Revenant (fiction)

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For other meanings, see Revenant.

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In fantasy fiction, the term revenant usually means a sentient creature whose desire to complete a goal (usually to avenge its death) allows it to return from the grave as a creature vaguely resembling an intelligent zombie. Another possibility is that a powerful wizard returns a dead hero from the past to make him go on a quest that no living human would dare to undertake. Such a revenant may be just as intelligent as it was in life but its will is usually bound by the wizard who summons and controls it.

In Peter Straub's Ghost Story the female ghost is a revenant and declared so by the protagonist. The revenant manifests itself throughout time and space at will and as different personalities to fulfill its mission of vengeance. In Ghost Story the revenant manifests as Angie Maul, a young girl, Anna Mostyn an attractive young lady to wreak havoc on the nephew of one of the original victims, Ann-Veronica Moore who attacks the original victims and in life was known as Eva Galli.

In Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, revenants are animalistic vampires who were violently killed by a group of vampires (rather than being turned in the traditional 3-day period).

Revenants exist primarily in role-playing games and horror fiction.

In the online game Ultima Online, the revenant is a creature that can be summoned by a necromancer character to attack a specified target. It is also a creature that spawns occasionally in the dungeon Khaldun.

In some earlier versions of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, the revenant is a powerful undead creature strongly resembling a zombie, a far less powerful undead creature at first glance. Notably, more recent versions of the game have adapted the revenant to reflect the aforementioned role of one who returns from the grave to fulfill a set task.

The dictionary definition of revenant, from Merriam-Webster's Internet site (m-w.com) is "one that returns after death or a long absence", hence the long association of the term with the undead in fantasy and horror fiction. The way the word is most often used there is the implication that the person who has returned has done so to take revenge of some kind.


A Revenant can also be an alien, Or an alien ghost as referred by in Twilight Valentines album Don't Call Me Valentine.

[edit] Examples

  • In Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire Louis and Claudia come across several zombie-like vampiric creatures known as Revenants
  • In Debra Doyle and James Macdonald's book The Long Hunt (part of the Mageworlds series), an astral creature called an ekkannikh crosses into the material universe to wreak revenge upon those responsible for the demise of its original personality. The ekkannikh is referred to several times as a "revenant."
  • While officially stated to be a wraith, the Mortal Kombat character Scorpion, a ninja who returns from the grave to avenge his murder, is arguably a revenant.
  • Nathan Grantham, a character in the movie Creepshow, who returns on the seventh anniversary of his murder to exact revenge.
  • In RuneScape, the Wilderness is haunted by revenants of creatures slain in the God Wars.
  • In Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star, by Brandon Mull