Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – spooky groaning voice heard on specific location freaks out players, source uncovered

A player of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom recently reported that, upon going to a certain location in-game, they could suddenly hear a mysterious voice, with no apparent source. In the recording they provide, one certainly can hear an unfamiliar voice, which sounds almost like an old woman groaning. The unsettling video quickly became a topic of discussion among players, and the source of the voice turned out to be a rather unexpected creature. 

The mysterious phenomenon was first spotted and documented by X (formerly Twitter) user @nameko_nama11. In their post, the player reported hearing something like a female voice in the proximity of YunoboCo HQ, located northeast of Hyrule. If you listen carefully, you can definitely hear what sounds like a moan. Quite frightening. 

Puzzled and slightly disturbed, players speculated as to what could be the cause of the phenomenon, some suggesting it could be a spooky Easter egg set up by Nintendo, others claiming it must be the work of Ganondorf. As @nameko_nama11 was kind enough to provide specific coordinates of the location, I was able to make a field investigation of my own and look into the mysterious voice. 

Sure enough, upon arriving at the marked coordinates, I was faintly able to hear the strange moaning. However, there were no people or creatures of any sort to be seen in the surrounding area. If it were nighttime, there would be a possibility of Stalkoblins or other such creatures crawling around, but in the provided video, it was still very much daytime. So, what in the world is making that sound? In response to the post, some people actually tried to uncover the truth, and the whole story of how it was done remains documented in the post’s X thread. 

Players have come to the conclusion that the sound in question is the cry of Horriblin. Underneath the previously mentioned coordinates, there is a large underground cave. It seems that several Horriblin inhabit this cave and that their cries were able to faintly reach The Surface through the thin ground. 

Upon taking a closer look at the site, there were indeed Horriblin to be found underground. The sound heard in the video is a cry that is not often heard when fighting Horriblin, and it also likely gets overpowered by the background music, so suddenly hearing it in a silent environment is understandably startling. Also, the fact that no one expects to encounter Horriblin while on the Surface no doubt also contributed to how mystifying this phenomenon was.  

One must also comment that the fact that voices of creatures lurking underground can be heard on the Surface is a really impressive testament to just how seamless the world of Tears of the Kingdom is. Talking about spooky phenomena, there was another user who stumbled upon (or into) a previously unknown “liminal” space in the game (Related article).

Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-08-21 17:42 JST)