Fantasy creatures

root taxon in the Harry Potter universe

character from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

thumb|A late-16th-century English illustration of a witch feeding her familiars In European folklore of the medieval and early modern periods, familiars (strictly familiar spirits, as "familiar" also meant just "close friend" or companion, and may be seen in the scientific name for dog, Canis familiaris) were believed to be supernatural entities, interdimensional beings, or spiritual guardians that would protect or assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic, divination, and spiritual insight. According to records of the time, those alleging to have had contact with familiar spi

thumb|11. Air-people, wind-men, sylphs A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced

thumb|upright|A World War II gremlin-themed industrial safety poster A gremlin is a mischievous fictional creature invented at the beginning of the 20th century originally to explain malfunctions in aircraft, and later in other machinery, processes and their operators. Depictions of these creatures vary widely. Stories about them and references to them as the causes of especially inexplicable technical and mental problems of pilots were especially popular during and after World War II.

mythological humanoids with a single, large foot on a central leg

The peryton is a fictional hybrid animal combining the physical features of a stag and a bird. The peryton was invented by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings, using the fictional device of a supposedly long-lost medieval manuscript.

fictional character from Alice in Wonderland

slimy or ooze-like organisms in fiction

In European mythology and literature, a cambion () is the child produced from a human–demon sexual union, typically involving an incubus or a succubus. In the word's earliest known uses, it was interchangeable with changeling.

somewhat analogous with "humanoid species" in fantasy and science fiction; e.g. elves and dwarves

fictional universe

theme in mythology and folk tales

fictional character from Alice in Wonderland

fictional species

A bandersnatch is a fictional creature in Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass and his 1874 poem The Hunting of the Snark. Although neither work describes the appearance of a bandersnatch in great detail, in The Hunting of the Snark, it has a long neck and snapping jaws, and both works describe it as ferocious and extraordinarily fast. Through the Looking-Glass implies that bandersnatches may be found in the world behind the looking-glass, and in The Hunting of the Snark, a bandersnatch is found by a party of adventurers after crossing an ocean. Bandersnatches have appeared in

entity that incorporates elements from both humans and non-human animals

beings in mythology, folklore and fiction