A Visit to Lizzie Borden's House

Photo: Lizzie Borden's house--the murder house, not Maplecroft, where she later moved--at 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA as it looked in 1892.  From Lizzie Borden's Wikipedia page.
 

Photo: Lizzie Borden's actual books, in the Lizzie Borden house.  The 9th one from the left--the thick blue one, is titled When Ghost Meets Ghost.  This photo, and all the following photos, were taken by me in the Lizzie Borden house.  Please note: Out of respect for the proprietors of the Lizzie Borden House, I do not show any of the meatier (reads: gruesome, but better to draw in blog readers) pics that are available there (and on my phone's camera).  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a cool thing going on over there, and I don't want to rain on their parade, so you'll have to take the tour (just $15 per person for 50 minutes) to see the pics I speak of here, and in the blog below.  Many of the pics you'll see in this entry are ones I took at the Borden House, but are also popular pics of this case, and are commonly found online.


Recently (on Lizzie's birthday, July 19th, as it turned out; 1 in 365 chance there) I went to Lizzie Borden's house, just half an hour away from my own house, just to have a look-see.  I'm planning to write a novel (one of many planned; if I had world enough, and time) about the murder and trial, told from the POV of the maid, who moved away from the house on that fateful day, and died in Montana.

The house is now a bed and breakfast, and it gives tours through the day.  The tour guide (who seemed honestly surprised that our tour took about an hour) through the house was the daughter of the guy who now owns the place.  She did a great job, and clearly likes what she's doing.  How many high school seniors can say that they work at a (possibly) real haunted house (though for the record I didn't get any creepy vibes), and that they talk to people about a famous murder that, at the time, was called "The Crime of the Century" over 100 years before O.J.?  Well, she can.  (And she said a ghost pulled her earlobe there when she was a kid, and that other guests report strange things, including Abby Borden's ghost saying nice, motherly things).  She was very knowledgeable about her subject matter (though she may have fudged a little about the maid's infamous last words--that weren't; I'll explain later, at the end of this blog entry), very friendly and energetic, and very interested in Fall River in general.  She has a career as an actress or guide, but she said she was going to college to be a biologist.

I highly recommend the tour.  You can just show up like I did, and (because they were running late) go right on the tour without any waiting.  It's only $15 a person, and you can take all the pics and all the notes you want.  No film, though, I think.  But you can ask.  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a nifty catchphrase on the page: "Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum: Where Everyone Is Treated Like Family."  Well, I hope not!

Anyway, it's a well-maintained place with some of the real house stuff, though most of the things in there now were time-accurate pieces bought at auctions, etc.  (But the couch Mr. Borden was murdered on, the one you see in all the online pics, is the exact one that is still in the house.  If you look at the pics [too gruesome to put here], you'll see why--Who could get all that stuff out in 1892?)  I think the step-mother's bed is the same, but I could be wrong.  Unfortunately, the real things fell into neglect, as Lizzie was jailed for a long time after the murder, and the sister and maid moved away, and everything just kind of went to hell.  After the acquittal, they took whatever they wanted with them (Lizzie went to Maplecroft, up the street, which actually looks creepier than the Lizzie Borden house does today) and the rest went into storage.  What happened to all that 1892 stuff after that is anybody's guess.

The Lizzie Borden House was bought by people, and then again, and again...the current owner has really spiffed the place up for his business (the place and tour aren't as business-y as the website is), and the house itself is really well-cared for.  The tour guide was very honest about the things in the house--but as a writer, I really just needed to see the house, to stage what happened in there in my mind.  For example, how else would I have known that there aren't any hallways in the place at all?  One door opens into a room, and then another does the same, and so on.  No hallways with rooms off of them; no privacy at all, one would think.  And, as the informative and energetic guide pointed out, if you compare some of Lizzie's testimony with the layout of the house, you can see that she was lying.  For example, she said that she was in the dining room, ironing, and didn't hear the step-mother or her father being murdered.  But if you stand in the room she said she'd been in, you could see this would not be possible.  It's amazing how close everything is in the house.

So, if you're in the area, go see the Lizzie Borden House.  I also went to see Maplecroft, where she moved later.  (Just a few minutes away, the house is nothing to be named.  Only Newport mansions were named back then, and this place is a far cry from that, and even more so today.  As I said, it looks like it would be more haunted than the murder house does.  It's possible that she was putting on airs.)  I also went to see the cemetery where all of the Bordens are buried; that's just up the street in a huge cemetery on the peninsula.  The cemetery's main road has small white arrows pointing to the exact spot the Bordens are interred so that nobody gets lost and / or defaces any other gravestones--like people have at poor Mercy Brown's grave.

Blogs will follow about the murder house, Maplecroft, Fall River, and the cemetery.  Until then, a few pics:

This is a picture of the Borden house and surrounding homes as they would've been in 1892.  Today, only the Borden house is left.  It's a busy street now--as it was then--but there are newer homes, businesses, apartment houses, a cathedral.  I know it's 122 years later, but it's still shocking how much things change.

