As fright-seekers in the United States prepare for Halloween, lawmakers in Pakistan are working to try to prevent their country from producing the world’s next real horror story.

Until now, there has been no law in Pakistan against cannibalism, a fact that has fueled persistent rumors of crazed residents roaming cemeteries and streets searching for their next meal. Thankfully, many of the tales appear to be just that – unfounded legends passed down over the decades.

But Pakistan has documented several cases of cannibalism over the years, prompting lawmakers to introduce legislation this week to try to curb the problem.

One bill in the National Assembly clarifies that anyone who exhumes a corpse with “intent to cook, eat, sell or to use for magic purposes” will face a mandatory jail sentence of between 10 years and life behind bars. A second bill would make eating human flesh punishable by at least seven years in jail.

The legislation is in response to a particularly grotesque case in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province in 2011.

That year, police received a call from a man who reported that his sister’s grave had been dug up in a local cemetery. The ensuing investigation took police to the home of two brothers. When police arrived at their house, they found the men cooking the 24-year-old cancer victim’s limbs into a stew.

“They had chopped off one of her legs below the knee, and the other one near the shin,” a local police official told BBC in an interview.

The brothers were promptly arrested, and they confessed to unearthing and eating a total of five corpses from the cemetery.

But because Pakistan lacked a stringent cannibalism law, they could only be charged with disturbing a grave site. They were sentenced to two years in prison and released in 2013, despite angry protests from villagers.

Earlier this year, however, police were called back to the brothers’ residence after neighbors reported a nasty smell. When they arrived, police discovered the severed skull of a toddler. One of the brothers reportedly confessed to using the corpse to make curry.

The two brothers were again arrested, but this time charged under the country’s anti-terrorism statute.

In June, both received 12-year prison sentences.

Nikhat Shakeel Khan, a chief sponsor of one of the bills and also a medical doctor, said the legislation would help to reduce the frequent complaints she receives about grave sites in Pakistan being raided or unearthed.

When a Washington Post reporter recently visited a cemetery in Lahore, for example, it appeared as though several grave sites had either been unearthed or dug into.

“Patients would come to me telling appalling tales of people digging graves of their loved ones and taking out different body parts for witchcraft,” Khan said. “Most of these cannibals have mental problems, but we hope to stop them as well as those who use body parts for magic and witchcraft.”

But before you dismiss this legislation as just another example of Pakistan being behind the times, consider this: If approved, it appears that the country would actually have one of the world’s more clearly-defined cannibalism statutes.

According to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute, there are no federal “laws against cannibalism per se” in the United States.

“But the act of cannibalism would probably violate laws against murder and against desecration of corpses,” the institute said.