Jinn
For thousands of years, they’ve been around…
By some accounts, they were around 2000 years before man was created.
Yet when Westerners think of them, they usually imagine a form consisting of a blue mist -- usually coming out of a bottle or an ornate oil lamp -- that forms into a friendly human-like creature that is eager to offers you -- three wishes.
These are the Jinn, unseen beings from another dimension.  
In fact, Jinn in Arabic means, “hidden”, to indicate their usual state of being, hidden from the human world.
The lore surrounding the Jinn is mostly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  Although the Middle Easterners and Asians think that what a Westerner refers to as a “ghost” is nothing more than a Jinn.
Ibn Taymiyyah, an Islamic scholar, believed the jinn were generally untrustworthy, and account for a great deal of the so-called "magic" perceived by humans, cooperating with magicians to lift items in the air while remaining invisible, delivering distorted truths to fortune tellers, and imitating the voices of deceased humans during séances.
In fact, Jinn are believed to be the explanation for a great deal of paranormal activity, particularly that of Ghosts, Black Dogs, Orbs, Ectoplasms, and Fairy sightings. The Jinn are skilled shapeshifters and can take on the form of beautiful seductresses, demons, horned creatures, and many types of animals.  Their favorite animal forms are snakes and black dogs.
The Jinn were popularized internationally after the English translations of the One Thousand and One Nights began to be published as early as 1706. This title is more popularly known as The Arabian Nights. This work is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.  
Jinn are creatures of folktales, with a diverse range from Middle Eastern, Jewish, African, and Egyptian lore.  The jinn are believed to be very real by millions of believing Muslims across the world, but unlike humans, who are made of Earth, the Jinn are made from smokeless fire and have supernatural abilities.
Find out more about Dedra Stevenson's book series The Hakima's Tale and read the first book of the Trilogy - The Revenge of the Blue Jinni