Today's monster is actually another that appears in the Nightmare of Mensis, and another of my favorites. The Winter Lantern is a humanoid being whose massive, eyeball-covered head actually looks quite a bit like the Brain of Mensis, complete with the many Messenger bodies forming its outer tissues! Similar large, glazed yellow, glowing eyeballs dot its surface and a few tentacle-like appendages dangle down from it.

You know you're near a Lantern when you hear its haunting singing, interestingly enough a similar tune to the music box that calmed one of the beast bosses. Once she detects you, a lantern's eyes will light up bright as she searches for you, and of course causes madness just like the Big Brain.

A great thing about this design is that the underside of the brain is concave, like the inside of a mushroom cap, and that space is packed full of little mouths! They're vicious little round nodules with long, thin fangs, like there's a whole pack of flesh-eating eels under her rim. Right under her hood! You get a new Winter Lantern you better remember to check under the hood! The livelier the eel mouths the higher quality the manufacture! CHECK UNDER THAT HOOD!!! CHECK THE EEL MOUTHS!

You know what's WEIRD though?! Crazy weird!

This was noticed early on in Bloodborne's release, but you can see some close-up comparisons by here. The humanoid bodies of the Lanterns are dolls! Yeah, just like your creepy little girlfriend or whatever that's about! What the hell does THAT mean?! SPOILER: NOBODY KNOWS. All we know about The Doll is she was made by Gherman, right? But also that Hunters and Messengers are both familiar with her. What's going on if these monsters have doll bodies and messenger-crusted brain heads? We also know Mensis was created by the goofball scholars who all turned into bugs. Or something. OR SOMETHING. That may as well be this game's tagline.

There are countless possible meanings to the Lanterns, including but not limited to:

A) they are Gherman's failed prototypes of the doll, discarded into the Nightmare where they continued to corrupt and evolve.

B) the doll we know is only the latest, and will eventually "age" into a monstrosity like these predecessors.

C) Gherman's doll is not a unique new invention, but based on an existing craft that isn't usually so human.

D) the Lanterns are born from the minds of Hunters in the Nightmare, corrupt manifestations of their memories.

E) they're born from the Brain of Mensis as it attempts to communicate with and understand the Hunters.

F) they're an independent "offspring" of the Brain, which took this form to prey on intruders or simply found discarded dolls to be the most convenient vehicle.

G) they are born from the memories of the tormented Messengers fused into the Brain of Mensis, if that's indeed what they are, perverting the relationship between the Messengers, the Doll and the Hunter, lashing out in a confused desperation.

H) they're your wife and you're married and looks like you're having hunter for dinner because SOMEONE around here has to put food on the table

There are plenty more theories we could concoct, some even more of a stretch than others, but what matters is that your wife is one of the single coolest, strangest and scariest beings in Bloodborne. She was actually one of the first things I ever saw from this game, and still possibly the first image my mind even conjures when I hear the word "Bloodborne" at this point. Every time I remember this game, every few minutes when I read an article about the various diseases spread by ticks, there she is, just popping into my head and looking around the place and gnashing her little eel mouths before fading out again. The fact that she combines so many memorable symbols of the setting into one enemy and the very fact that she has so little explanation make her pretty much the very avatar of what Bloodborne is all about.