The Lizzie Borden Seance

The Seance at Lizzie's House

Lizzie Borden lies at the intersection of reality and folklore. More than one hundred years after the brutal murders her name is forever attached to, Lizzie has become the subject of countless books, scores of documentaries and one full length feature film. Her legend builds with every new mention of her name, but in recent years she has stepped out of the pages of true crimes books to inhabit a new form of mythology.
Lizzie has become a ghost.
No new collection of ghost stories seems complete without a mention of the house where two bodies were discovered one August morning. The daughter of the murdered couple, Lizzie Borden, was thought by everyone to have committed the crime. Authorities were never able to convict her of the crime, and in getting off, she walked out of the courthouse and into popular culture.
Her house in Fall River has been transformed over the years and now acts as a bed and breakfast. For years residents and guests have complained about the ghost they share their rooms with. Unexplained fogs, eerie shadows and objects mysteriously moving have added to the questions that lie within the walls. Who are the ghosts and why have they remained in the house?
It was this mystery that brought renowned psychic and life coach Jackie Barrett to the inn one cold day last November. If the people attending the séance she conducted there did not know what to expect once the lights went down, they had no idea what to make of Jackie herself. Unlike other psychics, Jackie is a student of different religious thought, and although she considers hers a voodoo practitioner now, she has studied different religions and participated in various religious ceremonies, even living for a time with a sect of vampires. She can talk Satanism as easily as Christianity, and her thick New York accent and quick sarcasm make her feel more like your aunt than someone about to speak to the dead.

Her contact with the ghosts inside the house started well before the candles were lit. Earlier that day Jackie, her husband William and daughter Joanne were given a full tour of the inn to try and give them some initial feels about the house. Through the entire tour, Jackie felt the same thing; sadness. “It’s a guest home. You come in and out, but I felt like I was intruding.” She also felt something was very protective of the house, and unlike most people who have investigated there before, she felt it was not Lizzie. “The maid. I feel the maid’s presence is very strong here.” The strongest feelings for her came from the basement which is now used for office space and a gift shop. She heard voices overlapping and “on top of her” when the group finally made their way down there.
After the tour William went upstairs to sleep, but was interrupted by a presence holding him down in the bed. “I was trying to fight it, but it was so strong you can’t fight.” After being held down for several minutes, he went down to the bathroom to freshen up. Lizzie had always had a passion for pears, and as William used the pear lotion in the bathroom, he felt the air change. “I could tell it like me using the lotion.” Later he was in his room and he heard a foreign voice inside his head. “It asked me what could be thrown but not caught. I thought for a moment and then the voice answered, ‘Your voice’. Then it laughed like it said the funniest thing in the world. I never would have just thought that up and I had never heard it before.”
Jackie and Joanne were having their own experiences. In one room a small chair is set in the corner. Jackie heard a loud creak and saw the chair moving by itself. She asked Joanne to sit in the chair, and as she came down it made the same creak. She was later told her the chair has a habit of moving from one room to the other when people are not looking.

All of these occurrences set the mood for the séance. Using her voodoo background and a collection of artifacts, from a cursed Ouija board used in bizarre rituals to a homemade spirit summoning mixture stored in a spray bottle, Jackie was able to contact the spirit of Bridgette, the housekeeper for the Bordens at the time of the murder. With Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” playing in the background, the lights were dimmed and the Jackie performed several protection and summoning rituals, including calling on a Voodoo saint, Papa Liqua, and passing around holy water.
Most of the people there were attending their first séance and little idea of what to expect. They had been influenced by dramatic ceremonies on television and the movies showing chairs flying across the room, tables quaking and guttural sounds coming from psychics with glazed over eyes. While they knew this type of thing probably would not happen, they felt a mix of excitement and anxiety as Jackie called any spirits who would like to speak into the room.
Jackie does not have spirits speak through her. Although her spirit guide helps her communicate with the spirits that enter the room, she says, “I like to spin the bottle,” or invite someone attending to step forward and channel the spirit. One woman, Diane, released the hands of the people next to her and invited Bridgette in. The change was subtle. Diane, who had talked before the séance about being the excited to be there and had never had never experienced anything paranormal, became standoffish and angry. She answered only a few of Jackie questions, but stared her down as if ready to jump across the table. An attempt to have Bridgette writes using Diane’s hand failed when she angrily put the pen down and pushed the pad of paper away.

