Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares
A Penguin Classic
Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares
A Penguin Classic
For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate-otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation, and moral decline. The Penguin Book of Demons summons these supernatural creatures-and the humans who have hunted and been haunted by them-across cultures and continents- the daemons of ancient Greece and Rome; the giant, biblical half humans known as Nephilim who stalked the earth before the Great Flood; corrupted angels, condemned to eternity in Hell; the jinn of Islamic Arabia; the female, child-eating Gelloudes of Byzantium; the seductive incubi and succubi of northern Europe; the animal spirits of early modern China; and the cannibalistic Wendigo of Native American folklore. From demonic possession to black magic, these accounts give life to a spellbinding, skin-crawling history of the paranormal.