In today’s episode we explore where the archive and the imagination meet—sometimes in productive dialogue, sometimes in open confrontation. This is a place where documents matter, facts matter, but so does the question of what history feels like once it has passed through the human mind.

Our guest is Ric Rebelo, author and filmmaker, whose recent work spans an intense, prolific engagement with horror—particularly short fiction—alongside the release of three new books centered on one of the most relentlessly interpreted figures in American history: Lizzie Borden.

I’m joined today by Dr. C. Michael Hiam, author of Murder Aboard: The Herbert Fuller Tragedy and the Ordeal of Thomas Bram, a gripping new work of historical true crime.

This maritime mystery unfolded off the coast of Massachusetts, just three years after the trial of Lizzie Borden, and invoked startling parallels to the Borden case.

I’m joined today by the brilliant Anna Behrens, a devoted Sherlockian and fellow Lizzie Borden aficionado, for a conversation that explores an intriguing literary crossover: what happens when the world’s most famous fictional detective steps into one of America’s most infamous real-life murder cases?

We’re diving into four imaginative works that bring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Fall River, Massachusetts, to investigate the 1892 Borden murders. We’ll look at Sherlock Holmes and the Incident in Fall River by D.A. Joy, Holmes and Watson by David Ruffle, Sherlock Holmes and the Fall River Tragedy by Owen Haskell, and Sherlock Holmes: The Maplecroft Message by Joe DeSantis.

You can purchase the books through the links below:

Sherlock Holmes and the Incident in Fall River by D.A. Joy

Holmes and Watson by David Ruffle

Sherlock Holmes and the Fall River Tragedy by Owen Haskell (out of print/ebay)

Sherlock Holmes: The Maplecroft Message by Joe DeSantis

In this episode, we interview Dr. Tracy J. Revels, Sherlockian, author, historian, and professor of humanities at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, about her unique approach to teaching freshmen to consider how Sherlock Holmes would have investigated the Lizzie Borden case.

In this episode, we're turning our attention to the town of Webster, Massachusetts, and a truly immersive museum experience that brings the past to life in a remarkable way. We talk with Barbara Van Reed who is the executive director of the Samuel Slater Experience and Nicole Gaudette, the museum’s program coordinator.

In this episode, we interview Bruce Dorsey, author of the book Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation, the story of the Sarah Maria Cornell case and its societal ramifications, including social change, the birth of a new religion, popular culture, and jurisprudence.

On this episode of the Lizzie Borden Podcast, we are pleased to bring you a reading of "The Purloined Curio" by author Richard Behrens. It is one of the earlier stories in the Lizzie Borden Girl Detective mysteries. The title is no doubt an homage to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter." The story includes a nefarious medium who is hired by a bereft widow in the hope that she may make contact with her departed husband. All is not as it seems, and it is up to Lizzie Borden, Girl Detective, to put things right. The story explores the spiritualism movement in late nineteenth century New England, which was of particular interest to the author. Richard Behrens also includes his usual wry humor and comic characters that make his stories so unique and enjoyable. The story is read by a voice conjured by artificial intelligence.

In this episode, we interview George Schwartz, the curator-at-large for the new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, titled, Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums. Over the past twenty years, at PEM, George contributed to many of the institution’s most successful exhibitions. He has lectured internationally and teaches courses on material culture at Tufts University in the Museum Studies program.

Just in time for Halloween, the exhibit and the accompanying book elaborately detail the origins of the Spiritualist movement in America and its locus in the belief in life after death. We explore the history, controversy, personalities, and symbolism of spirit photography, the public exhibitions of mediumship, magicians like Harry Houdini, Thurston the Great, Kellar and his Amazing Cabinet Mysteries, among others, as well as the makers of objects used to conjure spirits.

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