These people have not watched enough X-Files. When corpses of any age begin to display alarming changes of this sort, you don't ask questions about why it's happening. By the time you get the answer, you are turning into black ooze. The only safe thing to do at this point is get a blowtorch.

AMDG

Or perhaps just the beginning of a series of peculiar but ultimately meaningless events bound together by no coherent narrative thread.

Climate change soured my cow's milk, made my goat barren, and withered my crops! At least this superstitious explanation for every inopportune circumstance doesn't require a smear campaign against the local eccentric spinster. OTOH it appears to require some kind of guilt sacrifice from the population and that's not good either.