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On certain nights of the week, Adams Morgan is known to some as the “Devil’s Playground” of Northwest D.C. But it turns out the wickedness might not be limited to Friday and Saturday evenings.

From the looks of an email on neighborhood’s Yahoo Group spotted by Popville, one of Adams Morgan’s actual playgrounds at Walter C. Pierce Community Park is being overrun by slithery nightmares. Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Joseph Perren left a message to the group last week that, while attempting to reassure residents, is still very unnerving:

On Thursday, May 23, 2013 around 11:40 a.m. a call came in about a couple of snakes that fell out of the trees. When the snakes fell they scared the children, and everyone fled. This was in the playground area. I responded but found no snakes. I caught one small enough to fit inside an empty water bottle I had. It was probably a black rat snake. They are indigenous to trees and the warm weather is drawing them out.

Rat snakes, to everyone’s relief, are not venomous. But they are still snakes, which makes them scary as Hell. And it doesn’t help relieve the terror induced by a new report that the park with falling snakes is built on top of a pair of ancient burial grounds.