I once went on a tour of an historic home, and the tour guide made what I consider the perfect statement with regard to a relatively stupid question she was asked by a rather credulous visitor.
We were in the bedroom that had been used by the children. The guide explained that of the nine children to whom the mother had given birth, only three of them had survived to adulthood. All six of those children had died in that very bedroom, all before the age of six. At which point, the woman breathlessly asked the tour guide, "Is this house haunted?"
To which the tour guide responded, deadpan, "Madam, I am a professional historian. I exercise my profession in the documentable world. I have been a guide here for 16 years, and I have never seen a single ghost on a sheet of paper in all that time."
It was all I could do not to applaud.
The tour guide and I had a nice discussion afterwards, where I confessed to being a professor of history. She told me that when she started the job, she had every intention of going on for her PhD eventually, but that she'd come to enjoy the interactions with visitors who had no clue what historical documentation was...