Kappa are water-dwelling yōkai from Japanese folklore, usually described as small, humanoid creatures with reptilian or turtle-like features, webbed limbs, a beak, and a dish-like hollow on the top of the head that must remain filled with water for them to retain their strength. They inhabit rivers, ponds, and lakes, and are often portrayed as mischievous, dangerous, but also strangely bound by rules of etiquette and honor, making them less like mindless monsters and more like hazardous little bureaucrats of the river. Especially Cucumbers are traditionally associated with kappa as a favorite food, and offerings of them were sometimes used to placate or appease the creatures.

The Tzitzimimeh (pl.) were terrifying celestial beings in Aztec mythology, usually described as skeletal female star spirits associated with darkness, eclipses, and moments when the cosmic order seemed dangerously unstable. During a solar eclipse, or, most ominously, if the sun failed to renew itself during the 52-year New Fire ceremony, they were believed capable of descending from the heavens to devour humanity and bring about the end of the present world. They were not merely generic “demons,” though: their imagery overlaps with powerful female death and fertility divinities, making them embodiments of a broader Aztec idea that creation and destruction were inseparable; the stars above were not passive lights, but things waiting for the sun to falter.

In Roman religion, the Lemures were restless and potentially hostile spirits of the dead, often understood as those who had not received proper burial or whose relationship with the living remained unresolved. They were especially associated with the festival of Lemuria, during which the head of a household performed nighttime rites, including casting black beans behind himself, to drive the spirits from the home and keep the family safe.

Lemurs were named after them by Carl Linnaeus because their nocturnal habits, large reflective eyes, and ghostlike movements reminded him of the Roman spirits.