Creepy doesn’t begin to describe these things. They were sprouting up all over the place near a place I was fishing one day. I’m assuming they’re some sort of fungus that propagates via carrion insects. I’ve not really heard of fungus doing that – though there is that one that grows out of the heads of ants, so it’s perhaps not without precedent.
Either that, or it’s some hideous alien spore come to take over the earth.