By Kalena Reynolds | Reporter
Waco is home to many different cultures and lifestyles, and while there is plenty of opportunities for those living in the city, what about those who are no longer living at all? Little do most people know, some of Waco’s most famous tourist spots are allegedly home to a multitude of ghosts.
Dr. Cindy Little, a parapsychological researcher and paranormal investigator in Waco, is a ghost tour guide at the Dr Pepper Museum. According to the museum website, ghost tour guides are currently offering paranormal tours on Saturdays to “lead you through both historic buildings, including our otherwise off-limits basement, to hear about the Museum’s history and investigate its paranormal activity for yourself with investigative tools such as EMF readers.”
“The Dr Pepper Museum is actually pretty active,” Little said. “I’ve heard children’s laughter and running on the second floor.”
Little said Cameron Park Zoo has also had many paranormal sightings — some of the creepiest ones being with overnight kids camps.
“When the kids are doing their overnights, they’ll have overnight stays for groups of kids like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, and they’ll have them sleep in the aquarium,” Little said. “And they’re the workers who have seen like a black shadowy guy standing over the children.”
Little said workers have even seen a figure in the lemur enclosure.
“They’ll see shadow people behind them, and then they’ll turn around and there’s nobody there,” Little said. “As well as that, that building one time shook, and they heard a voice yell at them, ‘Get out,’ and they got out.”
While some Waco ghosts are rarely interactive, others have been said to have a more poltergeist-style communication with the living. Little said J.S. Barnett’s Whiskey House has notoriously experienced such activity.
“I know that the employees have really experienced a lot of different things like poltergeist-type activity,” Little said. “I think a speaker was ripped out of the wall, dishes being broken with hearing footsteps upstairs.”
There is also a legend of paranormal activity on Baylor’s campus, specifically in the Armstrong Browning Library. The library is dedicated to famous poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and sightings of the couple have happened around the clasped hands sculpture.
“If you go around it, wait for a little bit, you’ll start to feel a different kind of energy around it, and it’s the energy of their love,” Mr. Shadow, the ghost host of The Haunts and Legends of Waco, said.
Mr. Shadow said a common misconception some people have is that ghosts are just evil entities. He said in many cases, ghosts are created from positive emotions such as love.
“It’s a haunted object because of how much love is contained within it,” Mr. Shadow said. “People fail to realize that love is so much stronger, and it creates ghosts too.”
