If you’re easily scared, you should probably steer clear of this article. Because I, horror-movie-and-zombie-lover, am kinda starting to get freaked out by all the insane stories pouring in from around the country about people going totally bitchcakes and ripping each other apart.

Since the story of Rudy Euegene–the Miami man who ate a homeless man’s face off last weekend–broke, other tales have been popping up in different states but with surprisingly similar amounts of violence, sparking rumors that a “zombie apocalypse” is upon us. The scariest thing is not even that it is happening, but that we don’t know why it’s happening. In the movies/comic books, zombies are easily explained by an illness of some sort, or a government experiment gone wrong, or similar. But these attacks don’t seem to have a connection, other than an altered state of mind, and no visible cause.

On Sunday, New Jersey resident Wayne Carter reportedly cut off pieces of his own flesh and cut out a rope of his intestines to throw at police after barricading himself in his home. Police say Carter has had psychiatric problems in the past. He survived the incident but is in critical condition.

On Tuesday, California cage fighter Jarrod Wyatt attacked his training partner in his apartment after allegedly drinking mushroom tea and hallucinating that the man was possessed by demons. He ripped out his heart, cut out his tongue, and tore off most of his face before burning the parts in order to expel the demons. A friend found him naked (like Rudy Eugene) and covered in blood with body parts scattered around the living room.

That night, in Baltimore, 21-year old Alexander Kinyua‘s brother found a human head and hands in a washtub in the basement of their house. He alerted his father, who alerted authorities, and Kinyua later admitted to killing roommate Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie and eating his heart and brains. According to The Baltimore Sun, Kinyua had previous arrests for violence, but still…weird, no?

While one cannot immediately jump to the conclusion that these stories are in any way related, it’s just weird to see them all pop up at the same time and to involve such a heightened state of violence. Rudy Eugene, the Miami attacker, has already undergone an autopsy, which reportedly turned up normal, but officials are waiting for the toxicology results to come back to get a better understanding of what his state of mind might have been during the attack. Rumors are swirling that he may have been under the influence of “bath salts“, a legal substance that causes fits of rage, heightened strength, and a severe effect on the brain, which some say is irreversible.