the Knowlton room. There were about six people in the room, all positioned close to the bed, when we heard a loud and angry-sounding growl coming from the corner, a low guttural sound that we instantly knew was not human. However, when we went to play it back, it didn't show up on any of our recordings.

On August 4, 2009, Matt Moniz and I just happened to be in Fall River on other business on the anniversary of the murders, so we decided to stop in to Lizzie's and say hello to Lee-ann and a number of friends who were there
that night. We met a pair of teenagers from out of state who were staying at the house and wanted to know more about the paranormal activity there. We agreed to take them into the basement for a little while and show them how to conduct an investigation, thinking nothing would really come of it.

As usual, when it comes to predicting the activity at the Borden house, we were wrong.

The basement is perhaps the most interesting part of the entire house. It's not part of the daily tour, and it is mostly used for storage, laundry and paranormal investigation. While the activity isn't always as prevalent as it is elsewhere in the house, when something happens in the basement, it's usually something worth noting.

Since we hadn't exactly planned on an investigation, Moniz and I didn't have any of our equipment with us. The two teens just had a video camera and a digital camera. We shut the lights off and began the investigation.

Not long after we began, I started calling out for whatever spirit lives in the basement to come out and show itself. I'm usually quite forceful with this particular entity, for reasons we'll get into in a bit. While I'm going through my whole song-and-dance routine in an effort to get it to come out and play, one of the teens simply asked aloud, “Um, what's that over there?”

Across the basement was a dark human form standing there and staring at us. Blacker than the darkness that surrounded it, we could clearly make out a shadow person, a type of paranormal phenomena that has gained ground in recent years. Not quite a ghost, it is an intelligent entity nonetheless. It watched us for a split second and then bolted.

We were able to follow its movements throughout the basement for a few minutes. The basement is set up as four different rooms, separated mostly by fieldstone. Matt Moniz and I attempted to trap it in the middle room, but when we thought we did so, it simply vanished.

As I said at the start of this chapter, I'm not going to try to solve the greatest unsolved crime of the last 150 years (with apologies to D.B. Cooper, of course). As an investigator, my job is to document and come up with a hypothesis regarding the activity in the house. In my opinion, the murders are not the cause of the paranormal activity at 92 Second Street—they're just a consequence.

Whatever is in that house predates the Bordens living there. It's what drove a man running from the police into the basement of the house in an attempt to hide, only to be shot dead when they found him. It's what drove the relative next door to throw her own children down a well and then take her own life. It's what drove the escalating tensions between the Bordens themselves, and it all but put the ax in the hands of whoever brought it down on Andrew and Abby.

As we learned in the first part of this book, the Native Americans thought there were spirits in this area long before King Philip's War turned the entire SouthCoast into one mass Indian burial ground. Whatever those spirits may be, they have a history of influencing evil. In the grand scheme of things, Lizzie Borden is not that far removed from Carl Drew and James Kater, or from John Alderman or the abusive orderlies of the Lakeville San. Heck, it's probably only a few degrees of separation from that bunch to the Pukwudgies. When something wicked this way comes, it usually sticks around and has no problems finding minions to do its bidding.

Am I talking about the devil, the very creature those Puritans warned against back when they first came to this land? I don't think so. Whatever this power is, it's beholden to no particular belief system. It's something that is bad just because it is. More negativity is what it lives on, and it finds ways to perpetuate that negativity. Some might refer to it as an elemental, a spirit that was never corporeal and essentially exists solely as a construct.

In discussing its influence on this particular case, look at it like this: You're a spirit that has reigned over this particular spot for millennia. You feed on the negative. Along comes this family, the Bordens, who are already at odds with one another. They fight about money; they fight about position; and they fight because sometimes that's just what happens when you spend too long living with the same people. Either way it's negative, and it's whetting your appetite. You decide to interject a little and influence the situation a bit, just to see how far you can make it—like someone piling food onto their plate at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Even though you could always just get another plate, you want to see just how high you can stack this particular one. It's almost become sport.

Eventually, the situation results into two brutal murders, and your hunger is satiated for about one hundred or so years. You take a long nap while more loving residents live in the house, but when it is opened to the public and people start mentioning murder again, you awaken. That hunger is rising in
your belly. Every day, people are coming in and talking about murder and other terrible acts that may have attributed to it, and paying credence to that negativity feeds you again. You're not getting the one-time plate piled to the ceiling as you did before but a constant stream of nibbles, like a slave feeding grapes to Caesar.

The physical presence of such a creature has been speculated for the past few years. One potential sign, which I have experienced for myself, is the rotting garbage smell that is frequently reported in the basement. Demonic and other negative entities are said to give off such unclean and offensive odors.

There is also the strength of force exhibited when the spirits of the house get physical. While it's possible for formerly human spirits to possess such strength, it's rare. Usually that type of power is held by something much darker.

Many investigators coming in with their paranormal equipment, especially Frank's Box-type devices, feature voices of anger and fear. Christopher Moon, a researcher who has combined Sumption's designs with modifications given to him by Thomas Edison from the Other Side, has pieced together through his use of the Telephone to the Dead a rather interesting back story to this tale, one that involves an incestuous relationship between Lizzie and her father that resulted in pregnancies and subsequent abortions performed in the secrecy of the basement by Dr. Seabury Bowen from across the street, the aborted fetus buried beneath the wash basin that Lizzie may have used to wash herself of the blood had she indeed committed the murders of her father and stepmother.

The incest story has always bubbled just below the surface of this tragedy, even since 1892, but it was often relegated as just one theory. However, it has gained steam in recent years, until Faye Musselman made her shocking revelation on my radio show.

According to Musselman, she spent the past two years developing a friendship with direct descendent of Henry Augustus Gardner, a relative of the Bordens through marriage and patriarch of the family in Swansea that was very close to Emma and, for a time, Lizzie as well. Through this friendship, Musselman found out that this descendent had inherited some of Emma Borden's belongings, including letters. Among those letters was one written by Orrin Gardner, son of Henry Augustus, in which he made reference to Lizzie being sexually abused by Andrew, and that most of the Gardners, and even Emma, knew it was happening.

In fact, Musselman believes tight circles within the Fall River elite may have also known, but that it was just something that wasn't spoken about.

If the sexual abuse was true, it would explain the brutality and “overkill” of the murders—nineteen blows to the head of Abby, and ten to Andrew. The passion that must have been behind the murders clearly goes beyond a business enemy of Andrew's or even an intruder, and it indicates that not only did the assailant know the couple, but they also felt wronged by them. It's possible that it's because Andrew did terrible things to Lizzie, and Abby stood by and let it happen. Lizzie might have put up with it as long as she could or could have done so even longer, but when she found out the property she desired was being given to her stepmother instead, it triggered her murderous rage.

It is all speculation, of course, but plausible—especially if that nasty thing in the basement was pulling the strings. Could it have manipulated Andrew into committing that incest? Could it have whispered into Lizzie's ear and driven her to kill? Or did it even have to?

Musselman doesn't necessarily buy into this theory, but she does have an interesting observation about Lizzie Borden's life that could suggest the influence of something sinister. Before the murders, Lizzie was full of hatred and resentment, living a cold life and desiring something better. There is even a legend that after being bothered by a stray cat that Abby had taken in, Lizzie took it into the basement and chopped its head off with an ax. Yet the Lizzie who emerged after her acquittal was a quiet person who gave generously to those in her life and made numerous sizeable donations to animal shelters and nursed sick animals back to health in her beloved Maplecroft home up on the hill.