When confronted with the paranormal, some people run toward it and some run away from it.

“I always dreamed I’d run away from it, but I ran toward it,” said Weisberg of an encounter with a “shadow person” in the basement of Lizzie Borden’s house.

A researcher of the paranormal, author of several ghost-themed books and co-host of the Spooky South Coast Radio Show, Weisberg has definitely become someone who seeks out the unexplained.

On a dark and stormy Tuesday night at the Mattapoisett Library, Weisberg shared some of his findings on the mysterious happenings at the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River.

Weisberg described the infamous murders of Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother this way: “It was like the O.J. Simpson trial in the Victorian Era.”

Whether or not Borden actually killed her parents remains a mystery, but Weisberg said something was not right in the house.

”There was definitely a sordid history between the Bordens,” he said. “It was not a stable house environment.”

When the house became a bed and breakfast in 1996, something paranormal may have been stirred up said Weisberg, who has researched the Bordens’ former residence and had a number of unusual encounters there.

Some people think the ghosts of the Bordens, a former caretaker for the house and even children who were killed next door could be the source of the phenomenon.

Weisberg said he’s been pushed down stairs, thrown against a wall and pinched in the house. But he admitted that he does provoke the spirits there.

“Whatever is there doesn’t like me very much,” he said.

Weisberg played a few recordings taken in the house, including one of a woman’s voice saying, “But I’m a good daughter.”

He said the voice might be Lizzie Borden herself, but he has another theory.

Weisberg said Native Americans didn’t settle in the Fall River area because they thought something was wrong with the land there.

“I think it’s something much, much darker that pretends to be whatever the situation calls for, something that was there long before the house.”

“The murders took place, the negative entity ate this all up and went to sleep for a long time,” conjectured Weisberg.

He thinks there might be something evil in the house that feeds on the energy of all the people coming into it.

Weisberg said that might also be the source of “The Amityville Horror” in New York.

Ronnie DeFeo, Jr.’s murder of his family at their home in Amityville, New York in 1974 was the first sign of trouble in the house.

When George and Kathy Lutz later moved into the house with Kathy’s three children, they only lasted 28 days before paranormal activity drove them out. The strange happenings eventually made it into a book and a movie series.

Kathy Lutz’s son Christopher spoke on Weisberg’s radio show and said he agreed there was a similar sort of evil in the two houses. Although Lutz said much of the fantastic events in the famous movie didn’t actually happen, he told Weisberg that a hooded figure did appear in the house. He suspected his stepfather of practicing the “dark arts.”

“He’s still haunted by it today,” said Weisberg.

At the advice of DeFeo himself, Weisberg said he’s kept his distance from the Amityville house. Whatever the “elemental” beings are in the Amityville and Borden houses, one thing is certain, Weisberg doesn’t invite any paranormal activity into his home.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” he joked.

For more on Tim Weisberg’s research and for links to his radio show, visit www.spookysouthcoast.com.