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2004-09-08 - 5:37 p.m. Do you believe in ghosts: Part II The Tour The tour began at 8:30 down in the sitting room where Andrew Borden had been bludgeoned to death. All the other guests were mingling when we came downstairs. There was the young couple that had visited our room earlier, another young couple who were friends of theirs, three college girls and an older couple from Maryland. The tour guide started things off by asking if anyone among us had any experiences with ghosts. It seemed as though everyone but us had at least one. The older couple described George, a ghost who has been �living� with them. Another guy related a story about meeting his grandfather who had died before he was born. There were some other stories about strange things in photos, incidents of cold spots, etc. Now, I�m a natural skeptic but far be it from me to say that any of these people are wrong. For all I know, a ghost has visited each and every one of them�but for me, when I see something or hear something I would be hard pressed to come up with ghosts as the reason. There�s always been a plausible explanation that didn�t involve the supernatural. For example, spots of light on a photo � most likely due to reflections from the flash. Coldness � well, I�m always cold so that doesn�t shock me � I think: �draft� The tour host told us several stories about her experiences in the house. Some I could explain away easily but there were others that I couldn�t say for sure because, hey, I wasn�t there. But when the guy who visited our room recounted the fact that the door to my room closed on its own AND, when he was in the guest room where the murder occurred, his pant leg moved! I couldn�t help but think, �With your leg inside of it?! Did you ever think maybe it was YOU?� And as for the door, I still think it was probably a draft. The air conditioning was pumping when I was in the room. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn�t want to get into anything with these folks (who all seemed quite pleasant). We toured the house and learned the story of how on the hottest day of the year in 1893, Andrew Borden and Sara Borden were brutally murdered by blows to the head (presumably with an axe). It�s too long of a story to go into fully but it is an interesting story. Lizzie Borden was accused, tried and acquitted of the crime due to poor preservation of the crime scene by the police and lack of anything more than circumstantial evidence. Did she do it? We�ll never know for sure. What I do know for sure is that I did not witness anything unexplainable on the tour. In the basement the older man said to me, �Do you feel that?� I said, �Feel what?� The young man who had visited our room joined us and said, �Oh my God, yes. I just got such a chill.� Uh�maybe I�m just not sensitive to ghosts or maybe its just normal for basements to be a little dank and cold. After the tour, I slept like a rock for the first half of the night but then, perhaps due to the power of suggestion, I had some disturbing dreams which woke me up. It was either the dreams that woke me or the loud crash I heard from the room next door. For a split second I thought maybe it was spectral but then my inner skeptic told me no. Its probably just the neighbors knocking something over. The next morning when I was asked how I slept I mentioned the noise at which point the older couple smiled at each other and then the woman said, �I�m so sorry about the crash. It was my wooden leg which I dropped getting into bed.� Yikes! When she said that I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it all. I thought, Hell, that�s a cooler story than ghosts anyway! � 
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