FADE to BLACK host: Jimmy Church guest: Sam Baltrusis
Tonight, author, researcher, TV host and paranormal historian, Sam Baltrusis joins us to discuss Lizzy Borden... it's time to get your learn on!!!
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Speaker 1: The Smoke Radio for the Masses.
Speaker 2: Headline edition July 8, 1947.
Speaker 1: The Army Air Force has announced that a flying disc
has been found and is now in the possession of
the Army.
Speaker 2: If the game is rigged, change the game.
Speaker 3: Game changer. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide
would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from
outside this world.
Speaker 1: This is Fade to Black with your host, Jimmy Church,
on the Game Changer Radio Network. Good evening.
Speaker 2: How you doing?
Speaker 3: How you doing?
Speaker 2: It's Fade to Black. Today is Tuesday, Rocktober 13th, 2026.
I'm your host, Jimmy Church. Let's do this, man.
Speaker 1: It's October, Rocktober 13th.
Speaker 2: What a great week. This week on Faded Black, last night,
Mona Lisa Coburn was here with us talking about alien
abductions last night, and that was an amazing conversation. She
is amazing. Tonight, well, it's October. We have Halloween coming up.
I don't know about you, but my neighbors have all
got their Halloween stuff out. I've got one string of
orange lights on my front porch that I leave up
all year long for Halloween. I never unplug them. So
my house has always got the decorations up. But this
is the time of year for me where we do
a lot on fun stuff, right? Monsters and ghosts and
history around that. We're going to do that tonight because
Sam Baltrusis is with us. And I'll get into more
about Sam here in just a second. But tonight we're
going to be talking about Lizzie Borden. And wow. I did,
some of you may remember the ghost hunt I did live.
I can't remember the TV network at the Lizzie Borden house.
That was probably 10 years ago or so. But it's
just a fascinating subject for all of us. We all
grew up. with the Lizzie Borden story and the myth
and the mythology and the folklore behind it. Tonight, we're
going to do a deep dive into that and much more.
Very excited. Tomorrow night, Karen Bell is here. She is
absolutely wonderful. You're going to find out tomorrow night as
I introduce you to her. She does a lot of
work out there. She's a channeler, but she's one of
my partners over on Gaia TV. And she's really dynamic.
And so that's what we're going to be doing tomorrow night.
And Thursday is Samantha Treasure. And we're going to be
talking about out-of-body experiences. So what a great week here
on Fade to Black. I was talking with Sam. I'm
going to bring in Sam here in just a second.
Talking to Sam in the green room before the show.
And what... What is going on in people's houses? And
Sam and I were talking about his thing. I'll save
that for when he comes on the show. But in
my house in particular. And do we, you know, something
like the Lizzie Borden house is one thing. But with
your own home, right, we see all of these TV shows,
you know, haunted this and haunted that. And I love
all of them. But the people that live in the house,
are they taking action by bringing in somebody to look
at the house and a ghost hunter and a medium
and maybe some cleansing? Is that the right move? Do
you do that at your own house? I would do
it at somebody else's house. But do you do it
in your own home? Very fun conversation with Sam. And
maybe we will also visit some of that tonight. He
is a paranormal researcher. He's a history specialist when it
comes to this. And tonight we're going to be discussing
Lizzie Borden. He has been on all of the TV
shows and a TV producer as well. So he's got
a firm grip on this, about the legends, about the
history and family secrets and all of that stuff. Now
he comes to us from the East Coast. He's outside
of Boston, which is perfect, right, for what he does.
And he's written books, and also the TV shows have
included Travel Channel and Haunting, Most Terrifying Places, Haunted Towns,
Haunted USA. And he made a cameo on several television programs,
including Paranormal Night Shift, Hotel Paranormal, and Forbidden History. I
would like to welcome for the first time to Faded Black,
Sam Baltrusis. He's right there. Hey, Sam. Hey, Jimmy, how
are you? It's so good to have you on the show, man.
And because you're a veteran of TV, does this mean
I can take the night off and just hand it
over to you?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, on the East Coast, it's kind of
late for me, so probably not tonight. Can we start there?
Speaker 2: Because of what you do with your career, as appearing
but also producing TV and other stuff, the obvious amount
of haunted ghost paranormal shows that are on TV tells
me two things. One, there's an audience for it. Two,
there are people that will buy advertising on those shows, right?
So the, right, right. If you're going to spend your
marketing money, you're going to spend it where you have
an audience and it has just blossomed. Does that show
you the huge interest that people have in this that
are outside of our community?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I do feel like
that things kind of go in cycles. So it, you know,
the ghost hunting television shows actually have kind of died
down the past year or two years, primarily with the
travel channel. So the travel channel has made some changes,
but I do feel like that a lot of it
has gone online. So you see a lot of the
streaming platforms stream paranormal investigation, but I've also noticed that
there's been more of a shift in critical thinking as well.
So there's sort of the, so we have the traditional
ghost shows, but you also have the idea of, What
is it? And kind of getting behind the scenes is like,
what's causing the haunting? So I have seen kind of
full circle. I will say the golden period for me
was definitely like around COVID era. Like that was, I
was on a lot of television shows, including The Curse
of Lizzie Borden, which is the one that was my
big show that made a huge impact on a lot
of people. And I was working with Dave Schrader and
Chris Fleming on that show. So I feel like that
it is kind of, I would say it's in transition
right now.
Speaker 2: I remember that and talking to Dave about that show.
And you're right about that. And here's the other thing.
What I really enjoy is all of the little ghost
hunting investigative groups that have just, you know, this grassroots
thing where a group of friends have gotten together. They're
able to maybe get a little bit of gear. You
don't need much, right? You need your cell phone and
maybe a digital recorder and something else, but to, to
go out and do this. And there are so many
of those around now. I really, really enjoy that where
people have, well, you have to have tattoos. So if
you have tattoos, you have a paranormal. Yeah, exactly. But I,
I really enjoy that and all of the YouTube channels and,
and there are groups all over the place that are
doing it. And there's certainly a, no list shortage of
places to go and see. Come over to my house, man.
Do you want some action? Do you have, we're going
to get into Lizzie here in just a second. Do
you have a favorite location? Maybe geographically, but maybe even
more down to the micro, a house or an institution
that you enjoy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I specialize in New England. I've spent years
in Salem, Massachusetts, which is sort of my area of expertise.
So there's, of course, locations in New England that I
would recommend. One of my favorites is that I just
wrote a book called Haunted Castles of New England. And
right on the cover is Wilson Castle in Proctor, Vermont.
And if I had a location that I love going to,
mainly because of the energy, there is super positive and welcoming.
And also the owners embrace the paranormal. I would say
Wilson Castle. As far as the West Coast, there's a
location that I have not been to that I really
would be like my bucket list location, which is the
Queen Mary.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've done a ghost hunt there for TV. Haunted, haunted, haunted, haunted, haunted.
Speaker 1: And I, Queen Mary is one of those locations that I,
so I, back in the day, I did kind of
go out on the outskirts of it and something about,
I was kind of scared to go. So just to
put it out, put it out there. I'm kind of, I'm,
I have been chicken most of my life. So a
lot of this stuff really does scare me. And what
happens is when you put me on these television shows,
the spirits respond to my terrified energy. So the, the
darker energies kind of feed off my fear. So I,
I was, I got a red flag. I'm like, I
can't go on the, on the Queen Mary. I do.
I've approached things differently now that I'm a little bit
more experienced in the paranormal field. And I, the plan
is to go, I'm actually going back to, to California
for an event coming up in January. So the goal
is to actually go to the Queen Mary there and
to investigate it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's Joe, man. So haunted, so haunted. The show's about you.
You're my guest. But I'll give you a little taste
of the Queen Mary. So I'm there filming a TV show.
And we've got four crews on the boat in different
spots with cameras and sound and all that. And they're
doing their thing. And I'm in one of these groups.
And so we go down to the Winston Churchill suite. Wow.
In the suite with me is Susan Slaughter, who I'm
sure you know. Susan's with me.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: I love her. Yeah, she's great. And Tony Rathman and
his wife Cherie, and he's got his gear there, and
he's amazing. And, yeah, he's great. And there was probably
10 people in the suite. And to my right are
like two or three camera guys and a sound guy.
holding me right. And he's got the boom and he's
right to my right and everybody else is to my left.
And we're sitting in these couches, Tony Rathman sitting directly
in front of me, across from me. And this is
what happens. We were talking, maybe we're asking questions. We
had some gear that was out and ready to go
for detection. And Somebody said something, but there was a
moment of about 10 seconds of silence. And at that moment,
as loud as could be, and it came from above me,
was a, hmm. And I look, and I'm looking at
the sound guy, and I look at Tony. Tony's like, right?
And we all heard it, and it was loud. It
wasn't like, did you hear that? No. And here's the
other thing. I've often said it was a British hum,
like a female, I don't know, like Helen Mirren, I
don't know. Anyway, so we all hear it, and I
turn to the sound guy, I go, was that you?
And he goes, what? I said, no, okay, it wasn't you.
And Tony thought he heard it come from behind him. Remember,
he's facing me. So Tony turned around and looked towards
the wall. I looked up this way. Everybody in the
room was speechless. So anyway, when we wrapped that night,
it was like two in the morning. We're done. I'm
walking to my car and I just throw my arms up.
I heard a disembodied voice. So that was my first time.
And That was, this is where I'm going to throw
it back to you. When you have a disembodied audio
thing that happens like that, not caught on a recorder,
something that everybody hears, that's a game changer. That's a
paradigm shift for me. But what causes that?
Speaker 1: That's... So for me, so disembodied voices... when you're on
the Queen Mary, you have to kind of take it
where you are. So basically you're by the water. So
I do feel like that the water does amplify hauntings.
And so disembodied voices happens to me a lot, actually,
paranormal investigations. And usually it happens when you're not investigating.
