Spectre (His Dark Materials)
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A Spectre is a fictional being invented by the fantasy fiction author Philip Pullman for his trilogy, His Dark Materials. They appear in the second and third volumes, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.
These beings are invisible to pre-adolescents, and cannot harm them. To adults, they appear as slight shimmerings in the air, and move with malevolence. If they catch an adult, they eat the adult's soul out, leaving the person as a lifeless zombie. When travelling, all human groups have to by law contain a man and woman on horseback to flee and look after the young. Spectres did not have the ability to fly, so air travel over Cittàgazze was the only safe means possible for an adult to cross the city. Toward the end of The Subtle Knife, Mrs. Coulter teaches the Spectres how to fly, or rather makes them forget that they are earthbound. John Parry also does this in his attack on the church forces.
Spectres cannot be killed by humans (or any physical entities at all), but are warded off by The Subtle Knife. As such, Cittàgazze, a city infested with them, is bereft of all adults. It has been speculated that spectres, or similar creatures, may exist in our universe, but those who sense them are viewed as being mentally ill - the character Will wonders if this might affect his mother (this is unlikely as Cittàgazze seems to operate in the same way as our world but every adult can see them there). Angels have some means of neutralizing Spectres and ghosts may be able to combat them. Humans whose dæmons have been removed from them via intercision can pass them without being attacked. Mrs Coulter tells some Spectres that following her command would give them greater prey and was thus able to control them. John Parry was able to use his skills as a shaman to control one and send it onto a church zeppelin to attack the pilot and cause the zeppelin to crash.
Spectres are created from the use of the Subtle Knife, a knife that can cut a window into another parallel universe. Whenever it does this, a gap is left that opens into the void between worlds, and a Spectre escapes from this void.
The largest example of such a happening was during the end of Northern Lights, when Lord Asriel cuts between worlds by harnessing the energy given off when separating Roger from his dæmon. This created a fog storm over Cittàgazze, and produced the bulk of the Spectres in the city.
