If you get this election text message, do not opt out. Someone might die.

[u/AlwaysScared247]

It’s election season in the United States, so if you’re here you’re probably getting a lot of these texts:

“CANDIDATE A is looking for your vote on November 3…”

“CANDIDATE B came up short this week on their fundraising goal…”

“We’re conducting a poll and we want to know: Do you support CANDIDATE C in the upcoming election?”

Some might be from politicians you love, others will be from candidates you hate, or you could be one of those apolitical people who thinks both sides are the same and casting a ballot is a waste. (I disagree, but this is not the forum for arguing about that.)

Most messages, though, are usually just annoying. I’ve been getting dozens and dozens, and to be honest, I thought they were innocuous too.

I was wrong. 

I opted out of one of these messages. Now someone is dead. 

It took barely 24 hours.

And I think I’m next.

Look, I know you think I’m joking. Or you saw the title of this post and started coming up with snarky things to say in the comments, like “oh no, did you accidentally donate $5???” or “lowkey this is probably a psyop from a campaign manager.”

But I am completely, 100 percent, swear-to-every-god-in-existence serious about this. 

It started early yesterday evening, when I got the message below. (The candidate name is partially redacted, but trust me — this is not a famous person. Unless you’ve had this experience, it’s not a name you’ve ever heard before.)

Rick (not my real name), I’m Conor with the Nathan [REDACTED] campaign. Did you know that Nathan [REDACTED] is the only candidate who truly cares about your safety?

I got the message while sitting on my couch, scrolling through a steady rotation of Reddit threads (what else?), and munching on some brand of tortilla chips I can’t recall, all to numb the ennui of life in 2026. Normally, I would have just kept scrolling — I had seen this name show up before and ignored it — but this text came at the end of a particularly frustrating day at work (I won’t go into it). So I wanted the satisfaction of rage-quitting at least one of these text chains instead of ignoring or deleting and “reporting junk,” again (which I’m pretty sure does nothing).

I opened it up and, without reading further, I typed:

STOP

—then sent and closed my messaging app, thinking that was that.

Seconds later, I got a reply:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Confused, I scrolled up and, sure enough, after the paragraph about Nathan [REDACTED] and safety, the instructions to unsubscribe were exactly that:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Feeling a little spicy, and admittedly thinking this might be a candidate who I wouldn’t have any interest in anyway, I shot back: 

“Why?”

Immediately, they replied:

Or else I’ll keep texting. ;-)

That annoyed me to no end. I’ve done text-banking before (yeah, ironic), so I know how it works. Volunteers aren’t supposed to antagonize potential voters. You’re supposed to answer questions honestly, if at all, and most importantly move on to the next text. It’s a volume game.

So I’m not proud of myself for what came next. I wrote some colorful language before copy-pasting the strange lettering and firing it back, then adding, “There, are you happy?”

I expected an immediate reply, some snarky 19-year-old giving me a cry face emoji before letting me be. Instead, the text bubble popped up and disappeared a few times, before finally something came back: 

Thank you :-D

That was it.

Or so I thought.

Last night was normal, so were this morning and today. My job had a Zoom staff meeting, and our cameras had to be on, so I sat there and tried to look interested for an hour and 13 minutes. I ate microwave kimbap for a very late lunch. A volunteer for a politician I actually do support dropped off a lawn sign, one with a single wooden stake in the back, even though I don’t have a yard. I got four more election texts, including a desperate missive from a Senate candidate from another state saying their race could be won or lost at that very moment (despite it still being October).

When my roommate, Jeff, left for a party, I was thrilled. OK, I was a little stung he didn’t invite me, but that’s just how it goes with Jeff — a big, jolly guy with a clean-cut beard, long hair and not a lot of money but a whole lot of personality. Meanwhile, I'm the sort who enjoys clicking “random article” on Wikipedia all night and getting in fights with political volunteers via text message. I understand why I wasn’t first on his Partiful list.

Anyway, after Jeff left, I set the lawn sign on the coffee table, plopped down on our hand-me-down couch, and fired up Netflix to watch Mindhunter for probably the fifth time. Except this weird feeling suddenly came over me. It felt like a deep, immense fear I couldn’t place. And it wasn’t because a fictionalized version of the BTK Killer showed up on my screen. Something seemed really, undeniably wrong.

Then I heard it:

Drip… Drip… Drip…

It got louder in my head each time. I shot off the couch and rushed to the kitchen.

It was just the faucet. Jeff hadn’t turned it off all the way before leaving. "He’s so popular that he’s always in a rush," I grumbled to myself, surely projecting. Whatever. I slammed down the handle, then reversed course, grabbed a glass and filled it with water, thinking maybe dehydration was causing all this. I chugged the whole thing and considered getting more— 

—but when I finished it, that’s when I saw the first anomaly. 

Off in the distance, but just barely in my peripheral vision, a human figure stood in the doorway to our apartment’s hallway. I swiveled my head to look at it, but it was gone.

“Jeff?”

