The B&B is real, this particular FAQ is not.
1. Which of you came up with the motto “Where everyone is treated like family”? Do you have a Tumblr? Could we get coffee?
2. I see that all rooms have wi-fi, which I appreciate. This is not a question.
3. You can rent the entire house for “family gatherings, wedding parties, corporate outings” for $1500 a night. Who has done this?
4. The murder occurred in 1892, which was 122 years ago. Do you think it’s too soon to be contemplating an ironic Lizzie Borden B&B sleepover? I think it probably is, I mean, this is a murder-house, and Abbie and Andrew Borden were real people. Like, it would be horrifying if someone turned, say, Ted Bundy’s house into a Bundy-themed B&B, but things must become appropriate at some point. Has that point been reached? Do you wonder about it? Obviously, you’ve decided just to embrace the kitsch factor and go for it, and there’s nothing more American than the concept of a Lizzie Borden B&B, I’m not questioning that choice, everyone is dead, it doesn’t really matter. If I were gruesomely murdered, I think I would get a kick out of my death site being eventually turned into a themed B&B with ghost cams. I don’t know. I’m going to think more about it before making a reservation. Do people ever back out of reservations because they decide it’s in poor taste?
5. Please rank these guest rooms in order of their haunted-ness:
a) Lizzie Borden Room
b) Emma Borden Room
c) John V. Morse Room
d) Andrew Borden Room
e) Abby Borden Room
f) Bridget Sullivan Room
g) Andrew Jennings Room
h) Hosea Knowlton Room
6. You appear to do a re-enactment of the murders every year on August 4th, and a prospective guest posted a comment hoping that her honeymoon could correspond with said event. Is…is that common?
7. Congratulations on the safe return of Max, the house cat who had been missing for a time. Does he seem changed, in any way? Is he exactly the same cat, or do you think he saw briefly beyond the veil of our human existence?
8. Do people more commonly see the ghost of Lizzie, or of the victims?
7. Did she do it?
8. Your decision to respond to guest inquiries with “what an Ax-cellent question!” does you credit, sir.
9. I see that there is a local medium available for guest seances. Does she have those milky eyes like the medium in The Others? Can one negotiate a different price for her to wear contacts that would give her milky eyes like the medium in The Others?
10. Is there any chance, however slim, that I might go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and find someone looking at me in the mirror?
11. No, really though, is this how we are to live?
Tags: bed and breakfast, ghosts, hotels, i want to go to there, lizzie borden
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I… what.
Look, I’m just really glad that Max is home.
Maybe this is horribly stick-in-the-mud of me, but I find this deeply disturbing and tacky. Yes, it was a long time ago, and it looks like it’s been done up quite nicely and all, but……this is too weird for me. (Edit: Not the Toast’s discussion of it! But the fact that this is A Thing.)
You are Canadian, so you know we have, like, SOMETHING going on at the Black Donnelly homestead, but…not like this, right?
I did know that! I find this all deeply weird. I think the difference is like…..the Donnelly thing is more like a Tragedy Museum (with creepy souvenirs), but this is like…..”LOL stay at the Murder House overnight!!! Stay in the murder bed!” And I think there’s a difference between staying in an old house/hotel/B&B where people have died because….that happens in old houses, and specifically seeking out a place where people died horribly expressly to….experience the ambiance? I think that’s it.
No, I’m with you. I find it quite disturbing.
Also on the Canadian hospitality/haunting tour is the Ottawa Jail Hostel. You get to sleep on the old Death Row! Walk where Patrick James Whelan was hung for the assassination of D’arcy McGee! For only $40 a night.
When I was living in Ottawa I knew people who were SUPER PSYCHED to stay there and I never really understood it. I…just……..well, you could stay there one night and then stay at the McGee household (which is now another B&B) the next night. Really come full circle.
And down the Google rabbit hole for Black Donnelly homestead; oh, and honeymooner in number six? Seriously, no; unless, of course, you’re looking to set the tone with murder and violent bloodshed (but, um….not recommended. That can always come later, just sayin’).
