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"Your majesty knows that the goules of both sexes are wandering demons, which generally infest old buildings; from whence they rush out, by surprise, on people that pass by, kill them, and eat their flesh; and for want of such prey, will sometimes go in the night into burying-grounds, and feed upon dead bodies, which they dig up."
"The Story of Sidi Nouman" in the Grub Street edition of Arabian Nights

Ghouls are pre-Islamic Middle Eastern monsters that have culturally persisted to present times and won a solid spot in Western fiction to boot. Their defining trait is that they eat humans, whom they may catch by violence or trickery. Alternatively, they may hit up the cemeteries and dig around for their meal. Sometimes ghouls look like humans, other times they don't but they can shapeshift into whatever form gets them results, and again other times they are beast-like, corpse-like, or a combination of both. Depending on the type of ghoul, they may have various supernatural skills, or they exist by means of possession, or they're great diggers. If a ghoul's religion comes up, odds are they're either Muslim or they worship an old god.

Ghouls may have their origin in the Bronze Age gallus, demons that dragged people off to the underworld but didn't eat them or anything at all, for that matter. If true, association with the "g'l" sound present in several languages — among which Persian, (Byzantian) Greek, Latin, and Urdu — used to indicate "throat" or "gullet" may be what morphed the ancient gallu (غالو) in the later ghoul. Linguistically, "ghoul" (غول) refers to the male and "ghoulah" or "ghouleh" (غولة) to the female. However, there are folkloric conventions that hold that one or the other doesn't exist and ghouls are a One-Gender Race, usually in favor of the female variety.

Traditionally, ghouls are the MENA counterpart to European ogres. While still true on a folkloric level, literary diversification began when Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights. In the pre-1700s editions of the Arabian Nights, there is only one story about a ghoul, "The King's Son and the She-Ghoul". Galland transposed its "ghouleh" as "ogresse" in 1704. Hanna Diyab, a Syrian storyteller, provided Galland with another story about a ghoul, "The Story of Sidi Nouman". When Galland published it in 1712, he kept "ghoul(eh)" as "goule" and added an explanation what ghouls are. It was this second story, which introduced corpse-eating, that got Europe interested in the ghoul as something other than an ogre by another name.

In 1786, Vathek was the first Western work to incorporate ghouls as more than a reference and concurrently was the first work to place their habitat underground, although this wouldn't become a common trait until the 1920s. In France, following the publication of The Vampyre, the female "la goule" became the counterpart to the male "le vampire" as early as 1825's Gemmalie. Ghouls in this tradition vary in how much they lean to either the ghoul or the vampire.

Ghouls can come in a plethora of types and subtypes. Some of the more common varieties include;

  • Undead ghouls – Flesh-eating undead, either your standard-variety zombie by another name, or a specific zombie derivative. When the two coexist, the ghouls will generally be the more bestial and savage of the two, and more willing to eat rotten flesh. Or sometimes the zombie will be subject to magical control, like the old Voodoo zombies. Garden-variety re-animated corpses may count as these.
  • Lovecraftian ghouls – Ghouls as a living and non-human species, often with distinctive canine muzzle and ears, and with a pale or greenish cast. Other types of ghouls as their own living race do occasionally appear in other media.
  • Demonic ghouls – The original ghul of Arabic lore was a demonic child-eating shape-shifting jinn that inhabited graveyards. Only rarely, however, do ghouls get such a degree of supernatural power in modern fiction.

As early as the 1800s, the concept of ghouls showed itself fertile to metaphorical usages that sometimes make it difficult to determine if a story features the actual creature or a nasty human. The big one is the usage of "ghoul" for corpse-snatchers, a profitable "job" once upon a time. The Igor is a ghoul in this sense, not in the creature sense. The association of ghouls with feverish digging also lent itself well to such concepts as a "literary ghoul" or a "scientific ghoul" for devoted readers, scholars, and scientists. And then there's "ghoul" as an insult, which in France in particular was in use for women the way one could also use "witch".

See also: Our Zombies Are Different, Our Vampires Are Different, The Morlocks, Gorgon, Wendigo, Wolf Man.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Blue Exorcist: Ghouls are lesser demons that are similar to but not as strong as zombies. The key difference is that ghouls possess corpses and zombies possess necrotic living bodies. Unlike some zombies, ghouls never possess speech and they don't eat humans either, but their touch can cause a healthy body to start rotting. Both creatures are noted to be slow and dispatchable by a weapon made from holy silver or a powerful firearm, but ghouls are also sensitive to a fatal verse from the Gospel of John.
  • The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time: Ghouls are living creatures of which the males are huge, muscular and have lion heads, while the females are small and very human-like except for their grayish-brown skin tone and golden eyes. They eat humans on occasion, but they can eat other types of meat as well.
  • Hellsing: Ghouls are shambling corpses that are created when either a natural vampire drains the blood of a non-virgin or an artificial vampire from Millennium drains anyone. If fatally wounded, they instantly crumble to dust. They are under the control of the vampire who turned them, eat human flesh, and retain enough intelligence to use tools.
  • Kemono Jihen: Kabane, the protagonist, is a half-ghoul hybrid. While he would normally have an insatiable desire to feed on the flesh of humans, it has been kept in check since his infancy by a special trinket left for him by his parents called a Life Calculus. His lineage grants him superhuman strength and renders him incapable of feeling physical pain. He also completely lacks blood, instead having a sticky white substance in place of it, and can constantly regenerate no matter how many times he's cut apart, being able to regrow his entire body from the neck down after his head was removed. The only thing that has managed to truly slow him down was a bullet through the brain, but he's completely fine after a single night. As a kemono, he also gives off a peculiar, foul-smelling odor that he covers up with a special cologne provided by his caretaker, Kohachi Inugami, a bake-danuki and a kemono himself. It's later revealed that ghouls don't procreate directly, instead creating more of their kind by sharing the fire that gives them their life energy and regeneration abilities. It would be more accurate to call Kabane a human with a ghouls' flame. Even more unusually, his regeneration is as powerful as a full-blooded ghoul.
  • Overlord (2012): Ghouls are a low-ranking type of undead that look like hairless and nearly naked humans with sharp teeth and yellowed claws. The claws are venomous and cause paralysis, which is the one thing that makes them dangerous. Ghasts exist too and are one of strongest kinds of undead.
  • Rosario + Vampire: Shinso vampires can inject humans with their blood to temporarily transform them into a vampire. A single human who receives multiple injections will eventually either die or transform into a ghoul. Ghouls resemble shinso vampires, having silver hair and red eyes, but the bite mark from their injection spreads like a tattoo across their body. They are potentially the most dangerous type of monster as they are almost as powerful as vampires while lacking vampiric weaknesses, but they are also violently insane. Tsukune is transformed into a ghoul, but the Headmaster is able to suppress the ghoul, allowing Tsukune to retain his sanity.
  • Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles: Ghouls are formed when a human ingests a certain kind of magic stone, turning them into winged monstrosities who are both physically strong and difficult to kill due to their Healing Factor.
  • Tokyo Ghoul: Ghouls look exactly like normal humans, but possess heightened senses, superior physical abilities, a Healing Factor, a retractable predatory limb that often resembles tentacles or energy wings, and a Game Face with black sclera and red pupils. Just like humans, they range from monstrous psychopaths to gentle pacifists and everything in between. But since the only thing they can eat is the flesh of humans and other ghouls, they are hunted by humans and live in fear of being discovered. The series focuses on an ordinary human transformed into a Half-Human Hybrid as a result of an organ transplant, something once thought impossible. It turns it was never impossible, and it's even standard procedure for a particular organisation to produce natural Half Human Hybrids through forced impregnation. One major character turns out to be a perfect hybrid because her human mother consumed human flesh during the (consensual) pregnancy, and another is successfully carried to term when her ghoul mother consumes human food.

    Card Games 
  • Magic: The Gathering: Ghouls were originally a separate creature type, but since the only ghouls for the longest time were the Scavenging Ghoul, which can regenerate damage by symbolically "eating" creatures sent to the graveyard, and Ashen Ghoul, which can return to play from the graveyard after three or more creatures have been placed there as well. Wizards of the Coast eventually decided to go the Zombie Derivative path and lump them under the zombie family — all ghouls after those two had been printed as zombies. Given that the zombie creature type covers everything from mindless dead to liches, it isn't that much of a stretch. However, numerous zombie cards since have still been named "ghouls".
    • The black-aligned zombies of Innistrad are frequently referred to as ghouls in order to differentiate them from their more Frankensteinoid blue counterparts, which are instead called skaabs, and Innistradi necromancers are typically referred to as "ghoulcallers".
    • Mercadians to poor to afford a proper funeral just have their bodies chucked into a swamp outside the city, referred to as the Ghoul's Larder after the undead that come there to feed on them.
    • It's relatively common for zombies to be called ghouls when they somehow relate to eating the dead or sometimes preying upon the living. Examples include Abattoir Ghoul, which rewards you for killing creatures with it; Barrow Ghoul, which requires you remove creatures from your graveyard to sustain it; Creakwood Ghoul and Gutless Ghoul, which reward you for sacrificing creatures; and Sutured Ghoul, which becomes stronger the more cards you remove from the graveyard.

