Way back during the COVID lockdowns, when the streets of Mexico City were quiet and empty of people, something else started walking them.

Multiple witnesses reported encounters with humanoid entities that moved like mannequins. With stiff limbs, and lifeless arms, running on their tiptoes. Backwards. One guy got chased. Another got followed to a bus stop. Someone else watched one of these things lift a sewer grate like it weighed nothing and climb inside.

After looking at three independent accounts, Tom gives some historical context, including the Golem of Prague, and a bridal mannequin in Chihuahua that stood in a shop window for almost a hundred years.

It turns out there’s real science way down in Uncanny Valley, and it doesn’t make us feel any better about it.

Neither does a certain “fantastic” YouTube video.

No more almost-faces, mmmkay?

Highlights:

Mannequin-like entity encounters during the COVID lockdown in Mexico City

A woman-shaped entity running backward on its tiptoes, arms outstretched like lifeless prosthetics, later appeared in the second-floor window of a derelict house

A mannequin in an empty commercial space with its hand extended, then reappearing down the boulevard

A mannequin-like figure crossed Reforma with clumsy steps, then lifted a sewer grate like it weighed nothing and climbed inside

All three accounts independently describe unnatural movement

Mexico’s most famous “living mannequin” was a bridal figure in a Chihuahua shop window from 1930 to 2024, rumored to be the embalmed body of the shop owner’s daughter

The Golem of Prague, a 16th century clay entity brought to life with God’s name

Talos, the bronze giant of Greek mythology

European chess-playing automatons (which actually had a small person hidden inside)

The term "uncanny valley” was coined by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in a 1970 essay published in an obscure journal called Energy

Mori believed our affinity for humanoid things increases as they become more realistic, then plunges into revulsion when they’re almost human, then recovers when they’re indistinguishable from human

Mori noted zombies are scarier than corpses because they move

The pandemic was a perfect storm for uncanny encounters

Spring-Heeled Jack was a Victorian London entity that assaulted people, breathed fire, and leapt over 10-foot walls

Brother Richard’s idea that paranormal entities “clothe themselves in our imagination” makes us wonder if mannequins were the imaginative “clothing” available to people surrounded by empty shops and display windows

Our revulsion to almost human things might be adaptive, helping us identify the diseased and dead

Could also imply the existence of a predator that mimicked humans (good luck sleeping tonight!)

The mountain lions that cry like human babies

“I Feel Fantastic” - an impromptu watch party

That track Tom mentioned at the end

And in the epilogue…

Monster mannequins in pop culture

How 28 Years Later’s psychedelic zombie twist mirrors real-world partisan dehumanization

“Playing in the ruins” when the systems around us are broken

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