1913 downtown Waxahachie hotel whose sealed basement once held a Chicago White Sox practice pool — the reported origin of its most persistent haunting.
100 N Rogers St, Waxahachie, TX 75165
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Hotel rooms available; lobby and ground-floor commercial spaces accessible to visitors.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Four-story downtown commercial building with elevator access
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1913 · Ellis County Courthouse Historic District contributing property · Texas Historical Commission marker · Chicago White Sox spring training connection · Last fireproof hotel construction in Waxahachie
The Rogers Hotel that stands today at Waxahachie's downtown square is the third version on the site; its two predecessors burned. The 1913 building was designed by Dallas architect C.D. Hill and constructed of reinforced concrete faced with dark mottled brick and Bedford stone trim at a reported cost of roughly $100,000 — the equivalent of more than $3 million today.
The hotel's most unusual feature was a basement swimming pool added specifically for the Chicago White Sox, who used Waxahachie as a spring-training base in the early twentieth century. The pool was built at their request and used for several seasons before the team's training arrangements changed. At some point after the White Sox stopped coming, the pool area was sealed off and is no longer accessible.
For much of the twentieth century the Rogers operated as the only full-service hotel in Waxahachie. It has since been converted to a mix of hotel rooms, office suites, and ground-floor retail. The building is a contributing property in the Ellis County Courthouse Historic District and is listed with the Texas Historical Commission.
Sources
The central haunting claim at the Rogers Hotel traces back to the now-sealed basement swimming pool. According to accounts reported by WFAA and CW33, a young girl drowned in the pool during the years the White Sox used it. Staff and guests have since reported cold spots near the stairwell to the sealed basement and the sound of a child's presence in that part of the building.
A separate and apparently unconnected legend involves piano music. Multiple accounts describe hearing what sounds like a piano playing on an upper floor of the building — sometimes from a room confirmed to contain no piano. The reports span several decades and have come from overnight guests as well as staff working late in the commercial suites.
A third tradition identifies a ghost called 'the bride' — a woman who, according to local lore, retired to a specific room after being abandoned at the altar and died there. This figure is sometimes described as distinct from the child apparition and associated with the elevator's unprompted returns to the basement level.
All three accounts have been in local circulation long enough to become fixtures of the Waxahachie Haunted History Tour, which uses the hotel as one of its primary stops.
Notable Entities
The Rogers Hotel offers guest rooms in a four-story 1913 building at the corner of Waxahachie's downtown square. The basement pool area is sealed and inaccessible, but guests report phantom piano music from upper floors and unexplained sounds in the corridors.
The Rogers Hotel is a primary stop on the Saturday-evening Waxahachie Haunted History Tour, which departs from Courthouse Square at 8:30 pm. Tours cover the hotel's history, the swimming-pool legend, and other downtown sites. Duration approximately 2 hours.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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