Читать книгу Ghosthunting Southern New England - Andrew Lake - Страница 11

ON AUGUST 4, 1892, the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, became the center of media attention when the bodies of Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found brutally murdered in their home at 92 Second Street. It is believed that the killer used a hatchet to mutilate the heads of both victims. Investigators concluded that Mrs. Borden was attacked from behind in an upstairs bedroom, and Andrew was assaulted a short time later while he was taking an afternoon nap on a sofa downstairs. Mr. Borden’s youngest daughter from a previous marriage, Lizzie, told the authorities she had discovered the ghastly crime scene after returning from the barn, which was located in back of the house. The police found discrepancies in her story and arrested Lizzie for the murders. Even though a large majority in the community felt that she was guilty, Miss Borden was acquitted a year later by a jury of twelve men. The Borden case has since become the second-most-infamous, unsolved murder mystery of the Victorian era, next to London’s notorious Jack the Ripper.

The Borden home stands today as the only witness to the horrible crimes perpetrated within its walls. For more than one hundred years, theories and allegations about the Bordens and their way of life have led many researchers to reexamine the case in a nearly obsessive attempt to solve these murders. A myriad of books, magazines, newspaper articles, and documentaries have presented a number of different theories as to the identity and motives of the person, or persons, responsible for the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Borden. It seems more than likely the world will never really know exactly what happened on that warm summer day and why.

Lizzie Borden and her sister, Emma, left their family home after the trial and moved into a new, modern house on French Street, which they named Maplecroft. Lizzie lived the life of a spinster and died from pneumonia at the age of sixty-seven. She was buried in the family plot in the city’s Oak Grove Cemetery. The house on Second Street changed ownership a few times after the Borden sisters’ departure. In 1948 the property was purchased by the McGinn family. It remained their private home until 1994, when Mrs. McGinn passed away. Her granddaughter, Martha McGinn, bought the house with her partner, Ron Evans, and they had the place converted into a bed-and-breakfast, which opened for business in 1996. The McGinn family had experienced paranormal activity in the old house throughout the time it was their family home, but Martha’s and Ron’s intent was to let the story of Lizzie Borden be the draw for their novel B&B. However, over the eight years in which they ran the place, the ghosts did make themselves known to the staff and guests. The word got out; the old Borden place is haunted.

Lee-Ann Wilbur and her partner, Donald Woods, bought the Lizzie Borden Bed-and-Breakfast/Museum in June, 2004. Lee-Ann had heard stories about the place being haunted, but didn’t let it bother her. It only took about a week in the house before she had her first unnerving encounter. Lee-Ann went downstairs to the basement and as she stepped off the bottom step, she walked into an intense cold spot. The rest of the cellar felt as warm as the June day, but that one spot was horribly cold. As Lee-Ann stood there trying to make sense of the isolated patch of cold air, she felt the sensation of someone running a finger down her back. That was enough to make her leave the basement for the rest of the day.

The basement does have its share of creepy stories. The dry sink in which Lizzie may have washed off the blood evidence is located in a niche below the kitchen. Long before Andrew and Abby were murdered, Lizzie is said to have chopped off the head of her stepmother’s cat on a wooden table that the Bordens’ kept in the basement as a butcher’s block. Abby’s cat is believed to haunt the house. Some guests of the B&B have made comments at breakfast about a cat that jumped up on their bed in the middle of the night. A photograph taken in the kitchen appears to have captured the cat’s ghost, peering around the side of the stove. A shadowy figure has also been seen in the basement, darting quickly out of sight. One witness said it had a female form.

The most impressive tale from the basement has to be the night that four of my friends and colleagues, Chris Balzano, Matt Moniz, Jeff Belanger, and Tim Weisberg, all heard the unmistakable sound of children running and laughing on the first floor above them. The doors were locked, and they were the only people in the house that night. When the four of them went to investigate, they could find no one. Three children were drowned by their mother years ago on the property next door. Perhaps their ghosts visit the house from time to time. Lee-Ann told me that she has caught glimpses of shadow figures all throughout the house. One night in particular, she had fallen asleep on the couch in the front parlor.

