Nightgaunt

A nightgaunt (also Night-Gaunt or night-gaunt) is a fictional race in the Cthulhu Mythos and is also part of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. The creatures appear in the poem "Night-Gaunts" and the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, both by Lovecraft. Nightgaunts were inspired by Lovecraft's childhood nightmares.

Description

Nightgaunts have a vaguely human shape, but are thin, black (though they are often depicted as purple), and faceless. Their skin is slick and rubbery. They sport a pair of inward-facing horns on their heads, and have clawed hands and a long barbed tail. They can fly using a set of membranous wings. They are unintelligent (having no language or culture) and function as mere servitors.

Dreamlands

Nightgaunts guard Ngranek, an infamous mountain on the isle of Oriab in the Dreamlands. They sometimes capture unwary climbers, tickling them into submission with their claws and barbed tails, and carry them to the lower reaches of dreamland. Nightgaunts are sometimes used as steeds by the ghouls of the deeper Dreamlands, but do not like to fly over bodies of water.

Occurances in pop culture

In the computer game Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero, if the player sleeps in unsafe areas of the forest at night, the game will instantly end with a message saying “Looks Like the Night Gaunt Got You.” The accompanying illustration shows a dark silhouette of an unhorned humanoid.

References

• Lovecraft, Howard P. [1926] (1985). "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". In S.T. Joshi (ed.) (ed.). At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (7th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-038-6. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

• Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon (1st ed. ed.). Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Pub. ISBN 1-56184-129-3. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)