FALL RIVER The Historic Lizzie Borden House in Fall River closes out its October series of Victorian mourning evenings on Sunday, Oct. 25, when guides in costume lead guests through the funeral rituals, mourning dress and superstitions of the 19th century, from 6 to 7 p.m.
The one-hour program, called In Mourning: A Victorian Funeral, has run every Sunday in October, with evenings on Oct. 4, 11, 18 and 25. Admission is $20 a person. Each guest is received as a mourner, served in the spirit of a Victorian gathering, and the evening includes a slice of funeral cake and a cup of mulled cider. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, so the final mourning evening lands the Sunday before.
What the evening covers
The house frames the evening around the Victorian idea of memento mori, remember that you must die. Death in that century was surrounded by ritual, fashion, superstition and lore, and mourning carried its own customs, from what a family wore to what it served. The program presents those customs inside the house itself, with each guest received as a mourner.
The program is built around four parts. The first walks through the elaborate funeral rituals and mourning etiquette every Victorian family was expected to follow. The second takes up fashion: the hidden symbolism of mourning clothing, jewelry and funeral dress. The third covers superstition, the stranger beliefs that lingered in the shadows around death, and the fourth looks at lore, the traditions that shaped the Victorian relationship with death and remembrance.
Two add-ons
Two optional extras can be added at booking. Below The Veil, a $5 add-on, takes guests down into the basement for a smaller session on what the house calls the darker side of Victorian funeral customs: the folklore, superstitions, strange practices and macabre stories that existed beyond the respectable parlor. A $20 add-on turns a guest's modern photo into an 1890s tintype-style mourning portrait, a keepsake in the period's memento mori tradition.
If you go
The final evening is Sunday, Oct. 25, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Historic Lizzie Borden House in Fall River. Tickets are $20 a person, and the two add-ons are chosen when booking through the house's website.
Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.
How we verified this
Every fact comes from the house's own event page listed below, read fresh on Oct. 21, 2026, about 9:10 p.m. EDT: the every-Sunday-in-October schedule and the four listed Sundays (Oct. 4, 11, 18 and 25, weekdays that match 2026), the 6 to 7 p.m. hour, the $20 price, the mourner reception, funeral cake and mulled cider, the four program parts, and the $5 basement and $20 tintype add-ons. We checked each date against a calendar: Oct. 25, 2026 is a Sunday, and Oct. 31, 2026, Halloween, is a Saturday. The page shows no year on its date picker; the Sunday weekdays match 2026. No outlet is a source for this story. Not heard: no one was contacted; the house's page speaks for itself.
Corrections
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Sources (1)
- In Mourning: A Victorian Funeral | Lizzie Borden HouseEvent page of the Historic Lizzie Borden House. Every Sunday in October, 6 to 7 p.m., $20 a person, one hour; date picker lists Sundays Oct. 4, 11, 18 and 25 with no year shown, weekdays that match 2026; guides in costume; each guest received as a mourner; funeral cake and mulled cider; the four parts (ritual, fashion, superstition, lore); Below The Veil basement add-on $5; tintype-style mourning photo add-on $20; add-ons chosen at booking. Read Oct. 21, 2026.