Ghul is the name for a desert-dwelling shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena.  It lures unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them.  The creature also preys on young children, robs graves, and eats the dead.  Because of the latter habit, the word ghoul is sometimes used to refer to an ordinary human such as a grave robber, or to anyone who delights in the macabre.

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Ghouls are true cannibals but do not seem to prey on humanity only through necessity. Their appetite is nearly insatiable. Humanoid Ghouls are gaunt in the face with bulging yellowish eyes, and large mouths lined with rows of tiny razor-sharp teeth. They have long and lanky arms with clawed hands, and they walk on short, sinewy legs. Their skin is a thick and fibrous hide, usually of a light blue-gray color large. Ghouls often appear naked, or wearing the last vestiges of clothing they wore before they became a ghoul. They crave on mammalian flesh (preferably human) taken from the living or recently-dead. They can normally be found prowling cemeteries at night for the newly buried corpses.

They are primarily nocturnal, preferring the cover of night to satisfy their vast appetite for human flesh. When discovered, they will usually hiss and growl to ward off intruders and, if that fails, they will attempt a quick escape. Ghouls will only fight if they are cornered, or if they outnumber the living by at least three to one odds.

The ghoul is impervious to pain, does not age, needs no air to breathe, and is immune to drugs, poisons, and gases. Guns and knives can wound these creatures, but they will not destroy them, as the ghoul possesses remarkable regenerative powers, enabling them to withstand large caliber weapons and even small explosives. Ghoul's are extremely agile and fast and  use their large claws for digging and cutting through flesh.

Weaknesses The ghoul is a nocturnal creature, and is repelled by sunlight and artificial light. Although neither cause them any real harm, their speed and strength can be drastically reduced when subjecting them to daylight, making them easier to destroy. Ghouls are highly susceptible to fire, and this is the best way to destroy these fiends.

Sightings In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with many heads an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water turned at once to blood "and so continues unto this day." The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

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