Lizzie Borden House: Tours, Rooms and What Survives

The Lizzie Borden house still stands at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, and you can both tour it and sleep in it. It runs as a museum during the day and a six-bedroom bed and breakfast at night, including the upstairs room where Abby Borden was found on August 4, 1892.

It is an unusual survival. Most houses attached to a crime this famous are demolished or quietly sold on; this one has been preserved, furnished to the period and opened to the public. Here is the practical picture:

Who Owns the Lizzie Borden House Now

The house was bought in 2021 by Lance Zaal, president and founder of US Ghost Adventures, a company that runs ghost tours across the United States. That ownership change is what shifted the property from a privately run bed and breakfast toward a more organised visitor attraction, with daily tours, nightly ghost hunts and a renovated gift shop.

The company has been explicit about treating the building as a preservation project rather than only a venue. In a 2023 statement marking its first full years of ownership it also said it had transcribed more than thirty years of guest accounts collected at the house, which tells you how long the place has been trading on its reputation.

What Has Actually Been Restored

A 19th century timber house run as a hotel needs constant work, and the published list of what was done is more mundane than the marketing around the place suggests. The owner published the work completed in five broad areas:

• Structural work: the foundation was strengthened, the front stair wall replaced and third-floor window frames restored.
• Health and safety: asbestos was removed from the basement, bathroom mold was remediated and the bathrooms replaced.
• Building services: a new HVAC system, weather stripping, smart thermostats, smart locks, motion sensors and new security cameras.
• Guest comfort: upgraded mattresses, blackout blinds, luxury linens, a commercial washer and dryer and self check-in.
• Period detail: the Victorian streetlamp was restored, the barn door replaced and Victorian furniture updated indoors and out.

That mix is worth noticing before you visit. The building you walk into has modern wiring, modern climate control and smart locks behind a Victorian presentation. The furnishings have been replicated to the period where the originals were gone, and the doors and hardware retain their original look, but this is a maintained visitor property rather than a frozen 1892 interior.

The Rooms That Matter in the Lizzie Borden House

The layout is small, which is itself part of the case: the prosecution argued that anyone in the house would have heard or seen what happened. These are the spaces visitors ask about:

1. The sitting room, where Andrew Borden was killed on the sofa, is the room most visitors come to see and the one that appears in the crime scene photographs.
2. The upstairs guest room, where Abby Borden was found, is now a bookable bedroom, which is the detail that most divides opinion about the place.
3. The kitchen holds the stove that features in the case, because of the dress burned in it days after the murders.
4. The barn behind the house matters to the story: Lizzie said she was in its loft when her father was killed, and the prosecution argued nobody could have stayed up there that long in August heat.
5. The gift shop and ticket kiosk occupy what was domestic space, which is the usual compromise when a private house becomes a visitor attraction.

The crime scene photographs taken in 1892 are the reason the interior reads as familiar to people who have never been. Those images survive, and the rooms have been arranged to match them, which is why a tour of this house feels less like a reconstruction than most historic crime sites.

What the Building Itself Shows About the Case

The house is the best surviving piece of evidence, and walking through it explains why the case was so hard to resolve. It is narrow and tightly packed, with rooms opening into one another rather than off a corridor, and it had no back stairs connecting the floors the way larger houses of the period did. Anyone moving between the sitting room and the upstairs guest room had to use the front stairs.

That matters because of the timing. The medical examiner concluded Abby Borden was killed at least an hour before Andrew. Whoever did it was therefore in or around this small house for that hour, with a maid working outside the windows and a daughter somewhere on the property, and then killed a second person and left without being seen. An intruder theory has to survive that hour inside these particular rooms, which is why the layout does more work in the argument than any single piece of physical evidence.

The barn is the other reason to walk the site. Lizzie placed herself in its loft during the second killing, and the distance between the barn and the sitting room window is short enough to see for yourself. Visitors tend to arrive expecting atmosphere and leave having formed an opinion about geography.

Visiting: Tours, Overnight Stays and Ghost Hunts

There are three different products here and they suit different visitors. Five things worth settling first:

• Book the tour and the stay separately. The daytime tour covers the house and the case; the overnight is a different experience and a different price.
• Decide in advance whether you want the room where Abby Borden was found, because that is the one people either request specifically or avoid entirely.
• Treat the ghost hunt as entertainment rather than evidence. The equipment is provided and the format is the same one US Ghost Adventures runs at its other sites.
• Pair it with the Fall River Historical Society if you care about the documented case rather than the atmosphere, since that is where the archive actually is.
• Check opening arrangements before travelling. The house operates as a working bed and breakfast, so tour times move around bookings.

For the documented side of the case, the serious collection is elsewhere in town. The Fall River Historical Society holds the trial exhibits, crime scene photographs and the papers of both the prosecution and the defense, and it is a museum rather than an experience. Our account of the murders, the trial and the verdict sets out what those documents actually show.

Why the House Became an Attraction at All

Fall River did not set out to market this. The house passed through private hands for most of the 20th century and only became a bed and breakfast in the 1990s, by which point the case had been fictionalised often enough that visitors arrived expecting a set. The business that grew up around it is a response to that demand rather than the cause of it.

That raises a question the current owners get asked often: whether a double murder should be sold as an overnight stay at all. The counter-argument is that the alternative was a decaying private house with no public access and no preservation budget. Both things are true at once, which is why the place sits oddly between a museum and an attraction. If you are planning a trip around that sort of site, our guide to Halloween Horror Nights covers the purely theatrical end of the same market, and our history of Halloween explains how the season became commercial in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you stay overnight in the Lizzie Borden house?

Yes. The house operates as a bed and breakfast with six bedrooms, and guests can book rooms including the upstairs guest room where Abby Borden was found. Daytime tours run separately from overnight stays.

Where is the Lizzie Borden house?

At 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, the same address where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed on August 4, 1892. The Fall River Historical Society, which holds the case archive, is in the same city.

Who owns the Lizzie Borden house?

US Ghost Adventures, the ghost tour company founded by Lance Zaal, bought the property in 2021 and runs it as a museum, a bed and breakfast and a ghost hunt venue.

Is the house still furnished as it was in 1892?

Partly. Doors and hardware retain their original look and the rooms are arranged to match the 1892 crime scene photographs, but furnishings have been replicated where originals were lost, and the building now has modern heating, wiring and locks.

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