How the new owners of the Lizzie Borden House are keeping the mystery alive

WPRI 12 News reporter Kate Walsh visited the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River in August 2021, shortly after the property became part of US Ghost Adventures, a company that runs ghost tours in dozens of cities. The report aired the day before the 129th anniversary of the killings of Andrew and Abby Borden on 4 August 1892.

Walsh takes a guided tour of the house, kept to look as it might have in the 1890s, as the guide challenges the famous rhyme – correcting the number of blows and saying it was written after the murders by a local man who wanted attention. An overnight guest describes doors closing and whispering she cannot make out, and new manager Jared Robinson explains plans for ghost hunts three times a week, a mile-long walking tour past the sites of Fall River’s mill fires, and events such as dinner parties and movie nights.

This is a news report about a business as much as a house. The guide’s line – that the case keeps attracting people because every answer raises more questions – is the honest core of the attraction. The ghost experiences described are personal impressions, and no hauntings are recorded from the decades when the house was an ordinary private home.

Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted in June 1893, no one else was ever charged, and the murders remain officially unsolved. Andrew and Abby Borden were real victims of a brutal crime, which is worth remembering amid the ghost-hunting fun.