The Appalachian Mimics

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to Out There, A Cryptid Podcast. I'm Josh, and today we're heading into the Appalachian Mountains to look at a creature that might sound like someone you know, but definitely isn't someone you want to answer. We're talking about Mimics, the mysterious voices in the woods that seem to know exactly how to get your attention. This is the Appalachian Mimics. Let's dive in.

[00:01:01] We'll get into the Appalachian Mimics right after this.

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[00:02:37] We've covered a lot of cryptids on this show that are known for imitating other people, or at least have stories surrounding them that involve things not being quite what they seem. We've talked about the Windigo, Skinwalkers, even Doppelgangers. But there's one creature we haven't covered yet. And honestly, it might be one of the scariest of all time.

[00:03:03] Because imagine you're home alone one night, and you hear your mom calling your name from outside. Or maybe you're out in the woods, and you hear your friend calling for you somewhere in the distance. You recognize the voice. You know who it belongs to. So why wouldn't you answer? Well, according to stories about a creature known as the Mimic, that voice might not belong to the person you think it does.

[00:03:31] Mimics have become a popular topic online, especially in stories about the Appalachian Mountains. People describe hearing familiar voices coming from the woods, strange calls outside their homes, and things that seem to be trying to get them to come closer, or let them in. And the more you look into these stories, the more you start to wonder where this creature came from,

[00:03:58] why it's so closely associated with Appalachia, and what's going on here. Now, we're not going to go too deep into the history of Appalachian folklore today, because we're saving that for some bigger episodes. But I think it's important to understand the setting. We've talked about them before, but the Appalachian Mountains stretch for about 2,000 miles,

[00:04:23] running from Alabama all the way through the eastern United States and into Canada. They pass through a bunch of states, including Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and they're one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. And when I say old, I mean really old. Some of the rocks found in the Appalachians are over a billion years old.

[00:04:51] There's this idea that because these mountains are so old, there's something supernatural about them. Now, there's no scientific evidence to prove this, but when you start adding up all of the cases reported, and the variety of those cases of unexplained phenomenon, cryptids, and even paranormal hauntings, you start to realize there has to be something going on here.

[00:05:18] And a lot of these stories have similar warnings that come from the Appalachian lore. If you're out in the woods and hear someone calling your name, no, you didn't. And if you're home alone and hear a familiar voice coming from somewhere outside, no, you didn't. But when it comes to modern stories about what we are here to talk about today, particularly the West Virginia area seems to come up again and again.

[00:05:48] West Virginia sits entirely within the Appalachian region, and a huge part of the state is covered in mountains, forests, and deep valleys. It's a kind of setting where if you heard someone calling your name from somewhere in the woods, you might not even be able to tell where the voice was coming from. Like I said, we're going to save the deeper history of Appalachian folklore for another episode. But for now, I want you to keep that setting in mind,

[00:06:16] because the stories we're about to talk about are all built around one really unsettling idea. Now, before we get into the stories, I think we need to talk a little bit more about what a mimic actually is. And I say that because if you start looking online, you'll find that people don't always seem to agree on exactly what this creature is supposed to be. Generally, when talking about mimics,

[00:06:46] they're describing some kind of entity that can imitate the voice of another person. Usually it's someone you know, like a family member, a friend, or even someone you're close to. Even, sometimes, yourself. And the idea is that whatever this thing is, it's using that familiar voice to get your attention. Maybe it's calling your name from somewhere in the woods, and maybe it sounds like your mom calling you from outside of your house.

[00:07:13] Or maybe you hear someone you know asking for help, even though that person is nowhere near you. And in some stories, it's not just the voice that's being imitated. Some cases, people have described seeing something that looks like another person, or a figure standing somewhere it shouldn't be. The details can change from one story to another, but the general idea is the same.

[00:07:40] Something is pretending to be someone, or something, that it's not. And you really don't want to find out what happens if you follow it. But as I started looking into mimics, I kept running into the same predicament. Is this actually an old Appalachian legend? Or is this something that's much newer? I came across a podcast called Madame Strangeways,

[00:08:10] and she did an episode titled, Are Mimics Real? Where she does a really interesting deep dive into the history of the modern mimic. And one of the things she points out is that there are plenty of older legends about creatures that are known to imitate human voices. But the mimic, at least as we understand it today, doesn't seem to have a very long history under that name.