It’s the fact that they do reenactments that really tipped me over the edge of “this is disturbing.” I mean, murder tourism is unsettling in its own way, but I can understand people’s fascination with it in a sense. People who would never think to kill someone else in cold blood are curious about what makes someone do something like that. But… reenactments?
Looking forward to a stay at Alcatraz as well. See Al Capone’s cell! Re-enact the Birdman of Alcatraz and other favorite films.
And why stop there? There must be thousands of gruesome murder sites that an be re-purposed.
Oh, America- you continue to surprise me http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northam…
I loved visiting Alcatraz but really I spent most of my time taking pictures of rocks and birds. The parts that aren’t a terrifying prison are really rather lovely.
Is it awful of me that I kind of want to visit?
NOPE – in a way it is so tacky, in such bad taste that it has almost become performance art
Knowing what I know about the US, I would not be surprised if there were a Murder Museum here somewhere
On the one hand I’d be going because the whole Lizzie Borden thing utterly fascinates me. On the other I don’t want to go because ewwwww.
There is the Museum of Death. Let’s go to the website!
“The Museum of Death houses the world’s largest collection of serial murderer artwork, photos of the Charles Manson crime scenes, the guillotined severed head of the Blue Beard of Paris (Henri Landru), original crime scene and morgue photos from the grisly Black Dahlia murder, a body bag and coffin collection, replicas of full size execution devices, mortician and autopsy instruments, pet death taxidermy, and so much more! Also on display are videos of autopsies and serial killers, the Heaven’s Gate Cult recruiting video, and the infamous Traces (not Faces) of Death video, all real (not re-enacted) death footage.”
So there’s that.
I am in genuine confusion as to whether I want to embrace this as the essence of American hustling or be totally revolted or both.
Both, absolutely both.
If someone had turned Road Hill House into a b+b (one of the most famous victorian murders, Kate Summerscale did a book about it called the suspicions of Mr Whicher. Basically the toddler son of the owners was murdered by his half-sister) I’d probably visit it.
But I feel icky about murder tourism in general? These are fascinating and awful things that happened and I like learning about them, but treating them like, idk, tourist traps? But I’d probably still go, so I Am The Problem.
But then is it significantly different to the regular visiting of old jails and torture chambers I do, which are a regular common thing here, advertised as family trips? How different is it to visit a medieval prison where it is known people were tortured to death, as opposed to the site of a 200 year old domestic crime? Is it weirder to visit one over the other and what decides that?
I don’t know, these are things I think about as a person with a love of history, especially the darker parts, living in a country where most of our most famous buildings are famous because someone had the shit murdered out of them there.
At what historical point and what histprical circumstances turn it from murder tourism to interesting history? Are the people who do the Jack The Ripper tours weird?
Yeah – I feel less weird about historical murder than, say, murders that are still in living memory. But I am not really sure where to draw the line between harmless voyeurism/hustling and way too creepy.
For me, I think it’s the difference between the individual and the general. Once it’s a bit depersonalised by thousands of people having been kept there, killed there, etc, it’s (for me, anyway) vastly less squicky than thinking ‘I’m visiting a place where a woman (probably) murdered her family.
I real In Cold Blood and was absolutely horrified and really upset by that, too. I think it was the ‘this really happened to this specific actual person’ that does it for me.
But it really happened to specific actual people in these other places, too! If they were literate and survived you can even read their accounts.
An example, the castle in my home town was used as a prison for about 200 years before they finally built the newish one in the 1800’s. People carved stuff on the walls. There are death masks of people who were executed there. People wrote their own stories. The story of Maria Marten and The Red Barn, a horrible localish crime, becamse a play and a ghost legend. People visit the site of the barn. (it’s no longer there).
Norfolk is jsut SO FULL of murder and crimes and the sites where they happened are often tourist destinations and supposedly full of ghosts.
There is a pub called the Lollards Pit with a very graphic sign near the location where a load of heretics were burned during Mary’s reign (i think) Outside the pub there is a plaque with all their names.