    Comic Books 
  • American Vampire: Known as "g'ul", they're abominations that eat flesh and bone marrow.
  • Atlas Comics:
    • "Don't Make a Ghoul of Yourself!" (Astonishing #16): A hunchbacked ghoul is caught in the act of corpse-snatching by a vigilante. To save himself from execution, the ghoul offers the man to fulfill a wish, explaining that human corpses give ghouls such power. The man asks to become the richest man in the world, for which the ghoul puts him in the body of a maharaja who is the richest man in the world. Said maharaja is also in the process of expiring and the ghoul, who evidently can teleport, waits patiently until he can claim the corpse.
    • "The Ghoul!" (Adventures into Weird Worlds #10): Bosco Channey is a murderer, by when he makes his way through a cemetery, the police mistake him for a ghoul instead because one's been raiding the cemetery as of late. Confused because ghouls don't exist, Bosco manages to escape his captors. He comes across a lone house where an old man lives and threatens him for a hiding place. The old man lets him in only to kill him easily, because he is the ghoul the police had been looking for.
  • EC Comics:
    • "A Tasty Morsel!" (Haunt of Fear #5): A man dreams that the creepy innkeeper of the lone End of the Road Inn he's staying at is a vampire who drains his victims' blood to drink at his leisure. When he awakens, he finds that his dream was off in that the innkeeper is a ghoul who drains the blood because he can't stand the taste of it. Incidentally, he's deeply insulted about being mistaken for a vampire.
    • "The Strange Couple!" (Vault of Horror #14): The vampire Fedor and the ghoul Hepsibah are happily married and living a little away out in the woods. Whenever humans knock on their door for help, like when they're lost or have car trouble, they put on a little play where they each tell the guest the truth about their spouse and instruct them to barricade their room for the night so as not to become the next victim. This way, the guest has no way out either when the couple later that night enters the room through a secret door.
    • "Two of a Kind!" (Vault of Horror #26): The vampire Willow Dree and the ghoul Bradbury Phillips each pretend to be human and each aim to consume the other, but they both genuinely fall in love. On a ski vacation, they get snowed in by a freak blizzard in a mountain cabin. As they wait for help, they take from their own bodies to nourish themselves rather than kill the other. Rescue arrives too late to save them.
    • "Sweetie-Pie" (Shock Suspenstories #10): At a secluded spot, a ghoul tricks people into car crashes. If the victims aren't dead, they are at least in no position to resist. He takes them home and drains them off their blood, only after which he can taste if they're sweet people or bitter people. He eats the sweet ones and returns the bitter corpses, which for a time makes people think a vampire is on the loose.
    • "Midnight Snack!" (Tales from the Crypt #26): After reading a horror story, a man starts leaping in and out of awareness while his body moves on instinct. First he awakens in the street feeling hungry, but the smell of cooked food makes him nauseous. Next he finds himself at a cemetery with a shovel digging up a fresh grave. He passes out again and comes to near a partially eaten corpse and with a mob coming after him. The nightmare seemingly comes to an end when he wakes up at home, but then he finds the corpse in his refrigerator.
    • "Mournin' Mess" (Tales from the Crypt #38): A philanthropic society called the Grateful Hoboes, Outcasts, and Unwanted Layaway Society opens up a free cemetery for homeless people unable to afford a proper burial. A reporter finds the whole thing fishy and decides to investigate, quickly realizing that the land GHOULS bought isn't large enough to hold all the bodies that have been buried there. He falls victim himself before being able to report his findings.
    • "Food for Thought" (Tales from the Crypt #40): A circus performer reads a newspaper article headlined "Bodies Disinterred at Local Graveyard Torn to Pieces As If Attacked by Wild Beast!" It inspires him to rid himself of his romantic rival by forcing him into the lion cage. By coincidence, he is hit by a heavy pole as the circus prepares to leave and becomes fully paralyzed. Mistaken for dead, he's buried, but has enough oxygen to survive until the ghoul behind the news article digs him up and starts chewing.
    • "Audition" (Haunt of Fear #28): Phil Vitale's all-girl orchestra does consist of only women, but more pertinently it's an all-ghoul orchestra. Vitale himself does not appear to be a ghoul. When the human Ethel Stark threatens suicide if she doesn't get to be in the orchestra, she's allowed to if she is willing to be injected with a zombifying poison. Thinking that the orchestra consists of zombies, Ethel accepts to become one herself. The undead girl promptly gets devoured and in that way gets to be in the orchestra.
    • "Mournin', Ambrose..." (Tales from the Crypt #30): Ambrose Hawley is a ghoul who murders his relatives one by one through suffocation to make it look natural. He has them interred without embalming in the family mausoleum, where he goes to eat. He lets his wife live to keep up appearances, but eventually kills and eats her too. This leads her nephew Andrew to discover Ambrose's scheme and get him arrested.
  • Fables: In Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, Cinderella and Aladdin face off against ghoul henchmen. These ghouls are the ones from the original Arabic myth: huge, superstrong shapeshifters.
  • "The Sewer Keeper" (Get Lost #2): In a parody of "Two of a Kind!" in Vault of Horror #26, a female vampire and male ghoul fall in love, but get stuck in his castle without food, a broken bridge and a phone line that's out of order. While waiting for help, she drains herself dry and he eats himself to the bone.
  • The Goon: While he's never called a ghoul, Buzzard is a "reverse zombie" — an immortal (living) gunslinger that must eat the flesh of the dead — including zombies — to survive. He was created when an evil sorceror unthinkingly cast a zombie-raising spell on a living human rather than a corpse.
  • Horrific: From #8 to #13, the magazine series was hosted by The Teller of Tales, an occultist, and his four companions: Freddie Demon, Garry Ghoul, Victor Vampire, and Walter Werewolf. Garry looks least like a humans as he is about half as tall as the others, bald, squash-faced, pointy-eared, cat-eyed, and fanged.
  • "Long Shall the Undead Wail" (The Hand of Fate #20): Cursed by their murder of King Edward II, Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer are killed and arise as respectively a werewolf and a ghoul. They can only face final damnation if they kill each other, prompting them to agree to avoid each other. After many centuries, however, they are done with immortality and fulfill the curse by tearing each other to shreds.
  • Providence #7: In "VII: The Picture", ghouls are referred to as saprovores. They are hairy, naked, and gaunt creatures ranging in height from human-sized to twice that tall and with a lifespan well over two hundred years. They live in the tunnels below Boston and might be exclusively male because they call themselves "boys" and only mention "brothers". Existing, as they put it, "downstairs from world, upstairs from dream," saprovores only ever come up to fetch human flesh, whether by scavenging or hunting, as well as to to visit Ronald Underwood Pitman, a human friend of theirs that's likely partially ghoul himself. Ronald photographs the ghouls both in his studio and while they're at work and creates paintings based on the photographs. At times, he gets the ghouls flesh himself by poisoning someone with prussic acid. One day, he gets visited by Robert Black, who needs his help, and Eamon O'Brian, a policeman accompanying Robert. Ronald gladly gives the naïve and polite Robert help by means of his connections to the saprovores, but Eamon is too inquisitive about a painting of a crime scene. Ronald poisons him and hands the body to his friends.
  • Le Roi Cyclope: Ghouls are a race of friendly, living creatures who feast on the dead.
  • Scare Tactics (DC Comics) contains the Kinightsbridges; a clan of ghouls dwelling in the Deep South and locked in a centuries long feud with Hank's clan of werewolves. Their exact nature is never established, but they appear to be living dead people: extremely pale skin, clad in funereal dress, and with a general air of decay hovering around them.
  • Skywald Publications:
    • "The Ghoul" (Psycho #15): Ghouls are possibly Arctic creatures who are nearly impossible to kill and who travel the north of the Atlantic Ocean on icebergs they can steer in the needed direction. When the S.S. Captain Cook enters their territory, one scout kills a few people before a group of around six surround the ship with icebergs at night. With the trap thus sprung, the entire group boards the ship leaving no survivors. Incidentally, the ghouls' design is based on that of Lovecraft's drawings for "Pickman's Model".
    • "The House of Demons!" (Psycho #15): Ghouls are said to not be supernatural and merely victims of a disease, but that doesn't add up. While ghoulism is a human disease that eats away at body until nothing is left, a ghoul doesn't only stay functional by eating human flesh, but the diet outright rebuilds their bodies. This makes a ghoul younger, smarter, and stronger at the singular cost that if a mirror is broken when it reflects them, they rot away in an instant. Sinclair De Maine and Christine are both ghouls, but find their latest hunt disturbed by the return of Sinclair's son Steven, who shatters their reflection. Steven is not motivated by anything noble; ghoulism is hereditary and he wants both his father's wealth and no competition.
    • "Ghouls Walk Among Us" (Psycho #15): Three identical-looking ghouls roam the cemetery for food, but if they can catch a living person to dine on, that has their preference. One of them disguises himself by day as the police chief, which guarantees that any attempt to investigate the murders and unearthed graves won't be a success.
  • "Nightmare Merchant" (Strange Fantasy #7): A ghoul runs a blood-delivery service for vampires the way a human delivers milk. The bloodman needs to be compensated with bodies for his own nourishment. To this end, one of the vampire customers, Mr. Black, occasionally sells his house to humans just before payday so that the bloodman can get them. No other preparations are needed, because the bloodman is strong and persistent and can catch the victims himself.
  • Story Comics:
    • From #21 to either #24 or #25 of Mysterious Adventures, Mother Ghoul is the host of Mother Ghoul's Nursery Tale, a section dedicated to twisted version of well-known fairytales. In #25, one Mother Shmoos tells a nursery tale and acts like she's always done so. She may be Mother Ghoul and she may be a different character.
    • "Blood Thirsty" (Mysterious Adventures #21): Karen dreams that her seclusive and rich grandmother she's staying with is a vampire who drains her victims' blood to drink at her leisure. When she awakens, she finds that her dream was off in that her grandmother is a ghoul who drains the blood because she can't stand the taste of it. Incidentally, she's deeply insulted about being mistaken for a vampire.
    • "The Ghoul of Death (Dark Mysteries #1): A ghoul has taken possession of Peter Arrant and makes him commit some of the most horrific crimes the authorities have ever dealt with. Peter is therefore the perfect test subject for an experimental brain operation to remove the ability to hate. However, the procedure forces the ghoul out. It takes possession of a nurse instead and so the vicious assaults continue until the police gun down the nurse, killing both her and the ghoul.
    • "Vampires bite!" (Dark Mysteries #10): Ralph Bowan owns a carnival freak collection consisting of the Tichard Vinutti the vampire, Rachel Harper the ghoul, and Malo Yoro the witch. Though stored in people vats and, as per Ralph's own words, dead, Ralph can bring them to life long enough to perform tricks for him. The ghoul, for instance, can be made to eat a live mouse.
  • Warren Publishing:
    • "Monster Rally!" (Creepy Magazine #4): Doctor Habeas wants to live forever and to do so he collects a menagerie of immortal monsters. His collection consists of a werewolf, a mummy, a witch, a vampire, and while he works on a Frankenstein's monster, his servant Drakow tricks a ghoul fleeing an angry mob into a cage. With all six in his possession, Habeas isolates pure life fluid. However, the townsfolk are on to him and storm the castle. Thinking he can make a getaway by siccing the monsters on the mob, Habeas frees them and is utterly surprised when the six attack him instead. Fire destroys the monsters, but the vial of life fluid Habeas was carrying mixes with the remains of the menagerie and the beams of the full moon to spawn Uncle Creepy.
    • "The Duel of Monsters!" (Creepy Magazine #7): The vampire Vega and the werewolf Ruiz, who operate unaware of each other, are aware there's competition that they can't afford running around in their town. After a series of incidents, they each come to suspect the cemetery watchman Alphonso of being the other monster in town and choose the same night to visit him in his cabin. Both monsters become mortally wounded and its only then that Alphonso shows himself. He reveals that he is a ghoul and that he has now not only removed the competition by tricking them into offing each other but also procured himself a big breakfast.
    • "The Castle on the Moor!" (Creepy Magazine #9): The current lord of Everleigh Castle organizes tours to finance his estate. It's easy money, except for the fact that his son is a werewolf and every full moon needs to be locked away to keep the staff and guests safe. One such tour, the guests stay a little longer and a curious one amongst them frees the creature. The werewolf kills everyone except Miss Creighton and Mr. Wayne, who get to him first. Then Mr. Wayne reveals himself as a ghoul as he attacks Miss Creighton, declaring that all the corpses will make for a grand feast.
    • "Maximum Effort!" (Creepy Magazine #12): The vampire Mr. Drumm and the ghoul Mr. Phyffe have joined forces to set up a memorial society. For low prices, they arrange a fully customized funeral service except that they insist on a closed casket service. In truth, Mr. Drumm drains the blood of the bodies and Mr. Phyffe eats the flesh. The bones they grind up and sell as fertilizer while they save money on the embalming procedure. To ensure a steady supply, every once in a while they strangle someone and make it look like a heart attack.
    • "Image in Wax!" (Creepy Magazine #17): A large group of monsters, among which a ghoul, have arranged for the perfect cover-up. Their leader is a sorceror, whose magic makes all of them stand still at day to pose as exhibits in a wax museum run by a puppeteered skeleton covered in wax to look human. At night, the group is free to work their evil.
    • "Home Is Where" (Creepy Magazine #22): Two burglars try to rob Uncle Creepy's curio shop. Instead, they have to run for their lives from various monsters, among which ghouls.
    • "No Fair" (Creepy Magazine #22): Four young boys, in truth ghouls, suddenly are barred from the local cemetery by the gravekeeper. After some snooping, they discover that he's serving a vampire. The boys kill the both of them to get their playground and food supply back.
    • "Surprise Package" (Creepy Magazine #27): Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie lead a spaceship to the colony on the planet Novella with a whole slew of monsters on board, such as the ghoul Dr. Flavious. Keeping them from going insane is quite a task, but the whole crew arrives safely.
    • "A Wooden Stake for the Heart!" (Creepy Magazine #31): Baron Rogo protects the village by hunting and locking up monsters. However, the village believes him to be a vukodlak and stake him. Thinking they're freeing victims of his, they unleash his imprisoned monsters, among which at least two ghouls.
    • "Movie Dissector!" (Creepy Magazine #32): Two boys hold a contest who can produce a better monster movie. One of them puts in a good effort, while the other creates an unimaginative film about a ghoul and his gorilla fighting Frankenstein's monster. The boys show their films to a random audience which ends up consisting of all kinds of monsters, including a ghoul. They like the first film, but kill the second film's producer for his disrespect.
    • "Tough Customers!" (Creepy Magazine #35): Some mobsters drain protection money from every store in their turf, but find themselves facing a hardhead when Sam's Butcher Shop opens up. Sam is a ghoul and so are his special customers. As a ghoul, he's stronger than the average human and not bothered by getting shot a few times. Generously, he only kills and sells those mobsters that figure out that he's not human; the others he politely but firmly removes from his shop.
    • "Sleepwalker!" (Creepy Magazine #38): Diane believes herself to be a disturbed human with vampiric habits. Her husband Charles and his friends help her hide the body of a victim she wakes up next to and arrange treatment. Diane, however, keeps having a particular dream and one day follows the dream to its end, waking up as she opens the door on Charles and his friends consuming a corpse. She was never a vampire. They were ghouls and tried to throw her off their trail, but they can't let her off this time.
    • "The Ghouls!" (Creepy Magazine #61): Two graverobbers in Hungary are close friends but incompatible coworkers. One point of conflict between them is that the domineering Yanus wants to work all night while the timid Gabi wants to go home at 11:30 for fear of vampires. Or so he tells Yanus. In truth, he is a ghoul who has a deal with the vampires that he'll deliver them a victim around midnight, so he wants Yanus out of the cemetery by then. One night, Yanus refuses to listen and Gabi has no choice but to hand him over to his vampire pals. As per usual, he gets the flesh.
    • "The Bite" (Creepy Magazine #72): Anita Perkiel is aristocratic and wealthy ghoul from Europe. Because ghouls need to feed on fresh human flesh, Anita travels a lot so she can make victims without rousing suspicion. Her wealth furthermore enables her to always find some scumbags willing to help frame another for her murders.
    • "Vampire Slayer!" (Eerie #5): Corinne the vampire and Colette the ghoul are twin sisters. The former works her charms on a notorious vampire hunter, Baron Alexi, for a chance to end him. Alexi suspects as much and prepares to stake Corinne, but instead faces Colette, whose existence he does not know of. Noticing that she casts a reflection, Alexi believes he almost killed an innocent human and neglects to arm himself when next he meets with Corinne.
    • "House of Fiends!" (Eerie #10): Living with Hugo Lupus inside his mansion are his wife Camilla, their servant Gromley, and Camilla's niece Rachel. The household asks Dr. Prentice over to declare Rachel insane so they can remove her. However, Rachel, in truth a cunning witch, convinces the doctor that the others respectively are a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghoul. The doctor believes Rachel and murders the three before freeing her. She thanks him by destroying him.
    • "The Monster from One Billion B.C." (Eerie #11): A ghoul is among the many monsters Harold Fenster digs up and brings to life to star in monster movies.
    • "Checkmate" (Eerie #24): The Devil's Chessmen is a chess set in which monsters are the pawns. Present are Voodoo zombies, ghouls, werewolves, vampires, the she-cat as queen and Satan as king. Ghouls take the role of rooks, for they too wait silently in the corners for their chance to strike. This isn't just symbolically: anyone who plays using the Devil's Chessmen and loses becomes trapped in the reality of the game.
    • "Scavenger Hunt" (Eerie #24): Borgo is a weird little horror enthusiast who isn't very popular among humans but has some monster friends. During one human party, the attendees try to get rid of Borgo by sending him out on a scavenger hunt for monster parts, such as a ghoul's fingernail. Undaunted, he fetches all of his monster friends and leads them back to the party.
    • "The Ones Who Stole it From You" (Eerie #37): Charlie Shores is the only survivor of his army unit following an air raid during World War II. With no means to leave and no supplies, he's forced to eat his comrades' flesh to survive, which nearly breaks his mind. He is retrieved, however, and builds up a romance with his therapist. Only, he's also built up a compulsion to eat human flesh and when the woman discovers his cemetery activities, he kills both her and what little connection to humanity he had left. Twenty years later, the now-ghoul digs up a corpse that seems to have died from a gunshot wound but actually was poisoned. The poison slowly destroys him, but in his final moments he gets to kill the poisoner.
    • "Ghoulish Encounter" of The Mummy Walks series (Eerie #52): Some time ago, a woman and her husband got locked up together and the man fell to his death trying to climb his way out. As the days passed, the woman's hunger grew until she snapped and started eating from her husband's corpse. She was saved days later, but had lost her humanity by then. Nowadays, she wanders around cemeteries as a ghoul looking for her next meal and this is when she spots Jerome Curry as a mummy carrying his original body to a crypt for safekeeping. Though, all she sees is the dead body and when the mummy leaves, she enters the crypt to feast. Fortunately for Jerome, the ghoul is still eating from an older body by the time he returns. He kills her to keep his own body safe.
    • "Ghoul Girl" (Vampirella #5): Four men catch a woman in the act of opening a grave and accuse her of being a ghoul. She isn't; she was only making sure her recently deceased brother hadn't been eaten yet because the area does have a ghoul problem. A man living nearby tries to help her, but he becomes a target of the mob too. The two get locked in and burned to death, after which the four men, who in fact are territorial ghouls, share a warm meal.
    • "Fiends in the Night!" (Vampirella #10): Thief and murderer Anton Delaudier hides out in the cemetery with his ill-gotten loot, which turns out to be magic book. Delaudier doesn't believe in magic and casts it aside just as he did his victim's dying curse. His convictions change when in order he gets attacked by ghouls, a werewolf, a vampire, and the living dead. The ghouls and the living dead are both encountered in the cemetery, but the ghouls may have been on Delaudier's trail ever since he left his victim's workshop while the living dead specifically rise from their graves to deal with Delaudier. There is no difference in appearance between ghouls and the living dead, though the latter can talk while this doesn't seem to be the case for the living dead.
    • "The Woodlik Inheritance!" (Vampirella #31): Siblings, possibly twins, Sately and Karna Woodlik are at minimum half-ghouls. Their father is a ghoul and their mother ostensibly human, yet it's implied that theirs is not the first ghoul-human relation to occur in the Woodlik Family. The siblings don't know about their heritage because their mother always told them that their father died before their birth. However, around the time of their mother's death, Sately pieces the truth together when he finds his appetite shifting towards raw flesh even if it's been rotting for a week. The siblings enter the caverns underneath their ancestral home in Maine and meet their father, who looks like a humanoid alligator-ape hybrid, just as he's bringing in their dead mom for dinner. The ghoul and Sately kill each other and Karna, the sole survivor, burns down Woodlike House as she promised her brother to do. Then she eats a piece of his arm she salvaged.