[00:08:35] In fact, a lot of what we now recognize as the modern mimic seems to have developed online through paranormal communities and social media, especially in the early 2020s. Madame Strangeways spent a lot of time going through older posts, videos, and discussions to try to figure out when people first started using the term in this way. And it seemed to fall under the more modern cryptid category.

[00:09:05] Now, that doesn't necessarily mean nobody had ever experienced something like this before. It just means that the creature we're talking about doesn't seem to have a long, or at least clearly documented, history. So, the next logical question is, where did this come from? Well, the interesting thing is that the fear of something imitating a human voice is actually much, much older.

[00:09:32] And there are a good amount of creatures from different parts of the world that have that same ability. One of those is the Krokoda, a creature described in ancient Greece and Rome that was a wild animal like a hyena or a dog that was believed to be able to imitate human voices. There's also the Jangsobeum from Korean folklore. This creature is associated with Mount Jangson

[00:09:59] and is described as having the body of a tiger, but with all-white fur. According to its legend, it can mimic the voices of people you know and uses those voices to lure you deeper into the mountains. But we also know a lot of famous cryptids that we have covered that have this same ability that are also located in America. Doppelgangers are always brought up when talking about mimics,

[00:10:29] and it's definitely understandable. The idea of seeing someone who looks exactly like a person you know only to discover that person was somewhere else entirely has been around for a long time. But there is a difference between a doppelganger and a mimic. A doppelganger is generally associated with the appearance of someone's double, while the modern mimic is more specifically tied to imitation, especially voices,

[00:10:59] and most of the time aren't seen in a physical form. But there's another big famous cryptid that could fit this description, and that is the skinwalker. Some people actually do use the two terms almost interchangeably, or at least suggest that the mimic is essentially another version of a skinwalker. But I don't think that's really accurate. Skinwalkers come from Navajo traditions

[00:11:26] and have a specific culture and spiritual context. And while they are known to imitate voices, there are much more to them, as we know. And I think this also goes with another indigenous legendary creature that we know, the wendigo. We know both of these cryptids so well, and it seems like the mimic, specifically the Appalachian ones, are different than them.

[00:11:54] But that brings us back to a more modern-ish time. If you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons, you might know the mimic as a creature that disguises itself as an ordinary object, usually something like a treasure chest, before attacking whoever gets too close. That version of the mimic dates back to the 1970s. Now, it's a little different from the voice-imitating creature we're talking about here,

[00:12:21] but we still see that this name and ability was introduced in pop culture early on. Even more recently, we've even seen mimics showing up in games like Roblox and Five Nights at Freddy's. But I think one of the biggest things to consider here is how these stories spread online. Places like Reddit and TikTok have created a space where people can share their encounters, retell stories they've heard from someone else,

[00:12:49] or sometimes even create fictional horror stories that they present as if they actually happened. And yes, sometimes those things start to blend together, but other times we have people coming online to ask whether what they heard was real, or if anybody knows what they actually heard. And with that, I think it's time we look at some of those stories that helped make the mimic what it is today.

[00:13:18] Because while we may not know where this creature came from, there are some pretty unsettling accounts from people who believe they've encountered one. Now, when you look up mimic or mimic sighting on TikTok, there are a lot of videos that come up. Here's the thing. It's really hard to tell which ones are truthful or trustworthy. Obviously, this is an easy cryptid to fake,

[00:13:46] but there are stories that seem more real and from people who do seem trustworthy. So, let's start with a pretty popular TikTok from the user Sunken Fox, whose name is Jen. She posted about her experience on August 29th, 2023. She and her husband were camping at a primitive campsite, which basically means they were out in an undeveloped area rather than an established campground.

[00:14:16] On one side of them was a lake, and on the other three sides was nothing but deep forests. At one point, her husband was over by their car cooking dinner on a little camp stove, while Jen was on the other side of the campsite. She started heading toward the woods to go to the bathroom, when she suddenly heard a voice right behind her say, meow meow.

[00:14:42] Now, that might not sound particularly creepy, but here's the thing. Meow meow was a little phrase that Jen and her husband used with each other, almost like a pet name. Meow meow. So, when she heard it, she immediately recognized her husband's voice. Except, it sounded monotone. And her husband was still over by the car, on the other side of the campsite.

