by Tim Weisberg
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.
Shadows of Something Sinister
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.
So What Exactly Is Going On?
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 te
n 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.
Some may suggest that the burden of being a Borden was alleviated, and Lizzie could live freely as herself. Others might say she had a guilty conscience about getting away with murder and sought to live a life that might earn her a spot in heaven despite the crime.
Personally, I think she finally broke free of whatever was controlling her back at 92 Second Street. But when she passed away in 1927, it took her once again and brought her back to that very location, where she is trapped forever with the other tormented spirits that can’t escape its grasp.
It’s just a theory, of course. But just in case, when you do spend the night at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, Lee-ann will be happy to provide you with a nightlight in your room at no extra cost.
EPILOGUE
Two men are in a bar and an argument breaks out. It’s about something irrelevant, but in the heat of the moment, one man shoots the other. The man dies, the other goes to jail, and the night becomes part of the lore of the bar. Years pass, and shot glasses begin to move in the quiet of closing time as the bartender is cleaning up. Sometimes a shot is heard that shakes the bar but has no source. The place has become haunted, and if you go into the bar and ask staff members about it, they are more than happy to share their experiences. Just pull up a chair, order a few drinks over the course of the night, and they’ll tell you all about it.
That’s the way it goes in the paranormal world today. The haunted present is born of the traumatic past, and hauntings exist in little pockets with colorful back stories, and the ghosts can always be held at arm’s length because you probably will not see or hear anything. But the story still gives you chills—or maybe it was the drink.
The SouthCoast is not like that. There are spots where you can stay at a haunted bed and breakfast or get some pub grub while you hear stories of creaks and dark figures, but the haunted history of this little section of Massachusetts is something more, something deeper where researchers are left wondering, why? More often they are left pondering what it all means. The ghosts are not easy here. Back story does not give you solid possibility, but it gives you context.
History has made it this way. The SouthCoast has long been an area that is a bit off, even back to the days when Wampanoags sold off tracts of land that were sketchy anyway. The other side is a reality here, held deep in the DNA of its citizens and worn like scars in their memories, like where they were during the blizzard of ’78. It’s passed down easily alongside stories of Johnny Appleseed and John Henry, as well as Benjamin Church and Lizzie Borden; the truth is always second fiddle to the truth of the idea.
I was speaking with Tim one night at a town meeting in Freetown while doing research for a book. I asked the audience if anyone had heard of a Pukwudgie, a troll-like legend that, at the time, was a bit obscure. More than half the audience raised their hands. These were not people in seats to hear about ghosts and monsters. This was a meeting of the historical society who had come to discuss budgets and upcoming events, and most were easily in their sixties.
The supernatural and the paranormal were just part of the complexion of the people.
The spooks just change their face from time to time. There is more than four hundred years of history in the SouthCoast, plenty of time for phantom carriages to become phantom cars, and story to be replaced by story. It is rare in this country to have so many strong cultures imprint themselves on a place, and each has their experience explained partly by the history already there and partly by their own people’s slant. Paranormal investigators and ghost hunters can come by with equipment and technology, taking measurements and gathering evidence, but the ghosts were there long before them and will be around when most have moved on to other interests.
There is no separation from paranormal experience and history in the SouthCoast, and delving into the unusual there is more a study in anthropology than parapsychology. Read the books, visit the websites and watch the documentaries. Maybe even visit the sites; but understand you are only getting part of the story. The other part lies in the heart of the people who live here. Don’t be discouraged, though. Go to the center of any of these towns, stand on a street corner or under a tree, and ask the first person you see if they know any good ghost stories. They’ll smile, and you’ll quickly realize you have just become part of the tale.
Christopher Balzano
Author of Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State
Forest, Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle and Picture Yourself Ghost Hunting
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Balzano, Christopher. Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Books, 2007.
———. Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Books, 2008.
———. Picture Yourself Ghost Hunting. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2008.
Belanger, Jeff. Picture Yourself Legend Tripping. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2010.
———. Weird Massachusetts. Toronto, ON: Sterling Publishing, 2008.
DeMello, Thomas, and Thomas Nickerson. Our Demons, Our Forefathers: Ghostly Encounters in a Sleepy New England Town. N.p.: AuthorHouse, 2006.
Kent, David. The Lizzie Borden Sourcebook. Boston: Branden Books, 1992.
Lovell, Daisy. Glimpses of Early Wareham. Wareham, MA: Wareham Historical Society, 1970.
Rehak, David. Did Lizzie Borden ‘Axe’ For It? N.p.: Angel Dust Publishing, 2008.
Rider, Raymond A. Life and Times in Wareham over 200 Years 1739–1939. Wareham, MA: Wareham Historical Society, 1989.
Robinson, Charles Turek. The New England Ghost Files. North Attleborough MA: Covered Bridge Press, 1994.
PERIODICALS AND PAPERS
Albernaz, Ami. “Japanese Men, Spinner Publications Collaborate on Manjiro Nakahama Story.” Standard-Times, May 25, 2003.
Aubut, Rebecca. “Fact or Fiction? The Search for the Truth Behind Fairhaven’s Haunted Library.” October 25, 2005. Southcoast247.com, http://www.southcoast247.com.
Barnes, Jennette. “313-year-old Middleboro Tavern Closes Abruptly.” Standard-Times, January 11, 2004.
———. “Captive Memories: Author Recalls Childhood as Tuberculosis Patient at Lakeville State Hospital.” Standard-Times, June 22, 2004.
Boston Daily Globe. “Glen Charlie.” December 3, 1885.
Guille, Sarah, and Robert Lovinger. “VIP, RIP: A Brief Tour of the Final Resting Places of Some Famous, Infamous and Just Plain Interesting People of SouthCoast’s Past.” Standard-Times, May 30, 1999.
Massachusetts Historical Commission.
Massachusetts Historical Commission Reconnaissance Survey Town Report: WAREHAM. Report. Southeast Massachusetts, 1981.
Some Account of the Vampires of Onset, Past and Present. Boston: Press of S. Woodbury and Company, 1892.
WEBSITES
American Heritage. http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1992/4/1992_4_66.shtml.
Biographical Sketch of John Gage. http://files.usgwarchives.org/il/montgomery/bios/johngage.txt.
A Chronological History of New Bedford. http://www.newbedford.com/chrono.html.
Fairhaven, Massachusetts. http://www.fairhaven.net
Fort Phoenix, Fairhaven, Massachusetts. http://fort-phoenix.blogspot.com.
Friends of Historic Preservation, Freetown, Massachusetts. http://www.assonetriver.com/preservation.
Ghostvillage. http://www.ghostvillage.com.
Greenville Paranormal Reasearch. http://www.greenvilleparanormal.com.
Haunted Lakeville. http://www.hauntedlakeville.com.
Haunted Places Index-Massachusetts. http://www.theshadowlands.net/places/Massachusetts.
The Kinsale Inn. http://www.kinsaleinn.com.
Lizzie Andrew Borden Virtual Museum and Library. http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com.
Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast. http://www.lizzie-borden.com.
Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads. http://www.masscrossroads.com.