So if you're just sort of hanging out with your
colleagues and you're like playing card games or just having dinner,
which I tend to do when I do investigations, I
try to make it where we're not sitting there with
a recorder and like asking like, how did you die? Like,
we don't do that. We kind of just hang out
and let the spirits sort of communicate with us. So
I do feel like that disembodied, it could be residual
in nature, something that was there from years ago and
somehow it is, you know, amplified in the environment. So
it's energy presenting itself as audio or it could be actual,
you know, an intelligent spirit. So something that is either,
on the ship or something that maybe is like a
spirit guide, but maybe Susan Slaughter spirit guide or someone
that is somehow related to someone in that room.
Speaker 2: I have to tell you so much stuff happened on
that boat that I came away from that. And I
went and watched the, some of the stuff from the
show that the producers had sent me. And I came
away from that. That boat is haunted. It's simply just haunted.
You can feel it. The main ballroom there is totally
the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Same vibe, you know,
the big ballroom from The Overlook. And so it's got
that 1930s look and feel to it. Very beautiful, but haunted.
You know, so it just feels haunted, but it was
the things that I saw and heard and experienced all
day and night on that ghost hunt. That boat is haunted.
If you're looking, you know, you want to get your
haunted ya-ya's out, Queen Mary is high on the list, man.
High on the list. So right now. I haven't seen
it yet, but there's a new Lizzie Borden TV series out.
Are you familiar?
Speaker 1: I am familiar, and I'll be honest with you. After
two episodes, so it's Monster, the Lizzie Borden story. It's
part of an anthology that's produced by Ryan Murphy.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a Ryan Murphy thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have to watch it now. Ryan Murphy and I.
were neighbors growing up.
Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2: Neighbors. Went to school together, same school bus, same friends.
How crazy is that? I've never run into him either
here in Hollywood. But he does good work. I like
his stuff.
Speaker 1: So when you deal with Ryan Murphy, you know that
he's going to take... He has a... He takes... historical
fact and sort of twist it and makes it a
Ryan Murphy production. So if you go in with the
idea that the show is actually not historically accurate, and
it's sort of his twist on it or his take
on the story, it's okay. But it really, really goes
a completely different direction. I was, to be honest with you,
because I'm so close to the story, after the second episode,
I couldn't watch it anymore because it was so.
Over the top, and the facts were twisted. I mean,
I knew it wasn't going to be factually accurate, but
it's so far from being accurate that it was too
much for me to handle. But it was the number
one streamed show on Netflix for several days straight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I didn't know it was Ryan Murphy. I'm
a big fan of– I liked his stuff not because
he was somebody that I went to school with. and
a neighbor. I, I like his cinematography. I like his
storytelling and his reach that he does with the imagination
and takes you to a dark place. That's a talent.
That's a real talent. Um, so anyway, I didn't know
that the Lizzie Borden was Ryan Murphy though. So I've
been holding off, but I guess I'm going to watch
it now. And there's stuff that he did with Jeffrey
Dahmer or the night stock, you know, And he twisted
up and you have to be a little tongue in
cheek with. And that's part of his personality, too, as well,
like Nurse Ratched. So and what he did with that.
But anyway, we all grew up with Lizzie Borden. We
know the song. I can't believe at five years old
we would dance to that song. Right. You know, 40 Wax,
you know, what were we really singing about? Well, we didn't,
but we all know the song and we all got
to know from a very young age, the Lizzie Borden story.
But what actually happened?
Speaker 1: So in 1892, Abby Borden and Andrew Borden were killed
with a hatchet. multiple whacks to their upper part of
their heads. And so the only two people that were
in the house in Fall River was Lizzie Borden and
the maid, Bridget Sullivan. So the case became sort of
the trial of the century because in 1892, Lizzie was
accused and And so because a woman of her nature,
she was 32 years old, lived in a house with
her family. The idea that she could have committed the
crimes was pretty much like very sensational. So it was
like the sensational, it was like the O.J. Simpson trial
of the 1800s, late 1800s. And she was acquitted. But
because of the sensation of the trial, it became... sort
of like legend. And so the actual facts of what
happened in 1892 have been twisted over time. There was
a huge backlash after the trials because of the rhyme.
So while she was still alive, people were seeing Lizzie
Borden took an axe, gave her father 40 whacks, and
that she would hear people, kids on the street doing
jump rope, hearing that song. But she still stayed in
Fall River and lived a pretty alone life for the
remainder of her life.
Speaker 2: How old was she when she died?
Speaker 1: She was in her 60s. So it was several– what's interesting,
she actually died really around the same time as her
sister Emma. So, yeah, she lived a fairly– I would
say full life, but she also left a very secluded
life after the, so she was in her 30s when
the murders took place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen pictures of the house that she lived
in after the murders. And I always thought about what
kind of trauma she, you know, the ordeal that she
had to live with every minute of every day for
the rest of her life. And, you know, everybody around
her knowing that, that's her house, right? That's where she lives.
And she had to, she had to endure that. And
she may have, it may have been like the OJ trial.
She was acquitted, but she did it.
Speaker 1: Pretty much. I mean, so she, she lived in a,
she could have moved anywhere. So she did inherit the
money from her father, Andrew Borden. And she could have
moved anywhere, but she just decided to stay in Fall
River and sort of, uh, Because she, I mean, even
someone who has communicated with her spirit, she does not
take accountability for the murders. And so I think in
her heart of hearts, she was convinced she did not
actually kill her father and stepmother. So she wanted to show, like, hey,
I didn't do it, and I'm going to live and
fall river. However, there was backlash. There was also press, too. Like,
so she would still be in the, make headlines. Years later,
for example, she She became friends with Nancy O'Neill, and
that was sort of the topic of tabloids during the period.
So Nancy O'Neill was an open lesbian, and she was
a thespian as well. So she was an actress or actor,
and they became friends. And they would, of course, allude
to that relationship in newspapers.
Speaker 2: Lesbian-thespian. Yeah, exactly. I had to do it. I had
to say it. I had to say it. What was,
so prior to her parents' murders, what was she like?
Was she normal?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's, that's, so what we know of her
is based on anecdotal. So if you, it depends on
who you talk to. I mean, she was a Sunday
school teacher. She did things that were somewhat questionable. Like,
so she had had a pension for, for stealing things.
So she was accused of stealing things as well. Based
on my communication with her, she had sort of a
sassy side and sort of a self-entitled side. In my book,
just to put it out there, the book is not
just about the murder. So the book actually is about
the family members. So we are all tied to several
heinous crimes in New England So the Borden murders in 1892,
but there's other murders that are also connected to the
family as well. So I look into the idea of
maybe it's something about our makeup as far as like
our brain chemistry. So there's actually a professor that was
based in California. He recently passed away. That was also
related to the Borden family. And he did scans, brain
scans on himself. And it turns out that some of
the people that are distantly related to the Borden family
have sociopathic or psychopathic brains. So it's the same brain
scans that other serial killers have. So you could argue
that maybe she had that. So she had a sociopathic
or psychopathic brain. So in my book, I do go
into the idea that maybe she was, in fact, the murderer,
which all the evidence really does kind of point in
that direction. But I also think that there may be
reasons why that she did, or she doesn't take accountability
for those actions as well. So when you communicate with
her in the afterlife, she's like, I didn't do it
as a medium. So I think I wanted to prove
her innocence in this book. I kind of presented both sides.
I'm not sure if I was successful in that, but
I do present both sides of the story.
Speaker 2: Um, okay. Can I, let's, can I be the devil's
advocate here? Sure. Um, the, the obvious question is if
she didn't do it, who did? But the other question
that I've always had, um, she wasn't the only person there, right?
You had the housekeeper, uh, and her parents, that's three
against one. What if it was her? how come her
dad didn't step in or how come somebody, her mom
was killed first, right? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Right. So the, the story, so it basically was August 4th, 1892.
The mother was on the second floor, which was now
called the John Morris room. And she was killed first.
The father had stepped out. They all had breakfast together.
Although Lizzie was, wasn't, she was absent during the breakfast and,
So the father had stepped out, came back around noon,
and he took a nap on the couch, the famous
couch that's in the parlor. And that's when he was murdered.
So the timeframe was about an hour and a half
between the two murders. So he would not have been
in the house when Abby, his wife, was murdered.
Speaker 2: Okay. So if it wasn't Lizzie, then who was it?
And you're a medium, right? And so you're able to
make contact and have communication. She pointed the finger at
somebody else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when I communicated with her, so I did, I
did a show called the curse of Lizzie Borden. So
we kind of go into the idea that the, one
of the theories is that she was taken over by
a dark entity. So almost like a possession of some sort.
So she may have, physically committed their murders, but she
was not there. She was almost possessed. Like that's, that's
a theory. Another theory in my book, I don't really
go into the paranormal as much as I do in
my other books. In the most recent book, Lizzie board
in the family curse. I go into the idea that
I go into different theories. So one of the people
that I've always, so I always say John Morris, just
so John Morris was the uncle. He, was in the
house the night before the murders. And he had a
pretty firm alibi the morning of. So he had breakfast
with the family. He goes out and he has an
alibi that was pretty much like really solid. So he
would say, I walked down the street, I saw the
priest on the corner, said hello to him. So he
was really kind of eerily new every step of the way,
like in his morning while he was away. So I've
always suspected that John Moore somehow had his hand in
the murders. I also, there's another person that, so Troy
Taylor is another author that I interviewed for the book.
And he goes into the idea that William Borden, who
has been sort of pushed aside by historians as someone
that should not be considered someone of interest, but I
think he was. So he was a family member. The
rumor is that he was like Andrew Borden's love child. So,
So whether or not he was actually Andrew Borden's actual
biological son is up for debate, but he was a
Borden family member, and he lived in the more affluent part,
the Highlands area of Fall River. So one theory is
that William Borden was actually... the man that was the perpetrator.
