For medieval Christians, monsters, demons, and all manner of fantastic creatures occupied the same world as humans. Typically, there was no separation of the human community and the world of the fantastic and the horrible, and this resulted in a constant and intense anxiety about Satan and other creatures, who could attack at any moment. Medieval Christians believed that “demons were everywhere ready to attack the souls and bodies of the unwary,” a fear that contributed to a “terror of all mental conceptions.” This thinking created a world that was much like the modern horror film—terror was around every corner, in every glen, living in the forest, the cave, and the lake. Even the local church was not safe, as demons were observed to walk through the halls of sanctified spaces, often in the guise of a dark-skinned foreigner.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 91