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Nothing is definite, nothing precise. Evil is a free-floating force and can inhabit the most commonplace objects. Fear of the dark is essentially unspecific; like darkness itself, it is formless, engulfing, full of menace, full of death. The rest is child's play: naming the demons (Satan, Beelzebub, Hecate, Lucifer) and filling in the details (fangs, claws, bats' wings, goats' horns, toad's skin, dragon's tail) are ways of sanitising the nameless dread, of containing the uncontainable. In horror movies, no matter how brilliant the special effects, the moment where the monster is finally revealed is invariably a disappointment. The creature from the black lagoon or the morgue or the pit or outer space is always easier to live with, however dangerously, than the nebulous shapes created by the imagination running free. Once you can put a face on evil, it becomes, as Hannah Arendt said, banal.
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A. Alvarez (Night: An Exploration of Night Life, Night Language, Sleep and Dreams)