This is the room where Andrew Borden was killed.  The actual couch he was killed on is to the left in this pic.  Here it is, closer up:

And here's the bed beside which Abby Borden was killed.  The famous picture of her kneeling beside the bed was taken after her body had been moved for the picture.  Initially, she'd been trying to get under the bed, her arms were outstretched, and her skirt had ridden up.  The first doctor on the scene moved her body to a more "lady-like" position.

There are some very gruesome pics indeed I could have shown here, but out of respect for the proprietors of the Borden House, not to mention of the dead, I won't do so here.  You'll have to go to the Borden House (again, which I highly recommend) to see them; or, if you're interested in this stuff, you've probably already seen the more hideous and infamous pics online.  The one above is a popular pic.  But at the House you can see a pic of what Abby's head--and the huge thick puddle of blood--looked like.  The House has a picture of a camera taking a picture from the other side of the bed, facing the mirror / dresser you can see in this photo, to the upper left.  Reflected in the mirror is an 1892 camera taking the picture--and it is very bloody and gory.  If you're into this kind of thing, you've probably seen the online pic of Andrew Borden's devastated face and skull, as he'd lay on that aforementioned couch, his head on his folded coat, which he used as a pillow.  Very creepy, because it's taken from a short distance, and there are shadows, yet you can still see the damage.  There's another one at the Lizzie Borden House that I hadn't seen: the autopsy shot of him lying on an 1892 gurney at the Borden home, just hours after he died.  (A second autopsy was done later, after his funeral, at the Oak Grove Cemetery where he, his wives and his daughters are now buried.)  This is one of the most gruesome I've ever seen, which is saying something.  Creepiest thing is that, although the face is almost completely obliterated, you can see hair and ears that look perfectly normal.

To give you a sanitized feel for it all, here are their fake--but historically accurate--skulls.  His on the left, hers on the right.  (Their real skulls were infamously separated from their bodies and used as visual aids at the trial--and then put back with their bodies, in the wrong places!)  Notice the damage done on his skull on the side, as that would be the side facing up while he was asleep on the couch, facing out.  Her damage was done on the back and right side, as she'd been facing away at the time of the first blows, and Lizzie was right-handed.  Supposedly Abby then turned to the side, either in stunned surprise, or because she was folding something on the bed, and that's why much of the damage is there as well.

Well, that's it for now.  More of this morbid stuff to come, including paragraphs and pics of Lizzie's murder house and her later abode, at Maplecroft, as well as of the people involved and of their final resting place.

Oh, yeah, the maid.  So it's in the 1940s now, and Bridget Sullivan, the maid, lives in Montana.  As the story goes, she gets really sick with pneumonia and thinks she's dying.  She sends word to a friend to come see her before she dies because she has something very important to say.  (Why she couldn't just call this person is a mystery, since by the 40s phones were commonplace.)  Anyway, this friend travels to Montana, but by the time the friend gets there, Bridget has recovered and doesn't say anything about the murder.  Then she dies four or five years later, never having said anything about what she was going to say when she was sick.

This is, by the way, where my planned novel starts.  Flashbacks, then it bookends with her getting better--and then dying, never having said whatever it was she thought it had been really important to say.

Or...did she say something after all? 

Blog Tour--My Writing Process

Thanks to my friend Jane Wilson, I am participating in the Blog Tour, in which authors write about their writing process, and their writing, by answering the same four questions. Jane posted hers last week, March 3rd, at http://redroom.com/member/jane-wilson. Go check it out. And thanks, Jane, for asking me to blog my two cents' worth.

So, if you're silly curious enough to read four questions and answers about my writing process and my writing, here you go:

1. What am I working on?

My goodness, what am I not working on? I'm always working on multiple projects, which I used to think meant that I was super-creative. But now I think it means I'm not as focused and organized with my time and with my projects as I should be. I'd get more writing finished if I did one thing at a time. For the record, I do not encourage the multiple-project method, unless you are much more organized than I am, and you tend to finish a piece after a decent length of time.

Anyway, I'm finishing a thriller / mystery, titled (maybe), Mattress Girl, though I may stick with its (too) old title, Cursing the Darkness. (I'm sort of sick of that title now, but it fits the work very, very well. And Mattress Girl is not the main character.) Feel free to comment on which title you think sounds more interesting. This is maybe 80% done. A sequel (or prequel) is in minor stages as well. 

I'm also writing a short story, "Cribbage," about a father / son bonding memory, considered by the narrator after his father has passed. This has proven to be a little too close to home, and difficult to finish. 

