When Carrie Underwood revealed last year that a fall outside her Nashville home caused her to fracture her wrist and injure her face, requiring 40 stitches, fans were understandably concerned. But over time as the 34-year-old continued to hide her face from the public, uploading mysterious selfies that concealed the bottom half of her face, fans started to find the whole thing rather mysterious. And hey, since this is the Internet, people have already come up with some wild theories for the country superstar’s injury.

“There is also another part of the story that I haven’t been ready to talk about since I have still been living it and there has been much uncertainty as to how things will end up,” the American Idol winner revealed last year. “It’s crazy how a freak random accident can change your life. In addition to breaking my wrist, I somehow managed to injure my face as well.” We were all heartbroken when the pop star made this candid admission about her freak accident. Falling down some cement stairs can easily knock out a few teeth or break a nose, so her initial comments about her face fracture made total sense. “I’m still healing and not looking quite the same,” she wrote on Twitter. “When I am ready to get in front of a camera, I want you all to understand why I might look a bit different.”

Shortly after these public statements, Carrie uploaded this picture on Instagram that showed the bottom half of her face hidden with a scarf. “When in 5-degree weather, wrap your @caliabycarrie scarf around your neck and face…you keep warm AND look like an awesome winter snow ninja!” she captioned the photo. It was around this time that the conspiracy theorists couldn’t help but reach for their tinfoil hats. After all, the entire accident was laced with questions that still hadn’t been answered, which made the story appear mysterious.

Right off the bat, fans started to question the validity of her story. Forty stitches are a lot for a simple fall down the stairs. Could it have possibly been a cover for something else? That’s what fans on Twitter thought. “How do we know Carrie Underwood ‘fell’ and this wasn’t abuse by someone else?” a fan wrote. “The whole thing seems fishy to me.” Another tweeted, “I’ve seen videos of mega car crashes and the driver walk away from it fine. Meanwhile Carrie Underwood has 50 stitches from ‘falling at home’. Either the world is being its usual weird self or we’re about 2 years away from an expose on domestic abuse in the Underwood household.”

Another fan pointed out that the steps outside of Carrie’s Nashville home didn’t look very steep — definitely not high enough for someone to sustain such severe injuries. However, we did a little digging of our own and found that Carrie also owns a cabin in the Nashville area that, judging by a screenshot taken from an episode of Oprah’s Next Chapter, looks very steep.

carrie underwood houses

Top: Carrie’s house in Brentwood, TN. Bottom: Her weekend cabin.

But it wasn’t just the fall itself that fans thought was strange. Another theory, started by Wendy Williams, was that Carrie’s story was a lie to cover up a botched plastic surgery procedure. “Did you hear about her?” Wendy asked her audience during her Hot Topics segment of her show. “I really don’t know a whole bunch about it, but she allegedly fell down a bunch of steps at her house, broke her wrist. [Carrie] released on Twitter that we may not recognize her when it’s all said and done. I don’t know what that means. An excuse for a facelift?”

carrie underwood scar

And Wendy wasn’t the only one to have this thought. When reality TV star Adrienne Gang shared the photo above of Carrie supposedly taken three weeks after the accident, fans were downright confused. In the pic, Carrie’s face was far from the disfigured monstrosity she teased in her tweets. In fact, she looked pretty much the same. “She claims to have had 40 to 50 stitches 3 weeks before this photo?” a fan wrote. “Nope. No way. So im guessing here..but perhaps she used the wrist injury as a way to hide some plastic surgery.” Another one wrote, “She is hiding something then. I got a handful of stitches on my face and it’s still noticeable years later. full truth not being told.”

To make the whole thing even more baffling was when, earlier this week, Carrie continued the mystery about her face by uploading a selfie that had her mouth hidden with a red X. Fueled with questions, redditors started taking their conspiracy theories to crazy new heights by speculating that the country star is now an Illuminati clone. “Using a facial injury to introduce a lookalike or clone wouldn’t be that surprising,” they wrote. “Like how they used rehab/treatment with Kanye [West] and Eminem.”

So we’re not sure how fans have gone from domestic abuse to surgery to the Illuminati, but one fan on Twitter thinks all the speculation is because Carrie continues to be weirdly secretive about a story that she should simply be honest about.

“Here’s the problem with the Carrie Underwood situation,” a fan shared. “Stars are conditioned to ‘tease’ their life rather than just being blunt. Now, everyone is trying to guess what it is. i.e. domestic abuse, pregnancy, etc. Just come out and say it to avoid lies.” And it looks like others are sharing the same sentiment. “Dude, enough with this attention seeking crap,” a fan wrote on Instagram. “Deal with it, just stop with the covering up of your face. It’s getting old.” If Carrie’s scars are truly as bad as she thinks they are, we’re sure that advice is easier said than done. Until then, fans will continue waiting and inventing strange theories to satiate their need for answers.