Meaning of "revenant" in the English dictionary

A revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word "revenant" is derived from the Latin word, reveniens, "returning". Vivid stories of revenants arose in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. Though later legend and folklore depicts revenants as returning for a specific purpose, in most Medieval accounts they return to harass their surviving families and neighbours. Revenants share a number of characteristics with folkloric vampires. Many stories were documented by English historians in the Middle Ages. William of Newburgh wrote in the 1190s, "It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony". Stories of revenants were very personal, always about a specific individual who had recently died, and had a number of common features.