Lizzie Borden House - Fall River, Massachusetts - Scores 6/6


Hope you don’t mind, but I’ll try to put 2 places on each day so I can get through these 50 study areas more quickly.

If you don’t already know the little childhood ditty “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41,” you can guess where this study place is going.

The Borden family was a well-to-do family in the 1890s when daughter Lizzie was arrested for the axe murders of her step-mother and her father in their home. She got off for the murder (no CSI back then!) and lived a comfortable quiet life with her father’s wealth.

It sounds like an ideal setting for a haunting, but the waters get murky, just like they do in the Amityville House. The question is, how much is genuine and how much is simply scared away by the foot traffic and tours? I’ll find out more about the actual proof of haunting later, but I know enough about this case to know I haven’t seen anyone with anything really compelling on a general sweep. When I go to score the places for their actual “proof” of haunting, I refuse to accept orb pictures or class C EVPs which are garbled and don’t represent language. So, on researching this site, I actually had very little hope because of the hype and romance. When too much romance gets attached to a haunting, I realize it might be all atmosphere and little substance to continue the "mythos" of the locals.

The fact is, it scored a 6/6.

Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Less than a mile from a train track.
2. The land is granite—ideal for poltergeists, actually.
3. Near a waterway.
4. House has stone foundation.
5. There were murders there (unsolved).
6. The house is older than 50 years.

What does this mean in the scheme of things? I have yet to see. I’m skeptical about evidence that’s out there. This might be a make-or-break case in my research if I can prove that granite is better for poltergeist activity and not hauntings.

I’ll keep you posted as this unfolds. I’m very likely going to need to go beyond the 50 places I’ve chosen to get eventually get enough evidence to weigh conditions and decide what factors create what situations.

Keep watching!

Comments

  1. I love how you're breaking everything down... I think this research of yours could become a book.

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  2. I was thinking the same thing, except I'd have to do a lot of documentation of sources to cite soures and that sounds like an English class project. Hee hee. Actually, as I get going with this and find out more and more and think I have a pretty good foundation for the exact formula and the exact rating system, I think it'd be a waste not to put it into a book form. I just know putting it out there will make me vulnerable to people thinking I'm a quack, but I tend to be very spatial and I look for relationships between things. I do the same thing when I read objects and places. It spreads out before me in a 3-D sort of model in my mind and I can see connections that others might miss, so this might be an ideal research for my talents. Now, I need to go visit a lot of places too and see what they feel like and read like to get my own bend on how haunted they seem to be. I have to admit, when investigating a place I never use my readings as proof of hauntings, but it can tell me where and when to do recordings/take pictures to give me best chance of "hard" evidence. Thanks for your support. This is actually really enlightening research. I want to throw in a few places not known for hauntings and see how they rate too. It can help me to decide what elements are most important.

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  3. What I really respect about you presenting these places, and how you apply your formula (which is objective rater than subjective), is that you stay true to that. You question the "romanticism" of legends around a place but still apply your formula and come up with some surprising results...like this could be grounds which could harbor hauntings. Very neat! (Because I'm sure in the back of your mind was the GH episode where they pretty much felt it was more story than anything really happening there, right?)

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  4. P.S. I think Dolly's suggestion is FABULOUS and am excited you're thinking of perhaps doing such a project. Also, it's great that you see things the way you do. You just might uncover something very useful that'll further paranormal research so you just keep plugging away at this. Truth is, you could be on to something HUGE and potentially more significant than people might realize at first blush!

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  5. Courtney;
    Thanks. Well, I've come to the conclusion that I need some more serious geology maps which I'm ordering and I want to place some tacks in the haunted places with different colors showing different scores like a blue tack might be a score of "3" and a "red" one is a 6. Then, I can start to look for rivers, geology, and areas, and see if there are patterns. It'll be a lot easier when I can dismiss the places with little hard proof of hauntings so they don't dirty up the waters. Keep you all posted.

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