So if you look at the actual murders, Lizzie, if
she acted alone, there was minimal time to actually commit
the murders and to get rid of all the blood evidence. So,
I mean, and also hide the weapon. So there is,
to me, like, as far as the timing of everything,
it's almost impossible for her to actually commit the crimes
unless it was very, very much premeditated to the point
where she actually was able to plan out everything, which
that's a theory for a lot of the historians who
think that she did in fact do it. So I
think that if you look, like recreate the crime, it's
very difficult for her to have done it by herself.
So potential another melt. So I go into the other
potential people that were there. So after the murders happened,
the first, of course, suspicions were the Portuguese immigrants in
the neighborhood. So it kind of went there as far
as like someone off the streets came in and killed him.
Andrew was a shrewd businessman. So he had a lot
of enemies. And so it could have been one of
his employees that was angry. It could have been somehow
related to John Morse, money related with John Morse, who
was the uncle who mysteriously came to the family's house
the night before the murders. And he was friendly with Andrew,
and he was very much aware of the business side
of Andrew. But I also think that John Morse knew
what was going on as well.
Speaker 2: So we have the famous lines in the song, right?
Gave her father 40 whacks when she saw what she
had done. She gave her mother 41 whacks. Not historically accurate.
How many whacks did mom get?
Speaker 1: I mean, so, yeah, the numbers, we don't know for sure, Jimmy.
I mean, like, so it's around 19.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of whacks, man. That's a lot of whacks, yeah.
And what about, I bring this up as a defense attorney, right?
I play one on TV. And how many whacks for dad?
Speaker 1: I mean, around the same. So around, well, it's like 13.
I'm actually, off the top of my head, I'm not
remembering exactly. I think it's like 13 or 14. But yeah,
so the amount of wax do not measure up precisely
with what is in the salt.
Speaker 2: But it's still a lot of wax. I don't know.
Have you ever chopped wood? Have you ever chopped wood?
Speaker 1: I have chopped wood, but also I am. So I
don't have a fireplace, so I haven't done it that often.
Speaker 2: But I bring that up because I've tried to chop wood.
I'm good for two whacks, and I'm tired, right? And
swinging an axe is a man's game. And so to
think of Lizzie violently– doing that, I don't know physically
if that was possible or if it is possible. That's
all I'm suggesting. As a defense attorney, that's what I
would bring this up. It would be nearly impossible for
a woman to swing a heavy wood axe that many times.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. So the weapon was never found.
So they don't know the size of the hatchet that
was used. So the If you look at the wombs
to the head, it looks like it's a smaller kind
of like lady-sized, so a smaller hatchet as opposed to
like the big wood hatchet. I say that with sort
of like tongue-in-cheek, but it's a smaller– and it's more–
it would be actually more easy for someone with Lizzie's
frame to use the hatchet.
Speaker 2: Identity, yes.
Speaker 1: So it was a smaller handle. And I do go
into the book, the different, I go into the weapon.
There's a whole chapter dedicated to the weapon. There's another
theory that it could be perhaps two weapons that were used.
So there may have been, like that's one theory that
hasn't really been explored that much. And I do talk
about it, kind of go into the alternative theories in
this book that I write. But again, it's the book
is not, replaying the murders because that book's been done
a hundred times my book goes into other things it
goes into um the specifics of the crime but also
uh the fact that the bloodline is connected to all
these other heinous murders throughout new england throughout new england.
Speaker 2: Can you throw a couple out i don't i don't
want you to you know give away the book uh
here on the show but uh no i mean what
else was it tied to this is fascinating to me
it's pretty much part of the, like, that's what this
book's about.
Speaker 1: It's not replaying, going through the murders. It does go
into the murders. Half of the book is dedicated to
sort of like looking at the different players and looking
at it with a different lens. But other crimes, for example,
Sarah Maria Cornell, she was a middle girl who was also,
and what I used was the fact that all of
these people in our family, so I'm related to her
as well. And so I, in our family lineage is
all these crimes are tied through blood. So it's a
bloodline connection. Sarah Maria Cornell, who was a mill girl
who was murdered in the 1830s, kind of a similar
crime of the century. The Reverend Ephraim Avery, who was
a minister, was accused and acquitted of murdering Sarah Maria Cornell.
So in this case, it was actually a victim in
the family that was kind of the crime of the
century in the 1830s. There was a woman named Eliza
Borden Eliza Borden was the neighbor to 44 years before 1892.
So when the murders happened, actually, Eliza Borden was accused
of killing her two children by throwing them down a well,
taking a straight razor and cutting her neck. And that
was right next door to the murder house. And she
was not connected to us by blood, but through marriage.
She was married to Laudwig Borden, who in my, actually
in my book, I look at the possibility that maybe
somehow Laudwig was involved. But the theory is that she
had postpartum depression. There's also sort of, to me, the origin.
There is a family curse. Thomas Cornell Jr., who was
accused of murdering his mother, Rebecca Briggs Cornell, using spectral
evidence in the 1600s. And so the story is that
Rebecca Briggs was smoking a pipe. She was standing in
front of a fireplace. They thought it was an accident.
She fell into the fireplace and caught a fire and
burned alive. So after the death of Rebecca Briggs Cornell,
the uncle, John Briggs, said he had a dream that
Rebecca said that Thomas killed her, her son. So he
was brought to trial based on spectral evidence, which is
also a big phrase that's part of the Salem witch trials.
So someone's dream was used to accuse and execute an
innocent man. So there was no proof whatsoever that he
actually killed his mother. But based on circumstantial evidence and
a dream, they were used to accuse and execute Thomas Cornell.
They had a daughter named Innocent. Innocent was the person
that I'm connected to, Sarah Earle. as far as the bloodline,
was her mother. And Sarah Earle was also accused of
killing Rebecca Briggs.
Speaker 2: What? Are you kidding me? So you're saying if I
was standing in my neighborhood, right, on my front lawn,
and I'm talking to a friend, and I go, well, yeah,
she fell into a fireplace. The person there, you know,
she chopped her parents apart over here. Over here, she
threw her children down a well, cut her throat. Then
over here, And you don't start connecting the dots on that, right?
That all of this can't be related? That's nuts. Especially
next door to the Borden house. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we started. So I was brought on for
the documentary, which actually won a gold telly. So to me,
it was a beautifully done documentary called The Curse of
Lizzie Borden. And so we started putting those dots together.
And I started in the book. So this is my
new book, Lizzie Borden, The Family Curse. I start going
into those cases and tying them together. And I'm using
the bloodline as sort of a way to kind of
focus on these different cases and kind of like weaving
them all together. But there's other people that are tied
to us as well, including Marilyn Monroe. And that's going
to be for the follow-up book to this. And also
Eileen Wuornos.
Speaker 2: Oh, Eileen Wuornos.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, man. When I was a kid, let's go back.
It's 19, I'm going to say 94. Right around the earthquake,
the California earthquake. So I'm at Tower Records on Ventura Boulevard.
Love my documentaries, man. You know, love my stuff. And
so I'm in the documentary section of Tower Records, which
was fantastic. And I find this, right, Eileen Warno's documentary,
never heard of her. And it was the first one
that was done by her crazy ass attorney. Remember that
guy that sang like body sang like Elvis, that, that
first documentary. So I get that. And I take, I
don't know who she is. Female serial killer. What?
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I, I got in on Eileen very, very early.
I thought I'm a big fan of spinal tap, obviously. Right.
I thought that was a mockumentary. I watched it so
many times. I didn't even think she was a real person.
I thought that this is just too crazy. Her attorney
was out of his mind and the documentary and the
way that it was shot. I didn't think it was real.
I didn't think it was real. And, Today, I follow her.
There's a new documentary that just came out on her.
I don't know if you've seen it in the past
week or two. And I did watch that, too, as well.
But you're right. She is a fascinating case study. Fascinating. Everything.
Her childhood all the way up to all the characters
in her life all the way up to the end.
What a case study.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in, in my book, I really look at
not necessarily whether they committed the crimes, but sort of
how their story is told and who controls the narrative.
So like for me, like for example, Eileen Warno is
a great, and I don't really go too much in
Eileen with Eileen or Marilyn in this book, because I'm
actually going to do a follow-up book to following this book. Uh,
but to me, if you look at all the, the
women that are portrayed, uh, in, uh, in pop culture,
the men controlled the narrative. So Lizzie's narrative was controlled
by men. Same with Sarah Maria Cornell. I mean, the
Reverend Ephraim Avery was sort of like a beloved person
in the community, but he was acquitted and he was
also had to face a lot of backlash from, because people,
it was so obvious that he killed Sarah Maria Cornell.
I mean, there was even a note saying, you know,
if you find me, go to the Reverend Ephraim Avery.
So in all the women that are in the book,
in my opinion, it's the narrative and how their story
is told. Eliza Borden, Eliza Borden, there's a small article
that says she was melancholy and that Laudwig Borden, who
was an outstanding citizen in the community, remarried soon after.
So all these women were sort of, just like their
narratives were controlled by people that wanted to crush them.
Speaker 2: Guys, fascinating. I didn't know about any of this. This
is why I do this show, Sam.
Speaker 1: I know, right?
Speaker 2: I just love learning stuff. Why was she acquitted? Why
was Lizzie acquitted?
Speaker 1: I mean, so there was a lot. I mean, if
you look at, she didn't actually, she wasn't at the trial.
So guys, if you watched the Ryan Murphy monster episode, series,
everything in that is not based on fact. She was
questioned before the trial. And so there was a lot
of circumstantial. So I think if you look at it,
she was a 32-year-old small framed woman who taught Sunday school.
So there was no way that a woman could commit
that heinous of a crime. And so kind of what
you were saying earlier, how could she lift a hatchet
and and kill you know have that many blows i
can't i can't even hold the dude two blows so
i do think that it was because she was a
woman and she kind of uh the idea that a
woman could commit that heinous of a crime it worked
in her favor uh but i also think that the
police were on to her and like they they really
thought that she uh was someone that was should have
been the prime suspect So I think it was more
like a, I would say there was a lot of
lost potential evidence because this was 1892. So for example,
there was a pail of bloody rags that were in
the basement of the Borden house. And they said, well,
that's all the women in the house were having their
menstrual cycle. So those were menstrual rags. So that potential evidence,
you know, that could have been tied to the murders.