[00:15:13] She went back over to him and asked if he'd snuck up behind her and said it. He told her he hadn't moved from where he was cooking. And that's when things got a little more unsettling. Whatever she had heard, used her husband's voice to say something that was specific to their relationship, even though he was nowhere near. At that point, they decided they were done.

[00:15:42] They weren't going to stick around and figure out what was going on. But as they started packing up, Jen says she could hear something moving around in the forest on all three sides of their campsite. It was as if whatever was out there was circling them. Then, while Jen was loading their dog into the car,

[00:16:06] she heard something come running out of the woods directly behind her. It sounded like it was only a few feet away. But when she turned around to look, there was nothing there. They got out of there as fast as they could and never returned. More on the Appalachian Mimics right after this.

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[00:17:36] Now, this is the kind of TikTok I wanted to focus on for this episode. Because it's a first-hand account. There are a lot of stories about mimics that get retold by popular storytelling accounts, like ours. But I wanted to keep this episode relatively focused on people who are actually claiming to have experienced these things themselves.

[00:17:59] What really makes this story stand out to me is the fact that whatever Jen heard used a phrase that was only known to her and her husband. It's one thing to hear a random voice calling your name from the woods, but it's another thing entirely to hear something using a phrase that's specific to your relationship.

[00:18:21] It almost makes you wonder if whatever this thing is can somehow access that kind of personal information. Or if it's somehow learning about the people it's trying to imitate. There are also two other details from this story that I want to point out. Because I think they come up in other mimic encounters too. The first is the monotone voice.

[00:18:45] A lot of people who claim to have encountered mimics describe hearing a voice that sounds just like someone they know, but there's something off about it. Maybe it's the way the person speaks. Maybe there's no emotion behind it. Or maybe it's just a feeling that something isn't quite right. It's almost like that uncanny valley feeling, where your brain recognizes something familiar, but at the same time, something tells you it isn't right.

[00:19:15] The other thing I find interesting is that Jen never actually saw anything. Whatever was out there seemed to be moving around the campsite, and something even ran toward her. But there was never a physical form attached to it. And that's something worth keeping in mind when we talk about mimics. A lot of these stories aren't about seeing some strange creature standing in the woods. They're about hearing that voice.

[00:19:45] And sensing that something is nearby. But having no idea what, if anything, is actually out there. And that's one of the things that separates these stories from accounts of doppelgangers or some of the shapeshifting cryptids. But with a doppelganger, that fear usually comes from seeing someone who looks like exactly a person you know or yourself.

[00:20:11] With mimics, at least in a lot of the stories we're looking at, the voice is the thing that gets your attention. You don't necessarily see anything at all. There are a handful more on TikTok that are definitely worth checking out. But I think we should turn to our favorite place to read some of the sightings and encounters people have posted on Reddit.

[00:20:38] The first story we have is titled, Mimic in East Tennessee. Strange thing happened to me several months ago. Late December 2019. Nothing as scary as some of the stuff I've seen since I started browsing this sub and others like it.

[00:21:07] But it left me feeling very puzzled and questioning my sanity for days. Eventually, I rationalized what happened and almost forgot about it. Reading through several stories from this sub, other subs, and Twitter, it dawned on me that maybe what I had experienced wasn't quite so far from the ordinary. It started as a very normal day. Went to work in Knoxville for the day and drove home.

[00:21:35] Roommate works night shift and won't be home till very late. It is 10.30 to 11pm at the latest. And I'm crawling into bed. Turn the lights out and begin to doze off. Roommate still isn't home. I imagine I must have been in bed for at least 30 or so minutes as I started to drift off. Suddenly, I awake with a start to the sound of my roommate's voice.

[00:22:04] He is yelling for me to open the door. To let him in. I groggily pull myself out of sleep and out of my bed and head towards the front door. My dog, Oliver, slowly gets up and follows me to the door, wagging his tail as he normally would if he knew my roommate was home. Strangely, as I get closer to the door, I hear the sound getting quieter or further away.

[00:22:34] In my confusion and sleepy state, I just stand by the door, listening for a second. And the voice eventually quiets. To the point that it's either too quiet or it has stopped. I can't hear it anymore. Strange. It sounds like he was gone around the side of the house. I assume to try the back-slash-downstairs doors. I open the door and peer outside.

[00:23:04] Nothing there. No sounds. And most notably, no car. Indicating that my roommate was home. At this point, I feel uneasy and confused. I called my roommate, practically begging him to come clean and admit he is messing with me. He is still at work. At least two hours until he'll be home.