    Fan Works 
  • The Butcher Bird: Ghouls are primarily based off Tokyo Ghoul, but organize themselves into complex hierarchies based off individual strength and have varying degrees of interaction with humans - some ghoul tribes are completely isolated beyond attacking humans, while others act as infiltrators. Unlike in Tokyo Ghoul, half-breed ghouls are fairly commonplace, inheriting weaker powers in exchange for being able to eat normal food. Their society also utilizes Names that can convey the essential knowledge of a given ghoul in a single Red Baron-esque title. They're also the result of a failed Super-Soldier project.
  • Fallout: Equestria: Just like the Fallout version, some are mindless and feral while some are intelligent and a couple are allies to the main characters. In this case, they might actually be undead due to the possibility of necromantic magic in the Balefire bombs. There is no doubt about the Canterlot ghouls: save beheading, they always come back after being "killed".
  • The King Nobody Wanted: Glarus tells Drogo that the Red Waste is home to a species of ghoul-like creatures called the Ifrit. They're thin, no heavier than a child, yet they're cunning, capable of speech, and always trying to lure travelers away from the safe paths in order to kill and eat them. According to Glarus, there are no more than a few thousand left.
  • The Loud Sim Date: Ghouls are created using a serum, and seem to be based on Tokyo Ghoul. They can get stronger through Monstrous Cannibalism, as when Cristina cannibalizes Leni, she gains her powers.
    • Leni, the first ghoul, can morph her arms into weapons or defensive equipment. She also feels no pain, though it's implied Cristina did that.
    • Lori, the second ghoul, has wings and can shoot sharp feathers. Which explode.
    • Cristina, the third ghoul, has four tentacles coming from her back that can let her shoot electricity, morph into things to protect her, and be remade from scratch should they be destroyed. This isn't including the ensuing Healing Factor she gets which can be nullified with Ronnie's tail.
    • Ronnie Anne, the fourth and seemingly final ghoul, barely seems to suffer any changes besides gaining a tail that lets her override Cristina's Healing Factor.
  • The Moonstone Cup: Ghuls are a canine species who live deep underground and have a strong affinity for earth magic. They're a Dying Race, as fewer and fewer are born each year and many have descended into savagery, becoming the show's diamond dogs.
  • Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): Chapter 1: The Ghoul soul gives Soma the power to comfortably digest rotten food:
    The Ghoul soul made everything taste like it was at its freshest, something Soma was greatly thankful for. A superpower that just suppressed the gag reflex and stopped food poisoning was useful but not pleasant.
  • Oversaturated World: In Inevitable, Sunset and Twilight argue on whether to call the undead rats they encounter zombies or ghouls. Twilight argues that they should be called ghouls as "they still retain some some self-control".
  • The Palaververse: Ghūls are bipedal creatures native to the deserts of Saddle Arabia, where they emerge during the night and hunt prey in packs.
  • Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Ghasts are pale, bestial undead that arise from the bodies of the unjustly murdered. They are instinctively driven to eat the flesh of the living in a futile quest to resurrect themselves. Light burns them severely enough that concentrated flashlight beams can harm them.
  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: While most ghouls are little more than mindless beasts, Tsukune's ghoul is mentioned to represent his dark side and thus has its own personality, allowing it to think and plan. At one point, it actually infects Kokoa with a portion of its essence as a contingency plan; the others are completely taken aback that it was even capable of infecting others, as no other ghoul has been able to, or at least had the mental capacity to think of doing so.
  • Still Waters Series: While magic-based zombies are often called ghouls, another notable ghoul appears in Book 1. Carrick is highly intelligent, ancient, and the servant of an even more ancient vampire, who sent him out to recruit Eva. Stated to be able to regenerate from wounds, he shows no signs of any flesh eating, but rather seems to be going after his victim's life force. When he attacks, he also spreads an infection to the victim through the wound, which causes tremendous pain and can kill within the hour, causing the victim to reanimate as a mindless undead pawn.
  • Sword and Claw: Ghouls are mentioned in Lilith's backstory as monsters that feed on corpses.
  • With Strings Attached: Some ghouls and ghasts hang around the ruined city on the Plains of Death. The Hunter tells the four not to let themselves be touched by them, as their touch causes paralysis, so they're right out of the AD&D Monster Manual. Ringo, who beats the crap out of them from a safe distance, says they feel like "squishy rotten meat".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Blade (1998): Sometimes when a vampire infects someone, it goes wrong and creates a mindless ghoul running on instinct instead. Said ghouls are stated to eat anything, including vampires.
  • Bloody Mallory: Ghouls are human-demon hybrids who are damned by God, eat the flesh of the dead, and can only reproduce via virgins. When their babies are born, they burst from the mothers' stomachs, killing them in the process.
  • Dark Heritage: The Inbred and Evil Dansen clan has devolved into a tribe of ghoul-like beings who eat human flesh, only come out at night during storms, and travel through a series of tunnels that emerge from graves.
  • The Ghoul: Professor Morlant is either a man raised from the dead by ancient Egyptian magic to avenge himself against tomb robbers, or a man in a cataleptic trance who was mistakenly entombed alive and who, upon awakening, went insane and believed himself to be a ghoul.
  • The Mad Ghoul: Exposure to a Mayan gas that affects both humans and animals subdues the inhaler's will, whereafter they follow any instruction according to their skill set's offering. One limitation is that an instruction can't readily be taken back or overridden. Another is that after two days tops, the inhaler needs to eat a relatively fresh heart of its own species mixed with certain herbs to stave off a coma and possible death. Eating a heart returns the inhaler to their own self for about a day and then they become a mindless creature again. Morris uses the gas on Ted and from then on takes him corpse-snatching in cemeteries to procure hearts, which Ted's surgical skills make easy to extract. The news is soon all over the ghoul desecrating graves and corpses. With investigations closing in, Morris plans to rid himself of Ted, but while Ted can't save himself, he does expose Morris to the mind-numbing gas and leaves him without master to keep him going.
  • Night of the Living Dead (1968): The reanimated and hostile dead are referred to as ghouls. The only effective way to turn them back into harmless corpses is to shoot the brain.
  • Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger: When her son fails to poison Sinbad and his crew, the magician Zenobia summons three ghouls "from the depths of the earth" through the firepit to finish the job. The ghouls are small and appear as a blend of skeletal humanoid and insectoid features. They make a constant chattering noise and come at Sinbad with axe, sword, and stick. The hero only manages to dispatch them by crushing them under a pile of timber.
  • Vampire in Brooklyn: The eponymous vampire makes a ghoul servant out of a man by making him drink his blood. The ghoul turns into a vampire by wearing his then-destroyed master's ring.

    Folklore and Mythology 
  • One folklore story about the origins of ghouls goes: the originals were the students of a powerful sage who, envious of the sage's favorite student, murdered the favorite, then cooked and ate the body to hide it. When the students returned, the sage asked the students where the favorite was. When the students lied, the sage caused the favorite to speak, from the stomachs of the students that had eaten him. Angered, the sage cast them out, and cursed them into becoming ghouls, forced forever to be monsters that ate the dead and dwelt in darkness, as well as giving ghouls a weakness: any ghoul who devours a tongue dies a slow, agonizing death.
  • "The Ghul's Daughter": A ghul shows mercy to a human girl whose family have been murdered, and gives her some of his powers. Other examples of friendly (or at least, not actively threatening to the tale's protagonist) Ghouls can be found here.
  • Arabian ghouls can be killed with mundane weapons, but they must be killed with a single blow, or it will resurrect. They can shapeshift into any form (or in some versions, the last person they ate), but they always have donkey hooves. Much like Western vampires are scared of garlic, ghouls can be warded off with mustard.
    • In Persia, ghouls are supposed to have forked tongues, cat heads, donkey hooves and pallid and limp-looking yet strong limbs. Ghouls from the Sahara are said to have ostrich legs and one eye, but still retain the characteristic hooves of ghouls from the Islamic world.
  • The Rakshasa from Hindu Mythology are a supernatural race of man-eating monsters, at times described as being able to shapeshift and use magical powers. The traditional legend says they were born from the Creator God Brahma's body, and immediately attempted to devour him before they were banished on Earth.

    Gamebooks 
  • Fighting Fantasy: Ghouls are rotting Flesh Eating Zombies with the power to paralyze their victims. Fighting Fantasy uses the word "zombie" to refer specifically to Voodoo Zombies. They can paralyze with three strikes but can be killed with holy water.
    • Chasms of Malice: A "long fanged" ghoul is one of the encounters, and tries to murder you in your sleep with a dagger. A bunch of ghouls can be disposed off with a spell which summons a monstrous pair of hands to drag them to their doom.
    • Night Dragon: One dungeon hosts a festering ghoul so rotten that its stench overpowers you, giving you a big malus for that combat.
  • Give Yourself Goosebumps: In one book, one of the people trapped forever at the Carnival of Horrors claims to be a "ghoul" rather than a "ghost".
    • In the second Carnival of Horrors book, you can take a picture with one of the carnival's prisoners. When asked if he'll show up in the photo, he replies that he's a ghoul, not a ghost.
  • Lone Wolf:
    • The Cauldron of Fear: The Zaaryx ghouls are emaciated flesh-eating undead, although still smart enough to use rusty weapons. One of them, however, is more mutated than the other and has dangerous Psychic Powers, apparently the result of the dead body it was formed with wearing a Psychic Ring.
    • The Master of Darkness: The Helgedad Ghouls are bloated humanoids with wicked claws and eyes sewed shut, the result of some Darklord experiment. Though never human to begin with, they're probably undead too, but it's hard to tell for sure since it's in a part of the book were pulling out the Sommerswerd (an undead slayer) is unsafe.

