Lemures

The lemures /ˈlɛmjəriːz/ were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman religion, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae /ˈlɑːrviː/ (from Latin larva, 'mask') as disturbing or frightening. Lemures is the more common literary term but even this is rare: it is used by the Augustan poets Horace and Ovid, the latter in his Fasti, the six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays and religious customs.

The word lemures can be traced to the PIE stem *lem-, which also appears in the name of the Greek monster Lamia.