Skyrim Player 'Freaked Out' By Haunted Mannequins Shares Spooky Images
Some of you older fans of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim may remember a time before nearly every aspect of the game was picked to pieces, revealing the secrets, bugs, and exploits that exist in the snowy northern wasteland of Tamriel.
A sweet summer child over on the Skyrim subreddit clearly never saw one of Skyrim’s creepiest bugs, as they titled a post: “My mannequins are f*cking with me.” Accompanying it with photos of them stepping down from their pedestal and sitting at the players' table with pies, sweet rolls and ale.
What Is Going On With Skyrim’s Mannequins?
Click to enlargeIn Skyrim, mannequins are available in nearly every purchasable house, as well as the custom homes you can build that were added in the expansion pack Hearthfire. They are there for the Dragonborn to store all their armour and weapons, while also spicing up the scenery a bit. But there is one caveat - the mannequins aren’t actually real mannequins.
Game development is an art of trickery, after all, and the mannequins are just regular NPCs with a wooden texture in place of skin. They also have special commands that freeze them in place - to avoid the very scenario in this post - but it’s a Bethesda game at the end of the day, so it’s bound to fall apart from time to time.
If the freeze command does fail, the mannequins will gain a sentience (A.K.A. regular NPC AI) and use their new-found freedom to move around, sit down, sleep, and whatever else they feel like doing really. The Redditor who made the post was certainly terrified by this discovery, but a kind commenter informed them of the actual bug that causes it.
So worry not, denizens of Skyrim, there are no weeping angel mannequins wandering around ready to pounce when you’re not looking. Just another Bethesda bug, albeit one that is a classic that we hope is somehow replicated in The Elder Scrolls VI, whenever it comes.
What Other Weird Occurrences Have Been Found In Skyrim?
Skyrim is so large and packed-full of content, that to this day we’re still discovering new things. The headless horseman who haunts new players saves, an inexplicably powerful fondue from Elsweyr, a mysterious box titled “do not delete,” and the jars that contain dead insects that were apparently part of a deleted quest line.
That’s not even counting the mods, which can extend Skyrim well beyond its limits and is the likely reason it’s still in the public consciousness all these years later. Though with the upcoming Anniversary Edition, it seems many of them could become broken, much like what happened back when the Special Edition was released in 2016.