    Literature 
  • Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls: Ghouls are non-corporeal green mists that were humans at one time and are able to steal bodies.
  • "The Brown Man": In "Goule", the antagonist by virtue of the title is identified as a ghoul. He is not notably different from the maybe-fae antagonist from "The Brown Man". Both sneak out at night to eat corpse flesh at the cemetery and hunt for food whenever that's the better option. The antagonist's horse and dog are ghouls too.
  • Clark Ashton Smith:
    • "The Charnel God": Ghouls are humanoid beings comparable to jackals and hyenas; they have a crouching posture, their faces are half anthropomorphic and half canine, their fingers end in curving talons, their spiky teeth are longer than coffin nails, and while they can talk human languages, the growls and laughter of the jackal and the hyena come more natural to them. Ghouls are capable of near-unmatched speed and enjoy immortality. One clan has become the priests of the deity Mordiggian and inhabit his temple in Zul-Bha-Sair, which they only leave upon news of a death in order to bring the corpse to their god. In their profession as priests, they wear silver masks shaped like human skulls, flowing purple robes, and fingerless gloves. It is said that the priests are shrouded so in order that no one gazes on them that have seen Mordiggian, but this may be a lie to conceal the fact that the priests are ghouls and keep the human population compliant. It is rumored and likely that Mordiggian, who consumes corpses, shares his food with his priests. Corpses brought to the temple are generally not eaten immediately, but set aside until they're just a little rotten. A rumor regarding this treatment is that the corpses are put to use in dark rites and other ill practices before Mordiggian claims them. This may or may not be true, but it is true that in return for many more corpses, the priests made a deal with the necromancer Abnon-Tha that he could experiment with their stash as long as he never removed a single corpse from temple grounds.
    • "The Ghoul": The ghoul is a huge and hideous demon with burning red eyes, eyebrows as coarse as tangled rootlets, and black fangs longer than even its monstrous mouth. His teeth are comparable to those of a hyena or a jackal and his voice is threatening by nature. He exclusively feeds on human corpses, but as long as a human is alive, the ghoul makes for decent company.
    • "The Ghoul and the Seraph": A ghoul named Necromalor strolls around a cemetery singing of decay and looking for a new corpse to consume. He is not bothered when a seraph shows up that tries to insult him and make him feel miserable, turning his back on the other with another song.
    • "The Nameless Offspring": Ghouls are canine monstrosities that dwell underground. Agatha Tremoth, who saw a full-blooded ghoul, describes it as having "a pale, hideous, unhuman face" and a "large and white" body with semihuman limbs, though it runs on all fours. Henry Chaldane, who saw a ghoul-human hybrid but admits his mind has refused to commit to a full memory, describes it as "a huge, whitish, hairless and semi-quadruped body, of canine teeth in a half-human face, and long hyena nails at the end of forelimbs that were both arms and legs." It stinks of carrion, but this might be a more a hygiene issue than a defining trait. The hybrid is the offspring of the full-blooded ghoul and Agatha. She had been erroneously pronounced dead and interred in the Tremoth Family vaults. The ghoul dwelling inside the vaults found her and instead of eating her, as it would do a corpse, it raped her. The hybrid is locked away and is docile for twenty-eight years until it senses the impending death of John Tremoth and becomes obsessed with consuming his corpse. Determined and strong as it is, it succeeds and on instinct finds its way to the vaults, escaping its pursuers.
  • Gemmalie: Gemmalie is identified as a ghoul but she also has aspects of the vrykolakas and succubus and may or may not function as a psychopomp. As a ghoul she is a consumer of corpses and appears incapable of killing her intended prey, having to rely on circumstances and manipulation instead. She delights when death occurs around her, but insists on treating the dead with respect when she's not eating them. She has telepathic abilities and possibly oracular qualities as she seems to be able to sense people's deaths-to-be and what needs to be in place to make them occur. While usually visible, there are circumstances when humans cannot perceive her, and she can become intangible, possibly by becoming one with darkness. Her main vrykolakas aspect is that she's ostensibly a Greek vampiric being and her main succubus aspect is that she is highly desirable but unattainable, leaving those who do get close to her with inescapable nightmares.
  • Agent of Hel: Ghouls are humans that died but didn't fit either Heaven or Hell, so they were kicked out of the afterlife back into their bodies. They're quasi-immortal in that they're alive but, if they're killed, reality just hiccups and they instantly come back good as new. They also need to feed on emotion to sustain themselves, but if they're not careful about it powerful emotion triggers a feeding frenzy.
  • "Amina": Ghouls refer to themselves as the Free-folk and the Free-people and the word "ghoul" may be exclusively what humans call them. Ghouls may or may not be without religion, but in any case they are neither Christian nor Muslim. Physically, ghouls are a mixture of the humanoid and the canine forms with some aspects reminiscent of swines. Clothed ghouls can pass for human as long as they take care to hide their sharp teeth too, because most of their animal qualities are on their torso, such as five sets of udders on the species's females. Relatedly, ghouls produce offspring in litters with ten being the maximum. There is a possibility that ghouls can shapeshift ever so slightly to have more of a human form and whenever they speak there is a growl beneath their words. In any case, they do not talk like people do, because they can produce a message without moving their lips.
  • Anita Blake: Ghouls are the result of evil rites being performed in a graveyard. They form animalistic packs.
  • Arabian Nights: Only one core story features a ghoul and only one of the orphan tales added to the first full European translation adds a second ghoul. Based on the popularity of this translation, a few more stories about ghouls have since been added to various editions.
    • "The King's Son and the She-Ghoul": There are at minimum three ghouls: a mother and several children of hers. The mother is implied to either look like an attractive young woman or have the ability to take that form, which she uses to gain people's trust and lure them to her home in some old ruins for her and her children to feast on.
    • "The Story of Sidi Nouman": One ghoul dwells in the cemetery to munch on its fresh corpses, which is noted to not be usual ghoul behavior as the creature normally hunts for human meat. Its appearance is not given (although Galland's version is female; later versions often present it as male), but Nouman recognizes it on sight even at a distance at night. Despite being a human-eater, the ghoul is an associate of the human Amine, who herself is a cannibal. They work together digging for corpses, consume the flesh as a pleasant outdoor dinner, and jointly hide the evidence back into the grave.
  • "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe: Ghouls "dwell up in the steeple" and "feel a glory in so rolling / On the human heart a stone". They also have a king.
  • The Book of Dragons: In "The Long Walk 2020", ghouls are six-limbed, four-eyed creatures that grow from untended corpses, which they fashion into macabre, tree-like shapes. The humans use them as beasts of burden, feeding them on dead bodies.
  • Caitlin R Kiernan: The ghouls that appear in Threshold and Low Red Moon are beings with canine-like faces and orange eyes that come from another world through dimensional portals. Capable of interbreeding with humans, they are also experts in sorcery and will kidnap human children to raise as hired agents to do their bidding.
  • "The Chadbourne Episode": Ghouls are porcine humanoids with well-hidden overmuscled jaws filled with many sharp teeth, a stocky build, and a band of long, three-inch, and coal-black bristles running over their backs. There are eleven confirmed ghouls and possibly four more, all hailing from Persia. The eleven certain ghouls are the chauffeur of the Rustum Dadh Family, his wife, and their nine children born during their stay in Chadbourne. The four who could be ghouls are Mr. Rustum Dadh, his wife, and their two young adult daughters. Female ghouls are more different from female humans than male ghouls from male humans because of the two rows of ten or more teats on their torso. They lack a female human's curvature, which makes it nifty that as Persian women they can walk around in wide veils. The chauffeur's wife never leaves the home during the Rustum Dadhs' stay in Chadbourne while the other three women do. This could be because the other three aren't ghouls, are ghouls but more adventurous, are ghouls but don't hate clothes, or are ghouls but not pregnant ghouls. All adults are reluctant to mingle with humans and utter as few lines as they can get away with if caught in conversation. This appears to be because human languages are unnatural to them; when the chauffeur talks to Canevin, he does so in a "thick, guttural, repressed voice" with little lip movement. Ghouls produce offspring in litters and do not share humanity's enthusiasm for clothing. They can nourish themselves well enough with live animals and corpses, but live humans are the favored meal.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: Ghouls may be one of the races that is inherently evil. They live in Narnia and are known about in Calormen, but if they actually live there too is unclear.
    • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Ghouls are among the creatures that fight on the side of the White Witch.
    • The Horse and His Boy: Shasta, Aravis, Bree, Hwin agree to meet up at the Tombs of the Ancient Kings some way outside the gates of Tashbaan at night. There are rumors of ghouls haunting the place, which all four are frightened by but refuse to admit to. As it turns out, the rumors are just rumors and no ghouls are encountered by the group.
  • The Concubine's Tomb: Ghouls are a jackal-like humanoid race who are burned by the sun's rays. To avoid this, they bury themselves in the sand during the day. They also must eat dead human flesh to avoid becoming more animal-like.
  • Count Saint Germain: The manservant Roger is a ghoul the vampire Saint Germain created in Roman times. Roger is apparently immortal and stronger than a normal human. His only requirement is that he only eats raw meat. So he buys chickens, cuts it up, and eats it with knife and fork like a civilized person rather than tear at it with his teeth.
  • In The Crescent Moon Kingdoms ghuls are summoned and come in different varieties, and are usually made from various materials such as bone, sand, or water combined with something symbolic of taint such as maggots. The worst are the legendary skin ghuls which are completely immortal and can only be defeated by killing the summoner. Unlike the others, skin ghuls are created by curses from a decapitated head that has been animated with black magic.
  • The Crystal has a horde of ghouls attack at the end. The title Plot Device is used to help get rid of them.
  • Discworld: Ghouls are an intelligent and civilized humanoid race most known for their incredibly refined sense of taste (as in food, not aesthetics). At one point, Carrot was considering getting a ghoul for the Watch forensics department, as long as they promised not to take anything home and eat it. There is a Mrs Drull who is a member of the Fresh Start Club, although she is a cameo character who is barely referenced. Apparently these days she doesn't do the "other stuff" and makes a living catering for childrens' parties.
  • Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.: Lovecraftian-inspired ghouls are common in the post-Big Uneasy world, although less so than zombies, vampires or werewolves. A trio of ghouls work for the medical examiner, and Dan's building manager and the cook at his usual diner are of this Unnatural type. Although they do crave human flesh, ghouls which have appeared in the series are usually (barring the odd "misplaced" medical specimen) content with human-flavored chicken products marketed for monsters.
  • The Dresden Files: Ghouls are humanoid creatures that, in their natural form, look like someone mixed a baboon with a hyena. They have minor shapeshifting powers, just enough to pass very effectively as human (as in, even a Wizard won't know until they change back). They eat meat, a LOT of meat, roughly 40 or 50 pounds a day, and it's almost invariably human. And they never feel sated, not truly. They also have a Healing Factor, but can be killed by sufficiently bad injuries, though it takes a lot of punishment - we see ghouls survive being blasted in half, and having an entire side of their body seared into nothingness. They're also intelligent, often serve as mercenaries and thugs, they tend to be pretty cowardly, and Harry Dresden really, really hates them (considering what he saw one do to two teenagers, Warden trainees, this is not surprising). At least some of them are signatories of the Unseely Accords, as Harry's first encounter with one involved an Accord-mediated contest between a ghoul and a goblin. There is also some sort of primitive, supersized, armor-plated mega-ghoul running around. They can completely regenerate after being reduced to the consistency of chunky salsa, and even then, that may not be enough.
  • Dr. Greta Helsing: Ghouls are a distinct race, reproducing by normal biological means, and subject to some human diseases. Greta treats a ghoul child for an ear infection at one point, and prescribes antidepressants for a ghoul chieftain.
  • The Elric Saga: Ghouls drain the strength of those they touch, possibly the inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons ghouls. They are summoned from another world and living creatures.
  • Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Ghouls are a humanoid race that just so happen to have transparent skin, muscles, and organs, giving them the appearance of animated skeletons... oh, and they just so happen to be cannibals too. Which is because of their own twisted belief that their transparent flesh is a sign of their "enlightened" status and they owe it to the "lesser" races to enlighten them as well by transmuting their flesh through digestion.
  • "A Fairy Story (1934)": Ghouls are creatures that look like humans, but just a little off and actual humans instinctively can tell they're ghouls although not necessarily at a glance. They waver when they walk and are on average thinner and smaller than humans. Ghouls, in turn, are instinctively drawn to humans that are alone with their thoughts. If a ghoul asks a question, their interlocutor is unable to keep from answering. They're implied to be telepathic, up to being able to talk to plants, and for certain can remodel another person's mind. It might be a form of possession and it leaves the victim with thoughts they didn't have before.
  • "Far Below": The ghouls are referred to as such only once; to the members of the Special Subway Detail it is wiser not to define their enemy and risk dwelling on their horror. Therefore, the common terms used are "They", "Them", and "Things", all with capital T. Ghouls have a "vaguely anthropoid structure" usually held in a bestial, semi-crouched posture. They have greenish white eyes that shine in the darkness, pale skin, elongated jaws and flat foreheads that evoke a canine appearance, and spade-like appendages that give the ghouls the digging capacity of huge moles. Unless they're hunting, they're elusive and all that may be perceived of them are their shining eyes and hyena-like laughter. From his position as a professor in biology, Craig gives such descriptions as "some sort of giant, carrion-feeding, subterranean mole" and "canine and simian developments of members", which he wholeheartedly admits sounds contradictory. For their evident connection to humanity, Craig theorizes that ghouls are descendants of Neandertals or Piltdown people that were forced underground. Ghouls are carnivorous and favor human prey and human carrion, but they don't mind eating the corpses of their own dead either. Light of any kind is deadly to ghouls which is why they stay in caves and tunnels underground. The SSD has noticed that even without the day-night cycle mattering underground, the ghouls still only are active for a little over four hours each night. Whether this is something biological or if they're responding to the slowing down of subway traffic is yet to be determined. Ghouls are loosely theorized to have telepathic powers, but what is certain is that they are intelligent and have a corrupting influence. It is their proximity that little by little changes the SSD agents from humans into ghouls. Mental instability seems to quicken the process.
  • In S.A Sidor's Fury from the Tomb, the first book of The Institute for Singular Antiquities duology, one of the recurring antagonists to the heroes are a violent gang of Mexican ghouls. These guys are foul undead banditos that can regenerate new body parts if they get to eat (the heroes capture one of the ghouls and to keep him captive, they occasionally hack new growth off of him and watch to see he doesn't eat any beetles or earthworms).
  • "The Ghoul (1873)": The ghoul is a woman with sickly pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and carmine lips with an uncanny ability to keep her clothes in pristine condition where that should not be possible. She has a compelling voice, hypnotizing eyes, and she may be able to teleport. Accompanying her are elves, gnomes, and hell-kites, the latter of whom she allows to partake in her meals. Being a ghoul, her meals consist of human corpse flesh no matter the condition. She can dig through grave soil in short time to get her food. However, when dealing with a living person, or at least one to her liking, she may delay her meal to rape them first. The power in her voice and eyes comes in handy there.