No answer. I stood there, dribble on my chin, half expecting my roommate/frenemy to jump out and burst into a good-natured laugh, as if being afraid in that situation was a sign of me being uptight. It never happened.

More angry at that made-up scenario than frightened at the prospect of a strange person being in my apartment, I returned to the couch and pressed play again. The opening credits began to roll. I really settled in.

Ding!

A text message.

It was from Nathan [REDACTED's] campaign:

Hi :0

I stared at it, confused and scared at first but quickly moving into anger at the idea that some random volunteer thought it was OK to mess with me. Instead of engaging, I swiped to delete the thread. But before I could press the trash can button, another text arrived:

I can see you O_O

Worry coursed through my veins.

Another message. Not words. An image.

It was my face, my actual face, from the POV of my phone’s front-facing camera.

Like I’d been hacked.

I threw down my phone, stood up and said a few expletives, before tearing through my apartment looking in every nook and cranny. Then I realized that was stupid; if they’d truly gotten control of my phone, they could be on Mars and my privacy would still be violated.

I put a strip of masking tape over each lens, rushed out the door and guided my Nissan to the closest Apple store, arriving with 13 minutes left until it closed.

“Yeah, there’s no evidence you’ve been hacked,” the Genius told me after spending 12 minutes inspecting my phone.

“Someone literally took a photo of me with my own camera.”

“Sure it wasn’t you?”

I didn’t even have a verbal response to that.

“I could get you a new phone and we can boot everyone else off your AppleID?”

I scowled; this was not the answer I was looking for. But I’d been doing pretty well at work, having a roommate was saving me money, and I just really, really didn’t like the idea of leaving without addressing this somehow. So I said yes and the Genius, to his credit, stayed 20 minutes after closing to get me set with my new device.

Back at home, Jeff was still out. He’s always the life of the party, after all. I was actually a little disappointed about his absence for once; I really wanted to tell someone what happened. And, I’ll admit, I wanted to feel safe. But I figured Jeff would be home soon. Even he needed to sleep sometimes. 

I dropped my wallet, phone and keys on the table by the door, told myself everything would be fine, and moseyed over to the kitchen for a snack from the fridge. 

THUD — a sound came from the living room. I spun my head around but saw nothing. I stood there, motionless, until the cold air of the fridge started stinging my face. I shook it off, closed the door, and slowly walked toward whatever I’d heard. 

It was my phone, on the hardwood floor.

I picked it up. The screen was cracked. 

And it had a new message.

Proposition [REDACTED] will cost taxpayers billions—

I exhaled deeply, for once relieved to see a spam message like this.

My comfort only lasted a few seconds.

Ding!

Nathan [REDACTED] knows you value your safety. So what are you gonna do about it, Rick?

Fear and panic took over. I frenetically typed “I fckign unsubs ribed. No wI’m going to report you” and sent it without fixing any of the typos. I didn’t care. I had to take this person down. 

I searched Nathan [REDCACTED] and my city and state to see who this horrible human was and how I could get to him.

I found nothing. Not even one lowly WordPress site. 

I typed in so many different phrases — “nathan [redacted] election,” “nathan [redacted] candidate” “nathan [redacted] ballot” — but he was a ghost. Even the AI description said something like “We couldn’t find any connection between Nathan [REDACTED] and elections…” before I closed it.

Then another message came. A photo again.

Of me, from the side, standing in my living room, wearing my typical brandless black hoodie and second-hand jeans, holding my phone, right at that very moment. 

I heard whispers. Heavy breathing. 

And I got one more message:

U thought I hacked ur phone ijbol 

I ran out of my apartment — I have no idea if I locked the door or not— and called 911. All I got were three loud beeps and “we’re sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected.” 

I hustled to my car, which was parked by the curb about a block away. Footsteps fell behind me. I glanced back and saw in the orange street lamps the outline not of one person, but a dozen.

My speedwalk became a run. Then a sprint.

When I arrived at my car, like a fool I fumbled my keys and dropped them to the ground. My shaking hands finally grabbed them and beeped it open. I threw myself inside, locked the doors, and turned around to check out the people following me—

—but there was nothing. Just an empty residential road after nightfall.

I stared. Squinted. Looked everywhere, maybe they were hiding in shadows or behind the bushes. But I couldn’t make out a thing. 

I banged my fists into the steering wheel and screamed, partly in fear, partly out of frustration. I smashed the engine button and sped out of there, blasting a random radio station as loud as I could just in case. Maybe if I couldn’t hear any weird noises, I wouldn’t see anything weird either. 

I drove to the closest police precinct. The cop at the front desk looked at me like I was claiming aliens brought back Elvis.

I whipped out my phone so fast he flinched for a second as if it might be a gun, but soon I was scrolling through texts to show him all that had happened.

“All this looks like is you fighting with some volunteer,” he said.

I tried to stay calm. I just needed to explain more. “No, he hacked my phone, then broke into my—”

But when I went to show them, the photos were gone. 