I just struggle to navigate this ethical line. It is gross to make money out of suffering and murder, but at some point it just becomes history and I don’t know where that point is.
I think it’s the scale for me. I’m still regularly brought to a bit of a quivering mess when I watch who do you think you are, for instance, and find out about people’s grandparents dying in the concentration camps or having horrendous PTSD after the world wars etc. Of course it’s no better that it happened to hundreds or thousands of people than to one, but for me, the personalisation of it does change how it hits me.
Yeah, personalisation does make these things a bit weirder. There’s a difference between ‘oh, loads of people died here and it was awful and dreadful’ and ‘these individual people were brutally murdered and now people make money out of it’. Maybe not objectively, but there is in my head.
How is it different than visiting old prisons, or viewing the cells and torture devices in the Tower of London? Both are creepy. But why is it OK, my inner voice asks, to look at really old enactments of horrible things, but to view less old enactments as tacky? I then begin to wonder if I am being an elitist by thinking one is tacky and the other is acceptable. Like Nicole, I am torn. But my inner entrepreneur is wondering why there isn’t a super creepy Murder Theme Park already.
This is how Norwich Castle talks about its dungeon tours.
“Dungeon tours enable visitors to discover parts of the castle not open to the public. The tour descends deep below the castle to a maze of early medieval cellars used to incarcerate manacled prisoners in dreadful conditions long ago.
Hear extraordinary stories about prisoners. Learn about the history of crime and punishment. And see horrifying instruments of torture including a ducking stool, scold’s bridle and gibbet iron.
The tour also includes a sinister collection of Victorian death heads – plaster cast impressions of executed criminals, some locally hanged!”
I would go on that tour in a heartbeat. When we visited the Warrenton, Virginia Jail, they took us into the courtyard where the condemned prisoners were hanged. It was super creepy. But also instructional to see how bleak the conditions were, and how we treat prisoners in general hasn’t changed that much.
Abraham Lincoln’s hat and contents of his pockets are on display here in DC. Historical or tacky?
When I was a kid they had a bit where they put a replica scolds bridle on the noisest child
Trunchbull Dungeon Tours, Ltd.
i was often the noisiest child
I would probably have made an effort to be the noisiest child.
I went to a museum about serial killers in Italy where they recreated such places as Ed Gein’s house and John Wayne Gacy’s basement…that was sort of a Murder Theme Park in its way.
I…kind of love murder tourism?
But I think for me it really depends on the impact the murder had on the wider world. So I find plantations and concentration camps incredibly depressing and wouldn’t visit one unless I sure it was going to be an experience that clearly took into account how horrifying the locations are and existed sort of as a lets remember what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again kind of tone. And even then I might still be too uncomfortable and it certainly wouldn’t be a ‘fun’ experience. But that’s because these are locations where what happened within them had huge repercussions for the rest of the world that still last and affect people to this day (racism, anti-semitism, etc).
Whereas the Lizzie Borden murders were, I’m sure, very tragic for the family and the nearby residents at that time they don’t really have any affects on anyone living there today, beyond the tourist dollars they bring in. So I feel comfortable being like “ooh look at the crazy murder house” because while I’m sure it was very sad when it happen it most likely doesn’t have a huge negative impact on anyone today. I wouldn’t do it for a murder that happened more recently than 100 or so years ago though, just to make sure that most of the people affected are dead.
Both. Definitely both.
Go in the fall, I hear it’s lovely. And the rustling of the autumn leaves will drown out the screaming.
If I were to teach a class on American Hustling, (which is a great idea) I would include this B&B as an example.Making money on vulgar curiosity is what made PT Barnum his fortune.
Someone needs to create this class for an American Studies dept, STAT.
Where do ghost tours fit in with this? My city does them every fall and I kind of love that they go around talking about old buildings, regardless of the reason.
Ghost tours! My favorite thing. I have been on so many of them. I mean, I think it’s pretty similar, though most ghost tours I go on don’t recreate the murders. That is what’s freaking me out the most about the Borden house.