  • "The Ghoula": There are at minimum three ghouls: a mother and several children of hers. The father has gone missing months prior. The mother, while gifted with ghoulish titanic strength, has the appearance of an attractive young woman, which she uses to gain people's trust and lure them to her home in some old ruins for her and her children to feast on.
  • Gil's All Fright Diner: Ghouls are green-skinned monstrosities created from normal bodies and aren't entirely solid when in darkness, making them very hard to dispatch.
  • The Graveyard Book: Ghouls are about the size and build of children and seem merely mischievous, but turn out to be very menacing. Every graveyard has a ghoul-gate, which you really ought to stay away from. They live in the underground city of Ghulheim and take their names after the main course of their first meal, including "The Famous Victor Hugo" and "The 33rd President of the United States." Since the book is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Jungle Book, the ghouls effectively take the place of the monkeys (or "bandar-log"), and their scavenged names are modeled on the Disney Jungle Book film naming the bandar-log's leader "King Louis".
  • Simon R. Green: Lovecraft-style ghouls have appeared in the Nightside and Secret Histories novels. They're actually rather friendly creatures for corpse-scavengers, eagerly hiring themselves out to chow down on garbage, slain monster carcasses, toxic waste or anything else that the various supernatural beings and factions of the Greenverse need to dispose of.
  • Harry Potter: Ghouls are harmless, non-sapient humanoid pests that take up residence in wizarding attics. The Weasleys have one living in their attic, which they treat more-or-less as a pet. It becomes useful in Deathly Hallows, when they alter its appearance by magic so it can pass as a very sick Ron.
  • Hic Sunt Dracones: Gouls of Zanoth are related to the setting's vampires and rely on the same nutrients found in the bizarre bloodfruits. However, instead of the vampire's Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities, the ghouls use the bloodfruits to power their Psychic Powers. Ghouls appear similar to vampires but instead of fangs, they tend to have heavy claws. Culture-wise, ghouls are often viewed to be quite morbid as their culture dictates that every household should have its own mausoleum in its basement.
  • The Horror from the Vault: The Horror's coffin is decorated with a painting of "a ghoul with no face."
  • The Hour of the Dragon: Ghouls are humanoid, man-eating forest critters living in northern Argos.
  • H. P. Lovecraft originated a recurring ghoul variant, which is characterized by but not beholden to a greenish pallor, rubbery skin, canine muzzle, pointed ears and hooflike clawed feet.
    • "Pickman's Model": Ghouls are horrible and potentially dangerous canine humanoids, capable of growing to titanic sizes, who live in a complicated network of underground tunnels and raid graves for food from the bottom up. They also leave their own young as changelings in the place of human children. The young ghoul grows up to resemble a human, but retains a ghoulish mindset, while the fate of the human child is vague. Ghouls also apparently have a morbid sense of humor; one of Pickman's paintings shows them laughing hysterically as one of their number reads off a list of famous burial sites, implying they've raided each of them. And they aren't just creatures of Pickman's imagination, but actually exist, as Thurber discovers to his horror when he realized he's holding a photograph of one Pickman used as a reference.
    • In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath ghouls (now including Mr. Pickman, who has evidently retired from the world of art in favor of the underworld) are shown more sympathetically, and they even aid Mr. Carter. The ghouls demonstrate that they can travel between our world and the dreamlands, and that they even ceremonially discard bones from the Crag of the Ghouls into the Vale of Pnath. Also a thing are ghasts, a much deadlier species that coexists in the dreamland underworld with ghouls. They are semi-humanoids with hooves and kangaroo-like legs.
  • InCryptid: Ghouls (Herophilus sapiens) are obligate carnivores. They're primarily scavengers, but increased cremation rates and improved security of corpses has led many to become predatory. They're also known to eat their own young in lean times. Visually, they look like humans with sharklike teeth.
  • The Iron Teeth: Ghouls are creatures that originate from infected humans. When transformed, ghouls are extremely pale and skinny with black eyes and black blood. They retain some degree of intelligence, and use their resemblance to humans in order to infiltrate human settlements and kidnap people in the midst of the night. Their body fluids are contagious, and the only way to prevent infection is the ingestion of garlic and silver.
  • The Iron Tower: The Ghuls or Ghols are undead humanoids mounted on Helsteeds who act as leaders of the Rucks, Hloks, and Ogrus. They are very hard to kill, with wood through the heart, beheading, and dismemberment being the only things that are sure to work.
  • The Malloreon: Creatures known as "raveners" fitting the description of ghouls appear briefly. They chase the protagonists for a while but eventually flee when approaching the seaside. Beldin supposes that it might be because the sea is "the only thing hungrier than they are".
  • Merkabah Rider: In "The Shomer Express", The Rider takes on a Arabian demonic ghul that has smuggled itself aboard a passenger train. The ghul possesses an intelligence slightly above animalistic, and can can take on the form of the last corpse it ate (until it finishes digesting the flesh). However, its feet remain cloven hooves, bretraying it as a demon.
  • Mithgar: Ghuls are evil creatures under Gyphon's domain. Whether they're a relative of the Spawn or a weak form of demon, nobody in-universe is entirely sure. They resemble pale, gaunt humans, and being rather more intelligent than most of Gyphon's creatures, they tend to act as the officers of his armies. Their most distinctive feature is how difficult they are to kill; while they may be killed with fire, beheading, and being staked through the heart, they can tank almost any injury and keep going at full strength. Moreover, they typically wear metal collars and breastplates in order to reduce the risk of being killed.
  • "Mop-Up": The ghoul is the least human-looking of the monsters, having a beastlike physique, a doglike snout, and sharp and sturdy nails. He can talk, but with a growl and he keeps to short sentences. His bond with the witch resembles that of a pet and its master and the witch at one point calls him "my pet" but isn't necessarily kind to him.
  • Mordant's Need: Ghouls are green, child-like creatures that absorb every living being they touch and multiply by splitting themselves like bacteria.
  • Night Huntress: Ghouls are a sister race to vampires, created when a human drinks vampire blood before dying and is given a ghoul heart transplant after death, followed by pouring vampire blood on it. They retain their human personalities. They must eat human flesh on occasion to maintain their strength, but generally stick to raw animal meat. They can only be killed by decapitation.
  • Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep: Ghouls are hominivores and the one in "The Ghoul" has a particular preference for the flesh of human children. He lurks around schools until recess or when school's out and grabs as many children as he can before heading to a quiet spot to mangle and rip their bodies apart for consumption. The moment there's nothing left to chew, he hurries to another school for his next meal.
  • Night World: Ghouls are humans that did not successfully complete the transition into vampirehood due to receiving too little vampire blood after being drained. This leaves them dead and rotting with no higher thought capacity than the incessant need to consume. Being incomplete vampires, they are dangerous predators, but just as weak to getting staked or burned.
    • Secret Vampire: Over ten years prior to the present, the lamia family Rasmussen hired a human named Emma as nanny to their son James. When he became too attached to her, they starved him until he couldn't help but attack her. In despair, he tried to turn her into a vampire after draining her, but his parents stopped him midway and so Emma became a ghoul. James's father got rid of her a few days later.
    • Huntress (1997): A ghoul catches Hugh and knocks him unconscious. Rather than eat him on the spot, the ghoul breaks into a nearby house to eat in peace. The exact room he enters belongs to Jez and being well-trained to handle the supernatural, she shanks the ghoul through the heart with a bamboo knife and tosses him out of the window.
  • Oracle of Tao: Ghouls come from another dimension and continuously resurrect unless they're sealed away.
  • Otherverse:
    • Pact: Ghouls are undead with flesh-rotting bites. They are individuals who've interrupted the circle of life and death, usually by eating the dead, coming back from near-death one too many times, or practicing necromancy badly. They're out of balance and need to stave off their death by hibernating for months or years and eating flesh when they wake.
    • Pale: The reader is introduced to pair of "friendly" ghouls, who are willing to cooperate and coexist with the Kennet Others. They try their best to never kill people, only consuming the flesh of the already dead or of animals. They explain that animal meat does keep them going in a pinch, but human flesh is far more effective (the difference between needing to eat every day and needing to eat every other week). Aside from their diet the two are actually extremely personable and friendly, though absolutely vicious in a fight.
  • Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: From Princesses in the Darkest Depths, when Cassie asks what's the worst reason for a Ghost Town that only seemed to be ghosting in the last day or two. Bianca's happy to provide an answer involving ghouls:
    Bianca: Everyone in town could have turned into bloodthirsty ghouls, haunting the homes wherein they were slain.
  • ''Rebel of the Sands': Ghouls kill and eat people, taking the forms of their last victims to trick their next ones. They can only be killed by iron, and, unlike the feral nightmares, ghouls are intelligent and patient.
  • The Reynard Cycle: The deep-men are cannibalistic albinos who live beneath the earth. Southerners call them ghouls. Even Isengrim is scared of them.
  • Ringworld: The Ringworld Engineers introduces the Ghouls (so named by Louis Wu; their local name is the Night People), a carrion-eating hominid offshoot with purple-black skin covered in black fur, long and pointed ears, sharp teeth, and hands tipped in wicked claws, and equally comfortable on all fours as upright. They're are the Ring's garbage collectors, long-range communicators, information brokers and undertakers. Yes, they eat the dead. No, the other races don't object: that's their job. The ghouls are arguably more intelligent than most humanoid species and perfectly willing to follow whatever funerary customs the locals wish, as long as those customs don't render the corpse inedible. They're capable of rishathra (interspecies sex), although they don't get many volunteers; even aside from the squick factor, most humanoids consider ghouls to have extremely bad breath.
  • Rose of the Prophet: Ghuls are hominivore shapeshifters who man the ship leading to the island fortress of Zhakrin's paladins. They take their payment in human flesh.
  • La Saga du Prêtre Jean: Ghouls are flesh-eating, corpse-like scavengers. Book 2 has a corpse-eating ghoul hidden in the embalmer's shop.
  • The Song of the Shattered Sands: The Asirim are the thirteenth tribe of Sharakhai, who were sacrificed to the gods and remade as a servitor race to the twelve immortal kings of the other tribes. Clawed and inhuman, these creatures live in burrows under a blooming field of dangerous, supernatural plants.
  • "A Sporting Chance" (The Beyond #18): The Hungarian Vladimir Rasloff, the Frenchman Jean Fernand, and the American Harry Williams are hunting together when a storm forces them to take shelter. By accident, they knock on a vampire's door and the hunters find themselves the hunted. Fernand and Williams are drained, but Rasloff lasts until dawn and turns the tables yet again. He is a ghoul and his two companions were to be his quarry. He'll take solace in getting to eat a vampire.
  • Tales from the Flat Earth: Ghouls are powerful supernatural beings that appear as beautiful humans and excel at love-making. They are an evil race and enjoy eating humans as a delicacy. Ghouls are a dying race reduced to a mere handful, since they practice incestuous breeding at the sibling level. They can interbreed with humans though the resulting offspring is weaker than a pure ghoul with succeeding generations further degenerating. The mightiest ghouls are nearly indestructible as no spell or physical force can harm them. A soolitary way to defeat one is to shine a light at it and then cut out its shadow. Its supernatural nature makes the shadow a corporeal thing and without a shadow, a ghoul is helpless and can be killed with normal means. The entire race meets its end when they annoy the demon princess Azhriaz the Night's Daughter, who magically seals them within their city. The trapped ghouls then turn on each other, eventually succumbing to cannibalism or starvation.
  • Tales of MU: Ghouls are vicious undead predators who arise when a waterlogged corpse is exposed to the light of the new moon, but unlike skeletons or zombies they can breed and form colonies. Other than that they fit the model of zombie ghouls.
  • The Throne Of Bones: Ghouls have the ability to take memories and sensations from the corpses they eat. Furthermore, if a ghoul eats the heart and brain of a person, this transforms the ghoul into an exact duplicate of whoever they have eaten. This makes for some interesting stories, especially if the person the ghoul eats had a strong personality, causing the ghoul to be "stuck" as that person or even forget that it's not them.
  • The Vampyres Of Hollywood: An albino ghoul named Ghul is a servant of Lilith.
  • Vathek: Gouls are pale and haggard human-looking beings with a warbled manner of speech. They live inside the tombs and beneath the earth within cemetery walls and the fancier the cemetery, the more likely it's inhabited by gouls. Gouls usually stay in hiding during the day and emerge only at night. This knowledge benefits Carathis when she finds herself, while en route to Istakar, near a cemetery at nighttime with all her guides dead, because she can give the gouls the corpses to eat in return for solid directions. Her servants, Nerkes and Cafour, also hope to get an orgy out of it, but while they do draw the gouls' interest, once Carathis has the information she needs, she orders them to leave with her immediately.
  • Vengeance From The Past!: The Neanderthals have survived alongside Man and are the source of most of Man's stories about monsters, such as ghouls.
  • The Wandering Inn: Ghouls are especially strong and fast undead, with sharp claws and gaping jaws. They can also be living humans who gained [Horror Ranks] by becoming cannibals.
  • The War Gods: Ghouls were bred from trolls by evil wizards. They are substantially smarter than trolls, living in villages, making stone tools and weapons and breeding livestock and are very fast and nearly as large (about eight feet tall compared to trolls ten). They retain however trolls viciousness, ravening hunger and capacious breeding capacity.
  • Welkin Weasles: Ghouls are corpses brought to life by mages to do their bidding. They're naturally obedient but do have opinions of their own they can act on instead. Being turned into a ghoul does not affect the rotting process and the more damaged the ghoul's body is, the less it can accomplish despite its persistence. Ghouls may or may not need to eat, and what they eat may or may not be living bodies, but in any case they do have a nose for sniffing out "meat". One of the few things that can end a ghoul is for its heart to be pierced with a talon from the left claw of a dead killer, though the body can be revived as a ghoul again thereafter. In Castle Storm, Grand Inquisitor Torca Marda revives a maggot-infested badger corpse as his ghoul to go after Sylver and his band. The targeted group, however, witness the ritual and on the advice of the alchemist Kloog end the ghoul with a claw-of-glory. Then they set the corpse on fire so Torca Marda cannot turn it into a ghoul a second time.
  • World War Z: In addition to undead zombies, there are living humans who have gone mad and convinced themselves that being a zombie is safer than being alive. These "quislings" act just like ghouls do.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Ghoul: An ancient Middle Eastern ghoul with the power of shapeshifting assumes the identity of a notorious Muslim terrorist leader, who is then captured and interrogated by a black ops military unit. It can be summoned by carving its symbol in blood, while it haunts its victims with their past sins before killing them.
  • Supernatural: Ghouls are of the Middle Eastern monster variety and take the appearance of the last person they have fed upon.
  • Tales from the Crypt: Two episodes feature ghouls: "Mournin' Mess" and "House of Horror". "Mournin' Mess" is a straightforward adaptation of the comic story by the same name. "House of Horror" takes the main plot from the comic story by the same name but the punny plot twist involving ghouls is from "Audition".
    • "Mournin' Mess": A reporter becomes dinner for the charitable organization known as the Grateful Homeless Outcasts and Unwanted Layaway Society, GHOULS for short, while investigating the murders on the city's homeless population.
    • "House of Horror": Some fraternity pledges go into a supposedly haunted house for their final test. The pledgemaster even invites several sorority girls to come watch in hopes of making any failures more humiliating. Little does the fraternity realize that Delta Omega Alpha is an all-ghoul sorority and that they eat frat guys as part of their pledging.
  • Svengoolie: The Horror Host Svengoolie, ostensibly a ghoul, introduces classic horror films with comic wisecracks, silly sketches, and corny puns.

