The next morning Phil sat in embarrassed silence while Marcie related his experience over a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, orange juice, eggs, sausage, and johnnycakes.
“Ooh, how wonderful. Why doesn’t something like that ever happen to me?” moaned one guest.
“I’ve heard some people have woken up in the night to see a woman in Victorian clothes dusting the furniture, and some have even had her straighten the blankets over them as they lay there.”
Martha McGinn noticed that Phil Rollins’s face was quite white and he did not seem interested in his food. “Incidents are sometimes reported here by the staff but seldom guests,” she said comfortingly. “People who work in the house say they hear the sound of footsteps or doors opening and closing mysteriously, but I think any spirits we have around here now are friendly ones. Visitors like to discuss their theories about the crime and they ask lots of questions.”
“I have my own idea of what happened,” said Marcie. “I scanned some of the books and bought a transcript of the inquest documents. You should read it, Phil. I think I know who murdered both of them and it wasn’t Lizzie at all!”
The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum is thought to be a house “active” with spirits. Some guests have reported hearing voices and the sound of a woman weeping. Others tell stories of unexplained footsteps and doors mysteriously opening and closing. In addition to reservations for overnight accommodations—where you can rent a single suite, a whole floor or even the entire house—the Borden House is open 10 am to 3 pm, seven days a week, year-round (except Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day). Tours depart every hour on the hour. The house is located at 230 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts 02721. (It was 92 Second Street during the Bordens’ tenure, but the house number was changed in 1896, notably to disassociate it from its macabre history). (508-675-7333; lizzie-borden.com/).
JOHN HAYS HAMMOND JR.—PECULIAR IN DEATH JUST AS IN LIFE?
HAMMOND CASTLE MUSEUM, GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
Some say the notorious inventor, eccentric, and prankster John Hays Hammond Jr. continues his bizarre, playfully morbid antics long after his death.
Picture it: A standalone, rectangular structure with a latched door, silver and windowless and crafted from a mesh of conductive materials.
If you claimed to be a medium in the early twentieth century and you happened to visit Abbadia Mare, the medieval-style castle of eccentric millionaire John Hays Hammond Jr., you would be asked to sit inside this contraption, known as a “Faraday cage,” a centerpiece of the grand hall.
Once inside, protected from the influence of electric currents, you would then be asked to contact the dead. The goal of the cage was to limit interference from the human world and to determine if you truly were mystically gifted. At least, that was how it was supposed to work, per the cage’s builder, Hammond, himself.
It would be superfluous to call John Hays Hammond Jr. eccentric—indeed he was and had no qualms about sharing his many unique talents, collections, interests, and obsessions. This includes, of course, his pièce de résistance: His home on the craggy coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, where, among many other things, he practiced mysticism and spiritualism.
And, some say, he succeeded in both practices, enabling him to continue to make his presence known long after his death.
Although for most people, the name doesn’t quite evoke the same iconic image as Thomas Edison, Hammond Jr. was just as abundant with ideas over his seventy-seven years.
Born in San Francisco in 1888 to wealthy mining engineer John Hays Hammond Sr., he spent a significant amount of his young life globetrotting, including in England and South America, where his father performed engineering work at Cecil Rhodes’ diamond mines.
As the story goes, once the family returned to America, the young Hammond was inspired at the impressionable age of twelve by a visit to Edison’s workshop. Edison, in turn, was amazed by his potential and endless enthusiasm, and the two remained regular correspondents for years. The godfather of American invention also introduced his young protégé to the legendary Alexander Graham Bell.
Over his lifetime, Hammond Jr. developed over eight hundred inventions that resulted in more than four hundred patents. He is best known for his early experiments with frequency modulation (FM) broadcasting and his development of electronic remote-control technology—thus earning him the nickname “the father of radio control.” He also invented a radio-controlled torpedo and developed techniques to prevent remote-control jamming by ally enemies.
In fact, to this day, he remains second only to Edison when it comes to awarded patents—albeit a distant runner-up; the “Wizard of Menlo Park” holds a record-setting 1,093, according to the Edison Innovation Foundation.
But all those years tinkering and innovating, Hammond Jr. never forgot his time in Europe; it was there that he became enraptured with the architecture, history, and lore of the abundant medieval, gothic, and Victorian castles. In an unpublished letter, he wrote, “It is in the stones and wood that the personal record of man comes down to us. We call it atmosphere, this indescribable something that still haunts old monuments...it is a marvelous thing, this expression of human ideals in walls and windows.”
The 1920s and the cacophony of the Great War brought him to the prosperous, north-of-Boston maritime city of Gloucester, where he set out to build his own “indescribable something.”
He prophesized (should we say, rather incorrectly) that “after I am gone, all my scientific creations will be old-fashioned and forgotten. I want to build something in hard stone and engrave on it for posterity a name of which I am justly proud.” Thus, work on his namesake Hammond Castle began in 1926. Upon its completion in 1929, he dubbed it Abbadia Mare, which means “Abbey by the Sea.”
Today, the property is a privately owned museum listed on the National Register of Historic
