A Los Angeles paranormal investigator says she left Lizzie Borden’s Massachusetts home a believer after a spirit allegedly tucked her into bed.
Sara Farrell, a digital creator and paranormal investigator from Los Angeles, won an overnight stay at the Fall River, Massachusetts, house between April 15 and 17 earlier this year. The property, which still stands and operates as a museum, is widely promoted as the country’s “most haunted house.”
Farrell described the home to the outlet as “beautifully frozen in time” and “filled with artefacts, documents and photos from the Borden’s daily lives and the trial.” Yet she also felt a “very heavy energy” that intensified the longer she remained inside.
The investigator and her fiancé, Connor, both reported being physically touched during their two-night visit. On the first night, Connor felt what Farrell described as both gentle and aggressive contact.
“The first night my fiancé Connor was touched multiple times, once was gentle, like a friend leaning on him because he was showing them videos,” she recalled. “The others were aggressive, he felt the sensation of two hands firmly pressing down on his bare chest several times and I witnessed the wind get knocked out of him.”
Farrell explained that they eventually identified the cause: a particular spirit appeared offended by Connor sleeping without a shirt. “When we realized what was happening he apologized, put on a shirt and the touching stopped,” she added.
The second night brought what Farrell called the most unsettling experience. As she tried to fall asleep, she felt “the sensation of two hands tucking the sheets under [her] legs” and her hair being “brushed away” from her face and “tucked” behind her ear.
“If you’re familiar with that feeling you get when someone is standing over you when your eyes are closed, it felt like someone was right in my face,” she shared. “My heart was racing and it took everything in me to keep my eyes shut and to try to stay calm.”
The following morning, Farrell consulted one of the house’s regular tour guides about the incident. The guide’s response only deepened the strangeness of the encounter.
“The next morning I asked one of the regular tour guides about it and she told me that Mrs. Borden will occasionally tuck guests that she’s taken a liking to into bed and I’m not the first person that’s brought this up,” Farrell revealed.
The Borden house stands at the center of one of America’s most infamous unsolved crimes. In 1892, Lizzie Borden, then 32, was accused of the ax murders of her father Andrew Borden and stepmother Abby Borden. She stood trial but was ultimately acquitted, and the killings remain officially unsolved. The case has since inspired countless books, films, and now a Netflix drama series.
Throughout their stay, Farrell and her fiancé actively attempted spirit communication, using an app to converse with what they believed were present entities. Farrell reported that these spirits seemed to react to their immediate surroundings in real time.
“I had spirits reacting in real time to things in our environment that they were observing,” she recounted. “They would hear a sound and react to the noise or they would say they were going to move something and what followed was them moving an object in front of us or making a noise.”
The John Morse room, where Abby Borden’s body was discovered, and the basement were the most “intense rooms” in the house, according to Farrell. She noted that spirits would indicate their locations through wall taps during attempted conversations.
“When we were talking to spirits, they would also tell us where they were in the room and tap on different parts of the wall to show us where they were,” she explained.
Farrell also believes she captured actual spirit footage on camera during the visit, though the source material did not include the video itself.
Despite entering the property as a skeptic, Farrell said her perspective shifted dramatically. “I’ve been in haunted spaces before, but nothing touches the experiences I had in this house,” she reflected.
“I completely understand if something has never happened to you it all seems wild, but once it does, it becomes really hard to look away,” Farrell continued. “Not to say that everything is paranormal of course, but there’s just so much left in this world to try to understand.”
The Borden case has drawn renewed attention following the September 17 Netflix release of “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story,” the latest installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology series. The drama stars Ella Beatty as Lizzie, with Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden, Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, and Sarah Paulson in a supporting role.