State Tourism Official, a Self-Declared Skeptic, Reports Glowing Shape and Untied Adidas at Gettysburg

GETTYSBURG, PA. — A ghost tour of Gettysburg last month has left one of Pennsylvania's senior tourism officials with a photograph she cannot account for and a pair of sneakers that, by her telling, would not stay tied. Anne Ryan, the state's deputy secretary of tourism, told The Philadelphia Inquirer she attended as a skeptic while hosting a group of writers.

According to the account, the tour stopped at a house known online as the "Baltimore Street Murder House," where a murder had allegedly taken place in one room. Ryan took a phone photo hoping to capture what ghost hunters call orbs. What came back, she said, was a glowing white shape she still cannot explain. "You could really feel the energy," she said, adding that she is not an "energy" person.

The guide, according to the report, explained that many ghosts at Gettysburg are soldiers who still believe they are in battle, a notable claim given that more than 7,000 men died there over three days in July 1863. The guide also warned that mischievous child ghosts like to untie shoelaces. Ryan double-knotted hers. After dark, near a home struck by countless bullets, she walked to her car, looked down, and found her Adidas untied. She said she could not get out of there fast enough.

Ryan said this week that she does not believe in ghosts, and that she still considers Gettysburg an excellent Halloween destination. The record, such as it is, is thin: the Inquirer ran the story Monday without naming the writers, the tour company or the guide, and did not print her photograph, using a stock image of a battlefield statue instead. Weird Darkness found no record of the murder for which the house is supposedly named, and the Inquirer appears to be the only outlet carrying the tale.