Opened in 1991, the Rose of Sharon Bed and Breakfast houses more than guests looking for romantic weekend getaway.

Located at 205 Bryson Street in Waxahachie, the house was built by lawyer F. P. Powell in 1892 for his new wife. The couple and their two daughters lived there for 20 years before F. P. took a job in Austin, thus selling the house. Throughout the next seventy odd years many families called this place home, but it fell on hard times in the 1980s by which time it had been transformed into apartments, and was put up for sale. When Sharon Shawn saw the house, even in its disrepair, she could see great potential. She restored it to its 1892 grandeur and opened the Rose of Sharon Bed and Breakfast.

Sharon first realized that something was different about this house before any restorations had begun. She had come in early one morning to get a general idea of what the place looked like and what needed to be done to transform the house from apartment homes back  into a quaint East Texas residence. On the first floor in the back of the house she noticed a small room filled with old magazines and newspapers and decided to look through them. Sharon got caught up in the reading and eventually noticed that she had been in the room much longer than intended. As she picked up her purse to leave she spotted a pair of fourteen karat gold hoop earrings, a pair she especially liked and had lost over a year before, laying on the floor! She had lost the earrings nowhere near the house and, infact had given them up as lost months earlier. At the time, she did not connect the appearance of these earrings to anything supernatural, she was simply exhilarated to have them back. Now almost fifteen years later she is convinced that it was the spirit of a former resident, perhaps Mrs. Powell, who produced the earrings as a gift to the new owner, that was going to restore the house to its former grandeur.

Since opening the home as a bed and breakfast, numerous sightings have occurred. Kathleen's Room, named after Sharon's granddaughter, garners the most activity. The most common haunting here is also the most widely reported throughout the world -- the feeling of not being alone combined with a very warm and welcoming feeling.

Aside from Kathleen's Room, apparitions of a family of four dressed in Victorian clothing can be seen. Sharon believes them to be the Powells because of their dress and because there are two daughters. The sound of stringed instruments, usually a waltz, are frequently heard. Footsteps are also heard in empty hallways and on the stairs leading to the second floor.