night-stalker

English

Noun

night-stalker (plural night-stalkers)

  1. A person who is habitually abroad at night, especially in order to conduct illegal business.
    • 1829, [Horace Smith], The New Forest: A Novel, volume I, New York: The Macmillan Company, page 269:
      [S]he accordingly proceeded with unrelaxed rapidity, startling the deer who came out into the open plots to browze, or scaring their lurking enemy the night-stalker, who, with his toils and engines, concealed himself in the adjoining bushes, that he might ensnare and carry off the fattest of the herd.
    • 1899, William Gilmore Simms, Confession; Or, The Blind Heart: A Domestic Story, Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry and Co., page 263:
      “You can't conceive what he fancies. It seems, according to his account, that you are a night-stalker.”
  2. A monster or other malevolent figure that moves about at night; a shadow-stalker.
    • 1880, The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, volume XXX, London: Walter Smith, page 602:
      “Thou wilt have no need to bury me, for if I get my death he will have eaten me all dashed with blood, he will bear away my gory corpse, he will taste me; the night-stalker will devour me without mercy.”
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