WASHINGTON, D.C.— Congress was left reeling after maintenance workers discovered a mummified corpse inside a cramped crawlspace beneath the Capitol building belonging to Mitch McConnell.
After forensic investigators concluded that the former Senate Majority Leader had likely been dead for decades, a chill went through the Legislative Branch as lawmakers began questioning who—or what—had actually been guiding Senate Republicans all these years.
“Mitch freezing in place. The vacant thousand-yard stare as he listened to the screams of the damned. All those times his incorporeal form passed through my body in the hallway,” muttered Ted Cruz. “I can’t believe we didn’t realize it sooner.”
Sources now believe McConnell’s death occurred sometime during the Obama administration, when the future Senate leader allegedly crawled beneath the Senate floor to avoid reporters asking whether Republicans had an actual healthcare plan beyond “No.”
Evidence suggests McConnell spent his final days desperately pounding on the underside of the chamber while Republican senators debated the Affordable Care Act directly above him.
“We all heard the knocking,” admitted Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson. “Every now and then we’d hear his faint voice encouraging us to keep talking about ‘Death Panels—’”
The congressman paused.
“Oh my God.”
Witnesses said Johnson began visibly shaking.
“I thought he was saying ‘Death Panels.’ He was saying, ‘I’m starving to death. Open the panel.’”
No one questioned when McConnell inexplicably returned to haunt the legislative process through arcane procedural maneuvers, occasionally materializing at press conferences to announce that Obama’s latest nominee for deputy assistant undersecretary of whatever would receive a vote “over my dead body.”
“At no point did anyone think to check whether he was alive,” admitted one longtime Republican staffer. “In fairness, he always looked like that.”
Analysts now believe many of McConnell’s most controversial actions make significantly more sense when viewed through the lens of a tortured soul.
“Political scientists have always struggled to understand what motivated him,” said Georgetown professor Elaine Mercer. “But once you accept that he was a restless spirit consumed by spite and denied the peace of the afterlife, the current makeup of the supreme court suddenly clicks into place if you view it as a curse.”
Several senators reported experiencing an immediate sense of relief after the remains were removed from the building.
“For years I’d find myself voting against my constituents and then wonder why,” said Senator Susan Collins. “Turns out I was being possessed by an evil spirit.”
Several Republican congressmen nodded their heads in agreement. Many more have now taken to twitter to blame supernatural possession for their steadfast support for the unpopular wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran.
Others described feeling McConnell’s lingering presence throughout the complex.
“I’d constantly catch glimpses of him at the end of hallways, staring blankly with trembling lips, whispering something about the national deficit,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. “Then I’d turn around and nobody would be there.”
Republican leadership has reportedly asked Democratic lawmakers to assist in cleansing the Senate chamber using crystals, sage, moon water, Ouija, and whatever else “pagan hippy shit” Democrats allegedly do.
President Trump appeared similarly unsettled by the findings.
“Is that why he kept showing up in my bedroom every Christmas Eve?” Trump asked reporters. “He kept trying to show me the past, and I kept telling him I already have all the seasons of Apprentice on DVD.”
At press time, White House assured voters that Necromancer Stephen Miller was already hard at work using the forces of the undead to wrangle Republicans back in line.
