Dr Pepper Museum

Housed in the 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building, this museum celebrates Dr Pepper, which was invented in Waco in 1885. The 1953 F5 tornado tore through this part of downtown. The museum now offers paranormal tours year-round.

The Dr Pepper Museum, housed in the 1906 bottling plant where the world's oldest major soft drink was first mass-produced, has been certified as a paranormal location--a designation earned through decades of documented supernatural encounters that make the facility as famous for its ghosts as for its soda. Staff who have worked here for years have simply learned to coexist with their spectral colleagues, greeting them in the morning and going about their day.

The most tragic spirit is "Shorty," a truck driver who died on May 11, 1953, when the devastating Waco tornado pinned him against the factory wall with his own vehicle. His presence is strongest on the second floor, where the air feels consistently colder than anywhere else in the building, and visitors report the sensation of someone standing with them even in empty rooms. The trauma of that tornado--which killed 114 people--is believed to have supercharged the building's energy.

The "doppelganger ghost" manifests as a perfect duplicate of museum employees, appearing in the building even on days when the staff member it mimics is off work. Colleagues have held conversations with what they thought were coworkers, only to learn later that person was never there. A spirit possibly named Seth has a distinct personality that investigators have documented, while another ghost is notably flirty--grabbing visitors' thighs and ankles during investigations, and once poking a paranormal investigator from behind.

The third floor office generates loud knocking on the door that nobody can account for, always in sets of two or three. Dark shapes move through the museum after hours. Cans fall from secured shelves, lights flicker, and faces appear in the periphery. The museum embraces its haunted heritage with weekly paranormal tours that include the otherwise off-limits basement.