    Music 
  • Alice Cooper's Ghouls Gone Wild.
  • Ghoul, a thrash metal band, is based around this trope.
  • The Mechanisms: The Saxons are interpreted as tribes of degenerate ghouls that live in Annwn, the outer parts of the ancient space station of Port Galfridian, where exposure to intense radiation has turned them into wasted, bestial and cannibalistic monsters.
  • They Might Be Giants: "The Darlings of Lumberland" is about ghouls with "cold, dead hand[s]" and "empty hollow sockets [which] freeze the soldiers where they stand."

    Tabletop Games 
  • 13th Age: Ghouls are undead cannibals that hunger for what they used to be and can infect victims to rise as ghouls as well.
  • All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Beyond the typical confusion between "flesh-eating zombie" and "ghoul", actual stats for Arabic-style ghouls are provided in Atlas of the Walking Dead.
  • Call of Cthulhu: The portrayal of the Lovecraftian ghouls varies widely, mirroring the source material. Sometimes they are savage corpse eaters with no redeeming virtues, and other times they are intelligent and even show human emotions and attitudes. The Dreamlands supplement introduced ghasts.
  • The Dark Eye: Ghouls are technically living creatures, but resemble undead in most regards. They're gaunt, long-armed, hairless humanoids ruled by a constant hunger for rotten flesh, and are usually found around graveyards, battlefields, and other areas where corpses are abundant. The sun burns and kills them, and they're consequently nocturnal creatures who spend the day hiding underground. They do not breed naturally, and instead turn intelligent humanoids into ghouls by means of their infectious bites. When they gather in large groups, they also tend to mutate to serve specific roles — common, undifferentiated feeders, quick and agile but fragile scouts who find prey for the pack, strong but slow gatherers of body parts, bloated regurgitators who swallow huge quantities of meat and regurgitate them for the rest to eat, blind diggers with large claws who maintain tunnel systems for the rest to hide in during the day, rare morokun capable of casting spells, and bloated, immobile and telepathic ghoul kings who rule over the rest.
  • Dark•Matter (1999): After a few generations, humans who engage in cannibalism degenerate into Ghouls. Ghouls have unnaturally sharp fingernails and stink of blood and decay, forced to small pockets on the edge of society and slaking their hunger from morgues or the occasional isolated person.
  • Dragon Dice: Ghouls are a basic undead troop type. They are moderately capable in both casting magic and melee combat.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has quite a few examples.
    • Most editions of D&D have ghouls who are feral, scavenging undead who are not disinclined to picking on fresh meat if it looks like it'll be good pickings. Their attacks are both poisonous (generally a paralyzing agent to subdue living prey in a hurry) and prone to spreading disease. Unusually for the usual flesh-eating undead concept, ghouls are fully sapient and can even speak, which makes them capable of planning out ambushes. A ghast is a tougher, more martially inclined ghoul with a few extra tricks, but is largely the same concept.
    • The CD&D rules omitted ghasts, but added elder ghouls (strong ghouls surrounded by a vitality-draining unholy light) and agarats (hyperkinetic ghouls that drain life energy with their screams) to the roster.
    • Some sources, including the 2nd ed Al-Qadim, feature ghouls (or ghuls) based on the ghoul of Arabic myth. It's an undead genie with powerful magic and shapeshifting abilities.
    • The Fiend Folio for third edition also features the maurezhi, a race of demons that eats the corpse as well as the soul of its victims, which makes it stronger and allows it to take the deceased person's form. Along with it is the abyssal ghoul, first introduced in City of the Spider Queen, which is like the undead ghoul, but with demonic powers.
    • d20 Modern brings it all full circle, in that its zombies are simply the traditional Voodoo type, but its ghouls are straight out of Romero's playbook.
    • Dungeon Magazine adventure City of Ghouls introduces True Ghouls, intelligent and much deadlier than the original ones. So much in fact almost overrun the Underdark, proving a worthy challenge to all kinds of dangerous creatures living there. They since made few appearances in other Dungeon adventures, 4E module Kingdom of the Ghouls and even rule the Underworld in Empire of the Ghouls campaign for Kobold Press' Midgard setting.
    • 3rd Edition's Monster Manual II describes famine spirits, also called ravenous ghouls, a type of bloated undead possessed by a burning, all-consuming hunger that can never be sated. Famine spirits consume everything they come across, even being able to unhinge their jaws to swallow large items or victims whole, and will only abstain from devouring undead flesh. As a result, they often gain followings of ghouls and ghasts eager to join in their feasts.
    • Arthaus's 3rd-party Ravenloft 3.5e supplement, Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead, broadened D&D's "ghoul" category to include a variety of "Hungry Dead". Its signature example was a grossly-fat undead who would crash dinner parties and frantically gobble down any sort of food, only attacking the living guests if there was nothing else edible within reach.
  • Exalted:
    • Han-Tha, the Ghoul King, is a god of cannibalism, necrophagy and scavengers who takes the form of a great eyeless beast with a giant maw filled with sharp fangs. His worship is forbidden, and is only found among depraved cults and degenerate primitives lurking in ruined cities.
    • The Ghost-Blooded, the half-dead and half-alive children of ghosts and living mortals, are sometimes referred to as ghouls.
    • The ghul, also known as deiphages, are gods driven insane by the loss of their domains and starved by the loss of Quintessence from mortal prayer. They lurk in the slums and sewers of the heavenly city of Yu-Shan, ambushing other deities and devouring them for their Essence.
  • Fabula Ultima: Ghouls are a type of undead. The core rulebook describes them as "[h]ulking corpses inhabited by a spirit driven mad by a terrible curse". They have sharp claws, can exhale clouds of poisonous gas, and like to hang out in graveyards where they can chow down on dead bodies.
  • Godforsaken: Ghouls are undead humans created by the necromancer Crumellia, and lair in dark pits until she unleashes them to hunt down those who have earned her wrath. They bear no resemblance to their living selves in body or in mind, and are feral predators who delight in hunting and devouring the living — they don't need to eat, they just like doing it.
  • Gods of the Fall: After the Delirium descended on the city of Athsayor, its inhabitants were transformed into ghouls and retreated underground. They tear intruders limb from limb and consume them while still alive, while preparing for something they refer to as the Great Dying.
  • GURPS: Ghouls in GURPS: Fantasy are a complete race who are indistinguishable from normal humans until they try to eat you. The only thing they can eat is human flesh; all other foods are dangerous to them.
  • kill puppies for satan: Ghouls are depraved people who are addicted to a supernatural charge they get out of eating corpses. They're looked down on by all the other supernatural types; the narrator describes them as "the desperate needle-sharing ass-peddling heroin addicts of our world".
  • Monsterhearts: Ghouls are undead creatures dominated by The Hunger, which can only be warded off by Keep Your Cool. A ghoul does not necessarily hunger for flesh, but can also feed on such metaphysical concepts as fear and power. Furthermore, the ghoul's sex move also causes sex to become something they hunger for. One perk to being a ghoul is that Short Rest for the Wicked allows one to sleep out death with no downsides except for some lost hours.
  • Night's Black Agents: Ghouls typically act as muscle for a vampire, or as guard dogs for an underground location. They needn't be human; ghouls might be flesh-eating canines, beetles, fish or alien constructs.
  • Numenera:
    • Ghasts are degenerate humans who live in the Ghastlov, the ash-scoured wasteland in the heart of Vralk. They wear no clothing, use bone weapons and make no shelters, instead burrowing beneath the ground by day, and will eat anything they can catch — and are cannibals to boot, eating both human travelers and their own young, elders and feeble ones to survive in the waste they call home.
    • Syzygy ghouls are abhumans who feed upon the dead, and spend almost as much time beneath the ground as corpses. Their bodies are hairless and so porcelain-smooth that their faces are sometimes mistaken for emotionless masks. Syzygy ghouls come to the surface at night to gather humanoid remains or steal those recently interred from their graves, and are said to know what any of their past meals knew. They are later revealed to hail from Dhizrend, a dimension filled only with corpses, and to be ruled by an elite that does not feed on corpses and instead dines on living human captives.
  • Pathfinder:
    • Ghouls follow D&D's example and also take inspiration from H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos, giving them an underground kingdom and a hatred of the more powerful ghasts, even bringing in the minor Mythos race, the gugs, as their natural enemies — the gugs, despite being much bigger and much more powerful than ghouls, are terrified of them and will always attempt to flee when they meet one. They usually worship the demon lord Kabriri, said to have been the first ghoul to ever exist and the eventual progenitor of every modern ghoul.
    • Ghouls have a complex relationship with elves. Elves are immune to their paralyzing touch, although not to the fever that turns the living into ghouls — the fact that Kabriri was an elf in life is speculated to be the reason for this. Elven parents affected by ghoul fever may give birth to angheuvores, half-undead beings afflicted by a ghoul's ravenous hunger for flesh.
    • There are also "ghuls", a separate monster formed from the undead husks of a genie, more closely modeled on the Arabic lore.
    • Leng ghouls were introduced later, are more powerful than even ghasts and were specifically created to be the Old One-worshipping, dog-headed, peculiarly civilized Lovecraftian ghouls. They do not worship Kabriri like other ghouls do, and consider themselves to be part of a distinct undead lineage that predates Kabriri's by a long stretch.
  • RuneQuest: Ghouls are half-dead creatures that maintain their status by eating the dead. They are formed when malign spirits possess a corpse. The corpse is thereby transfigured and animated, becoming a parody of life that will alsways look as if it has stepped from a week-old grave.
  • Shadowrun ghouls are metahumans who contracted a virus that 1) blinded them, 2) deformed them (they lack body hair, and have claws and shark-like teeth), 3) shunted them halfway into the astral plane and 4) made metahuman flesh a dietary requirement. Often ends up making the poor character either a monster, evil or (if they are lucky) a tougher shadowrunner. The dietary requirements are a particular issue for them — they need to eat human, elf, dwarf, ork or troll flesh, quite a bit of it, and can't live off of anything else. While individual ghouls can scrape by off of corpses and casualties in shadowruns and firefights, any large concentration inevitably has to resort to things like the black market organ trade, purchasing condemned prisoners from nearby governments and worse. One of the things that the great dragon Dunkelzahn left in his will was an enormous reward for anyone who successfully was able to develop or discover a subsitute food source for ghouls.
  • Small World: Ghouls are one of the playable races. Their distinct racial power is the ability to keep all their pieces in play and continue expanding their territory when they go into decline.
  • The Strange:
    • Ghouls in Halloween are goblins who have developed a taste for the flesh of their fellows. Hungry for flesh, whether fresh or decomposing, they dig up about one in ten fresh graves in the Graveyard.
    • In Wuxia City, a ghoul is a person who sought the sacrament of the Darkness and willingly became a supernatural entity of endless hunger. Ghouls can see in the dark, are immortal unless killed, and derive pleasure from gnawing on human flesh.
  • Talislanta: Necrophages are humanoids from the Underworld that feed on the remains of the dead. Ghasts hail from the nether realms, and tend to haunt ancient graveyards, tombs, and battlegrounds.
  • Unhallowed Metropolis: While technically undead — specifically half-lifers, a type of undead that outright dead like vampires or zombies, but who aren't quite alive, either — and deformed, the strain of The Plague they're infected with leaves them with some of their humanity. Those who can curb their violent impulses are more or less tolerated — meaning they're treated as an inferior minority to be exploited at leisure as long as they don't get uppity.
  • Urban Jungle: The "Occult Horror" supplement has Lovecraft-like ghouls, they're described as mostly harmless if not directly threatened, after all their enemies will die and become food eventually.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: There are three different meanings to the term "ghoul". The foremost usage indicates living drinkers of vampire blood or vitae. Another usage, spelled "ghul", is for an independent creature that hunts humans for their flesh. The third usage of "ghul" is a term of insult against vampires used by mummies.
    • As per Ghouls: Fatal Addiction, ghouls are living beings who drink vitae, thereby gaining some of the powers of a vampire and some of the weaknesses. For instance, one perk is that the aging process stops, but only as long as a ghoul drinks vitae regularly. Would their supply stop, they revert to their true age, which is deadly for a ghoul past their natural lifespan. Another example exclusive to animal ghouls is that they grow beyond their species usual size, which also reverts without vitae. Most ghouls exist as carefully selected and devoted servants of the vampires that nourish them, whether those vampires are good masters or not, but there are also self-made ghouls who hunt vampires for their vitae like vampires do humans for blood. There are two notable variants of ghouls: fleshcrafted ghouls and revenants. Fleshcrafted ghouls belong to Clan Tzimisce, who use their powers to mold the ghouls' flesh to suit combat and not much else. The szlachta are the enhanced soldiers, the vozhd consist of many bodies fused together, and the fleshweld ghouls look like regular soldiers but can fuse together at will. Clan Tzimisce also is big on revenants; more than any other clan. Revenants are born ghouls bred from made ghouls over multiple generations. Revenants generate their own vitae and aren't dependent on a vampire, but are loyal servants still because that's the family business.
    • As per Tribebook: Silent Striders, ghuls are Arabian creatures that take the forms of beautiful women to trick travelers and eat them.
  • Vampire: The Requiem: There are two very different creatures to bear the designation "ghoul": ghouls and ghûls. The former are the drinkers of vampire blood or vitae, while the latter are effectively vampires by a different name. It's insinuated that ghouls are named after ghûls, but for what reason is yet to be shared.
    • As per Ghouls, ghouls are living beings who drink vitae, thereby gaining some of the powers of a vampire and some of the weaknesses. For instance, one perk is that the aging process stops, but only as long as a ghoul drinks vitae regularly. Would their supply stop, they revert to their true age, which is deadly for a ghoul past their natural lifespan. Another example exclusive to animal ghouls is that they grow beyond their species usual size, which also reverts without vitae. Most ghouls exist as carefully selected and devoted servants of the vampires that nourish them, whether those vampires are good masters or not, but there are also self-made ghouls who hunt vampires for their vitae like vampires do humans for blood. Plants are not immune to vitae addiction and ghouls created from them are called mandragora. They are rare, and so are born ghouls. The chances for conception and birth when one of the parents is a ghoul are slim and only marginally better odds are achieved when both parents are ghouls. Nonetheless, some ghoul families exist, mostly in the branch of Ordo Dracul. Born ghouls that don't partake in vitae age, but slower than humans do and they possess stronger bodies and the like, but they're also inherently more servile to vampires than made ghouls.
    • As per ''Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead', ghûls are a living equivalent to vampires that hail from the Middle East. They are cursed beings that come into existence in some cases when a human commits an act of evil without a hint of remorse. Though powerful, ghouls suffer ever-lasting insomnia and need to consume human flesh, be that fresh or rotting, to sustain themselves.
  • Warhammer:
    • Ghouls are the degenerate descendants of humans who were driven to cannibalism, typically during times of war or famine, and often hide in places such as catacombs and crypts. Though not supernatural creatures themselves, they have an innate connection to dark magic that allows vampires to easily dominate them as living minions.
    • The Strigoi vampire bloodline, often dubbed "Ghoul Kings", are twisted, hunched vampiric scavengers who skulk around graveyards feasting on the blood and flesh of the recently dead and prefer graveyards as their favored haunts. It's common for the Strigoi to form a closer bond with the ghouls than other vampires do, and they often lead large packs and colonies of the cannibalistic beings.
    • Crypt horrors are gigantic, heavily mutated ghouls that have been fed vampire blood, which functions as a Psycho Serum. Effectively living weapons, crypt horrors are used as shock troops against foes whose magic could otherwise repel true undead, such as the undead-abhorring Cult of Morr. The creation of crypt horrors is frowned upon by most vampires as a bastardization of the Blood Kiss, and so only the most desperate or degenerate of vampires are willing to utilize them.
    • Mournghouls are horrific beings created when people driven mad by cold and hunger in the far north of the world turn to cannibalism to survive, only to later succumb to the elements and rise as monstrous undead creatures driven by an endless, insatiable hunger that they can never relieve. Notably, this makes them very similar to the mythical Wendigo.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Ur-Ghuls are a type of aliens resembling pale, hunched humanoids with large heads and four sensory pits instead of eyes. They're often used by Dark Eldar Archons as bodyguards and enforcers.
    • Dark Heresy: Hullghasts are feral, bestial humanoids descended from human crews who became stranded on wrecked space vessels, ruined stations, or often enough on remote, rarely-visited decks of the Imperium's immense and centuries-old ships. They're hairless, all but eyeless, and have mouths lined with fangs, and eagerly prey on humans who stray into their realms.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar promotes Warhammer's ghouls to a full faction in the form of the Flesh-Eater Courts, and manages to make its predecessor's already creepy ghouls even creepier. They're not just degenerate humans now, they're also all extraordinarily insane, with a shared, contagious delusion that they are all part of a glorious kingdom of benevolent kings, chivalrous knights, and stalwart men-at-arms fighting terrifying monsters, instead of gibbering club-wielding cannibals slaughtering and devouring monsters, enemy warriors, and civilians alike.
    • The Flesh-Eater Courts, much like their Warhammer Fantasy predecessors, are ruled by vampiric Ghoul Kings, degenerate vampires who have become little more than bestial, ravening predators, but whose clouded minds still think themselves the noble kings and crusaders they once were. They're responsible for infecting cannibals with the infectious madness of the Courts, and for transforming them into ever more monstrous forms by feeding them their blood in reward for valiant deeds.
    • The ghouls of the Flesh-Eater Courts come in a much greater variety of types than simply the crypt ghouls and crypt horrors carried over from the original game. Variants include crypt ghasts, powerful creatures who were once heroes and wizards and now lead their lesser kin; crypt haunters, beasts elevated from crypt horrors by the blood of their kings and who see themselves as noble commanders leading scores of knights to battle; and crypt flayers, whose arms grow into batlike wings on drinking their king's blood and who can further transform into crypt infernals.

    Theatre 
  • The House That Jack Built by Margaret Hollingsworth: Jenny and Jack enjoy their Halloween the same way every year. She always dresses up as a witch, he always as a ghoul.

