‘How Is the Sun Not Hurting You?’: Arkansas ‘Vampire’ Mayoral Candidate Uses a GPS Tracker to Recover His Stolen Coffin Campaign Signs

He showed up in fangs, but he came with a GPS pin. An Arkansas mayoral candidate who performs as a vampire online has turned his stolen campaign signs into his latest viral saga — and this time, he followed the trail right to a front door.

Shayne McKinney’s coffin-shaped campaign signs kept disappearing, so he hid an Apple AirTag inside one of them. Sure enough, that sign was taken too — except this time he knew exactly where it went. The clip of what happened next drew 450,200 views, 31,900 likes and more than 800 comments. McKinney walked up to the home where the tracker pointed, where two women, AJ and Whitney, greeted him and recognized him from his videos.

He got straight to the point. “I had a sign at W Street and Jenny Lynn that got taken, and it’s at this address. We have it on a GPS tracker,” he said. The women suggested some young boys may have taken the coffin and pointed him toward the AirTag’s location. He checked through some trash cans, then knocked on a door, where the homeowner explained the situation herself.

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A Mother’s Explanation Divides Viewers

“My son probably got it,” the homeowner said. McKinney answered, “My signs are really cool, but still having these taken over and over and over again is getting frustrating.” The woman then asked him not to record her, and he reassured her that he was only recording himself, noting that a different cameraman was filming footage for a future documentary. Still, she was not having it. “My son is a teenager. He saw a sign he liked; he took it,” she said.

In the end, McKinney showed no hard feelings and got his coffin sign back. He had previously said the police were coming, but stated that he would talk to them and ask them not to pursue the investigation any further. Viewers, though, were less forgiving. “The fact that that mom defend his son instead of teaching a lesson…. Dang!” one person wrote. “My son is ‘just a teenager.’ Smh, she’s the issue,” said another.

Others chose to focus on the candidate’s costume instead. “How is the sun not hurting you?” one viewer asked, while another joked, “Being a vampire and a landlord is smart because you don’t have to ask permission to enter someone’s house.” Some see a parenting failure, others see a harmless prank and a candidate who got his sign back without a fight. Either way, the vampire got his coffin back — and a warning for the next person tempted to take one.