The 1892 crime scene you can tour by day and book overnight — trial record first, “most haunted house” branding second
On the morning of 4 August 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and his second wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, were killed with a hatchet in their house at 92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts (today 230 Second Street). Andrew’s younger daughter, Lizzie Andrew Borden, was arrested, tried in New Bedford in June 1893, and acquitted. No one else was ever charged. The house still stands. It operates as an inn and museum: daytime house tours through the rooms, evening ghost products, and overnight stays in named bedrooms.
Ghosthound’s interest is the same rule we use on burying grounds: documented history and folklore / commercial haunt narrative are different files. The murders, inquest, and trial are among the best-documented American domestic homicides of the nineteenth century. The skip-rope rhyme, the ghost-hunt add-ons, and “America’s most haunted house” are later layers. Both can be visited. They should not be fused.
Plan your visit
Address: 230 Second Street, Fall River, MA 02721
Web: lizzie-borden.com (book tours and rooms here)
Access: This is not a free walk-through. The operator runs timed house tours (currently advertised 10 a.m.–4 p.m. daily, about 90 minutes, all rooms), plus separate ghost hunts (first floor and basement), an outdoor ghost walking tour of Fall River, and an Oak Grove Cemetery tour. Overnight lodging: two suites and four rooms. The property lists itself open daily into the evening for those products. Confirm current hours and what your ticket actually includes.
Cost: Tours and rooms are charged. Breakfast with a stay is extra on the current menu. Prices move — use the official booker.
Nearby, and better for primary sources: the Fall River Historical Society (451 Rock Street) holds major Borden collections. As of 2026 the museum/archive is closed for a building project (reopening announced for spring 2027). Check fallriverhistorical.org before you plan a research day.
Do not: show up after midnight expecting to wander the house because a blog called it haunted. You are a paying guest in a working inn, or you are not inside.
History: 4 August 1892 and the trial
The Bordens were a Fall River family of property. Andrew, about 70, was a retired undertaker and investor; Abby, 64, was his second wife. Adult daughters Emma and Lizzie still lived in the house. The Irish maid Bridget Sullivan (the family called her Maggie) slept on the third floor. Uncle John Morse had stayed overnight in the guest room.
The sequence, as reconstructed from inquest and trial testimony, is grimly domestic. Abby was struck repeatedly in the guest bedroom upstairs — the room Morse had used — sometime in the mid-morning. Andrew, who had gone out and returned, was killed on the sitting-room sofa downstairs, his face destroyed. Lizzie alerted Bridget. There was no sign of a successful burglary that satisfied the police. A hatchet head in the basement became the state’s preferred weapon. The famous rhyme (“Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks…”) is playground folklore, not the autopsy. Abby’s wounds were fewer than forty; Andrew’s were fewer still. Repeat the rhyme as culture if you want. Do not file it as a wound count.
Lizzie was charged. The 1893 trial in New Bedford was a national spectacle: no blood on her clothes that the state could make stick, disputed timeline, class and gender politics in a mill city, a jury that took a little over an hour to acquit. She returned to Fall River, bought a house she called Maplecroft on French Street, and lived there until 1927. The Second Street house passed through later owners and, in the late twentieth century, became the commercial historic site it is now.
What remains honestly unsolved is who delivered the blows. Acquittal is not the same as an identified killer. Treat “Lizzie did it” and “Lizzie was framed” as hypotheses with passionate constituencies, not as closed forensic findings.
Rooms that match the record
If you take the house tour — the product that walks every room and is the one to book if you care about the case — keep the 1892 map in your head:
- Sitting room / sofa — where Andrew was found. This is the core crime-scene stop.
- Morse (Murder) Room — the upstairs guest room where Abby was killed; Morse had slept there the night before. The inn now rents it.
- Andrew & Abby suite — their bedroom and Abby’s former sewing room (now a second bedroom in the suite).
- Lizzie & Emma suite — the sisters’ second-floor rooms.
- Bridget Sullivan Room — third-floor maid’s room. Bridget and Lizzie were the two people known to be on the property when both deaths occurred; that fact is why her room is on every serious tour, not because a ghost “prefers” the attic.
- Andrew Jennings / Hosea Knowlton rooms — third-floor lodging named for defense counsel and the district attorney. Interpretive naming, not 1892 bedrooms.
The inn will also sell you breakfast that gestures at the Bordens’ last morning (they skip the mutton, by their own copy). That is hospitality, not evidence.
Ghost stories and paranormal claims
Labeled lore, much of it sold on-site. The official site calls the house “America’s Most Haunted House” and “historically haunted,” and it runs ghost hunts, ghost tours, and overnight stays aimed at people who want phenomena. Guest and tour-script claims commonly include:
- Footsteps, voices, and doors in empty halls.
- Apparitions associated with Abby (guest room), Andrew (downstairs), children, or a maid figure.
- Personal “touched / watched” reports from overnight guests, especially in the murder room and Lizzie’s room.
Some overnight guests — including recent public reviews — report a beautiful historic house and no haunt sensation at all. That split is typical of a site whose business model rewards the ghost story. It does not disprove anyone’s night. It does mean you should not treat the marketing slogan as a measurement.
If you investigate: book a listed ghost hunt or a room, stay in public/paid space, and keep the 1892 trial file in a different notebook from the 2 a.m. recorder. Do not harass staff with demands to “open the crime scene after closing.” They are innkeepers.
Field notes
- Primary target for history: the house tour; then, when it is open, the Fall River Historical Society’s Borden collections. Read a trial summary from a historian, not only the tour script.
- Primary target for lore: a paid ghost hunt or overnight, labeled as such. The outdoor Fall River ghost walk is city folklore, not the 1892 interior.
- Oak Grove Cemetery: Andrew, Abby, and later Lizzie are associated with Oak Grove in Fall River. The house operator now sells a guided cemetery tour. Cemetery etiquette applies — daylight, paths, no souvenirs from graves.
- Etiquette: other guests are sleeping; neighbors live on Second Street. This is a residential block that happens to hold a famous crime scene.
Hours, which rooms are on which ticket, and event calendars change (including “murderversary” programming each August). Confirm on lizzie-borden.com.
Related reading
- The Field Investigator’s Handbook — keep method and true-crime tourism apart.
- Ghosthound field resources
- Fall River Historical Society — Lizzie Borden collections
Tags: Massachusetts, Fall River, True Crime, B&B, Haunted Places, History
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