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.