brown jenkin

"the small, furry, sharp-toothed thing which haunted the mouldering structure and the town and nuzzled people curiously in the black hours before dawn...descriptions of the darting little furry object which served as the familiar were so painfully realistic despite their incredible details...that object-no larger than a good sized rat and quaintley called by the towns people "brown jenkin"--seemed to have been the fruit of a remarkable case of sympathetic herd delusion, for in 1692 no less than eleven persons had testified to glimpsing it...(that was in 1692--the gaoler had gone mad and babbled of a small white fanged furry thing)...there were recent rumors too,...witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands." h.p.lovecraft, the dreams in the witch house.