“Well— OK—” I stammered. “He’s not a real politician though!” I continued on, explaining that whoever was doing this was surely using a fake name to avoid drawing attention. After a long, possibly incoherent ramble, I finally finished with: “This is wire fraud! Don’t you investigate that??”

“Honestly, I wish he was a real politician. Safety's a big deal.”

I’m not sure what I said next but it made the cop have some sympathy for me. Maybe it was my stammering. Or maybe it was because I refused to leave. The cop said I should call the FBI, because that’s who investigates wire fraud. I asked if I could use the station’s phone since I didn’t trust mine. 

He picked up his desk phone, found the number, and dialed it himself. After a brief, pleasant exchange with someone on the other end, he handed the receiver to me.

“Can I get your name and number, sir?” I gave them both. “We’ll have someone call you in the morning.”

Unsatisfied, but knowing that was all I would get out of this, I said “thanks” and left. 

I drove away from the station but where was I gonna go? I didn’t want to return to my apartment. But what if this was something bigger, something supernatural, that could follow me anywhere? How else could you explain the disappearing photos, or the people who were there one second and gone the next? Or was it just hallucinations, something induced by my very real tendency to catastrophize when things got negative? You know, one of the many reasons I’m a real bummer at parties?

I decided to go someplace public — these visitors, whoever they were, hadn’t followed me anywhere that had a lot of people. So I chose a bustling hotel with a late-night lobby bar and punched directions into my app. I reached for my wallet to double check for my cards and ... realized they weren’t there. 

I replayed everything back in my mind. The wallet was still on the table by the door. Without that, I couldn’t buy anything, let alone reserve a room. I hadn’t set up Apple Pay on my new phone, so yeah, I was screwed. Unless I went back.

On the street where I parked my car, there was no sign of any intruder. I walked briskly anyway, spinning my head at the building’s front door to make sure I was alone. It seemed so.

Inside, I climbed the stairs to my floor, stood in front of my apartment’s door, and took one big breath. I practically screamed when another human figure jumped into my periphery. But this time it was an actual person, my workout-obsessed neighbor whose name I always forget (I think it’s Kyler?). He picked up his Amazon box of probably creatine and went inside his place. I put the key in the lock to mine.

I turned it. Shook my head as I opened. Reached in without looking and…

…my wallet was not on the table. 

I threw the door open, rushed in, and started turning over everything, desperately searching for the only item I needed to be truly safe that night.

I. Could. Not. Find. It. Couch cushions were on the floor, mail was strewn about, the bookshelves were emptied. But no phone. 

Slowly, in my hysteria, I began to notice a sound. It was familiar. 

DRIP… DRIP… DRIP…

The faucet again.

“Jeff?” He really just could not be bothered to turn off the water faucet all the way, could he? 

My call went unanswered. He probably had his new headphones on. 

“Jeff??”

The sound was getting louder.

DRIP... DRIP... DRIP...

Now I was starting to get angry. I was in a life-or-death situation and he was just callously wasting water as if it wasn’t a rapidly diminishing resource. Unbelievable.

I forgot about the wallet and went into the kitchen, so I could slam the faucet off again and then probably unload on Jeff.

I rounded the counter and reached the kitchen, imagining all the colorful words I’d throw his way…

But the faucet was bone dry.

Yet the dripping sound persisted. And it was coming from the sink. No doubt about it.

Confused, I stepped toward it and looked. 

I have no idea what sound came out of my mouth next.

Because I saw it:

Jeff’s head. 

Inside the sink. Stuck on that wooden lawn sign peg, like Jeff was his own lawn sign, the blood drip-drip-dripping from his severed neck and onto the scuffed stainless steel below.

My blood ran cold. My muscles and joints froze. But that only lasted a second because, from behind me, with the power of an emergency alarm, in a voice that sounded like a thousand humans speaking all at once, I heard:

“Rrrriiiiiiiiiiicccccck!”

And I ran.

Down the stairs, through the lobby, into the night. I didn’t even bother getting to my car. I couldn’t slow down for one single second until I saw a place filled with people.

I’m writing this now from a booth inside a fast food joint, I don’t want to say which because I didn’t run that far and someone might be able to figure out where I live. 

Then again, who cares? Jeff is dead. I know I’m next. The late-night munchies crowd is dying down, and I’m afraid what will happen when this place gets empty.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll make it to the morning to talk to the FBI agent. And even if they do call, will they really be able to help? What do I tell them? That I typed in a cursed string of letters and symbols in an election-season text message and now some sort of demon killed my roommate and is tormenting me? I suppose I could try the cops again, but they’re just as likely to arrest me or get murdered as to help.

Really, I’m writing this for two purposes. One: If you’ve been through this and you know how to reverse the curse, please reach out, and don’t make jokes. I’m desperate.

And two: This election season, if you get a message from a candidate whose name does not show up on any sort of search, just ignore it. DO NOT OPT OUT. 

Your life could depend on it.

[u/Old-Dragonfruit2219]

I think you should get back to the police. Otherwise they’re just gonna think you have something to do with your roommates death.