Lizzie Borden

There were no guests in the house that night, so she slept soundly until about three o’clock in the morning when she awoke to the sound of taxicab drivers talking outside on the street. As she became aware of her surroundings and the time, she noticed that the light bulbs on the chandelier were glowing dimmer and dimmer. The bulbs then went out completely. At that very moment, she noticed a female figure in a long dress, standing at the foot of the front hall stairs. Before Lee-Ann could react, the figure moved quickly up the stairs to the second floor without making a sound. “I grabbed my blanket and went outside to sleep in my car,” said Lee-Ann. As she went out the back door she told the ghost, “You win, I’m out of here!”

Lizzie Borden’s sawing machine

Matt Moniz has been investigating the paranormal for more than twenty-five years. He works as a chemist by day and acts as the science advisor for Spooky Southcoast Radio. Lee-Ann Wilbur notifies him whenever anything strange happens in the house. She also has Matt conduct investigations for guests who are visiting specifically to hunt for ghosts. In 2008 he was attending a friend’s birthday celebration that is held every year at Lizzie Borden’s. Besides his friend and her family, there were three other guests from California. The group was all gathered in the front parlor, listening to Matt recount the whole history of the house, the deaths, and the ghostly activity. The parlor, like all the rooms in the house, is furnished and decorated much as it would have been at the time of the murders, based on crime scene photographs. Moniz was sitting in a high-backed chair placed at a ninety-degree angle to a short sofa, where his friend was sitting. Between them, to the right of the chair, stood a small table. On this table, there was an eight-by-ten photograph of Second Street as it looked in the late nineteenth-century. The picture was under glass, in a heavy wooden frame and displayed on an ornate, metal stand. As Matt explained to his audience the changes that have occurred to the neighborhood over the years, he passed the photograph around to illustrate his point. When the picture was returned to him, he placed it carefully back on the metal stand. Before Moniz could finish his next sentence, the photograph and its stand lifted off the table. The heavy stand fell to the floor next to Matt’s chair, but the picture held in the air for a brief instant before spinning out into the room. As the picture hit the floor, it rolled on the corners of its frame in a semi-circle before coming to a complete stop. Being the fearless paranormal investigator and scientist that he is, Moniz picked the picture and stand up off the floor, put them back together on the small table and enthusiastically requested, “Do it again!” With that, everyone, except his friend, fled the room in a slight panic.

The sounds of people walking around and talking on the second floor have been heard quite often. I have heard footsteps and banging coming from the upstairs during two visits to the house. Guests have told Lee-Ann and her staff that they were kept awake by the sound of someone walking around during the night. Another complaint is having their blankets pulled off or someone touching them while they were in bed. When I asked Lee-Ann to tell me about the scariest story told to her by an overnight guest, she answered, “I’ve had a few guests leave in the middle of the night, so I never do get their stories.”

The attic on the third floor contains three comfortable guest rooms. All three of these rooms have had startling activity. Shortly after purchasing the property, Lee-Ann decided that she would spend the night on the third floor. She picked Bridget’s room to sleep in. Bridget was the Bordens’ live-in maid. She did not pass away in the house, but some paranormal investigators have suggested that she may haunt the house in periods of visitation, due to guilt felt over the murders. An old rocking chair sits in a corner of this room. Lee-Ann told me that she slept very well through the night, but when she woke up, the rocking chair was alongside the bed. It was as if someone had sat vigil over her while she slept.

The next room on the third floor is the Andrew Jennings room. It contains Lizzie Borden’s own sewing machine. A banging sound has been traced to this room, and the apparent source is the cast-iron foot pedal banging against the sewing machine’s wooden base. I once left a video camera running in the Hosea Knowlton room, which is next to the Jennings room. When I reviewed the video the next day, I found that the microphone had recorded a loud “thump, thump, thump” sound. When Matt Moniz listened to the recording, he smiled and said, “I’ve heard that sound before. It’s Lizzie’s sewing machine in the next room.” Matt told me he traced the thumping sound one night to the Andrew Jennings room and saw the pedal fall against the wood as he entered the room.

The other strange thing I found on my video recording was the video itself. I had set my camera on a wooden chest in a corner of the Hosea Knowlton room. I picked this spot because Moniz and the paranormal group, Whaling City Ghosts, had placed a video camera in the very same spot on a previous investigation and it moved twice. The second time it moved, there were witnesses in the room looking directly at the camera. No one was near it. The video camera moved seemingly by invisible hands. My video camera didn’t physically move, but the video image kept shifting around. The manufacturers of the camera told me over the phone that they could give me no explanation for how this could happen.