Video footage taken during the ceremony captured the change in Diane. Her face, animated and friendly before channeling, lost lines around the cheeks and forehead and her nose changed slightly, becoming more angler. While some of the facial definition is due to the effect of nightvision on surfaces, first hand accounts noticed the same change.
Also during the filming, the camera lost focus several times and had to be refocused. Again, nightvision can be unpredictable, but for the most part the camera does not lose focus unless something passes before it or some change in the subject has taken place. This could be dismisses, but the filming does not shake and the focus is lost during interesting times in the ceremony. For example, before Bridgette went into Diane, it pestered her husband. There is a shot of Jackie and then a pan to him. In the background Jackie says something about the spirit moving, and the shot goes out of focus.
While audio and video evidence accent the case, the real focus is on the transformation of Diane. Her anger is clear. She postures to Jackie, almost challenging her to try and communicate with Lizzie.
The response did not surprise Jackie. She had seen everything at séances, from unexplained lights and shadows to a man who channeled two men at once who argued with each other. She saw the spirit move across the room and finally rest at Diane even before she agreed to allow the spirit to speak through her. Once she had agreed, Jackie saw her mouth change into someone else’s.
Jackie ended the session satisfied Bridgette and been contact and a bit scared other spirits might try and enter Diane. Jackie was also satisfied she had learned a new piece of the Lizzie Borden mystery. The housekeeper had killed the Bordens or had helped Lizzie hide it afterwards. There was a palpable hatred for men in the room and she felt as if she were Lizzie’s guardian.
Diane turned again into her enthusiastic self, although she was too weak to stand and did not remember anything that happened and asked the people around her what had happened. “It was like I was there but not there. My heart was outside my body. Did I say anything.” Although she had lost control of herself without knowing it, she still stayed by her idea going in that the paranormal is not dangerous. “I’d like to go to a séance where something happens, like a spirit talks to the group.” She rejoined her husband and son with no memory of having had a ghost speak through her. Later that night she distanced herself from Jackie. It seems as others told her more about what they had seen, Diane might have changed her mind about séances.

Two pictures of Diane. The left picture was taken after the seance was complete and represents how she looked through most of the night and the right during her possession. The differences are subtle and the effect of the nightshot must be taken into account, but Diane seem like two different people.

Others were affected by what had happened during the séance. In addition to several people having headaches and pains in their chest, one woman had become so sick she left the room. She attempted to return several more times, but each time she became sick. “I don’t want to do that again,” she said afterwards, although she had been the most enthusiastic person about the séance before it began. “It’s not something to play with. It’s dangerous, I know that now personally. Jackie definitely has talent.” Both Jackie and the woman feel she caught the bad that was feeding of the energy of the ceremony.
The physical effects of the contact were not limited to stomach pains and headaches. Joanne broke out in a rash on her neck shortly after the séance ended. Others discovered rashes and scratches on their hands or arms. Most who found the marks were in the semi-circle Jackie saw the spirit traveling in before it entered Diane. It was as if Bridgette were moving through the connected hands of the people in the group, trying to find someone to speak through.
Skeptics would not have been impressed by what they saw in Lizzie’s house and the events of the evening can be explained away. Perhaps Diane was a plant. Perhaps a video camera set to record the event, set to night vision, lost focus due to changes in the light of the room. Perhaps Jackie, who trained with Satanist, used one of their most effective methods, hypnotism, to put Diane under a trace.
Those in attendance however, including employees who had attended several séance there, would not dismiss what happened so quickly. They may not have come out with proof, but most felt something had come in and made its presence known. Jackie herself was satisfied with the results. “The spirit was very angry. She wanted to talk, but did not like the fact I was ordering her to talk.”
The mystery of who killed the Bordens remains and will continue to engage and confuse people for years to come. Instead of die away, Lizzie’s legend continues to grow, evolving as the society she left behind evolves. People have looked at her case from modern angles using new forensic technologies and bringing in criminal profilers to reexamine old evidence. The heart of her house in Fall River, Massachusetts continues to beat not because we can look at it through our 21st century eyes but because the sometimes the dead still have a pulse. Sometimes they allow us a glimpse of what they were, and we cannot turn away.

The haunted bathroom and chair.

The picture above appeared in several frames the video foorage after the seance. The picture below was taken during the interview after the seance. Several others were taken in the same location and show no glare.