A Pennsylvania tourism official doesn’t believe in ghosts but says she saw one in Gettysburg
“You could really feel the energy, and I’m not really an ‘energy’ person,” Pa. deputy secretary of tourism Anne Ryan said.
When Anne Ryan arrived in Gettysburg for a ghost tour last month, she was a skeptic.
The Civil War battle of Gettysburg, where Union troops defeated Confederate forces in 1863, was the bloodiest battle in American history. More than 7,000 soldiers died on both sides and thousands more were injured.
If ever a place should be haunted, it’s Gettysburg. Ryan, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of tourism, was hosting a group of writers there and figured she’d play along.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Ryan told The Inquirer this week.
Still, Ryan left that night with a ghostly picture she can’t explain and found her double-knotted sneakers untied, a specialty of Gettysburg ghosts.
Ryan said she snapped a photo on her phone at a house, looking for what ghost hunters describe as orbs in a room where a murder had allegedly taken place. Online, that location has been dubbed the “Baltimore Street Murder House.”
Ryan snapped a photo with her phone and can’t explain the glowing white shape that appeared. Ryan said she isn’t sure she’s a believer, but she sounds like one. Or a savvy deputy tourism secretary.
“You could really feel the energy, and I’m not really an ‘energy’ person,” she said.
The Union lost 3,155 soldiers and the Confederacy lost 3,903 during the bloody, three-day battle that raged from July 1 to July 3. Across the 6,000 acres of Gettysburg National Military Park, more than 1,300 monuments have been placed since the war ended.
“According to the tour guide, a lot of the ghosts there are soldiers who still believe they’re in battle,” she said. “Essentially, there are so many spirits that are still stuck in those three days and the days that followed.”
Ryan’s tour guide had also warned visitors that ghosts of “mischievous child ghosts” like to untie shoelaces.
“So I double-knotted my sneakers,” she said.
Before she left, though, Ryan visited a home that had been struck by countless bullets. It was nighttime. She began walking to her car. Then she looked down, and her Adidas were untied.
“I couldn’t get out of there fast enough,” she said. “I don’t want any ghost, even a child ghost, in my orbit.”
That being said, Ryan thinks Gettysburg is a great place to visit during Halloween. Just make sure you tie your shoes.
