For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate - otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation and moral decline. Drawing from three thousand years of religious traditions and world literature, The Penguin Book of Demons follows these supernatural creatures - and the humans who have hunted and been haunted by them - through accounts across cultures and continents, including: 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 djinn 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.