Police Are Looking for a Scary Cloaked Guy Allegedly Scattering Meat Near a North Carolina Playground

Read: Inside the Satanic Temple's Secret Baphomet Monument Unveiling

UPDATE 8/26/15: This mystery has been solved, and it's as mundane as the end of any Scooby-Doo episode. Looks like the whole thing was just a kid "working on something related school." It's unclear what meat-scattering, cloak-wearing homework North Carolina schools are doling out, but that's a question for another time. Read more here.

Photos of a creepy cloaked dude allegedly scattering raw meat around a Gastonia, North Carolina, apartment complex have been making the rounds on Twitter and Facebook this past week, prompting an investigation by local police.

The hooded guy, who looks like the Grim Reaper from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, was photographed through the blinds of a ground-floor apartment window as he reportedly lurked near the apartment complex's playground.

The Gastonia Gazette, who initially wrote about the story, said a resident of the complex found a bag of raw meat two weeks earlier, and online commenters guessed it came from the same unknown meat-spreader.

Cops aren't quite sold on the idea. WBTV reports that police met with the apartment complex's manager about the stranger, but they insist the town shouldn't start panicking about an evil warlock in their midst.

"[The photos] could have come from anywhere," a police spokesperson told the station. "We don't know if this is some bogus prank someone is playing."

Lance Calhoun of Southwood Realty—the company that owns the complex in question—also shrugged off the story. "We don't know if it's one of our residents with an interesting way of presenting themselves," Calhoun said, "or if it's a trespasser."

In any case, the Satanic serial killers who were arrested in nearby Gastonia North Carolina last year are still locked up, so we can cross them off the potential suspect list.