The fact that she did not have any blood on her,
that was, you know, like, where did the blood go?
And there was no weapon. So where did the weapon go?
So there was a lot of missing potential, like, facts
that were kind of overlooked by the prosecution. So they
were unable to actually prove without a doubt that she was, in.
Speaker 2: Fact, the murderer. So even... Oh man, what a crazy case.
Even if some entity took over her body, she blanked out.
She didn't know what she, she doesn't remember it, but
that doesn't eliminate blood spatter, right? That doesn't eliminate any
of that. That would still have had to have been there.
It's another fascinating part about this, you know, Did she
change her clothes? Did she take a bath? Did she wash?
Who cleaned up the crime scene? What happened to her
bloody dress or whatever she was wearing? Where did all
of that go?
Speaker 1: Wow. There are many... Go into the different theories of that. So.
One theory is that she stripped completely naked and that
she committed the crimes and then put on a dress after. However,
I don't think that that amount of blood, you could
be able to clean that up as quickly as she
would have had to clean it up within the time,
the window of the murders happening and her alerting the
neighbor that her father was murdered. So another theory is
that she had The dress that she was wearing, a
blue dress, and then another dress on top of that
that she put on after the murders took place. So
that's another theory, as well as she was, in fact,
the sole perpetrator. But this has had to have been
a very extreme premeditated murder. That's what really happened. She
did burn a dress after. And she said that the
dress that other people spotted her burning a dress. So
that is like what what was the dress and was
there blood on the dress?
Speaker 2: Hold on a minute. Stop. Did everybody just see? Yeah.
What was that?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: What did everybody just see what went across Sam's screen?
Did everybody see that? What was that? I.
Speaker 1: Haunted you know so i i do.
Speaker 2: Oh no i saw it happen yes see jessica says
yes yes yes yes everybody saw it happen okay sam
just i saw everybody saw it.
Speaker 1: This is my life when i talk about of talk
about her i have evps of her Basically, I had
to ask, Lizzie, did you kill your father and stepmother?
And I heard an agonizing cry, like, stop asking me
that question. I told her, her spirit, that I would
not call her back to the crime scene ever again.
So I have sort of a pact with her and
her spirit that I will present her as a family member.
And I try my best to. So do I think
it's related to this case? I do.
Speaker 2: I really do. Is, is, is she, is, does she
show remorse? Is she sad about it?
Speaker 1: She doesn't take, she doesn't take accountability for the murders.
So she, when I have communicated with her and actually
the later in life home is called Maplecroft. So I
have investigated that location too. And if she's going to
be anywhere, it's going to be at that beautiful house,
which is now owned by a lovely family in fall river.
So she, I have talked to her and she basically
said Bertha Manchester. So Bertha Manchester was also in the
Lizzie Borden docuseries. She was not like a very close neighbor,
but the murder happened six days before the trial. So
there was no way in hell that Lizzie actually could murder,
also murder Bertha Manchester, but the patch it was used
and it was a really similar kind of like potential
man off the street killing her. There was a gentleman, Jose,
who was accused of murdering her and was sent back
to his country. So there was no trial, but he
was accused. So Bertha Manchester is another, she mentioned Bertha.
And I think Bertha, the murder of Bertha is the key.
Who murdered Bertha Manchester? And I don't think it's Jose.
I think it's somebody else.
Speaker 2: And when we talk about that, again, just fascinating, right? It's,
At some point you have to back up and go, okay,
this is all connected, right? This is not a coincidence.
But what was the origin of the curse? What set
it off?
Speaker 1: So in my book, I look at what could be
the potential origin story. So I think the Rebecca Briggs
Cornell being pushed into the fire, that was the beginnings
because the daughter, innocent Cornell is the one that connects
all of our family members uh so innocent was named
innocent because she because her father who was hanged and
not buried with the family on the family lot in
portsmouth rhode island uh was you know he was innocent
and he was spectral evidence was used to accuse them
but there's something that i that happened Years before that,
I think maybe the origin story, and I don't want
to get my book away too much, but I think
that it's tied to Anne Hutchinson. So the Cornell family,
they lived in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, but there was a
period that they were kind of going on with Anne Hutchinson,
who was a Quaker leader back in the 1600s. She
formed a colony, like a Quaker colony, in what is
now modern-day Bronx, New York. And they were going there
to practice their religion, which was a Quaker.
Speaker 2: They were Quakers.
Speaker 1: And so Anne Hutchison brought her family, her children with her,
and then the Cornell family, including Thomas Cornell Jr., who
was eventually executed for murdering his mother, Rebecca, and the father,
Thomas Cornell. And Thomas Cornell Jr.
Speaker 2: Was....
Speaker 1: He was sort of like the lookout for this colony.
And he got word that the Native Americans were going
to raid the colony and kill all of the colonists
in that area. So he got that information. He did
not convey the information to Anne Hutchinson and her family.
So the family left at night, the Cornell family, and
went back to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and Anne Hutchinson and
her children were murdered. So if I think that there
would be a curse, it's related to the murder of
Anne Hutchinson and her family.
Speaker 2: What is it? What is it about that area? It
goes back hundreds of years. Today, we're in 2026. I
don't know how many cauldrons or covens are in that area,
but what is it? What is it about Salem and
Boston and Fall River and that part of the country
that that promotes this and you mentioned indigenous, uh, uh, uh,
cultures as well, that may have something to do with
it too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, the land is stained with blood. There is
so much blood that has been lost by history. I mean,
the native American of King Phillips war, there was, uh,
massacres that happened. I mean, Ann Hutchinson that was massacred
by the native American. So the tensions between the, the
indigenous and the, and the, um, the, the colonists that, that,
that left a sort of a psychic imprint on the land.
So you have that coupled with hundreds of years of
history and murders and injustices happening, and that's going to
leave a lot of residual hauntings in New England. So I, that's,
I mean, I'm not originally from this area. I actually
grew up in Florida and then I moved here in
the nineties for college. So I, I was called to
this area, something about it. And that even the, I
didn't even know I was related to Lizzie Borden. I, I,
knew that my grandfather was not from Florida, but it
turns out he actually was originally from Portsmouth, Rhode Island,
which is where all of this happened. So Portsmouth, Rhode Island,
which is right by Newport, Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: Is there, you being a resident there, especially with what
you do in your career, is there a feeling and
an appreciation of of the supernatural and other, you know,
another dimension of life that is part of the community
and civics.
Speaker 1: Actually, it's complete opposite. So when I first.
Speaker 2: Started doing this. No, really?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I mean, truthfully.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, so if you look at sort of shows
like ghost hunters, a lot of the television shows, They're
all New England. So New England is the hub of
the paranormal. It really is. So there's a lot of
a lot of the origin stories like Ed and Lorraine Warren.
They're from New England as well. So because of that,
there was when I first started writing books, it was
there was people were had ghost stories. But everyone's like,
I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts.
So there was a lot of like skeletons in the closet.
Like they did not. want to admit publicly that they
believed in ghosts or they thought ghosts were real. So
there was a lot of that. That has changed because
of pop culture. So I do think that it has shifted.
But when I first started, they would read my books.
They would ask for a brown paper bag like it
was ghost porn. Like they didn't want to be known
as reading paranormal themed books.
Speaker 2: Ghost porn. You know what I used to say? I
don't say it anymore. I need to bring it back.
I used to hide my UFO videos in my UFO
books and my UFO magazines. If I had company over,
that stuff was never out. I always put it away.
I used to joke about it. It was my UFO
porn stash. It's really funny. Now, obviously, I don't give
a crap, but no, you're right about that. You just
kind of kept that stuff on the down low, but
I've often looked at it, New England and that area,
and I've spent a lot of time there. It's kind
of like, remember the apartment building in Rosemary's Baby, right? Yeah.
Everybody's in on it, but nobody's talking about it. That's
New England. Everybody's in on it, right? Exactly.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that it's haunted. Everyone knows about the Salem
Witch Trials, but there's something about the area that doesn't
want to acknowledge that this area is very haunted. And
it goes, it's ancient. There's stuff that goes, that goes
back hundreds and hundreds of years. And it almost, you know,
like the energy, you can just feel, there's a different
vibe to New England. And it's great. Like during spooky season,
like I love, I love New England and Salem during
spooky season, but it also, like when all the, all the,
the weekend witches, as I call them, when they leave Salem,
it turns, it turns really dark. It's, Salem is terrifying.
Like when it's, When it's off season, Salem is a
very quiet ghost town that is kind of scary. Like November, December,
like through the winter months, Salem is scary.
Speaker 2: I have a friend that has a big piece of
property in Salem. And so I'm over at his house.
I've been there a few times. And his main house
is new, right? New construction. But his garage, the carriage house,
that frigging thing is like 300 years old. And he goes,
come here. I want to show you this. And he
shows me this wall, this big long wall. And he goes, dude,
it's 500 years old. And so everything is just old.
You can feel it's old. It's not like here in L.A.
The oldest thing we have here is a McDonald's. well
you know what i mean right and and but that's
not the case new england was the foundation of everything
and then we had the people that were here before
us so it's just a very very old area.
Speaker 1: Yeah and i i feel like and you look when
you come to new england you can feel that and
and the ghosts also we don't tear down our buildings
in new england so we preserve the um the structures
that date back to the 1600s and like the witch
house in Salem that dates, that was still standing during
the Salem witch trials. So you do have houses and
properties that date back three, 400 years. And that's, that's
new England for you. Like we don't tear down our houses.
Speaker 2: Now as a medium, we're going to take a break.
I'm setting up for when we come back for the break.
We've got about a minute left. The, the, The house itself,
you're a medium. What kind of vibe do you pick
up at the Lizzie Borden house?
