The Haunting of Talk Elections: An Atlas Forum Adventure

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

(with apologies to Shirley Jackson)

Prologue

No political junkie can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even yellow avatars are supposed, by some, to dream. Talk Elections, (abnormal, insane), stood by itself on its new website, holding darkness within; it had stood on its previous website for twenty years and might stand on this one for twenty more. Within, polls continued to be taken, trolls posted cautiously, FF votes were firm, and socks were sensibly banned; silence lay steadily against the off-white background of Talk Elections, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

To be continued...

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

1.

Tender Branson was thirty-two years old when he came to Talk Elections. The only people in the world he genuinely hated were the left-leftists. He disliked rapefugees and people who had never heard of Zell-am-See, and he liked nailing .

Tender was part of an elite team of paranormal investigators put together by TimTurner to figure out what the hell was going on on the forum. So too were KaiserDave, Battista Minola, and Ferguson97. All but Ferguson97 had experienced paranormal happenings of some kind on other websites; Ferguson was there as a representative of Talk Elections' founder, Dave Leip. (Nobody knew how Ferguson had angled this, since he didn't know Dave personally and Talk Elections was no longer Dave's responsibility anyway since they had changed the website.)

Tender Branson logged on to Talk Elections from a hip internet cafe in Salzburg where a little girl was having a fit over not having her special cup to drink from. He had a group chat open with the other investigators on the other website, and he had an unfunded mandate to get to the bottom of what was happening on the forum. This was going to be a tricky job.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

(warning: this chapter has jokes that won't make sense unless you've read the Shirley Jackson novel that "The Haunting of Talk Elections" is a parody of)

2.

As Tender Branson sat in the cafe in Salzburg browsing Talk Elections, the little girl kept having her fit.

"She wants her cup of nails ," her mother explained to another patron.

Indeed yes, Tender thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of nails , of course.

"Her cup of nails ," the little girl's mother went on. "It has nails in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of nails because she can see the nails while she drinks her milk."

Tender took this as inspiration to make a forum post about nailing . "Don't you think that's a little tasteless?" KaiserDave posted after a few minutes. "I mean, you can't have sex with a ghost...can you?"

"Depends on the ghost," Ferguson97 observed. "I wouldn't want to have sex with a ghost who was anti-choice, for instance."

"Why would it matter if a ghost was 'anti-choice'?" Battista Minola asked. "It's not like they can get pregnant."

"Depends on the ghost," Ferguson97 said again. "Besides, it's the principle of the thing."

Back in Salzburg, the little girl was still throwing a fit about her cup of nails . Tender wondered if perhaps the Krampus could give her a new one this coming Christmas. Stranger things had happened.

Then, suddenly, the first manifestation of the ghost haunting Talk Elections happened! Tender felt a cold spot radiating from his computer; he was terrified, and wanted to leave the cafe, but he had to stay and get to the bottom of this, for all forumites' sake, and because TimTurner was paying him good money.

His breath catching in his throat, Tender leaned forward, and began typing a post...

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

"Depends on the ghost," Ferguson97 observed. "I wouldn't want to have sex with a ghost who was anti-choice, for instance."

"Why would it matter if a ghost was 'anti-choice'?" Battista Minola asked. "It's not like they can get pregnant."

"Depends on the ghost," Ferguson97 said again. "Besides, it's the principle of the thing."

lmao

I'm debating whether to make this a Chekhov's gun and actually have ghost mpreg (mpreg rather than normal pregnancy because hey, it's Atlas) later in the story.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

3.

"Have you ever seen a ghost?" Tender typed. He made it a poll.

The votes on the poll came pouring in. Within the hour, there were 7 yes votes, 15 no votes, John Dule had called two posters mentally ill for talking about their experiences, and a poster who was feuding with dead0man had posted "you just don't get it, dead0" even though dead0man hadn't created the poll.

Surely that would keep the ghost on its toes! It wasn't going to catch Talk Elections unawares. Now the forum was wise to it, or at least wise to the possibility of it.

But then, KaiserDave PM'd Tender saying "Hey, we're trying to prove the existence of the ghost, not scare it off. What gives?"

"I wanted to give the ghost an opportunity to manifest in a thread about ghosts," Tender said. "It seemed like the sort of thing a polite European who loves Western civilization would do."

"Fair enough," said KaiserDave. "But I'm warning you, as someone who's spent lots of time in Vermont: some of the ghosts you find in these old, drafty, out-of-the-way places, like a Web 1.0-style forum that's still active in 2020, for example, are even craftier than you would expect..."

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

4.

"No, of course I haven't seen a ghost," John Dule was still insisting. "That's almost as ridiculous as believing in QAnon or Presbyterianism."

"I take exception to that," said DC Al Fine.

"So do I," said Fuzzy Bear, "but not for the same reason."

This wasn't getting anywhere interesting. Tender was about to close the thread and go nail some women in his basement, but then he got another PM from KaiserDave.

"Come to the 2024 board," KaiserDave said. "I think I've found something that could blow this whole case wide open."

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

5.

The elite team of investigators hastened to the 2024 board, and were promptly redirected to the 2020 board. Ancient, hulking, derelict, the 2020 board was exactly the kind of place where one might have expected supernatural or ghastly or demonic activity, a fact that Battista Minola wasted no time in pointing out.

"The general rule with ghosts is that the older the setting is, the more haunted it's liable to be," he said. "That's why Italy is the most haunted country in the world."

"You say that like it's a good thing," said Ferguson.

"If it weren't a good thing then we wouldn't be in a Shirley Jackson pastiche, now, would we?" KaiserDave pointed out.

"Oh? How much Shirley Jackson have you actually read?" Ferguson.

"Almost as much as Phil Scott has. God bless the Vermont Republic," KaiserDave said.

Just then, it loomed before them.

The ghost. Eerie and immense.

In a thread in the 2020 board was written:

"HELP TENDER BREDESEN COME HOME"