    Toys 
  • Monster in My Pocket: Ghoul is #37 of the original series. The pale and glassy-eyed creature hails from the Arabian deserts, where it died as a human and rose again as ghoul. It craves human flesh, which it prefers to obtain by digging up fresh corpses but doesn't mind hunting for. Tts ability to turn invisible by standing still is a most useful asset in either endeavor.

    Video Games 
  • Battle Brothers: Nachzehrer are a type of ghoulish creature that likes to eat corpses. They'll often do this when battling your company, eating either their own dead or yours and growing bigger and bigger and more powerful as they do so. At their biggest size they can swallow one of your men whole, and if you fail to kill the creature your comrade will die in its stomach.
  • Battle for Wesnoth: Distinct from "Walking Corpses", ghouls are larger, eat their dead opponents instead of zombifying them, and have poisonous claws. Depending on the campaign, they can be created either by cursing live humans or reanimating recently dead.
  • Boktai: Ghouls, also known as Boks, are fairly close to the traditional zombie. Only they squeak when they see you.
  • Castlevania: Ghouls usually are the stronger Palette Swaps of zombies.
    • Circle of the Moon: Ghouls are stronger palette swaps of zombies, looking like blue corpses in red robes. They're elementally strong against Darkness.
    • Dawn of Sorrow: Ghouls are stronger palette swaps of zombies, looking like blue corpses in purple torn pants. They are confirmed to be undead in the bestiary and feed on corpses. They're elementally strong against Dark. The rarest drop gained from these creatures is Demon Stomach, which turns spoiled and rotten food into nourishing sustenance. This goes well with the most common drop: Rotten Meat.
    • Curse of Darkness: There are three levels of ghouls, all stronger palette swaps of the three levels of zombies. They look like walking corpses in blue tunics and are only hinted to be undead due to a reference to their rotten teeth. Rather than dead flesh, their favored food is the warm flesh of the living. They're elementally strong against Ice and weak against Fire.
    • Portrait of Ruin: Ghouls are stronger palette swaps of zombies, looking like green corpses in red tunics that feed on corpses. They're elementally strong against Dark and weak against Slash, Fire, Holy, and Stone. There's also a much stronger variant with dark blue skin called the Ghoul King, seemingly a reference to "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe. They come out for battle if a number of ghouls are slain in quick succession and one must be dfeated as part of the optional quest "Defeat the Ghoul King".
    • Order of Ecclesia: Ghouls are stronger palette swaps of zombies, looking like red corpses in red torn pants. They are almost certainly alive, being defined as a spirit, and feed on corpses. They're elementally strong against Darkness and weak against Slash, Flame, Light, and Stone. The one potential drop ghouls can leave behind is Spoiled Milk.
    • Lords of Shadow: Ghouls look like demonic humanoids with large claws and a maw that can split open in the middle for extra volume. They are explicitly not undead and, for once, weaker than zombies.
    • Grimoire of Souls: Ghouls are stronger palette swaps of zombies, looking like blue corpses in purple robes. They are almost certainly alive, being defined as a spirit, and feed on corpses.
  • City of Heroes has Mutant Ghouls in the alternate dimension of Praetoria. They were created by Praetor Berry, who was trying to create a new variety of super-soldier to replace the legions of conscripted superhumans through the use of a genetic serum. However, the serum turns people into super-tough brutes instead, and they look like deformed monsters because the serum causes their altered endocrine systems to accelerate the build-up of stress damage. Because Berry is still curious about how the failures could be used, but the Praetorian leader, Emperor Cole doesn't want the monsters mucking up his perfect world, Praetor Berry dumps the Ghouls into the gigantic network of sewers and maintenance tunnels under the city, with the added benefit of the Ghouls constantly attacking and eating the Resistance group that occupies those same tunnels.
  • Daemon Summoner: Ghouls are akin to generic zombies (at one point you enter a graveyard where dozens of them push their coffins open to swarm you), are the first enemies encountered, and are rubbish mooks that dies easily despite appearing in large numbers every time.
  • Darkest Dungeon: Ghouls are about two heads taller than humans and go around dressed in loincloths with skull accessories. They have sharp claws, no pupils, and their muzzle is slightly elongated. Ghouls belong to the Unholy enemy type, which is usually but not always associated with the undead. Notably, ghouls are among the Unholy ones vulnerable to Bleed. They are on the very dangerous end of common enemies, found only in Veteran or Champion-level dungeons, and capable of the moves Rend, Skull Toss, and Howl.
  • Darkest Dungeon II: Ghouls are about a head taller than humans and go around dressed in loincloths with skull accessories. They have sharp claws, no pupils, and their muzzle looks skeletal. Ghouls, whether intentional or due to a bug, have no enemy type, but they are strongly associated with the Gaunt. Their moveset consists of Rend, Skull Toss, and Howl.
  • Dark Souls: The Infested Ghouls are hollows infected by the diseases in Blighttown. They are more aggressive than the hollows at the surface and are cannibalistic.
  • Die2Nite: People who have feasted on a human corpse to become half zombies. They suffer from decaying flesh and must feed on human meat to survive, but are immune to infections and retain all higher brain functions.
  • Dominions: Ghouls are a Late Age capitol-only unit for Ulm, cursed when they ate their companions during a siege. Their halberds destroy enemy sacred units and they cause instant fear by being seen.
  • Doodle God: A Ghoul is created by combining a Corpse and a Zombie, thereby defining a ghoul as a zombie that eats corpses. Alternatively, a Ghoul and a Zombie are jointly created by combining a Corpse and a Necromancer. If one combines a Ghoul with a Priest or with a Paladin, the Ghoul will be split into a Corpse and a Ghost.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Ghouls are people who have succumbed to the Darkspawn Taint. The Taint gradually eats away at their mind, body, and soul and allows them to hear the Song of the Old Gods. Most Ghouls spend the remainder of their twisted lives — which aren't very long thanks to the Taint — in slavery to the Darkspawn as manual labor and possibly food.
    • Some fans have described the Grey Wardens as effectively "high-functioning ghouls" since they've all drunk a mixture of darkspawn blood, Archdemon blood, and lyrium that gives them some minor darkspawn powers including the ability to detect the presence of tainted beings (though they can be detected in turn), and eventually kills them, drives them insane, and/or turns them into full ghouls or darkspawn themselves.
    • Animals can become ghouls as well; they tend to end up which much more extreme physical deformities then humanoid ghouls along with the usual insanity. Specific examples include Bereskaran and Blight Wolves.
  • Drakensang: Ghouls are living beings who behave like the ravenous undead version in most respects, being flesh-eating, crypt-dwelling primitives who feed on corpses and possess infectious bites as a result of their diet.
  • Dungeon Crawl Ghouls are one of the many playable races, as well as an occasionally encountered monster. As a race, they get all sorts of wonderful immunities and abilities, but they gain experience slowly, and they need to constantly eat meat, preferably rotten.
  • Dungeon Maker II: The Hidden War: Ghouls are animated human corpses. They carry daggers and often have an elemental affinity. Notably, they also occasionally spawn spirit monsters when destroyed.
  • Dungeons: Ghouls are an advanced version of zombies, being larger, having a Primal Stance and paler skin, tusks and the ability to bullrush enemies. They feed on corpses.
  • Fallout: "Ghoul" is short-hand for a "necrotic post-humans" that has been horribly scarred and burned by radiation, so much so that they resemble walking corpses, however, calling them a "zombie" is considered a Fantastic Slur. On the upside, they are not only Radiation-Immune Mutants, they seem to be sustained by it in some way as well; some ghoul characters have clear memories of pre-War America before the bombs dropped 200+ years ago. Many ghouls are fully sapient and no better or worse than anyone else in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, but so-called "feral ghouls" have lost all sense of their former self and animalistically attack any non-ghoul on sight, acting closer to typical Hollywood zombies. It's speculated in- and out of universe that prolonged radiation exposure accelerates a ghoul's mental degradation, hence why most ghouls found at the bottom of old irradiated bunkers are feral. Non-feral ghouls often face discrimination both due to their decomposing appearance and from the suspicion that they may one day turn feral. Ghoul sub-types that exist include Glowing Ones, those that have become so irradiated that their skin glows, constantly emit low levels of radiation, and can heal and even revive their lesser ghoul brethren, and Reavers, which have learned to make Improvised Armour and hurl chunks of radioactive gore with fearsome accuracy.
    • Fallout: New Vegas: Raul Tejada is over 200 years old and one of the first ghouls ever to come into being. Eternal life doesn't do him any favors as he suffers severe arthritis in his hands and knees and his eyes are covered in cataracts, to say nothing about living with the memories of losing his friends and loved ones. Whether or not the former two are all just in his head and what he can do to move on from them is the focus of his personal quest.
    • The Lonesome Road DLC add-on for New Vegas introduces a unique type of "super-ghoul" in the Marked Men, existing in the Divide and constituted of NCR and Legion soldiers that were there when the area's nuclear warheads exploded underground. They were ghoulified by the detonation, and in the present, are regularly flayed of all their skin by the howling sandstorms, but kept alive by the radiation (said in-universe to be so concentrated that even a "normal" ghoul would die). The one silver lining of their tormented, agonizing lives is that it blurred the line between enemies; the Marked Men are united in their shared hatred of the Divide, and those that trespass there.
    • Fallout 4: John Hancock became a ghoul through the use of an experimental drug he found while on one of his "wild tears". He got into heavier drug usage following his departure from Diamond City after Mayor Mc Donough (his brother) took over and had all the ghouls of the city thrown out. Hancock in turn became the mayor of the town of Goodneighbor even as a Functional Addict; ghouls are apparently naturally resistant to chems, but it's implied that Hancock was the same even before he was human.
  • Fate/Grand Order: Ghouls, Ghoul Gluttons, and Ghoul Prophets are Earth-attributed, demonic, undead, humanoid creatures with sharp claws, pointy ears, grey skin, and an elongated snout. There are also Elder Ghouls, which are hulking, blue, humanoid monstrosities with four arms and a head that's mostly a mouth. All four ghoul variants are encountered during the Salem quest and mainly drop night-weeping iron stakes.
  • Final Fantasy: Ghouls are the first really nasty undead encountered, who, like the ghouls of Dungeons & Dragons, have the ability to paralyze you. White Mages with the Harm spell are an absolute must for dealing with them, especially in groups, to minimize the danger of paralysis.
  • Frankie's Dungeon: The graveyard is where the ghouls are holed up. Ghouls are decaying undead creatures that reside underground unless they have reason to get up to the surface, like when they need to deal with an intruder. Some wield pickaxes, others throw knives, and some don't come up at all but reach out from the ground to grab at an intruder's legs and hold them still for the others to finish. Ghouls can be punched into submission, thrown knives at, and holy water also works to end them. At one spot in the graveyard resides a skeleton about 1.5x the size of the ghouls. It's unclear if this too is a ghoul, but their crown suggests a connection to the ghoul "commoners" and their flesh-less state my signify that they're the oldest undead in the graveyard. They attack by throwing bones and only electricity, in the form of lightning redirected, can take them down.
  • Guild Wars: Ghouls are semi-bestial undead melee-fighters of the Orrian undead horde. Resembling Warcraft ghouls, they are poisonous and have the annoying habit of spawning by burrowing up out of the ground right underneath you.
  • GU-L: The GU-L Project is one of several projects attempting to create powered superhumans. This project’s scientifically-created ghouls have red eyes and a taste for human flesh.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic:
    • Ghouls in Might and Magic: Heroes VI are the undead type, used as foot-soldiers or slaves by the Necropolis faction. Because becoming a ghoul robs an individual of their free will and sentience, and bars them from the reincarnation cycle that governs the world of Ashan, Necromancers usually create ghouls by transforming their enemies or condemned criminals, as a Fate Worse than Death-style punishment.
    • The ghoul was later retooled in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic as extremely fast and powerful servants of the necromancer Arantir. These ghouls could climb walls and were near-animalistic in nature.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: Rakghouls are intelligent humanoids transformed by the powers of the Muur Talisman into mindless, vicious monsters with no eyes, pronounced muzzles, hoof-like claws and a ravenous appetite for human flesh. They were first created by the Sith Lord Karness Muur as a way to quickly generate ferocious, deadly and easily controlled troops, and popped up to plague the galaxy numerous times in the following millennia.
  • Laplace no Ma: Ghouls are pale green humanoids about a head taller than humans and not in the habit of wearing clothes. They are hominivores that mostly reside in Weathertop Mansion, but a few can be found in Laplace Castle. At least one ghoul, Richard Upton Pickman, has human origins, having become a ghoul when he sought a new life in Weathertop Mansion.
  • Legend of the Cryptids: The word "ghoul" is in use for certain undead creatures, two possibly born creature, and it also sometimes is used in a general monster sense. On top of that, no ghoul looks like another, making it impossible to tell if there's such a thing as a ghoul or if multiple creatures carry the name. Those creatures certain to be undead are Ghoul Queen Ludslante, Ghoulish Annihilator, and Ghoulish Barbarian, while the two possibly born ghouls are Smitten Ghoul Girardo and Crimson Ghoul. Ludslante and Barbarian look the most human, followed by Girardo who is too tall for a human, while Annihilator and Crimson are skeletal demons. A recurring trait shared by the undead ghouls is that they cannot recall their time before death well or at all.
  • Magicka: Ghouls are Gollum-esque creatures that crawl around on all fours. There are also Lantern Ghouls who can set you on fire with their lanterns and explode upon death. They're also not technically undead, since they take damage from Arcane and are healed by Life like normal enemies.
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Mordor seems to suffer from a country-wide Ghûl infestation. They are a pestilent species of nocturnal, small, hairless bipedal things with glowing yellow eyes, long, dog-like skulls, and sharp teeth and claws. While weak individually, Ghûls come in large swarms to overwhelm foes, some spitting poison on their unfortunate prey. It's implied in the Appendices that the Ghûls are growing in number due to the dramatic increase in unburied corpses littering Mordor in the wake of Sauron's return and the spread of the Uruk-hai.
  • Myth: Ghouls are apelike living creatures. They're tribal mountain dwellers who are the ancient enemies of the Dwarves.
  • Nexus War: Ghouls are a type of minion animated by the Lich class. They are stronger and more vicious than normal zombies, and gain health from successful attacks.
  • Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Ghouls are ugly cowled humanoid creatures who only appear in a few areas. They have less health than regular mooks, but have longer range and deal more damage. The Encyclopedia describes them as being related to Vampires, but weaker and dumber, and they eat flesh instead of drinking blood.
  • Phoenotopia: Awakening: Reusing the Zombot model from Phoenotopia, ghouls are enemies found in the Scorched Lands and the Mul Caves. They're blue robots reminiscent in appearance of corpses and are either fully abled or red and broken from rust. Some ghouls have shut down and active ones sometimes pretend to be deactivated to get the drop on unsuspecting travellers. Upon defeat, they drop Golem Cores.
  • Pillars of Eternity: There are two variants of ghouls: guls and darguls. Both are fampyrs become due to a lack of consumed soul essence. Guls are more savage and animalistic, but darguls are more dangerous because they're aware of their own decay. One particularly upsetting sidequest in the first game entails rescuing a young girl from her dargul family members, who are aware enough to beg her to open the door, but decayed enough to want to eat her.
  • Planescape: Torment: Ghouls are one of the three types of undead that make up the Dead Nations, the others being skeletons and zombies. Ghouls have flesh like zombies and are natural undead like skeletons. Ever-present hunger for flesh and bone marrow marks the average ghoul's behavior, and only few, like the ghoul queen Acaste, can rise above it. Wanting what's best for her kind, Acaste does not agree with the Dead Nation's peaceful policies because it means less for the ghouls to eat. Their one sure source of food are the rats of the Warrens of Thought, with which the Dead Nation is at war.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Gimmighoul is a small Ghost-type Pokémon which hides in a treasure chest filled with coins, and can mind-control others to gather coins for it. Unlike most depictions of ghouls, Gimmighoul does not eat people, but instead has similarities with the ghoul's lesser-known traits of luring people astray and stealing coins. Prior to being revealed in Scarlet and Violet, Gimmighoul first appeared in Pokémon GO, running around without a chest in its so-called "Roaming Form".
  • Quest for Glory II: Ghouls only come out at night and can sap the hero's SP with melee attacks. In the AGD Fan Remake, they can cast spells, and their melee attacks also give them more MP if they connect.
  • Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers: The all-controlling mastermind behind the numerous thefts perpetuated by people dressed up as monsters is Rex Necros, whose own costumed alter ego is the Ghoul King in reference to Poe's poem "The Bells". It looks like a skeleton, about a head taller than the average human, wearing a gold crown and purple robe.
  • The Secret World: Ghouls are a race of bat-faced near-humanoids with hunched builds and leathery skin who make nests out of a highly-toxic mixture of rusted metal debris and their own shit. Ravenous carrion-eaters by nature, they can often be found congregating around battlefields, graveyards, rubbish dumps, and powerful magical sites in search of ripening corpses. Though seemingly crude and bestial, lore reveals that ghouls are actually borderline immortal, and those that survive the brutal years of early adulthood eventually grow more intelligent and more powerful: ghoul elders are among the most devious and potent of all their kind, capable of commanding armies into battle, wielding magic and even shapeshifting. How the ghouls came to be is still uncertain: the Dragon suggest that they are the degenerate remains of a highly-advanced civilization, subsisting on rotten meat in a desperate ritualized attempt to reclaim their former glory; on the other hand, the Jinn claim to have created them as a Servant Race in order to clean up the bodies generated by their ongoing feud with humanity.
  • Shadowrun Returns Hong Kong: Gaichu is a sufferer of the HMHVV III virus, which has robbed him of his eyesight, ability to digest anything other than hominid flesh, and standing as a Red Samurai. However, he was lucky because he was aware of what happened to him and had the focus to get through it with his psyche relatively intact. When you meet him, Gaichu is a Cultured Badass who cuts up mooks by the dozen in spite of being blind, debates philosophy and poetry, and makes delicious human ''sashimi''.
  • Terraria: Ghouls appear in Hardmode underground deserts with variants for Corruption, Crimson, and Hallow. They have a large mouth and long pointy ears, and they drop the Ancient Cloth when killed, which is used to craft the Ancient vanity set.
  • Tibia: Found among other types of undead, ghouls are fairly weak enemies. They are fleshy walking corpses and are notable for being among the weakest creatures capable of True Sight. Lack of animations in the game means they're never shown eating either living or dead, but on contact they sometimes cast "life drain" (not the case of Life Drain, it's just a damage type) and have a separate weak self-healing ability, which might be an primitive attempt from the developers to make a "ghoul eats you and heals itself" behavior.
  • Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: Taros' Dark Priest unit can resurrect corpses as ghouls, which will obey you to some extent but also have a tendency to wander randomly.
  • Total War: Warhammer: Crypt ghouls are a unit in the Vampire Counts roster; unlike the rest of the vampires' undead minions, they're technically living humans who have turned into degenerate, hunched and light-shunning beasts after generations spent living underground and eating the dead. They'll still crumble like undead units instead of routing like living units, however. There are also the crypt horrors, Elite Mooks resembling gigantic, deformed ghouls with complex, bony growths and spikes erupting from their spines.
  • Town of Salem: The Necromancer may resurrect one dead townie as a zombie to go out and kill a specified target once per night. The zombie perishes thereafter and no townie can be resurrected twice. These limitations do not exist in the ghoul, a creature the Necromancer can summon if they are the keeper of the Necronomicon. No corpse is needed and although only one ghoul can be summoned per night, a zombie and ghoul can be send out at the same time. Ghouls are astral visitors and therefore cannot be seen by Trackers, Lookouts, or Trappers. If they encounter a defense, they destroy or kill it, but in turn are destroyed themself.
  • Ultima Underworld: Ghouls are technically still alive, but they've turned into the standard flesh-eating-monster as a result of cannibalism. Their appearance has likewise become monstrous.
  • Vigil: The Longest Night : There are three kinds of ghouls, namely ghouls, ghoul warriors, and the Ghoul King. Homaging the design of the first Dungeons & Dragons ghoul, ghouls look like humans with injuries to their ribs and abdomen, a reptilian head, high ankles, and claws at the end of all four limbs. The only difference between ghouls and ghoul warriors is that the former fight bare-handed while the latter are armed with axes. The Ghoul King, who resides in Peak of Weep, is distinguished from his servants by his hulking mass of fat and muscle. He is armed with the Ritual Sceptre, an axe-type weapon forged from human bones.
  • Warcraft: Ghouls are a basic type of undead.
    • They are the basic foot soldiers of the Scourge in Warcraft III (who double as lumberjacks and eat corpses to replenish health) while the basic zombie is a very weak unit unavailable by normal means. In World of Warcraft, they are slightly less common but still one of the most encountered types of undead along with skeletons and classic zombies. In the second expansion, they were promoted to Deathknight pets with a few distinctive abilities, while their old role as worker/melee seems to have been taken over by Geists (one-eyed, crawling zombies).
    • It's mentioned in the background that Ghouls are Zombies that have "ascended" (descended?) into "true" undeath. Their bodies have mutated to make them more efficient killers and instead of being lumbering and mindless like Zombies they are aggressive and possess bestial cunning.
    • Of course, based on the classic definitions of the word, Forsaken characters qualify as ghouls, being undead that can eat corpses to heal. Unlike the ghouls of the series, the forsaken are free-willed, intelligent and can even be civilized, if resentful towards living beings. Making alliance with them means having a Token Evil Teammate.
  • War for the Overworld: Once a Crypt and the Soul Pyres within have been acquired, necromancers can raise corpses as ghouls to fight for them. Visually, ghouls are skeletons with a few shreds of soft tissue still clinging to them and a bound soul shining from within their chests. No more than two forces drive a ghoul: the will of a necromancer and, would one be lacking, instinctual hostility to anyone nearby, even other ghouls. Up to twenty ghouls can serve a necromancer at once if the latter is at their maximum level.
  • Warframe: Councilor Vay Hek creates a type of Grineer clone called a Ghoul. Every corner is cut in their development in favor of gestation speed. They are grown in the ground in the Plains of Eidolon, and rise from the ground to kill any unsuspecting victim.
  • The Witcher: Ghouls and alghouls are a necrophage subspecies that originate from the "Conjunction of the Spheres" that brought magic into the world, making them an existence outside the natural order. What exactly this means is unknown beyond the implication that the Witchers could theoretically hunt them to extinction with no adverse effects to the native ecology.
  • World of Horror: Ghouls are corpse-eating, animalistic, and undead creatures that look like humans except that their cheeks split open into a wider mouth. It makes them look like they've had a run in with the Scissor Woman, but no connection exists between the two creatures. One ghoul who looks like a female high schooler may be encountered in Downtown as an enemy. She scratches and she bites.
  • Persian Wars: There are three factions: Beduins, Amazons and Ghouls. Ghouls are somewhat anthropomorphic hyenas who like to throw feasts where human flesh is consumed, if human guests are present they are expected to become humanitarian (a rejection on consuming human flesh during a feast can make the Ghouls utmost offended). They are also very fond of tunnels, graveyard-resembling cities and purple lotuses.
  • Vampire Survivors — Tides of the Foscari: Rotting Ghouls show up in Abyss Foscari. The very first one is a boss fight, while the ones in later waves count as normal enemies. They look like purple humanoids dressed in burial shrouds. One Rotting Ghoul named Rottin'Ghoul is a playable character unlocked by either killing 6000 Rotting Ghouls or casting the secret menu spell "souloftheparty". Rottin'Ghoul's weapon of choice is Party Popper, which shoots confetti.