Speaker 1: Well, I was just there this past Friday. So I
took a break from the house. I will say it's
different every time I go. So when I filmed The
Curse of Lizzie Borden, I probably investigated it about 13
to 14 times before I filmed The Curse of Lizzie Borden.
I think it really depends on the people in the house.
So the living people in the house. and sort of
like what baggage was brought in before. So when we
did the show, The Curse of Lizzie Borden, it was
during COVID. So it hadn't been investigated every day. So
the spirits were very desperate, like very desperate for communication.
So it really depends on the time, the combination of
people investigating and sort of other factors. So it's shifted
over the years for me.
Speaker 2: So when we come back out for the break, I
want to talk more about the house and And what
the vibration is there. All right. So stay right there.
Sam Baltrusis is our guest tonight. It's Lizzie Borden all
night long. Sam, stay right there. I am your host,
Jimmy Church. We'll be right back after this short break.
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All right. Welcome back. Fade to black. I'm your host,
Jimmy Church. Tonight, Sam Baltrusis is with us talking about
Lizzie Borden tonight. It is October. It's Halloween. I love
this stuff. Sam, what's the history of the house? When
was it built?
Speaker 1: Um off the top of my head i'm not 100
sure but i just know it was i would say
like early 1800s um it wasn't it was fairly recent
to the so the how the family had it for
most of lizzie's life uh so i know the exact
year that it was built but i do know that
um it was i would say like 40 years no
sorry she was 32 uh when the murders took place
in 1892 so i would i would probably guess uh
around the mid 1800s, but I'm not a hundred percent sure, Jimmy.
Speaker 2: That's fine. That's fine. So the murder scene itself, when
you go into the house today and you walk in
the front door, what do you feel? And now her
father was killed in the living room, right?
Speaker 1: He was on the first floor and the mother was Abby.
The stepmother was killed on the second floor, which is
now what's called the John Morris room. So you have
to go upstairs for that. So it was on the
second floor. What do I feel? I mean, like I
said during the previous segment, it's different every time I go.
Sometimes I feel heaviness. The last time I went, which
was last Friday, not this past Friday, but the Friday before,
it felt very not heavy, actually. But the basement felt
very heavy. So really parts of the house sort of
shifts depending on how often it's been investigated, time of year,
the people that are in the room with me.
Speaker 2: Do you have visions of the murder scene?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's something that goes back to my childhood.
So when I was, for many years before I even
knew about the case, I mean, I knew about the rhyme, obviously,
but I didn't really know specifics. I would have these
dreams over and over again. So I had recurring dreams.
It was like 35 millimeter black and white, there was
a woman coming through. I remember the wallpaper in these dreams.
And then there was a man behind her that had
a hat and sort of like a really scary face.
So kind of like 1920s sort of black and white,
scary person with a hat. And then you saw the
father on the couch, like sort of lounging on the couch.
And then there was... the words below said Diablo did it.
So that was a dream that I had over and
over again. And the guy would sort of present himself
in the dream and he was, he would scare me.
This was as a teenager. And before I even knew
I was, uh, related to Lizzie Borden. Then I had
another dream where I was on, uh, so Bridget Sullivan,
she lived in the attic or the third floor. Uh,
so I stay in her room. If I do stay
the night at the house, I stay in her room.
So I felt the safest and Bridget Sullivan's room. Uh,
In the dream, I see I'm pinned to the bed
and I see Bridget coming in with a hatchet and
putting it in the cistern. There's a closet that's right
on the third floor in that room. And she's showing
me that's where she put the hatchet. So in the dream,
Bridget was sort of, I guess, confessing to her role
in the murders. So, yeah, I mean, so with my dreams,
there was a male and female.
Speaker 2: Lizzie.
Speaker 1: And the male actually looks a lot like William Borden,
who was the gentleman who was a family member who
ended up in an insane asylum. And he was also
lived really close to where Bertha Manchester was murdered. So
I think he should be a suspect. He's been sort
of like pushed to the side as someone that was not,
you know, like shouldn't have been a player or shouldn't
have been considered. But I'm kind of going back where
I'm like, maybe he should have been really considered.
Speaker 2: And what's the vibration upstairs?
Speaker 1: I mean, really depends. So I haven't been upstairs. So Bridget,
to me, the Bridget Sullivan's room, which is on the
third floor, that is the room that I feel the
safest in. If you, having stayed up there, usually there's
children spirits up there. And then the second floor, when
you walk into where the murder of Abby took place.
And of course, this is knowing that a woman was
brutally murdered in that room. But you can feel the heaviness.
So when I walk into the John Morris room, I
actually burst out in tears. There's so much emotion in
that room. And there's almost like, you know, like Abby,
who was not their biological mother. So Abby was Emma
and Lizzie's or Lizbeth, as she likes to be called,
their stepmother. but there's almost like a betrayal feeling that like,
how could you do this to me? I loved you feeling.
And my take on Abby is she was a lovely woman.
She was a sweet woman based on what I read
and the trial transcript and all the press. And also
the show, Ryan Murphy's show portrayed her as like the
evil stepmother. And that's something that a caricature that, that
really kind of hurt me because she was, On all accounts,
a lovely woman and a sweet woman. So second floor
is very active. We did the show with Dave Schrader
and Chris Fleming. We did a seance, which is sort
of like the infamous seance that happened, was in Lizzie's room.
And that's where all hell broke loose on on the
show um that because that that's where um to me
that's it's the most i would say the second floor
is the most active.
Speaker 2: Floor did i understand you let's let's back up did
you say you spent the night there.
Speaker 1: I did but i've actually i can't i can't stay
the night so it's a bed and breakfast so you
can actually sleep in the house.
Speaker 2: I've heard that yes Yeah, so I.
Speaker 1: Have done multiple investigations there, but I could not sleep
there because I was worried about, you know, I stayed
in the Bridget Sullivan room before and I woke up
and there was a rocking chair that was in the
back of the room. And when I woke up, the
rocking chair was moved right next to my bed. No, man.
Why do you do that?
Speaker 2: Why would you do that? I would never do that. Wow.
Schrader told me about the seance a while ago. What
happened during the seance?
Speaker 1: What didn't happen? I mean, it was so life-changing for me.
So we investigated the house multiple days and Truthfully, we
were supposed to stay in the house, but all of
us ended up, because it was so active, that we
decided to stay at a hotel. It was just too
much going on. So the final day, well, not the
final day, but the day before the final day of filming,
we did the seance. So it was sort of a
culmination of an investigation. You have Chris Fleming, Dave Schrader,
Lou Anjali, who was the woman that sort of brought,
she found new evidence from EVPs to the case, and
myself at the table. So Chris Fleming and I, because
we're both mediums, were the ones that sort of controlled
the seance as far as handling what was going on.
There was a dark entity that came into the room,
and I, at the time... thought perhaps maybe it's the
same dark entity that took over Lizzie and the neighbor,
Eliza Borden, who allegedly killed her father and two children.
So the dark entity comes into the room. So I
was holding back the dark entity. And then, like I said,
all hell broke loose. So the spirits came in. Dave
got basically taken over. buy something. And we thought it
was Lizzie, but he's like, this is not a woman
that took him over. So he starts shaking and, and it,
it was really, it.
Speaker 2: Was really intense. Chris Fleming is Chris Fleming's really good.
He really is. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's really, really good. I,
I would go in, I would go into the house
if I had people with me.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And I'm kind of, would I do it alone?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Would I sleep there? I know it's a, it's like a,
you know, it's Airbnb or bed and breakfast today, but
I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: I just, I mean, I, I, I didn't either. I was,
I couldn't even walk in the house. So I had
these dreams when I put two and two together, because
I was a journalist for 20 years before I started
writing paranormal themed books. So a journalist, but I also
worked in television too. But basically I, I wrote about
this case without even going in the house back in
the 90s. So I go all the way back with
this way before I knew I was related to her.
So when I moved back to Boston in 2007, I
was put on assignment to do another story on the
Borden house. And this is before I wrote about the paranormal.
I would not go inside. So it literally took me
years to actually get the courage to go inside. But
when I started doing the paranormal books, I kind of
had to. And so I started going there, and I
kind of tiptoed, went with people, people that I trusted.
And then before I knew it, I was, like, I
had gone there so many times that it was comfortable
for me. But it's still not 100%. I mean, I
don't sleep there. So I was there. you know like
friday before last friday and with a group from my
i did an event called mass paracon and i was
with patty negri and i trust patty negri with all
my heart she's the best yeah she's the best and
so i was with patty but i got nauseous i
literally i i never get sick and i literally i
was in the bathroom also when we went up to
the i ran up to the bathroom to basically get
sick And the light was flickering like sort of like
in and out. And they were like, that's not normal.
And I'm like, I know it's not normal. So this
is from the basement. So people are like, what happened there?
And really, it was I got sick and that's not
normal for me. So whatever was there was very much
affected me.
Speaker 2: Are there other stories tied to the house besides, of course,
the the double murder?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so here's the thing. When you have
a location that has been investigated as much as the
Lizzie Borden house has been, people bring in their baggage.
So I don't think what we're dealing with the house
are original ghosts. I do think, you know, Abby and Andrew...
are sticking around but it may be something else sort
of assuming that role and even like when people like
oh well lizzie's still in the house is it really
lizzie's disembodied soul i mean i know from interacting with
her she doesn't want to be called back why would
you want to haunt a location where your father and
stepmother were brutally murdered why like why and i and
people calling her back there just doesn't make any sense
to me and it's also it's all it's not uh
It's sort of like disrespecting her wishes because she doesn't
want to be called back there. But she is pretty
much on a daily basis. So I think a lot
of what's going on at the house is baggage and
other things assuming the roles of Andrew Borden, of Abby Borden,
and of Lizzie, and also Emma.
