Created Matlab echo signal: Is it an actual "echo?" Or am I just manipulating the signal to make it seem like an echo?
To generate a repetitive echo all you need to do is pass your signal through an appropriate AR filter with a delay corresponding to the echo period. For instance the following code generates (for a damped 1 Hz sinusoid sampled at 100 Hz) an echo which repeats every 1000 samples. The strength of the echo can be adjusted by the AR filter coefficient (0.5 here)

Example Matlab code

% generate 10000 samples of a damped sinusoid at 100 Hz
sig = sin(2*pi*(0:9999)/100).*exp(-(0:9999)/200);

% AR filter to generate a repetitive echo, period 1000 samples (10 seconds)
b = 1;
a= [1 zeros(1,999), 0.5];

echo = filter(b,a,sig);


You may want to experiment with your AR filter to match your echo decay. Also look into 'gapped deconvolution'