[00:23:31] I convince myself that there are ghosts in my house or something and sort of start to fear spiral. Every little sound makes me jump. For some reason, I only felt calm when I would go outside. It was very quiet outside and made me feel like I was safer out there for some reason. In hindsight, that logic makes absolutely no sense.

[00:23:59] But I remember feeling like it was less scary outside for some reason. At one point, I almost wet my pants because Oliver started growling and barking, staring at a door in my kitchen that leads downstairs to a dirt floor basement area. I didn't think about it at this time, but the door that leads into the basement from our backyard is always unlocked.

[00:24:29] It's a very old house and we never go down into the basement. Not because it's scary, but because it's dusty and dark. This is about all that I can really remember. Nothing else happened aside from me scaring myself more and eventually falling asleep with all the lights on. Roommate tells me he found the whole thing weird, but said he found me asleep with all my clothes on and all lights on. And nothing happened after he got home.

[00:25:00] We live in rural East Tennessee, surrounded by hicks and sticks on all sides. If you walk down the road in either direction, away from my house, you will quickly be swallowed up by the dense forest that surrounds the area. We are pretty much at the base of the Smoky Mountains in the valley. What I find interesting about this story is that it was posted back in 2019,

[00:25:29] before mimics really started becoming popular online in the way that they are today. But one detail that stands out is that the voice seemed to move further away as the person approached the door. And that's something we've seen in other mimic stories, where the whole encounter seems to involve something trying to get people to follow it. Or in some, let it inside the house.

[00:25:57] The details aren't exactly the same, but there's this reoccurring idea of a voice or a person drawing someone toward something they probably shouldn't approach. Of course, there could be a perfectly ordinary explanation for what happened here, especially since the person was just drifting off to sleep. But then again, this is in the heart of Appalachia, and it checks off a lot of the boxes for the Appalachian mimic.

[00:26:28] Let's go to another post from a year before this one. This one was posted to the Paranormal subreddit by a deleted user. Yesterday, February 15th, I was walking back home after hanging out with some friends. Before anyone asks, I was completely sober and in my right mind. I've never been afraid to walk alone in the dark. I'm quite tall and intimidating looking from a distance,

[00:26:59] and I always bring a pocket knife when I know I'll be walking in the dark. Anyways, I was walking past some woods on the way back to my home. I heard my mother's voice call, Gabriel, help! From inside the woods. I immediately recognized her voice and turned to look into the woods. She kept calling my name over and over. I couldn't see anything.

[00:27:27] It was far too dark to see through the trees. Mom, I called back, heading toward the woods. She sounded like she was in trouble and scared. I assumed that she had gone for a run like she did every night and somehow got lost in the woods. Then I realized it couldn't be her. She had texted me only 10 minutes before,

[00:27:51] asking me to come home soon to watch my little sister so she could go on a run. I stopped dead in my tracks and called my mom. The voice in the woods was still calling my name and getting more frantic by the second. She picked up and I immediately asked her if she was in the woods. She said no. She was back home with my little sister.

[00:28:19] I swear to God, as soon as she said she was back home, her voice stopped calling my name from inside the woods. I was overcome with a wave of dread and fear that I had never felt before. Something in the woods was trying to lure me in using my mother's voice. And it knew my full name, not just my nickname.

[00:28:47] Which made things even scarier, because the only person who calls me Gabriel is my mom. I immediately turned and ran faster than I have ever run before back home. When I got back home, my legs felt like jello and my lungs burnt. I opened the door and there was my mom, sitting on the couch with my sister.

[00:29:13] I would think this was some sort of prank, but my mom isn't one for pranks. And even if she was, there's no way she could have gotten home before me without me seeing her. My only question is, what was in the woods? Edit.

[00:29:47] I think one of the creepiest details about this story is that the voice stopped the second Gabriel confirmed his mom was actually home. And that actually brings up a pretty interesting characteristic that comes up in these stories. Sometimes when the actual person whose voice is being imitated is physically there or accounted for,

[00:30:16] the voice suddenly stops. You have to wonder why that happens, though. Does the mimic realize its trick isn't working anymore? Or is it somehow aware that the person it's imitating is right there, so it decides to move on or try again another time? Obviously, we can't know that for sure, but I think it's an interesting thing that shows up in multiple accounts. It's not just the voice itself,

[00:30:45] but the way it seems to stop once the person realizes something isn't right. It leads us to believe that these are intelligent creatures. They understand when to stand down. And then on the flip side, when they are winning. Now, our next Reddit story goes to something we haven't really talked about yet. And that's this creature mimicking your own voice.

