Soultick

Soulticks are a group of malevolent spirits in Arazi folklore. They are known by many other names, and in some regions are even called the literal equivalent of a "skinwalker". Another common name for the beings is just "follower", alluding to their alleged behaviour.

Appearance and behaviour
Soulticks are associated with wild are heavily forested areas. In their natural form, soulticks are spirits with no physical body. However, they are fully capable of producing sound, mimicking natural occurrences (such as branches snapping, water dripping and wind rustling in leaves), animal noises (particularly birdsong, but other random animal sounds are attributed) and even human speech.

As far as speech is concerned, soulticks are often alleged to only be able to reproduce words and phrases uttered first by a human but some myths claim they are capable of original utterances, too.

When encountered by a group of people in their habitat, a soultick adopts an illusory physical body similar in appearance to the people encountered, with similar clothing, hairstyles and characteristics such as skin and eye color. The soultick then infiltrates the group of people and spends time among them. A soultick never eats or drinks anything, and never interacts with the people unless directly spoken to first. The original people of the group are usually aware of the presence, but do not seem disturbed by it in any way.

Once someone recognises the soultick as a stranger, the spirit usually quickly leaves or straight out disappears into thin air. Sometimes it is said that this breaks the magic, and the people finally realise that a foreign being had spent time with them, often causing psychological stress to those involved.