Spectral Hunter

The Spectral Hunters are from John Carnahan's “Devil’s Canyon”; they are also very similar to the demons in M.R. James' "Casting the Runes (fiction)".

Description

Spectral hunters are large, hideous humanoids about 6-7 feet in height. Rubbery, jet-black flesh covers their bodies. Their eyes are large and red and their mouths are wide and filled with rows of shark-like teeth. A long, tapering nose matches their general appearance — horribly thin and reedy with the exception of a distended abdomen. Their limbs terminate in gross appendages. While their feet resemble those of a man, their hands are only huge, crab-like pincers. Because they are slightly immaterial at all times, they often seem to float or hover over the ground like big, ugly balloons.
— John Carnahan, "Devil's Canyon"

Spectral Hunters are strange, tall, humanoid creatures with red eyes, jet-black skin, and often distorted or strange features and proportions. They are immaterial, having descended to the material world from some dark corner of the Astral Plane, "The Other Side", where they were created by cultist wizards from willing, living, humanoid beings to serve as guardians, messengers, watchers, spies, or assassins for the cult that created them. Spectral Hunters are ritually bound to this world via some specific place or object, limiting the reach of these beings to within a relatively short distance, enough to effectively haunt a cursed house, doll, idol or altar, door, runic curse, tome, etc.; for those who know how (for example, those who have been forewarned by a suitable tome), these entities are easy to banish or destroy, once the object they are bound to has been identified. However, spectral Hunters tend to be malevolent and even violent guardians, and due to their shadowy presence, they might be mistaken for the (usually comparatively peaceful) Shadow People; Spectral Hunters may also be mistaken for Demons, Elementals, and other such beings; the mistaken identity and the Spectral Hunters' violent nature tend to result in dangerous enemies for unsuspecting occultist investigators.

Associated Mythos Elements

• races: Demon, Elemental, Shadow Person (easily mistaken for one of these)
• location: the Other Side (place of origin)

References

• fiction: M.R. James, "Casting the Runes (fiction)"
• fiction: John Carnahan, "Devil's Canyon"
• film: Curse of the Demon (1957 film) (AKA Night of the Demon)
• sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum