The Haunted Weaver Hotel, Waterville: A 1905 Railroad Hotel and Its Two Quiet Ghosts

The Weaver Hotel stands on the corner of Kansas and Front Streets in Waterville, a town of a few hundred people in Marshall County, northeast Kansas. It is the only three-story building in town, painted white with a rounded corner and a long wooden porch, and it was built in 1905 and 1906 directly across from the tracks of the Central Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad. For eighty years it fed and housed rail passengers, train crews and traveling salesmen, until it closed in 1985.

The town would not let it go. The Waterville Preservation Society raised the money to restore it, and the Weaver reopened on Memorial Day 2009 with ten guest rooms. Along with its history, it kept two ghost stories: the wife of a former owner, said to have died in the building, and a man who took his own life after he was rejected in love. They are among the gentlest of the haunted hotels in Kansas.

The ghosts of the Weaver Hotel

The former owner's wife

The first of the Weaver’s two ghosts is said to be the wife of one of its former owners, who, the story goes, died inside the building. For much of its life the hotel was a family business as much as a hotel: the National Register nomination records that William Weaver’s widow, Imogene, managed it for many years after the deaths of her husband and his parents, so the idea of a woman who never quite left her post fits the place.

Her name and the date of her death are not given in any published account, and the nomination does not mention anyone dying in the building, so this is local lore rather than recorded history. Reports of her are gentle: a sense of someone keeping an eye on the upstairs rooms.

The man who was rejected in love

The second spirit is a man said to have taken his own life at the hotel after his love was not returned. Older versions of the story, including the one we used to tell on this site, describe him as a construction worker; more recent travel write-ups simply call him a heartbroken man.

Again, no record has been published that names him or dates his death, and the two versions do not quite agree. What both share is the location: the upstairs floors where railroad travelers once slept.

A low-key haunting

The Weaver is not a hotel of slamming doors and flying objects, and it does not market itself on its ghosts. The two stories are passed on by locals and travel writers rather than by the hotel, and published accounts give few details of what guests have actually experienced.

If you want dramatic activity, there are louder places in Kansas. If you want a night in a genuine railroad hotel with a couple of old stories attached, this is a good one, and if something does happen during your stay, we would like to hear about it.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The upstairs guest rooms: Where both ghost stories are set. All the lodging rooms are on the upper floors.
• The upstairs hallways: Linking the old guest rooms where railroad travelers slept. Quietest late at night.
• The wraparound porch: Faces the old railroad line, where passengers once waited for their trains. Best at dusk.

History of Weaver Hotel

Waterville sits on the old Central Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad in Marshall County. The Weavers were already in the food business in town: L. E. Weaver had opened an ice cream parlor in June 1877 and added a restaurant and bakery. His son, William E. Weaver, built a new hotel for his parents at the corner of Kansas and Front Streets, directly across from the tracks. Work began in March 1905, the lion’s head on the south wall carries that date, and the hotel opened in mid-May 1906. It became known as “the pride of the Central Line.”

J.J. Brooks and Herman Schmidt of Hanover made the cement blocks and put up the building, which Wikipedia credits to them as architects, and W. E. Fitzgerald of Waterville did the woodwork. It is a Renaissance-style building of precast concrete blocks with a stone texture, painted white, one of the first large cement-block buildings in the area. It is about 90 feet long and 22 feet wide, with a flat roof hidden behind a parapet and a wooden porch that runs along the south side, around the rounded corner and halfway down the east side. The ground floor held the restaurant and the upper floors held the guest rooms.

William and his wife Imogene helped run the hotel, and after William and his parents died, Imogene managed it for many years. Apart from short closures for repairs or after a proprietor’s death, it served railroad crews, salesmen and local events for most of the twentieth century. In October 1969 Ina Roeth bought the run-down building and renovated it in a Victorian style, with the focus on gourmet dining. The Historic American Buildings Survey documented it with measured drawings, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 28, 1975.

It closed in 1985 and sat empty for years. The Waterville Preservation Society rallied the community and raised contributions to rehabilitate it, and the Weaver reopened on Memorial Day 2009 with ten upgraded guest rooms, two party rooms, a visitor center and a gift shop. The restoration won a Kansas Preservation Alliance honor award in 2010.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book by phone or through the hotel’s own website. It is a small, community-run hotel and is not on the big booking sites.
• Rooms are few and book up for local weddings and reunions, so plan ahead for summer weekends.
• Ask for an upstairs room, where both ghost stories are set.
• Walk the Waterville historic district and the old railroad grade; the town’s Victorian houses are worth an evening stroll.
• For organized investigations, see Haunted Rooms ghost hunts in Kansas.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Eldridge Hotel, Lawrence: the famous Room 506, about two hours southeast
• Midland Railroad Hotel, Wilson: another railroad hotel, with a haunted third floor
• Hotel Josephine, Holton: an 1889 hotel with a ghost named Josephine, about an hour southeast
• Haunted hotels in Kansas

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• National Park Service: Weaver Hotel National Register nomination
• Wikipedia: Weaver Hotel
• Kansas Preservation Alliance: Weaver Hotel award
• Kansas Preservation Alliance: Weaver Hotel (2010 listing)
• Weaver Hotel (official site)
• Trip101: Historic hotels in Kansas (2024)
• OnlyInYourState: 7 haunted hotels in Kansas

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