[00:31:13] The user, DariusAndry08, posted this sighting on the subreddit Paranormal Encounters two years ago. This one is a long one, and also not the best writing, so instead of reading it word for word, I'm going to retell it with all of the details. So, the narrator lives in a residential area with a pretty large forest nearby, and there's a walking path through the woods that they regularly take their dog, Coco.

[00:31:43] Usually, they go out in the late afternoon, but one Monday, they forgot to take Coco for his walk, so they ended up having to go later that evening, around 7 or 8 p.m. And since it was winter, it's already completely dark outside. They head out with Coco and start making their way along the usual route. But as they get closer to the forest, they notice something strange. Coco, who's normally really playful

[00:32:11] and excited about going for walks, is suddenly sticking right beside their leg. At first, they assume he's just nervous because he's not used to being out in the dark. But that feeling doesn't really go away. They eventually make it into the woods and continue along the path, passing a few abandoned houses. At one point, Coco stops to sniff around,

[00:32:39] and the person walks a little further ahead before realizing the dog has fallen behind. So they turn around and call out, Coco, let's go. We need to go. Coco catches up, and the person turns back around to continue walking. But just a few seconds later, they hear something that makes them stop in their tracks. It's their own voice.

[00:33:06] The exact same words they had just said to Coco, in the same tone, and the same way they had said them. They say it wasn't an echo because there was a noticeable delay of about five to seven seconds, and the voice didn't have an echo to it. They immediately picked up Coco and ran the rest of the way home.

[00:33:37] About 20 minutes later, their mom comes home, so they tell her what happened. But instead of telling him that she thought he was crazy, she says that something strange happened to her in those woods too. Apparently, one time when she was walking Coco through the forest, she came across a dog that just seemed off. She couldn't really explain what was wrong with it. It wasn't that the dog looked injured

[00:34:06] or physically strange. It was more that something about it just didn't seem right. Almost like that uncanny valley feeling. Or something looks completely normal, but there's just something about it that makes you uncomfortable. Fast forward to the next night, around 1130. the narrator hears what sounds like footsteps outside his bedroom window.

[00:34:36] They pretend to be asleep and eventually manage to fall back asleep. The next day, around 6.40pm, he took Coco out again. When Coco started eating some grass, the narrator said, Coco, no, let's go, you're not allowed. And then, two or three seconds later, they hear another voice say, Coco, let's go. What makes this account stand out is that

[00:35:05] it adds a slightly different element to these mimic stories. So far, we've mostly talked about something imitating the voice of another person, but here we have someone hearing their own voice repeated back to them. And it makes you wonder if there's a difference between something trying to lure you somewhere and something that's simply copying what it hears. or maybe those are actually the same thing. But there's

[00:35:34] another aspect of the story that is really interesting and that's the uncanny valley feeling of that dog that his mother saw. We've talked about how when a mimic is seen, a lot of the times it's described in this weird way where you know it's just not right. because the strange dog his mom encountered was exactly that, something not quite right. There's the belief

[00:36:03] that this is how a mimic takes a physical form. It's trying to mimic an appearance. However, sometimes it just isn't exactly right. When I first read this story the first thing that came to mind was that maybe this was a juvenile mimic if that's a thing. It seemed like this creature wasn't trying to get them to come to it but instead just happened

[00:36:33] to be there and was mimicking what it heard and maybe its dog form wanted to play with Coco. Either way it's an incredible story. More on the Appalachian mimics right after this. You've been asked to run the company's social channels but company content plays by its own set of rules. It needs a logo in the first three seconds but it can't feel like an ad. It needs subtitles

[00:37:03] except when it doesn't. It needs to run at two times speed and deliver a complex message simply of course within 9x16. Thankfully your company has Canva so you can easily edit your video and every version of it. What will you Canva today? I hope I don't have to cancel again tonight. Chronic migraine means 15 or more headache days a month each lasting 4 hours or more. Botox prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14

[00:37:32] or fewer headache days a month. Botox the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment prevents on average 8-9 headache days a month by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness.

