Sorry if this is not the right post to ask, but I though maybe some of you are more familiar with european traditions, legends and folklore.

So I watched "Don't be afraid of the dark" in this film the "tooth fairies" are represented as small dark, antropormophic beings, greyish, a little bit like rats, that prey on children to kidnap them and eat their teeth and bones. These beigns are also afraid of bright lights.

I have seen similar representations of tooth fairies on two other films, one is Hellboy, and the last one is "Darkness falls".

A little bit of research on my part took me to Faerie folklore and the believe that these being can be good, evil or indifferent towards humans.

But I have not find any fairy that could be considerate origin of this tooth fairy, so I would like to ask if you might know what could be the original inspiration of this.