Betsy Ross House

In 1980, two security guards fought in the basement. One killed the other. The woman weeping down there may be older than Betsy.

In 1980, two security guards working the Betsy Ross House got into an argument in the basement of the gift shop. One of them killed the other. It is the most concrete piece of violent history the building has, which is awkward for a tourist site built around a woman who may or may not have ever lived there.

Historians have argued for a century about whether Betsy Ross actually stitched the first American flag in this particular house on Arch Street. The front section dates to around 1740, the rear addition came ten or twenty years later, and Betsy lived here, maybe, from 1776 to 1779. The flag story was introduced to the public by her grandson in 1870, almost a century after the fact, with no contemporary documentation. Scholars have been politely skeptical ever since. The house commits to the legend anyway, because the tourists keep showing up, and the tourists are the ones who report the ghosts.

They report a woman weeping at the foot of a bed in the basement. They describe her as Betsy. There is no way to corroborate that. More common are voices in empty rooms. One visitor, touring with a companion, heard a teenage boy humming clearly enough that both of them assumed the other had a speaker on. When they realized the room was empty, the humming continued for a moment and then stopped.

Ghost Hunters filmed at the house and came away convinced something was active inside. Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, in their on-camera recap, described employees as people who may come face to face with history. The specific history on record is the 1980 killing and 250-plus years of commercial tenancy that never quite stopped: before it was a museum, the building held a shoemaker, a drugstore, a tailor, a cigar shop, and a tavern. A lot of shifts ended in that basement.

Whether the woman weeping downstairs is the seamstress herself or one of the other people who actually lived and worked and died here over the centuries, the reports line up on location. Basement. Bed. Humming boy. Those are the spots the employees would rather not close alone.