[00:38:03] Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor, visit Botox Chronic Migraine dot com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Let's do one more story and this one comes from the heart of Appalachia in West Virginia and this one was posted two years ago by the

[00:38:32] user Dopey Dopey to the paranormal subreddit. The story may be short or it may be drawn out. I am recounting these events as I type as it was honestly one of the most horrifying things I have ever experienced and it brings me genuine stress to think about. This happened maybe two three years ago. I live in southern West Virginia and have

[00:39:02] for my entire life. The woods and mountains surrounded every direction you look and nighttime is a darkness that you can never really dream of unless experienced. I was with a friend I'll call him Mark. Mark was at my house one evening doing the usual thing watching UFC playing Xbox etc. It was extremely late when we finally got bored and decided to go

[00:39:32] for a walk on a nearby trail to smoke a joint. This is not a particularly long trail but it is very dense in the woods that surrounded it and it is easy to get freaked out when thinking about your surroundings. We finally get to about halfway into the trail about 30 minutes in where we

[00:40:07] weigh are unsettling. It was past 1am. This was strange and eerie but not alarming as any sort of predatory animal in the area may cause a disturbance. We finish

[00:40:38] mocking, humanoid voice. Shaky and uncertain. Almost like an old children's toy. Like the ones with the crackly speakers and robotic voice, if you know what I mean. This immediately set us off. We bolt directly down the opposite length of the trail, but the sound does not gain distance.

[00:41:03] It doesn't get closer per se, but no matter how far we ran down the trail, this eerie voice remains the same volume, going over and over with no quieting or stopping. At this point, I am convinced that we are in genuine danger, something I have felt very few times. Finally,

[00:41:26] after sprinting for who knows how long, we exit the trail, grasping for breath, and almost at the verge of tears of how frightening this was. We begin to exit the trail, and about five minutes from the exit, there is a bone shaking, heart stopping, murderous scream from directly behind us.

[00:41:53] I know what a mountain lion sounds like. This was not an animal. This was not someone playing or watching a movie. This scream sent birds flying from nests and made my heart drop into my stomach. It was the most genuinely depraved and violent scream that I have ever heard. This is a true

[00:42:18] story that I have only told to maybe three people, all of whom seem to brush it off as false. I've never been a person to push for the existence of the paranormal or spiritual, but I genuinely believe I encountered something inhuman in those woods. Edit. I know I will receive questions such as what the voice was possibly saying,

[00:42:45] or to explain the area and what happened after. I genuinely cannot remember what the voice was saying, if anything intelligible. I don't know if I could understand it then, and I certainly can't recall understanding it after several years of blocking it out of my memory. All that I can recall is that

[00:43:07] it was a fluctuating voice in pitch, shaking, almost just joining sounds together. After running from the scream at the end of the trail, we ran to the car, which was only about five more minutes from the trail, so we got there relatively fast from sprinting. I think what makes this one so interesting

[00:43:33] is that the voice isn't really doing what we've seen in some of the other mimic stories. It's not copying someone they know or calling out to them using a familiar voice. It's more like something trying to sound human, but not quite getting it right. And I think that description of it sounding like a broken

[00:43:56] toy is really creepy because it makes you wonder what they were actually hearing. Was it trying to imitate someone, or was this something else entirely? The other thing that really stands out is that the voice never seemed to get any further away, even when they were running. You'd think that if something was making a noise from somewhere in the woods, you'd eventually get far enough away that it would start

[00:44:26] to fade. But according to this story, that never happened. Obviously, being in the woods at night can mess with how you hear things, but I can understand why that detail stuck with them. And then of course, there's the scream at the end. I think it's interesting that the whole encounter starts with something they can't even really make sense of, and then ends with a sound that scares them enough to

[00:44:53] just bolt for the car. We don't know what was out there in the woods, but I think this story is a good reminder that not every mimic account involves hearing someone you recognize. Sometimes it's just the feeling that whatever you're hearing sounds almost human, but there's something else that's just

[00:45:15] oh so wrong. And with that, I think it's a good time to talk about some possible explanations for what's going on here. Now, remember, we've been focusing specifically on Appalachian mimics, but these kinds of encounters have been reported all around the country and even in other parts of the

[00:45:40] world. More on the Appalachian mimics right after this. You've been asked to run the company's social channels, but company content plays by its own set of rules. It needs a logo in the first three seconds, but it can't feel like an ad. It needs subtitles, except when it doesn't. It needs to run at two times

[00:46:04] speed and deliver a complex message simply, of course, within nine by 16. Thankfully, your company has canva so you can easily edit your video and every version of it. What will you canva today? We've already talked about the similarities to doppelgangers, skinwalkers, and creatures from folklore around the world, but there's another theory we haven't really touched on yet.

