Much like the internet rule 34 (please don’t ever look that up), online communities insist that bad things happen in threes, especially when it comes to celebrity deaths. You may think, “There’s no way this is an actual thing that happens. It’s all coincidental!” Yes, it may be, but after doing a bit of research, we’re pretty convinced.

For all you skeptics out there, we have concrete proof — or rather, some pretty good examples — of the celebrity death rule of threes phenomenon. It’s believed to have started when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash together all the way back in 1959. Then, in 2018, Parts Unknown star Anthony Bourdain, fashion designer Kate Spade and The Goldbergs star Jackson Odell all died within mere days of one another; re-sparking the conversation about the death in threes even years later.

Much like you will be once you click ahead to the examples we found, we were shocked to find how many times tragic celebrity deaths have happened in threes.

A version of this article was originally published in June 2014.