    Visual Novels 
  • Tsukihime: Ghouls are the first stage of a Dead Apostle's unlife, created when a vampire (either a Dead Apostle or a True Ancestor) injects their own blood into a victim while sucking their blood, and said victim possessing both the physical and spiritual fortitude to avoid becoming one of the mindless "living dead". The resulting creature rises from the grave after a few years as a walking corpse with the mental capacity of a wild animal. They must feed on other corpses to gradually regenerate its decaying flesh, which eventually will end with them becoming a full-fledged vampire.

    Webcomics 
  • Eldritch (2009): Vampires who don't drink enough blood degenerate into ghouls, eternally decaying immortals that instinctively seek out blood.
  • The Fan: A group of characters fight a ghoul in a side story. A later filler strip provides more information of ghouls in the comic's world.
  • El Joven Lovecraft: Glenn the Ghoul is the hero's pet. He looks mostly like a jackal.
  • Lovely Lovecraft: Judging by Pickman's appearance, ghouls are largely consistent with their portrayal in Lovecraft's original works: greenish or grayish clawed humanoids with dwellings in the Dreamlands. The main differences are that their faces are more humanoid than canine and their habit of wearing loincloths instead of going naked.
  • Sluggy Freelance: In the "Aylee" storyline, another dimension is overrun by creatures called ghouls, which are basically humans, but with claws, fangs, much lower intelligence, and a tendency to speak entirely in hisses. Oh, and they feed on human flesh, of course. It's unknown at first where they came from, and some initial suggestions are that they're some form of undead, or people mutated by a virus or something. Turns out they're actually alien/human hybrids, who are the other-dimensional version of Aylee's species.
  • Zebra Girl: One of the monster residents of Miscellaneous is Walter, a ghoul Zandra allows to raid the graveyard for food. He remains loyal to her after Bloofer's coup and uses his tunnels to pass messages and help her friends escape a vampire ambush.

    Web Original 
  • Less is Morgue: Ghouls like Riley Almanzor, their parents Carmen and Teddy, and their cousin Shaz Arcuni are born and mortal creatures. Though originally hailing from the Middle East, the species has migrated and Riley themself is a proud native of Tallahassee, Florida. Ghouls have pointy ears, large fangs, sharp claws, and most often grey skin, but green skin and grey-green gradient skin are possible too. Their main qualities are shapeshifting, voice mimicry, and a never-ending appetite for all manner of flesh and sometimes whatever else is available, like rubber. Human flesh is favored and ghouls aren't necessarily safe from other ghouls, even if they're family. Among themselves, ghouls may speak their own language, a hyena-like shrieking and chittering. Carmen Almanzor refuses to speak in anything but Ghoulish.
  • Longbox of the Damned: Moarte is a flesh-eating, undead ghoul who reviews horror comics and dresses up like an old-timey magician. It's implied he used to be human at one point, but how he became a ghoul in the first place is left vague. It's sometimes been implied he might not even be a ghoul at all, but rather demonic in origin.
  • Rogues (End Master): Ghouls are created by vampires. They have an obsessive loyalty to their creator, but smell terrible, have disgusting eating habits, and are not the brightest creatures around. Isabella believes that they are more trouble than they're worth.
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-6387 (A Ghoulish Tale) was a tall, translucent-skinned Monstrous Humanoid with hooves and huge clawed hands. It was shot and killed when a graveyard groundskeeper found it frantically digging up a fresh burial plot. It was later discovered the woman in the plot was Buried Alive.
  • Tales of MU: Ghouls are vicious undead predators who arise "when a waterlogged corpse is exposed to the light of the new moon", but unlike skeletons or zombies they can breed and form colonies. Other than that they fit the model of zombie ghouls.

    Western Animation 
  • Aladdin: The Series: Ayam Aghoul is, as his name reveals, a ghoul. He is a creature of the netherworld who came into existence as an undead. Physically, he is sickly pale, gaunt, and just too tall to be human. Gifted with powerful magic, Ayam is limited only by the matter that he can't be in the living world without a living being to either switch places with or to anchor him. For the longest time, his main interest in making the trip was to fetch himself wives whom after death would join his skeletal workforce, but after being thwarted in one such endeavor by Aladdin, it's about revenge.
  • Love, Death & Robots: The creatures referred to as ghouls in "The Secret War" are borderline demonic entities that were summoned in a disastrous attempt to bolster the Red Army's forces. The actual creatures are however fully fleshy and killable beings, and resemble eyeless, hairless and roughly humanoid creatures with elongated arms, quadrupedal gaits and long muzzles filled with fangs. They're highly aggressive carnivores, move in large swarms and live in immense warrens underground.
  • Slugterra: Ghoul slugs are pure evil (being corrupted by Dr. Blakk), and more powerful versions of their original species. Their vicious appearance inspires Eli to coin the name after seeing one for the first time.
  • Wakfu: The ghouls are of the "vampiric kind" (in fact, their first creator was a guy named Vampyro): they're created when Shadofang's ring absorbs their shadow, becoming things, black-skinned humanoids with a skull for a head that only do their master's bidding.
  • Winx Club: Ghouls are insect-like imps marginally bigger than cats. Despite having distinctive arms and legs that suggest a bipedal existence, like gorillas, they get around on all-fours. In "An Unexpected Event", a number of them assist the ogre Knut in his attack on Stella and later on Bloom and her family to recover the Ring of Solaria. Both times end in defeat and supposedly they and Knut cut ties hereafter.

     Real Life 
  • Algol is a three-star system in the Perseus constellation. Two of its stars regularly pass in front of each other, causing the brightness of the star system to fluctuate. It is this peculiar variability that got it named after the demon, as "Algol" means "The Ghoul". It is also known in English as the Demon Star and as part of the Perseus constellation the star system marks the location of the Gorgon's Head.

Alternative Title(s): Our Ghouls Are Different

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