I’ve gone on a couple of ghost tours, but for the most part they haven’t told any stories that could be, like, factually verified as the actual story of an actual murder that took place — more along the lines of, “Rumors exist that a man was murdered here sometime in the 1880s! Perhaps it is his footsteps we hear creaking on the stairs at night.” I don’t think the Galveston ghost tour even included any gruesome Great Storm stories. So, maybe still in the category of Catering to Vulgar Curiosity, but not really as prurient as visiting an actual, factually-verified murder location.
The ghost tour I went on just seemed like a bunch of bullshit. It was reasonably funny? But not interesting.
Totally both; it’s two sides of the same coin, for sure.
For some reason, I find it particularly creepy that, in the registration box, there’s three drop-down menus to indicate the number of guests: one for adults, one for children, and one for babies.
Also, re: number 6 above: WHAT
NO
NO
That creeps me out the worst. Reenacting murders? REALLY?
Yeah, touring the house is one thing, but a reenactment is some next-level freakiness.
And then there’s wanting to experience reenactments ON YOUR HONEYMOON.
Question 6…is both surprising, and…not.
Hey! One of my colleagues does research on this kind of stuff. It is weird!
So we’re renting this out for the next Toast meetup, right?
I am horrified by the existence of this place BUT I would attend that meetup in a hot second.
We can all just stand around being horrified with cocktails and then Nicole can do some reverent pushups
…forty of them….
why am i broken inside
I can’t stop laughing, Nicole. We should have fun partying together in hell.
(This is a regular Bittersweet family joke whenever we say something mean.)
Can we drink pitchers of Bloody Mary(s) or is that too tacky? Plus, I’d be there in a hot second, too.
My great-grand aunt was Lizzie Bordon’s maid (but not the one who was there when the murders happened), so I was raised in a staunchly pro-Lizzie household. My grandmother kept all of her Christmas cards, and said she was a very nice lady who was basically shunned by everyone.
Also, IF SHE DID IT, my favorite Lizzie Bordon theory from Wikipedia: “Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan had been engaged in a lesbian affair, that Mrs. Borden had caught them together and had reacted with horror and disgust, and that Lizzie had killed Mrs. Borden with a candlestick.”
(she probably did it though)
Have you read the two Angela Carter short stories about Lizzie Borden? One from her childhood, another set the week before the murders. Very interesting, lots of stuff about gender and class and expectations and how they may spark certain impulses.
(I know I’ve just become so committed to this viewpoint)
I haven’t! But these sound incredible.
Yay GENEALOGY! How cool!
But for real if you bother to read the inquest and trial testimony (which is extensive!) it’s clear she’s lying and probably did it 🙁
She wasn’t convicted because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had some baggage around hanging women . . . see legal analysis here http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/26/magazine/lizzie…
Consider me fascinated!
Would you contact me please. I would like to interview you for my online magazine. You can reach me through FB or my website. Thank you!
Guys, Joe McGinniss died! I read all of his books, and he will be missed. Also, the goddamn Green Beret did it.
He totally did it. He is guilty as hell
Absofuckinglutely.
I came down here to say #8 made me lose it, but found people having actual mature discussion. Now contemplating my shoes.
Do want.
“Dear A Clean Person, How do I get bloodstains and viscera off of my favorite axe?”
Aren’t axes are fairly easy to clean, like Le Creuset dutch ovens?
You just have to season them with a gentle rub of vegetable oil beforehand.
For another interesting (and Canadian!) take on Lizzie Borden, check out playwright Sharon Pollock’s “Blood Relations”. It’s worth a look, honest!
Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her father forty winks!
oh god I just laughed SUPER loud
<3 <3 New England <3 <3
I keep conflating the capital letters in the title and reading this as “The Lizzie Borden BBQ”
Restaurant opportunity for next door
You know, I honestly thought Lizzie Borden was Canadian up until this very moment. Murder tourism DOES teach you things!
