Overview post on "mimics" — entities imitating voices in the home

We know about the traditional unclean spirits that live in houses. Domovoi-banniki, the small household folk live alongside many of us, and we recognize them—helpers and mischief-makers, shapeshifters into cat shadows, protectors of home and household, benevolent and capricious—we know their names too, and we're (almost?) not afraid of them.
But there's another fairly common group of inhabitants of our homes that can really ruin your life. In the English-speaking world they're sometimes called "mimics," and I've heard they're also called "imitators."

It's curious that this isn't a special class of inhabitants of the subtle world, but completely different entities that we try to unite and define by exactly one trait: their behavior and manifestation.
These are entities that make sounds, imitate the voices of people living (or often visiting) in the house.
Banshees, kikimoras, leshies can also imitate voices. But mimics-imitators live next to a person, more often—directly on their territory, in the house. They appear more often in houses or large apartments, in old buildings, especially where there are basements, attics, and dark rooms.

At first mimics manifest simply as some kind of noise: rustling, footsteps, movement in an empty room. This includes, for example, cases when in the next room a sofa creaked as if someone sat on it, but the whole family is in sight, and there's no one there and can't be. It's the sound of cat paws on the floor while all the cats are right there: sitting and perplexed.
The thing is, we practically don't pay attention to such things, but for mimics attention is vital. They feed on it and become stronger when they start being noticed. And if they start being noticed, then they'll start being feared—and fear allows them to grow and gain more power.
The classic move of "imitator spirits" is voices.

Most often they call someone from the household in the voice of another family member. Most commonly, children call the mother, husband calls the wife, or vice versa.

One woman writes that she was in the kitchen baking a pie, her hands all in dough, she couldn't step away, and her husband was literally yelling himself hoarse, asking her to come to the living room. When she, covered in flour (and furious), finally burst into the room, it was empty. And literally a couple of seconds later keys jingled in the lock: her husband, who had gone to the store, came home.
Another told how her daughter called her from the basement. Only the mom knew perfectly well that the daughter was in her room playing with a friend (and that's where she found them when she went to check just in case).

Another shared that her stepson refuses to visit their house because his mother keeps calling him there—his mother who, obviously, had never been in that house.

And here we immediately see that there are significant differences in how imitators behave. Some attach themselves to specific people and call them with the voices those people will respond to, and whether such a call could actually be real or not doesn't matter. Others simply imitate the voices of the household inhabitants. By the way, the most common case of imitator manifestation is when the sound comes from a room where the caller actually is. Only they didn't call anyone or ask anything.

One case was described by a woman who lost a child in childbirth. She had never even heard(!) her daughter's cry, but when she returned home from the hospital, she began to think a baby was crying in the house. The house was in a rural area, and the neighbors definitely had no small children. Naturally, the woman decided she was developing psychosis; she told her husband, hoping he'd send her for rehabilitation. And the husband replied that he had exactly the same "hallucinations," and he'd been keeping quiet so as not to worry or upset his wife.

It's believed that our departed loved ones often turn into mimics, especially dead or unborn children, those who died suddenly, loved ones who are deeply mourned. But many stories about them suggest that far from only restless human souls can manifest this way.

A domovoi can stomp like a cat and even purr. Sometimes a foreign small folk can take up residence in a house (especially if the house is remote, if it has closed-off and cluttered rooms). If there's magic practiced in the house and the space is rarely or insufficiently cleansed, all sorts of things can be pulled in from the subtle world, including ones that treat people exclusively as food.

What are imitators dangerous for (besides upsetting and scaring)?
To start with, if there were no imitators before, the house is clean, there are no closets and no strangely deceased relatives, then the appearance of such effects is a bad sign. It's a disturbance of the ether; this is how a warning from previously calm spirit-neighbors might look (and sound). All those fallen books (or the sound of something falling when nothing fell), laughter, creaking—"the domovoi is fussing"—that's not good. If someone is called by name, often the danger threatens precisely that person or the one that person protects and would want to defend.
However, this isn't danger as such, it's more a warning about it. A bad sign, but a useful impulse.

Much worse is when mimics begin to manifest maliciously, to scare, and as the discomfort of the household inhabitants increases, the effects intensify, and life becomes impossible. I was told that a crazy grandmother insisted on having the light on at night because if the light was turned off, "they whisper next to me." At first it was just whispering, then prayers(?), then grandma said it growled, and then even the light stopped helping. Grandma was prescribed serious medication, her sleep (at least outwardly) was restored, a few years later grandma died, and her grandson moved into her room. With good mental health and roughly zero level of suspiciousness. Moreover: the room was seriously renovated, none of grandma's things remained. This grandson was surprised when he once heard that at night someone in the room was either rustling or actually whispering.

So imitators should definitely be driven out. They're driven out with profanity, loudly and aloud, sent to all possible obscene addresses. Under no circumstances should you show fear. The space is cleansed both magically and physically, old junk is cleared out (one family that didn't like that someone seemed to be having a good time in their locked basement did such a renovation there that it turned out to be a sort of separate apartment, which they successfully and profitably rented out). The whole house is rung with bells, sage and wormwood are burned, wind chimes are hung.

There's also advice to drive old (or rusty) nails into the corners of the house. You can use construction staples or similar parts—from rails. Salt is sprinkled around the perimeter of the house. I also liked the advice to remove the doormat that says "welcome" (at least that way at least foreign scare-lovers won't wander in).

But the main thing, of course, is to remember every moment and know, feel, who is the master in this house—a master powerful and fearless.

Because I myself haven't heard of cases of real harm from imitators, but they can quite well drive you out of the house: that married couple, after conferring, first temporarily moved in with relatives, and then sold the house where "sad memories lived." In the new place they had a child, and the crying became not mysterious but absolutely real. The grandson, though, used the strongest weapon of the young—apathy—and simply didn't give a damn. And the whispering stopped.