Weirdly uncanny, eerie in a way that feels old, inhuman, and slightly wrong. Familiar shapes become suspect when an alien undertone enters them. Something older than fear, and less interested in us.

From Scots eldritch “strange, eerie,” probably related to an older sense of “other” or “foreign.” The word carries the atmosphere of borderlands—places where the known world thins and the “elsewhere” presses close.