Speaker 2: Did you– have you made contact with Andrew?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Andrew– I mean, so if you want to
base purely on what I think was Andrew Borden, he
is– he's sort of an aggressive male spirit kind of
a cranky man and if i got hit in the
head you know with a hatchet 19 times or whatever
time amount of times that he got hit i would
be angry too um there's he was a notorious penny
pincher so there's also been rumors and this is where
it always goes when you're investigating mediums always go to
the idea that there may have been uh abuse, specifically sexual,
in the house. So they kind of portray him as
sort of this sadistic, you know, man who assaulted women.
And so he, of course, his spirit is angry. And
I would, you know, whether or not he actually did
that is up for debate, because we don't have any
historical record of that. Lizzie, on all accounts, loved her father.
But If you look at sort of the circumstantial things, like,
for example, there were pigeons. She had pet pigeons in
the backyard. And then this is in the trial. So
she kept the pigeons, and then he actually killed the pigeons,
and they had the pigeons for dinner. So he did
things that were kind of considered today very sort of penny-pencher,
sadistic almost, based purely on that. But he was also
a man in 1892. So men were different back then,
and they were also very misogynistic. But he was also
a fairly successful, well, not fairly, he was a very
successful businessman. So he was a shrewd businessman.
Speaker 2: And what about Abby? Have you made contact with her?
Speaker 1: I did. So when I walked into the spot where
she was murdered, I mean, I burst into tears. So
my connection to her is, why did you do this
to me? Like, sort of like, she loved, she wanted
a relationship with Lizzie and Emma, and she felt like
a betrayal of that love for them, their mother, Sarah Borden. She,
she actually died when Lizzie was an infant. Emma didn't
know her mother. So the, even the whole house, like
they love their biological mother. So they even, so Emma
and Lizzie or Lisbeth refer to Abby as Mrs. Borden
and not mother or not stepmother.
Speaker 2: Now with all of this family history, It does sound
like it could lean on the dark side a little bit. Oh, absolutely.
Sort of lean on the dark side. Very much so. Yeah,
very much so. So do you think that that contributed?
Before I get to some conclusions, and we've put so
many different ideas on the table, do you think that
the family history could have been a contributor to this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I talk about in the book. I mean,
so I look at sort of the family curse, and
I'm using air quotes for that, because ultimately, I don't
think that there is a curse. But I also, there's
so many serendipitous things that happen that it's like, wait
a minute, this is crazy. These things are all connected,
and they're similar, and they're sort of, We don't know
what really happened there. I don't think we'll ever really
know what happened in 1892. And you have people over
and over going through this case. And we will never
know for sure. But you never know. Maybe something will
pop up. There's actually some recent evidence that surfaced a
couple years ago that Lizzie was she worked at the
sunday school she was a sunday school teacher at the
church and a dumb waiter fell on her wrist about
six weeks before the murders took place which didn't even
come up in trial so that's sort of new evidence
so i do think that things things could actually surface
and and i think mediums uh myself included, have looked
at this case in every possible angle, but I don't
think we'll ever know without a doubt that she did
in fact kill her father and stepmother.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of true crime. Everybody is these days, right?
I cannot get enough of it. It's just fascinating. But
one of the recurring themes that you hear over and
over again The neighbor will be, well, you know, I
heard the gunshots coming from inside of the house, and wow, right? Okay.
And then the comment, well, they were such a nice family.
They were nice to everybody. You never know what is
going on behind the walls of a family home. You
just don't. Families have their secrets.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And they had a lot of secrets. I mean,
if you look at the household, it was tense before
the murders. Abby was, like I said, a lovely person,
but she also, she asked Andrew to, one of her sisters,
for one of her sisters, or actually it was her stepsister,
to stay at one of the Borden houses. So, Lizzie
and Emma were very upset about that. And the fact
that Abby had sort of control of Andrew and sort
of money was a big issue with Emma and Abby,
Emma and Lizzie, because I think that, you know, they
were worried that they were going to sort of be
pushed out of the family inheritance. So that was definitely
a tension in the house. And they were, you know,
she was 32 years old. So she was still living
in the house, was not married um and so that
that tension as well it's sort of like why are
you still in the house and and so that she
she and her sister both were never married and never
were were with.
Speaker 2: Men well yeah lizzie lizzie ended up being a spinster
herself right.
Speaker 1: Yeah and she doesn't like being called that so i
i know i know i know she was i mean
she pretty much lived her life with and There is
a theory, and Ryan Murphy does go into this, that
maybe she was, in fact, a lesbian. And I have
always thought that, that maybe she was. But I also
think that there's no historical proof to say for sure
that she was.
Speaker 2: Ryan loves exploring the gay themes of psychotic killers.
Speaker 1: He really does.
Speaker 2: He's really good at it. He's really, really good. But
I'm just painting the obvious here. The way that her
parents were killed with that kind of violence, there was
crazy town stuff that was going on in that house
for a long time. And that's it. And whether it was,
like you said, a business thing or something from the out,
it all plays down to the same thing. There was
something going on inside of that house for that to happen.
And here we are left with the mystery that we're
still trying to unravel that we do with so many
other true crime cases that go on, right? Fundamentally, there's something,
when I say fundamentally, right, at its core that allows
and causes this stuff to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those cases. So I.
Am I like a true crime fanatic? I'm not, but
I do. What I'm interested in is giving a voice
to the victims. And that's, I was, I was actually
a crime reporter for, so I was a journalist, but for,
for years. And it was so traumatic for me because
of having to talk to the parents of the victim.
So I've always, I'm sort of like a, too soft,
I guess, for, for crime reporting. Cause you have to
have sort of thick skin for it.
Speaker 2: And I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I did that for a while, many, many years ago
and before what I'm doing now. And I got to
a point, I said to my producers, I can't do
this anymore. I cannot. We need to talk about other stuff.
I just can't go into this dark place. And the
other thing that– with exactly what you're talking about, especially
with something like Lizzie Borden, is you get correspondence with
other people, right? And so you're reading and that, oh,
I've got a hot tip. I've got this. And then
you have to read through this darkness and you're pulled
back into it and you have to go down that
rabbit hole. I couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, I– Yeah,
it's a dark, true crime. And when you're dealing with
that kind of heaviness, it weighs– you have to have
the thickest of skin. I don't know how people do it.
I don't know how a CSI– I don't know how
a homicide detective does what they do. I don't know.
I don't know.
Speaker 1: And so for me, like I– truth like the specifics
of the crime i had to for the book and
i had to for the shows that i've been on
too but i'm really interested in getting to know them
as people um and not just sort of like having
lizzie be you know known for um the crimes that
happened in 1892 and the trial and so she was
she lived kind of alone in her life after the
murders and she also um was very philanthropic. She donated
to what was like the Humane Society. So she loved animals.
And so she may have lived a pretty lonely life after.
And her sister, Emma, lived in Maplecroft with her, but
they had a breakup. We don't know what happened with that.
And then Emma moved out. And so Lizzie lived alone
later in life. So I feel, I mean, there's a
part of me is she was in fact innocent. I
feel bad for her. I mean, I, my heart goes
out for her and I don't want to keep calling
her back to the crime scene. So my, now that
I know that I'm related to her, I'm a lot
more empathetic toward her than I was before.
Speaker 2: The dumb waiter thing. That's an eye opener, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an, and I tried so hard to
exonerate my distant relative.
Speaker 2: I really did.
Speaker 1: I wanted to prove that she was in fact innocent and,
But there's no way. There's no definitive way to prove it.
You can just put out theories and you can also
look at, well, maybe it was justifiable. Maybe Andrew really
was a horrible, sadistic man. And on all accounts, he
was shrewd. Did he assault Lizzie and Emma? It's very possible,
but we don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, devil's advocate again. If Lizzie didn't do it,
I would bet my house that she knows who did.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And so that's one of the theories I go into.
So there's the family conspiracy that Emma, who was in Fairhaven,
kind of conveniently in Fairhaven that day when the murders
took place. John Morse, who was very close to the girls,
but also close to Andrew Borden, specifically the financial part
of it. He was the uncle. but he was not
tied to Abby. So I think he had something to
do with it. So I think John Morris, Emma and
Lizzie worked together.
Speaker 2: I do. Had, why would she, okay, let's say she
didn't do it, but she knows who did. Why did
she take that secret with her?
Speaker 1: Because I mean, she inherited the family fortune. So like
along with her sister, money, money, money, that's, I mean,
that's what the obvious motive would be. But if you
really look at her as a person like that, she was,
there was some self entitled stuff going on there, but
there was something else like the brutality, the violence of it.
There was some definitely something else going on that we
may not know. We can, of course it's conjecture that
maybe she was assaulted or maybe she was having sort
of a lesbian affair and they found out or something. They're,
There's something that if she did do the murders, set
her off.
Speaker 2: Well, okay. But the idea, so I, I thought about
this a lot. So if she didn't do it, then
she knows who did, but that's it. I don't think
there's any other conclusion, but for her to take that
with her, it didn't come up in trial. There were
never any other suspects. There wasn't a second trial. There
wasn't anybody else that was brought forward as a suspect.
Maybe she was scared, right, that she couldn't say anything
because the killer was never caught. And she knew the killer,
so she couldn't say anything. That's where I've always kind
of leaned on this. Most people don't realize, unless you
really study this case, and Sam, you know this to
be true. Most people think that she was convicted. That
she was caught. She was the killer.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And that's kind of the dogma of, right, the pop
culture side of this, the myth. No. She was acquitted
and died of old age in her house. Not the
Lizzie Borden house in the house up the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So most people don't realize that. That's a crazy, crazy
part of this whole story. She was acquitted and lived
out her life. So, yeah, that's a very bizarre part
of the story. Everybody thinks that she was, you know,
it was Salem. They caught her. They burned her at
the stake. You know what I mean? But that's not
how this resolves. So you being the true detective, true
crime specialist that you are, what did happen? What are
your conclusions?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so this is something that, even in
the book, I really... Conjecture, because my opinion changes every...
The more information I get, the more my opinion changes.
