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.
Spotlight On: Anawan Rock Rehoboth, Massachusetts
Rehoboth, Massachusetts has been called the commonwealth’s most haunted town. There are six well-known sites that have produced numerous reports of apparitions, strange lights, and disembodied voices. The Hornbine School, an historic, one-room schoolhouse located at the intersection of Hornbine Road and Baker Street is said to be haunted by the spirits of its former students and their teacher. On Reed Street, a mysterious man in black has been seen walking around the ruins of the Shad Pond Factory. When witnesses have gone to look for him, he disappeared without a trace.
The old Palmer River Burial Ground on Lake Street is haunted by the ghosts of a little boy and a Colonial soldier. During two separate, independent investigations, paranormal investigators Brianne Pouliot and Michael Markowicz both recorded electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) of a woman singing in the burial ground. My colleagues and I have dubbed this spirit “The Singing Lady of Palmer River.”
The Shad Pond Factory
The Village Cemetery on Bay State Road contains no fewer than three specters. This graveyard has a ghost of a little boy that is seen dancing about the graves. There are also reports of a floating woman in white and a dark shade of a man in eighteenth-century garb that yells obscenities at women visiting the cemetery. This angry ghost has also been heard to cry out the name “Catherine” while positioned on his knees, pounding the ground with his fists.
On Route 44, near the Seekonk, Massachusetts, town line, a phantom referred to as “The Redheaded Hitchhiker” is said to walk the road late at night in the dead of winter. Dressed in denim jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt, this redheaded ghost (some reports say he has a matching beard) harasses drivers by stepping out in front of their vehicles, forcing them to slam on the brakes. When the badly shaken driver looks for a body in the road, none is ever found. Stories claim that an awful, maniacal laughter, which seems to come from all directions, terrorizes the motorists.
Perhaps the most active haunted site in Rehoboth is a place called Anawan Rock. Located off of Route 44 East (about a half mile before the intersection with New Street), the rock is accessible by a short footpath that leads from a small, but well-marked parking lot. In 1676 the bloody “King Philip’s War” came to an end. In June 1675, the English authorities in the Plymouth colony had pressured the Wamponoag sachem (chief), Metacomet, into a war he didn’t want. His Christian name was Philip, and he defied King Charles II’s rule over his people and their land. On August 12, 1676, Philip was betrayed and brutally executed at Mount Hope, Rhode Island. His last surviving general, Anawan, was hiding in Rehoboth at this rock formation, using the surrounding swamp as concealment while he and a small band of warriors debated their future. Captain Benjamin Church and a company of militia moved in through the swamp on August 28, taking Anawan and his men completely by surprise, and demanded their unconditional surrender. The Indians were then marched off in shackles to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and later executed. Their severed heads were displayed on pikes for all to see. For many years, people visiting this historic site have reported experiencing strange phenomena. Some claim they have seen phantom fires that gave off no heat, burned nothing, and then quickly faded away before their eyes like an image on film. Visitors have also reported the strong smell of burning wood as if they were standing right by a campfire that they could not see. It is believed these are the ghostly campfires of Anawan and his men.
Further astonishing encounters involve witnesses hearing voices speaking in what is believed to be a dialect
