Frightening supernatural creatures that supposedly eat corpses, or people who seem creepy or evil.
From Arabic 'ghul,' a demon from Arabian folklore believed to rob graves and eat the dead. The word entered English through tales like 'Arabian Nights' and became standard horror vocabulary.
Ghouls appear in folklore from many cultures that practice burial—they represent a very specific anxiety about respecting the dead, and where cultures practice cremation, ghouls are basically non-existent in their mythology.
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