Some people think Mike Pence’s daughter is a vampire. We kid you not.

One of the silliest rumors to erupt this campaign season started with this innocuous tweet from Indiana governor Mike Pence, who shared it on Saturday after becoming Donald Trump’s running mate.

That’s Pence and his wife, Karen, sitting in a booth at a Chili’s restaurant in New York City with their daughter, Charlotte.

After people’s heads exploded that the Pences chose to eat at Chili’s instead of some chi-chi NYC watering hole, they freaked out over what they saw in the photo.

Actually, they were stumped by what they didn’t see.

Look closely in the mirror.

Where is Pence’s daughter? Her reflection isn’t there.

She’s a vampire, the Internet cried!

The chatter grew so loud that The Indianapolis Star debunked the rumor in a story about “4 viral rumors about Mike Pence that aren’t true.”

“False: Mike Pence’s daughter is a vampire. File that under ‘things we never thought we’d type,’ ” the Star wrote.

For those who couldn’t figure it out on their own, the photo was “just a strange optical illusion,” noted the Star. “Besides, the food probably had tons of garlic in it.”

Even the myth-busting website Snopes drove a stake through the heart of this weirdness on Monday.

“Few, if any, of the users who shared and commented on the photo seemed seriously concerned about what was obviously an optical illusion — that, simply put, given the angle of view and the relative positions of Pence and his daughter in relation to the mirror, we can’t see Charlotte Pence because her father is between her and us in the reflected line of sight,” Snopes wrote.

“So, why all the fuss? One likely explanation is that after a week full of truly horrific news — the terrorist attack in Nice, the police killings in Baton Rouge — the Internet just needed to blow off steam.”

By the way, here are the other viral rumors about Pence that the Indianapolis Star knocked down:

▪ Though he’s been outspoken against gay rights and same-sex marriage he did not refer to “pink, chartreuse, teal and magenta, in particular, as ‘gateway colors.’ ”

▪ And, that original Trump-Pence campaign logo that got dumped last week because it caused so many people to snicker? It was not stolen from a Nevada brothel.

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Some people think Mike Pence’s daughter is a vampire. We kid you not.."