I'm also working on a historical horror novel about a nasty, evil creature that took part in the plague in Rome and the Great Fire; in The Black Plague that killed a third of Europe (though I focus on the village of Eyam, England, which quarantined itself during the Plague and lost about 80% of its people); in the TB epidemic in New England from 1880-1895; and possibly in the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 and, if I'm really gutsy, in the AIDS Epidemic, circa early-to-mid 1980s. (Because that's what it was, and is, and I'm not sure, even 34 years later, that we've totally realized that as a society.) I'm actually about a third through this one, though it's in fragments. I speak of Book 1 of this project, which I expect to be a trilogy, at least. 

And did I mention I was drafting a novel told from the POV of the maid (who really existed) or of a servant (who really didn't) of Lizzie Borden, in 1892? And two memoirs?

I also write book reviews for an online mystery magazine. You can see why I do not suggest this juggling-writing method.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I try to turn each genre on its head, or to at least introduce something new to it. I'm writing Cursing the Darkness because I've been reading mystery, and noir, and detective novels, and combinations of those, since my early teens. The darkness, the loneliness, the lone man standing on his own (but not being as alone as he thinks he is) against the evils and ills of his society, of his world--all of that resonates with me. I feel I often do much the same thing, though I'm not a detective. I suspect, though, that I could be a good one, but I wouldn't be able to work in a constrictive environment, like a police force. I wouldn't be able to stand the politics, the red tape, looking in the faces of murderers and abusers and rapists and not being able to beat the hell out of them, the frustration of having to let go of an unsolved case because of the next case...

The memoirs I write because I have something very specific to say in them; to be honest, they're in such an infancy that I don't know how they'll be different yet. Except for its main subject, of course...

The short story in general is a form I like a lot. It's immediately gratifying for the author, in the sense that they're finished faster than a novel, and the editor's Yes or No comes back quicker than an agent's or publisher's does. Mine are different, I think, because I focus on an aspect of the story's genre, or themes, that are not as tread upon as are others. "Hide the Weird," for example, differed because it focused on the minute details of one potential death, one incident, and it ended with a "knowing" detail that was a little different, a little quirky. I like that about short stories, that you can focus on one thing, and turn it around, or amplify it...

The historical horror novel will be different because it takes a bit of the vampire trope (though it's not exactly a vampire, per se) and focuses more on the European vampire myths rather than the American neck-biter. (There's no neck-biting, for example.) These bad dudes are quite nasty because they're more life-drainers and spirit-suckers, like the original European and Asian ones were. They are not Victorian blood-sucking stand-ins for repressed sexual urges--if I can be so bold. And these are not things you'd want to have a romance with! No one gets lovey-dovey about these guys. It's not even an option. These are things you want to run away from, fast--if you can. That's difficult because they tend to hide in the footsteps of bigger catastrophes--like fires, and plagues, and viruses. But they also hide in the biases of the society's reaction towards these catastrophes--and that's another way this trilogy is different. How can you run from such a thing in Eyam, England, during the Plague, when the town's already quarantined? While people in New England in the 1880s and 1890s, for example, were dropping from consumption, a few unfortunate folks were succumbing to this demonic thing--which hid in the footsteps of the TB, and its way to kill even mirrored TB's symptoms. So that's different, too.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Whoops--I kind of answered that in the paragraph above. Though, actually, the real answer for this is because it interests me. A lot. I've got something to say, something to show, and I know I can do so in a different way than what's already been done--at all, or recently, or both. My characters tend to surprise me, which is always good, and I tend to surprise myself. I write some things and I think--Wow! I didn't know I was going to go there! I'm rarely in love with what I write, but it's a blessing when something comes out just right, and a little bit different. "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season" worked like that. Didn't even know it was going to come out that way, and say what it said, until it did. "Hide the Weird" was a little more planned in my head, but the ending was still a nice little twist / surprise for me. And so that's why I write what I do as well--to surprise myself, to complete something of my own unique creation that really works. It's like a mechanic making his own engine and liking how it purrs. It's rare for me, but it's blissful when it happens.

4. How does your writing process work?

Oh, Lord. Well, here's the nasty, evil truth, and I'm very ashamed to admit this, but...I don't have a writing process. At all. I don't write the same thing every day, or even consistently. I don't write at the same time every day, or even (what I feel is) consistently. I don't outline. I do listen to music, and I do draft. A lot. When I can. Whenever my job doesn't consume me; whenever I conquer my own fear, or frustration, or lack of focus, or whatever it is (Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance, which is as good a name for it as any) that prohibits me from sitting my butt down and working on one project consistently, at the same time every day, until it's done. This is maddening beyond belief; I would literally tear my hair out if I thought I could afford to lose any more of it. I do not advise my working method, if I can even call it that, for anybody. Sit your butt down and work on one thing (or one big thing and one smaller thing) at one time. Otherwise it'll all paralyze you like it often does me. It is a minor miracle that I've gotten as many projects done as I have, and that I've been published as often as I have. Every finished piece is a miracle baby--even the ones that don't sell. I'm proud of them all, in some way. They're all a piece of me, and they all came out hard.

Well, that's it. Thanks for stopping by! Next week, please check out the writing processes of these three good writers: