The Penguin Book of Demons — Scott G. Bruce

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 daimones 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.