[00:46:29] And it's a little out there, no pun intended. So just stay with me here, because some people believe that at least some of these mimic encounters could actually be explained by Sasquatch. Now, I know that might sound a little strange at first, but when you think about it, there are actually some similarities between the two. Within the Bigfoot community, there have been reports of

[00:46:59] years of Sasquatch making strange vocalizations, including sounds that people describe as almost human, but not quite. And there are even accounts of Sasquatch supposedly mimicking human voices. One example that comes up a lot in Bigfoot research is something called the Sierra Sounds. Back in the

[00:47:23] 1970s, a man named Ron Moorhead recorded a series of unusual vocalizations in the Sahara Nevada mountains in California. He believed that the sounds were coming from Sasquatch, and some of the recordings have this really strange speech-like quality to them. It's almost like you can hear something trying

[00:47:46] to communicate, but you can't quite make out what it's saying. Now, these recordings are still debated, and we don't know what exactly made the sounds. But they've become pretty well known in the Bigfoot community, and will definitely be a future episode. So maybe Sasquatch is imitating sounds they hear

[00:48:10] from people, or maybe they are making vocalizations that just happen to sound human. Either way, the theory is that what someone thinks is a mimic might actually be a Bigfoot encounter, even if they are never seen. And when you look back at some of the stories we've talked about today, we have a lot of accounts where these voices are coming from the woods. So it is definitely a strange link between

[00:48:38] these two famous cryptids. There's also the possibility that the mimic is less of a cryptid, and more of a paranormal entity. So instead of being an actual creature living out in the woods, some people believe these encounters could be caused by spirits, or other entities that are able to imitate human voices. And when you look at some of these stories we've talked about,

[00:49:03] you can see why people might make that connection. But there's one more explanation we need to talk about, and that's the possibility that at least some of these encounters could come down to how our brains process what they're hearing. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world around us, and sometimes that means finding patterns in things that aren't entirely clear. The term for this is called

[00:49:30] auditory pareidolia, which is basically when you hear something ambiguous, and your brain interprets it as a recognizable sound, like a voice. And there's actually been research looking at this. In one study, researchers found that when people were told they were listening to recordings of supposed paranormal voices, they were more likely to report hearing voices in some of the ambiguous

[00:49:58] sounds. So what we expect to hear can actually influence what we think we're hearing. And this is where it ties in with mimics, because a lot of these stories involve people hearing something that sounds familiar, but they can't actually see where it's coming from. If you're already scared, you're alone in the woods, or you know the stories about something imitating people's voices, is it possible that that could affect

[00:50:28] how you interpret a strange sound? And then there's the fact that these stories have become so popular online that once you hear enough of them about mimics calling people from the woods, you start recognizing that pattern in your own experiences. But what that explanation doesn't explain is how some people claim to have

[00:50:52] video footage, or even when multiple people hear the same thing all at once. At the end of the day, I don't think there's one explanation that covers every single mimic story we've talked about today, and that you can find on TikTok or read on Reddit. Some could be misunderstandings, some could be terrifying cryptid encounters, and

[00:51:16] others are maybe paranormal encounters. But when you really start looking into mimics, the thing that really stands out is you end up with more questions than answers. Are these creatures something that's been a part of Appalachian folklore for generations? Or are they a much newer legend that's been shaped by the internet?

[00:51:40] Whatever the answer is, there will always be something so unsettling about the idea of hearing a voice you recognize, knowing exactly who it belongs to, and then realizing that person isn't there. So, the next time you're out in the woods and hear someone calling your name, maybe make sure you know

[00:52:02] who's calling you before you answer. So, what do you think? Are mimics really out there? Be sure to follow us on Instagram at OutThereCryptids for episode posts, updates, and more. Join our community on Discord where we dive even deeper into the mysteries we explore here on the podcast. The link can be found on our Instagram. And if you're loving the show, consider supporting

[00:52:31] us on Patreon. As a patron, you'll get exclusive perks like bonus episodes, early access, and even surprises. See you next week!