I was a tiny kid when I read an essay entitled “The Day I Ripped Off Lizzie’s House” in which the author tells the story of her visit to Fall River, where her then-boyfriend sat in the car, motor running, while she dallied by #92 (then privately owned, I believe) until all was quiet, then snapped a chunk of paint off the front and ran.
And for the first time, I thought “Well, what do you do with a notorious murder site?” It seems unpleasant to live there if fans* and souvenir hunters are going to be hanging around waiting to peek into your bathroom or sneak into your side yard or steal trophies from your home. Making it into a site dedicated to the history – stagey or otherwise – seems like a reasonable reaction to the way people will treat it.
And Lizzie Borden holds a special place in public memory. More than time passing separates her in our imaginations from Ted Bundy. She didn’t (allegedly) kill strangers; her family was murdered in her home. Her gender, age, and social station matter, too: she was a spinster in her 30s living – not cordially – with her father and stepmother, with her father controlling all her spending money, keeping the household frugal while giving large gifts to his wife’s extended family. And maybe most important to public imagination, she was acquitted of the murders, but lived on in Fall River under a cloud of suspicion and hostility.
Whether Lizzie Borden was tightly controlled by virtue of her gender and social circumstances hardly matters to the mythology; then and now, the public imagines her that way, and the (ghastly) murders live in shared memory as a symbol of eruption, of the dangers of trying to control a woman pushed to the limits of repression.
*The idea of murder fans is bumming me out pretty hard.
PLEASE expand this into a full-on essay and submit it to the-toast dot net, would read all of it.
Y’know, as I was typing, two parts of my brain chattered at me: “Hey, you should pitch the gendered fascination w/ Lizzie Borden as a story” vs. “Hey, not every thought that flickers through your brain is a great story.” I’m trying to find the balance between those voices every day.
Knowing that someone else had the same thought is encouraging. I have a list of pitches, some time-sensitive, but I think I’d better add this one to it! So thanks for the nudge.
I’d read this as a proper toast post!
Somewhat related: Is reaaaallly wanting to stay in Stalin’s dacha near Sochi (recently converted to a hotel! You can stay there for around $200 usd a night!) in poor taste? The creepy historical factor is the primary draw for me, but he did kill an awful lot of people. Of course, I will probably never be in a position to take a trip to Russia, but these are still things one must think about. Just in case.
Socioapthy must run in the Borden family. Someone directly related to Lizzie ran a non-profit for years but ran it like a corporation (they’re the same thing these days, right???) and was just all-around ruthless. He was otherwise an ok person.
Y'know, as I was typing, two parts of my brain chattered at me: "Hey, you should pitch the gendered fascination w/ Lizzie Borden as a story" vs. "Hey, not every thought that flickers through your brain is a great story." I'm trying to find the balance between those voices every day.
Knowing that someone else had the same thought is encouraging. I have a list of pitches, some time-sensitive, but I think I'd better add this one to it! So thanks for the nudge.
I first misread this as Lizzie Bennet and was confused for longer than I should have been.
I’m a bit late to the party here, but I actually stayed at the B&B last year, on the anniversary when they do the re-enactment. To be honest, I didn’t really consider the moral issue when I booked it, but also wasn’t really into the ‘scare’ factor either… it was more of a historical interest? Getting to be inside history in a way that museums don’t allow? In any case, the reenactment is of the investigation rather than the murders per se, everyone who works there is incredibly nice and knowledgable about everything, and the house is quite charming, although it is just in this totally normal neighborhood in a sort of run-down old town off the highway, which, for me, was oddly more disconcerting than the experience itself. Oh, and at night the only people in the house are the guests–the caretaker lives off site. But overall everyone is mostly just sort of respectful and interested and treat everything very nicely. For me, it was like when you’re a little kid and all you want is to accidentally get locked in the museum overnight so you can wander around it and touch everything. So a little spooky and the feeling of peeking behind closed doors, but it wasn’t like, a haunted house or a theme park or anything.