Lurid (adjective).- Lurid (LOOR-id) means shocking, causing horror or revulsion; glaringly vivid or sensational. As used by Edgar Allan Poe in The Pit and the Pendulum: “Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.”