Larvae (or Lemures) were feared as vengeful ghosts haunting the living. In poetry, they appear in gothic or elegiac scenes to evoke guilt, unresolved trauma, or the consequences of impiety—often during nocturnal festivals like the Lemuria meant to appease them.

Larvae (or Lemures) were malevolent, restless dead—unlike the benevolent Manes; they were exorcised during the Lemuria festival (May 9, 11, 13) with midnight rites involving black beans and spitting; Ovid describes the paterfamilias performing these rites barefoot; they represent improper burial, untimely death, or ancestral wrath; poets use them in ghost stories, moral warnings, or psychological verse; they contrast sharply with the Lares, showing the Roman duality of ancestral spirits—protective or punitive based on ritual care.