If you're Rep. Bill Orton, D-Utah, and jokingly suspect a ghost in your office, who you gonna call?
The House of Representatives' electricians.Although they found no earthly explanation earlier this year for ghostly light flickering and bell ringing there, they rewired his office to try to chase them away.
The results? "We've officially been ghostbusted," Orton aide David Saybolt said Thursday. "None of the ghostly things have been happening since."
Prior to the overhaul, lamps plugged into wall sockets often dimmed, flickered for a few moments and returned to full brightness. The wall clock - which is supposed to ring in concert with others on Capitol Hill to warn of votes - often rang in ghostly solos with weird patterns.
Shortly after Orton took office, he asked electricians to try to find the problem. They hooked up fancy instruments that looked somewhat like lie detectors and found nothing. Orton joked he must have a poltergeist.
Later, the staff of the previous occupant, Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., told how deadbolts on office doors were often mysteriously found locked from the inside - which they figured was impossible unless someone climbed in from the window.
So they had window locks installed - but the mysterious locking continued for several weeks and finally stopped abruptly, although other office doors were sometimes found strangely unlocked some mornings. But no one noticed strange lights or bell ringing until Orton took office.
The Deseret News wrote a front page story about the haunting suspicions. Following suit were Roll Call, a newspaper distributed on Capitol Hill, and the Detroit News - which was interested because one suspected ghost was a Michigan congressman whose death allowed a political rival to be elected and become the first occupant of the room.
Saybolt suspects those stories haunted the House electricians.
"They came without being requested and essentially rewired the office," Saybolt said. "They wouldn't admit it, but I think they were embarrassed by the stories."
He said no lights have since flickered, nor has the bell rung. "But bells won't really start ringing until Congress gets back in session. We'll see how it acts them."
Saybolt said electricians now figure the old circuit feeding into Orton's office was simply overloaded - which led to the flickering and bell ringing.
"The wiring apparently hadn't been touched since the early '60s," Saybolt said, which was before computers, fax machines and assorted other new office equipment materialized. "They said they plan to rewire the whole building soon, but did us first."
Maybe the shrieking unreal gets the grease.