A Lilliputian ghost story.

Yesterday, a strange thread popped up on TOPIX, Kingsland. http://www.topix.com/forum/city/kingsland-ga/TBIEPLOG6VLRGEFF6 My first thought was that it was a back door attack on Gull Weaver. Well, it got even curiouser at last night's council meeting. Apparently, Royal Weaver, in his capacity of chair of the Orange Hall Foundation was approached by some promoter - a "Mr. King"- about using Orange Hall as the setting for some sort of a ghost hunters' competition which this fellow hopes to market as some sort of new reality show. The promoter offers Orange Hall nothing but the promise of national exposure. He is charging 144 participants $65.00 each to spend the night in Orange Hall presumably in a competition to see who can videotape the most, uh, interesting (for idiots who go for that kind of bogus crap) ghost hunting experience. Apparently, there are people who travel all over the country doing that. Anyway the top three get a chance to move on to further competition. Now, at last night's meeting, Royal Weaver felt compelled to present a vigorous defense of his actions. He assured everyone that there would be no more than 20 people in the house per night. The opponents included Barbara "Delta Dawn" Ryan, Thug Void, and a couple of women whose names escape me, but they assured everyone that they had lived here all their lives (which, of course, ads great gravitas to their statements), had grown up believing that Orange Hall was actually an example of fine period architecture, had volunteered there, and yadda, yadda. All of them expressed concern that the building would be irreparably damaged by the ghost hunters, went on to say how structurally unsound the building was, how the electrical wiring would overheat and the building would surely burn to the ground, and so on. This prompted Councilwoman Deborah Hase to ask if perhaps the building should not be immediately closed to all visitors if things were that bad. I kept waiting for Rev. Jim to pop up and decry the ungodly nature of "ghost hunting," but, mercifully, that did not happen. Councilman Larry Johnson questioned (repeatedly) whether the city should approve the project before having the chief of police do a thorough investigation of the promoter to make sure it was not a scam. It turns out that the Orange Hall Foundation does not need the city's permission. This whole thing went on for about 20 minutes. It was discussed longer than anything else last night. I left with the distinct feeling that there was more going on than met the eye. Well, this morning, a trusted source confirmed my suspicions. Here's the rest of the story. A while back, Barbara "Delta Dawn" Ryan and her sidekick, Thug Void, announced that they were forming some sort of St. Marys Independent Film Commission, or some such name. Of course, they are part of the cabal that owns and operates the "downtown" franchise. Royal Weaver is not. They and presumably, all of the DMA types, are highly pissed because this upstart, double outsider, Royal Weaver, took it upon himself to invite in a TV production crew without the involvement and approval of their fledgling film commission. Only in Lilliput-By-The-Sea!