So you asked me five years ago, or ten years ago,
I would say 99% for a fact that she did,
in fact, commit the murders. She was in the house.
Bridget was in the house. But with this book... I
think that there is no way that she could have
committed the murders without having any blood on her that
we know of. Or cleaning up the crime scene so
quickly where there was no blood throughout the house. So
I don't really feel comfortable saying what I think. So
if you asked me 10 years ago, I thought she
did it. She didn't take accountability for it. So she
wasn't disassociative. So she had to have been in an
altered state, whether she was possessed or it was sort
of like a psychotic break of some sort, that would
be the only explanation. And she had superhuman strength to
be able to take a hatchet, whether it was a
woman-sized hatchet or a big hatchet, we don't really know,
but taking this hatchet and holding it up like that
and killing someone that brutally. So it had to have
been someone with sort of like a sort of a
psychotic break of some sort to be able to do that.
So those specifics, I I'm convinced there was a man
involved too. And I think it was William Borden. I
really am convinced. Wasn't John Morris. He has an alibi,
the uncle, William Borden needs to be looked at again.
Speaker 2: She was religious, demonic possession.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's, that's a theory that will. So that's, I'm
not a big believer in demonic possession. I think things
are miscategorized. Um, I think that there was potential dark
entity that could have taken her over. I mean, we
have the, and that's something I look at as a
family member. I, so I was on a haunting. I
actually had an attachment that was a murderer. Um, So
I went in and out of consciousness for eight days.
So we may have that. That may be the family curse.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, Sam, you don't
just get to dance past that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a pretty well-known because it was, it was
the hundredth episode of a haunting. Okay. So yeah. So
my family line has there. I suspect that, that maybe
she had that ability as well, or there was an
entity that took her over. I, I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't want to get taken over right now. Because
when I talk about it, things happen. Let's put it
that way.
Speaker 2: Look what happened earlier in the show. Dude, that was
a ghost. That was crazy. Hey, Bill, I'm talking to
my moderators. You guys, cut that clip out and send
it to me tomorrow when that happened.
Speaker 1: This is very common. I'm I've heard disembodied screams while
doing interviews talking about her. There is a pressure on
me to present her story and present it accurately and
present a side to her where I think she's innocent.
But I'm a journalist, so I have to present both sides.
But I want to prove her innocence, and I feel
a passion to do that. I just don't know how
to do it.
Speaker 2: Do you think that, you know, it's so long ago now,
you know, almost 140 years. Yeah. You know, that's a
long time. But do you think that the murder weapon
eventually will surface and the other stuff? It's weird that,
not completely strange, but to have all of the evidence
just completely vaporize. You have to have the murder weapon.
But how much blood spatter do you have from those
two types of murders? It must have been, you know,
floor to ceiling. It must have been everywhere. And to
have it just completely disappear, you can throw the supernatural
element into this, right? Bewitched, right? And it's gone. I
don't know. But that seems to be the case where
we don't have. any of this forensic stuff available to
us today that would possibly solve everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, even so there was a hatchet that
was found in the, in the basement that was brought
in for testing. They did not find any blood traces
or there was a gilded. So there was like something
like a gilded traces on it, but there was a
hair on, on the handle. So the hatchet actually broke.
And there was the hatchet there. So it couldn't have
been cleaned, but they suspect that that was, in fact,
the hatchet that was used. But the only other idea
is that another person came into the house and had
the hatchet with him and left the property and took
it with him. And so I think that that's the
only possible explanation. But everything points to her, though. You
know what I mean? Except for the evidence, the blood...
the weapon, that important stuff that we, we never found
the weapon. So do I think we'll ever find the weapon? No,
because I think it's been lost by history. I mean,
I think, I think that that case was such sensation.
The fact that it wasn't found back then is shocking
to me, or it was found and maybe, maybe something,
you know, will pop up. Like there's a lot of,
a lot of documents that are people's private possessions. So,
An estate sales, maybe like in 20 years, we'll have
an estate sale. We'll find the sort of like the
loaded gun, like find something that's tied to this case. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's some Rothschild Illuminati family member that's going, hey, you
want to see the Lizzie Borden axe?
Speaker 1: I have it. It's very possible. I mean, I do
know the hatchet that was brought in for forensic testing.
It's at the Fall River Historical Society, which has been
closed for about five years. So I haven't actually seen
this hatchet, but there are photos of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And why is it that all of us,
including myself, have this just ongoing fascination with this case?
What is it? Is it because it's a woman that's involved?
She's got a great name. We were just talking in
the chat about the band out here in Hollywood in
the 80s called Lizzie Borden. They were great.
Speaker 1: They were great.
Speaker 2: I saw Lizzie Borden. And that's part of it, right?
This ongoing fascination with the case. Why is that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think because it hasn't been solved. So
it's sort of like the whodunit. A woman who has
sort of taken on a sort of like the life.
She's sort of like legendary. So I've always, but I've
viewed her as a caricature. And now that I know
that I'm related to her, I view her as a
complex woman. You know, she's definitely, and the same reason
why we're fascinated with Eileen Wuornos or Marilyn Monroe. There's
something about them that just, there's a quality to them
that you can't really explain. So I think that this
case will continue. I mean, it'll be, a lot of
it's pop culture too. Like movies are done about it
and it sort of rekindles the fascination with the case.
So it sort of keeps going and keeps going. Same
with the Salem witch trials. And I think it's important
to remember because I think that this is, you know,
a perfect example of, you know, of a woman who
went on trial in the late 1800s. So it's sort
of she's pivotal for women specifically.
Speaker 2: Her eyes. There's one other thing that we have that's crazy.
about this case is we kind of see it in
sepia tone, right? We kind of see it in black
and white historically. But there are a lot of photographs
of her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this is the famous one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking at it right here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, there are a lot, but they're sort
of like they're not really. I mean, it's sort of
like I would say five photos of Lizzie. This was 1892.
So this was and they were wealthy. So she could
afford having photographer having photography. But truthfully, there's not as
many as, you know, like, say, Eileen Warno. So more
contemporary photos. So there's a, there are photos, but it's
because the case was sensational. She was in the press
a lot. So the newspapers had photos back then and
that's how they were preserved.
Speaker 2: What do you make of her eyes?
Speaker 1: So knowing that I'm related, so I didn't find out
I was related to her. My mother did the genealogical
research and she has crazy eye, which is what my, my,
one of my aunts has that same look. And, And
she does have that look in her eyes, like sort
of like she's crazy, you know, Lizzie or Elizabeth, I
love you. But, but there's like a crazy eye look.
I get what you're saying. I get where you're going, Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Okay. Look, I'm going to do this for us in
the moment for everybody. Just, just hang on. Just let
me pull this up. And so everybody can see what
we're talking about. And, and she was, she was pretty.
also there there's the photo that's that's the one wow
yeah now you said crazy eyes i didn't want to
bring it up but in all of the images of
her she does have that that that look what those
eyes have seen wow.
Speaker 1: And from someone that's empathic, someone that identifies as a medium,
I also get a lot of sadness in those eyes, too.
So I think that there was a lot of repression,
and I feel like that she had to hold back
a lot of passion and a lot of love and feelings.
I just see the windows, like the eyes may come
across as crazy, but there's also a lot that she's
holding in, too. So that's what I feel, and that's
what I see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just, wow. Wow. Was this picture before or after?
Speaker 1: It's before. It is before. Yeah, this is the fair
use one. So this is right before. So this is,
it was the one that appeared in a British newspaper,
but it was when the trials were happening. So she
was pretty much headlines throughout the world, really. The case
was one of the most talked about cases of that era.
Speaker 2: Just you can feel there's something going on. But they
always did those stoic. One of the reasons why images
from that time period look the way they do with
humans is you had to stay in the same position
for a long time. You couldn't move. Oh, yeah. You know,
it's not like snap. No, you had.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You couldn't move for 15 seconds.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's what's going on here. You have to remain
perfectly still. So is it stoic? Is it melancholy? Is
there something else going on? I don't know. But these
images always provoke those feelings in us today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's like with her, she she was notoriously
stoic in the trial. And people like in the, I
keep bringing up the Ryan Murphy because it was so
historically inaccurate, but in the trial, she was sort of
like theatrical and feigning that, that she was pretty stoic
and that, that people commented on how stoic she was.
She also was pretty fashionable. So she would wear these
kinds of like ornate outfits and they were more focusing
on her clothing than the, than the trial. So it was,
she didn't really give them what they thought a woman was.
you know, like sort of having feigning spells and dramatics.
She didn't give them that. So she was actually kind
of a stoic person.
Speaker 2: Now, what do we do with the fact or fiction
part of this? Is it bullshit or not, right? What
do we do with that? Because history is nothing but,
especially the oral part of it, is just a long
game of telephone that we've all played. And so, you know,
the way it starts and the way it ends and
finally gets to us are completely different scenarios. Right. And
so how do we separate the fact from fiction in
this case?
Speaker 1: It's really so it's one of those things that I'm
very passionate about, especially with the Salem witch trials, because
there's so much misinformation perpetuated by pop culture. So I
feel that with Ryan Murphy twisting, we all know that
he did that. That's what he does.
Speaker 2: He twists.
Speaker 1: Historical fact and kind of does his own thing it
does a fantasy version like an alternate uh lizzie borden
but i think it's important to know the facts because
i think you know people this this case is revisited
over and over and over again and i think you
like like you said earlier she was acquitted and i
hear these youtube uh videos and like well when lizzie
killed her father and stepmother i'm like she didn't she
was acquitted we don't know for sure you know what
happened and so i think that's the most important thing
like remembering that she was acquitted and that she, um,
I guess, you know, was a, was a complex woman. She,
and she was very philanthropic leader in life and she, uh,
had to endure a lot of backlash from the community, uh,
people mocking her and seeing that rhyme over and over
again and how, you know, even she, even though she
wasn't put, she was in jail too, like while the
trial was happening. So she had a pretty rough life.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's another thing too, historically, um, Salem, especially
when you go back to the witch trials, you were
way guilty out of that. That's it. That's it. Nobody
got a fair shake. Everybody that was hung and, you know,
everybody that died, everybody that was executed, uh, were innocent
of nothing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So to have her acquitted in geographically in that area, uh,
That should stand for something, shouldn't it? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I always feel like the Borden murders in 1892
and the Salem witch trials, which was in 1692, so
literally 200 years apart. And so I feel like there's
something tied to this. I really do. And I don't
know what. They're bloodline, obviously. And so people always joke
everyone in New England is related. which is true. If
you have family that came over in the early 1600s,
you're related. But I'm not from New England. I'm from Florida.
