When we got outside, Jon snapped so many pictures. I thought it would fill his hard drive before this vacation really got started. I think he is looking for some redecorating hints for the Luce road mansion.
We took the Cliff Walk which is a walkway around the shore line. As we left the Breakers, we came across the other homes on the ocean. In any other setting, they would have been magnificent homes, but we are sure the Astor’s, Vanderbilt’s, and the Rockefellers’ would have seen these neighbors as trailer trash in their neighborhood!
Marble House was next. This was another house by a Vanderbilt in 1892. Although not as big in size as the Breakers, it was still stunning. The house was built with different color marble from around the world. Some of the walls were lavishly gilded with gold. There were murals painted on the ceilings with masterpiece quality. The mistress of the house was someone I would have admired. She was a huge advocate for women to get the right to vote. She was also the first woman in her class to get a divorce. At that time is was just not done. She remarried again for love. It was scandalous at the time, but became common practice after she did it. She received the mansion in the divorce. However, she moved to her new husband’s house and used Marble House as a storage unit for furniture and clothing. Jon says this is the woman that all men should blame for their troubles today!
The Elms was the last mansion of the day. Again it was smaller than the Breakers, but it was more opulent than the Breakers. It had enormous rooms made for entertainment. Women of the day would change their clothing up to seven times per day as they rotated rooms throughout the mansion.
After touring the mansions we went window shopping down town and got some ice cream. We are now on our way to our macabre adventure into the world of ghosts and murder!
We arrived at the Lizzie Borden B&B right before dinner. When we were putting our bags away, there was a black cat sleeping outside our door. This may be a bad sign. The tour guide for the evening, Eleanor, was there and recommended a Portuguese restaurant for dinner. It was not in a great section of town, so we walked fast and returned before sun down. The dinner was great. Kim had the Saint Michael’s Steak and I had the Mozambique Chicken. We had never had any Portuguese food before and liked it so much, that we will try it again.
When we returned to the Lizzie Borden house, the two other couples that were staying there were in the kitchen talking. Both couples had been there the night before and had taken the tour. One couple said that they didn’t want to take another tour and said they were going to go to dinner. Before they left, they said they had played with an Ouija board and something strange had happened. They didn’t want to spoil our tour. When the tour started, it was the other couple, Kim, and me. Eleanor started with some history, but spent most of the time talking about what experiences she has had at the house. She says that the spirits of the Borden’s are still present. In fact she says she has to watch what she says on the tours, or strange things happen. If she talks about how cheap Mr. Borden is, he will rub the back of her head or poke at her. They usually have séances on Saturday nights, but the medium could not get a baby sitter tonight. It would have been great to be part of one. The medium tells her about what is happening and says that Mr. Borden will not let the other souls leave the house. In past séances, all of the Bordens have been contacted. Sometime other souls who are floating by will be contacted. Eleanor is convinced that the medium is legit!
Eleanor’s theory is that Lizzie didn’t do it directly. Her uncle who had dropped by the day before helped to arrange a pig farmer to do the deed for her. However; when you look at the number of whacks given to the mother and the father, there was some passion there. You don’t whack the mother 19 times and the father 10 if you are just trying to kill them. Someone was really pissed off. It was speculated that the father had committed incest with Lizzie over the years and she probably had enough. There was also the fact that Mr. Borden was rich and would not spend his money on a nice house and a lavish lifestyle. These are powerful motives for Lizzie!
While Eleanor was telling the stories, the other couple came back from dinner. In a few minutes, they came downstairs with their luggage. They said something came up and they needed to check out. They said the Ouija board had opened a channel to two dead boys who had been drowned by their mother in a well over a hundred years ago. Eleanor exclaimed “Oh my God, why did you use the Ouija board. They really need to put a warning on that thing. We only keep it because it is an antique.” The couple was visibly spooked and was afraid of spending another night there. As they talked about their experience, I tried not to laugh. They kept talking about opening “an evil portal” and not being able to control it. They had taken some pictures outside and showed us pictures with “orbs” hanging over the building. Both couples said that on last night’s tour, one of the door handles rattled for a few seconds. The girl from the other couple was just out of their sight and was laughing very hard. Every time I looked over, I would start to laugh. They were glad they had an experience, but they could not spend another night. Kim believes they let their imagination get the best of them, but I think they had some bad acid.
After Eleanor had said good-bye and explained how dangerous an Ouija board is, she continued the tour. We went to the rooms where the murders occurred as well as the bedrooms. In Mr. Borden’s bedroom, people will leave small change or a dollar or two hoping to have a peaceful night’s sleep. We went into the basement and took pictures of the wall by the old wash basin. If you look hard and have a wild imagination, you can see the face of a man. You have to look hard to see it. The tour finally ended at 11:00. It was a three hour tour. It was good that we knew some history before we got there. Eleanor didn’t give us much of that. It turns out that Eleanor is a bit of a celebrity. Several history and ghost shows have done documentaries on the haunting of the Lizzie Borden house. She is in most of them.
We finally got to bed at 11:30. We were sleeping in the room where Lizzie killed her step-mother. Based on what we saw and heard tonight, we didn’t know what to expect. During the night, the only thing haunting me was the Mozambique Chicken.
No comments:
Post a Comment