Rumors of a Taylor Swift sighting on Capitol Hill spread quickly Wednesday afternoon, but congressional offices said they had no reason to believe the pop icon had paid a visit.

The buzz appears to have been started by a reporter for The Hill, who tweeted that sources told her Taylor Swift would be in the Russell Senate office building “at some point” today for a meeting.

Don Stewart, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, responded (apparently in jest) to the reporter’s tweet with a photograph purporting to show Swift walking through the Capitol rotunda.

The story quickly took on a life of its own. Before long, interns, Senate pages and young staffers scrambled around the halls of congressional office buildings searching for the quick and elusive Swift.