Lemur

In Roman mythology, "lemures" were evil spirits of the dead. Three days a year, the pagans would exorcise those spirits from their houses in a ritual they called Lemuria. In the 18th century, as Linnaeus was cataloging animal species, he gave a certain primate from Madagascar the name "lemur" because, like the malevolent spirits of lore, lemurs are nocturnal and have specter-like faces.