Obviously we've all heard of skeletons in a politician's closet, but ghosts in the closet are a pretty new development taking place down in Georgia.Political columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Jim Galloway published a blog today tracking a congressional race in Macon between U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D) and potential paranormal investigator, Republican Paul Rish.
According to Galloway, he called the Georgia Ghost Society to inquire why Rish was popping up alongside the ghost hunter group's member page in a Google search. The group's founder, Bob Hunnicutt, told Galloway that Rish was consulted as a technical expert but is not a member of GGS. To quote Galloway's blog, "If some web designer included Rish’s name on a page that is drawing Google’s attention, it was a mistake, Hunnicutt said."
An hour after speaking with the paranormal investigator, Galloway "coincidentally" received a press release from Rish's people titled "Georgia Congressman Jim Marshall publicly attacks ghost hunting and those who participate." Excellent timing, eh?
Something smells fishy here since paranormal investigative groups rarely recruit "some web designer" to create their Web site, and instead produce it in-house. Also, based on this cached MySpace profile for GGS, Rish is listed again as a member and there's no designer to blame for that one.
We'll continue to follow this, but in the meantime, let me encourage Paul Rish to come out of the paranormal closet. How cool would it be if Georgia elected its first openly-ghost hunting Representative?