baleful

adj

1. Portending evil; ominous.

   “The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.”

   “According to them all sorcerers, necromancers and evil-doers were born under the baleful influence of the seventh calendic sign[.]”

   “[…] he went off alone with his family, and, watched by the day's red baleful eye, pumped the pump-car homeward, […]”

   “I learned the speech of birds; now every tree Screams out to me a baleful prophecy.”

   “Few people cast a more baleful shadow over postwar Britain than Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, who has died aged 74”

2. (obsolete)Miserable, wretched, distressed, suffering.

   “Thou balefull Messenger, out of my sight:”

   “round he throws his baleful eyes, that witnessed huge affliction and dismay […]”

3. (obsolete)Deadly, mortal.

   “With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers, / The earth that's Natures mother, is her Tombe,”

   “If some were akin to the Formori of the baleful fogs in Irish mythic history and the Mallt-y-nos, those she-demons of marshy lands immortalised by the Welsh bards, creatures huge and uncouth "with grey and glaring eyes," there were others who exceeded in beauty anything human.”