So the fact that I was called here almost by
something that I didn't understand at the time. I mean,
I went for college, but I had a poster of Newport,
Rhode Island on my wall growing up as a kid.
So there was something calling me to New England at
a young age. So I feel like I just feel
like that there's there's There's so much, there's a lot
of mystery that still is lingering within me in this area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. She was acquitted. And that's, again, going back
to the urban legend and, you know, dogma. I just
throw dogma in there as another way to put this.
That stretches out for a long time. And eventually all
of that turns into truth. And that's a difficult thing
for us because historically you have to go back and
read through this to truly understand. But this case, for me,
has got way more questions than answers. I think that
there is a paranormal, supernatural element to this. I don't
know exactly what is going on. But the way that
it went down and the way that she was acquitted
and lived the rest of her life, where I think
that she knows exactly what happened, but then we have
the entire absence of blood and blood evidence at the house,
which doesn't make any sense. And it goes to me,
goes into this interdimensional possibility with this, which brings me
to my last thing. I want to close out with this.
I meant to get to this earlier. When it comes
to ghosts, and entities, spirit, or whatever label that you
want to put on it, are they spirits of the dead?
Or is it an interdimensional parallel world aspect that bleeds
into ours?
Speaker 1: And so I think it's a little bit of both.
I'm in a school that when I'm talking to spirits,
I'm not talking to disembodied souls. I think that I'm
in a school that maybe they're like splinters. So There's
something that has been it's like a murder, like the
murder happened in 1892. It's going to leave a splinter
at the location and almost has, it interacts like a
disembodied soul. So I don't think, I think that there's that.
I think that there's interdimensional entities that can cross over
portals from the other side. So I'm kind of leaning
more in the interdimensional direction theory um and i think
but also psychic imprints so splinters or pieces left at
locations soul parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah you brought up uh the reason why i'm so
intrigued with all of this it's it's well yeah what
i read and what i you know it's but it's
also what i have experienced and when you go through
an experience then you're trying to figure out what's the
cause of it you know Yeah. And you brought up
Dave Schrader like you with this thing earlier on over
your face. And that was pretty crazy, by the way.
Dave Schrader was on this program. I think it was
New Year's Eve last year. OK, so 10 months ago.
So Schrader's on the show. And, you know, Dave and
I worked together for many, many years on Coast to Coast.
And we have a great friendship. But we always have
open conversations. And he's just great. Truly love that man.
We're at the end of the show, Sam. And he's
talking about, it's the last two minutes of the show.
And you can go and check this out for yourself.
Dave Schrader, New Year's Eve. Fade to black. And he's
talking about his mom who had passed. And possible contact
that was made. Okay?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: So that's what we're talking about at the end of
the show. And as he is telling that story, there
are people in the chat right now that saw this
and heard this happen. And everybody that saw this, just
say yes, and I'll put your name up on the screen.
I heard it. So Dave and I, and all of
a sudden, I don't want to knock anything over. This happens.
It sounded like the refrigerator in my kitchen tipped over. Loud. Bang.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I'm startled. And I said to Dave, I go,
what was that? Was that you? Because nothing, you know.
And I'm looking around in here and there's nothing out
of place. And he goes, I didn't hear anything. And
I'm watching the chat and everybody's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
It happened. Now, after the show was done, I get–
and I'm walking through– I'm looking for something like a
guitar off of the– something, right? Something big. Nothing's out
of place. Nothing. Anywhere. I found no evidence of anything.
I went back and here's somebody right here. I remember.
I remember. I remember. I remember. The next day, Bill
sends me the clip. And I watched that clip. And
I was more startled the second time that I saw that.
It was loud. I freaked. I remember I pulled off
my headphones. And I was expecting, like, the roof to
cave in. It was like that. It was crazy. And
what's the cause of that? What? made that sound. And
you can see, I'm just sitting here, you know, talking today, boom,
you know, and it's, it's something. And that's, that's what
drives me. You know, what, what, what is it?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: There's something, I don't know, but this, what we're taught
is not the reality that we live. And that's, that's
where I'm at today. I I'm okay with it. I'm
comfortable with it. but I'm more fascinated with the causality
of it, the physics of it and the science of it,
because there's something there and we just haven't figured it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so I'm not surprised it was Dave
Schrader having worked with him. Like with us together was
like a magnet of a paranormal activity. So literally everything
that happened on the show really did happen. So I
do think that it's certain people do attract this. And, and,
you live in a haunted house, so we're going to
kind of stir the pot in your haunted house or
haunted studio. So I do feel like that it is
related to the guest and it may be something responding to,
you know, like to us and our conversation. So I
do think it's something related to that. But is it
something that is stuck at the house? I don't think so.
I'm kind of in a school of interdimensionals. Like it
can cross over from portal to portal. Like, cross through
something and make its presence known and then go right back.
Speaker 2: So if that's the case, and I love that. Yeah.
If that's the case, then are we ghosts to them?
Speaker 1: And that's, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 1: And so that, that is, I do think that that
is definitely, and I have asked that to spirits, like, Like,
am I a ghost? And they're like, yes, you know.
And so I've done, like, the sphere box sessions and stuff, too. So, yes,
I think that that is very much something that I have.
Speaker 2: Thought about a lot. You know, we see, you know,
I turn around, there's somebody standing in here, right? Okay,
I see that. All right. So does that, right, whatever
it is, does it go back to its wife going,
check this out? Man, I saw this ghost. There were guitars. Right?
It was crazy. Right? I was in this room. There
was this guy. And, man, it was crazy. Oh, honey,
you got to quit drinking. No, I saw it. You
know what I mean? And he, or whatever, doesn't have proof. Right?
And so he's got to go back with his story
just like we do. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah or or it could be someone living because i
i astral project and i remote view as well and
i'm like do i when i do that do i
is there like an essence of me at this location
so i it could be someone that's living that somehow
was in the room at the time uh and sort
of like not knowing that they're they were in your
house uh making their presence known. So I have thought
of that too, like sort of like astral projection or
remote viewing.
Speaker 2: You know who you remind me of?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 2: You remind me of, what's his name? Ah, Maurice on Bewitched.
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Was that his name? Right? Her warlock uncle on Bewitched. Remember?
Speaker 1: He would show up. I mean, I watched it as
a kid. I don't remember the names, but I did watch.
Speaker 2: It as a kid. But you know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You remind me of him. I don't know why. I
just called Sam a warlock. But you've got that image, man.
You've got that really cool, what's the word I want? Medium.
The psychic medium image.
Speaker 1: Well, I specialize in Salem, Massachusetts, so I'm surrounded by witches.
My mother is like, see, my mother is not into
the witches and pagan. And she's like, are you a witch?
I'm like, no, mom, I'm not a witch. But I
do witchy things, definitely. And I work with some of
the best witches in the field, like Patti Negri. I
love working with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's amazing. She is. When I think of cool,
I think of Patti. She's cool, man.
Speaker 1: And she's really good.
Speaker 2: She's really good.
Speaker 1: When I'm together, it's so good.
Speaker 2: Like, it's really good. Yes, yes. Where can everybody follow
your work?
Speaker 1: So go to sambaltrusis.com. That has pretty much links to everything.
I have two books out this year, but I have
so many books. I have a book coming out, it
seems like every six months or so. And then as
far as television, a lot of my stuff is available online,
especially a haunting episode. If you want to know more
about what happened to me in 2016, with the possession
that I didn't want to talk about earlier. It's a
season 10 of a haunting, and it's called Provoking Evil.
But other shows are available on streaming platforms like Max,
the HBO Max website, and other websites as well. So
just type in Sam Baltrusis, and you have access to
all the TV shows and my books.
Speaker 2: Fantastic stuff, man. Great conversation, Sam, and I look forward
to our next one, man. Thank you so much. That'd
be great.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: You're the best. See you, Sam.
Speaker 1: All right. See you, Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Stay scared. Oh, man. What a great conversation. Happy Halloween, everybody.
Lizzie Borden. And you didn't know, did you? And now
you do. What an amazing case. Now, I'm going to
go watch Lizzie Borden, the show tonight. Ryan Murphy. Yeah,
I was holding off on it. I know. One of
my Pandora's box, I say this all the time. One
of these days, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going
to turn on the lights in my room. There's going
to be somebody there. Maybe tonight's the night. You never know.
We can thank Sam for that. Tomorrow night. What is
tomorrow night? Tomorrow night on the show. Oh, tomorrow night
Karen Bell is with us. And she's absolutely amazing. And
I can't wait for all of you to meet her.
But for now, until tomorrow night, all I've got is
go Beckley Tappy. Fade to Black is produced by Hilton J. Palm,
Renee Newman, and Michelle Freed. Special thanks to Bill, John, Dex, Jessica, Dennis,
and Kevin. Webmaster is Drew the Geek. Music by Doug Aldridge. Intro,
Space Boy. Fade to Black is produced by KJCR for
the Game Changer Network. This broadcast is owned and copyrighted
2024 by Fade to Black and the Game Changer Network, Inc.
It cannot be rebroadcast, downloaded, copied, or used anywhere in
the known universe without written permission from Fade to Black
or the Game Changer Network. I'm your host, Jimmy Church.
Go Beckley Tappy.