Supernatural Creatures and Haunted Places: True Spine chilling stories.

Ghouls: Who Are They?

There was once upon a time in Arab when a girl was collecting logs in a forest. The sky was gloomy and it was already nighttime. People were performing their evening prayers far away in a Baghdad mosque. The girl became aware that someone was observing her. She turned around to see a woman's silhouette standing in the shadows. She resembled her mother.

"Ammijan? Is that you?", the girl asked

The woman said nothing but beckoned her to approach. The little girl dashed to her mother, completely unconscious of the impending horror she was about to face. As she got closer, she realized she was staring at a pair of black, gloomy sockets instead of her mother's hazel brown eyes. The terrified girl shrieked.

"Ghūl! Ghūl! Save me, someone!".

The woman caught hold of the shrieking girl and everything plunged into darkness.

Ghoul is a hideous humanoid or demon-like monster that originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion and is associated with graveyards and the eating of human flesh.

Demonic beings are said to live in burial sites and other deserted places, according to folklore. Ghouls were thought to be the offspring of Iblis, the ruler of darkness in Islam, and belonged to a devilish class of jinn (spirits) in ancient Arabic folklore. They could change their appearance at any time.

The ghūl, which was considered feminine by the ancients, was sometimes confused with the sílā, which was also female; the sílā, however, was a witch like kind of jinn with an unchangeable shape. They roamed the desert, frequently disguised as a beautiful woman, attempting to distract visitors and, if successful, killing and eating them. A person's only protection against a ghoul was to kill it with one blow; a second blow would merely bring it back to life.

The ghoul featured in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, particularly that of Ta'abbaa Sharran, as a vivid figure in the Bedouin imagination. It was quickly integrated into an ancient Berber tradition abounding in demons and weird creatures in North Africa. The ghoul is a term used by the modern Arabs to describe a human or demonic cannibal, and it is widely used to scare rebellious youngsters.

The ghoul, a form of demonic genie, was a part of Arab beliefs long before Islam and was a perceived reality for most people living in Arabia. The ghoul was depicted as a repulsive human monster that inhabited the desert and solitary regions in order to deceive tourists by lighting a fire and leading them astray across numerous historical and religious times. This beast was claimed to have killed travellers in some circumstances.

Ghouls are cannibalistic and carnivorous humanoid species that can only eat the flesh of humans and other ghouls. They are as near to humans as possible: they have the same physical appearance, intelligence, and anatomy as humans, with the exception of their, mindset, and food.

Ghouls cannot eat normal food, although they can drink pure water. If they try to eat regular food, they will experience a strong desire to puke. It will impair their physical condition if they are coerced or pressured to digest such stuff. Ghouls don't need to eat as much as humans do in the near run. They can live for one or two months if they just eat one body.

Ghouls are one of the most inconsistently depicted creatures in fiction, partly because the terms "ghoul" and "ghoulish" are vaguely defined terms that can refer to anything or anyone interested in the macabre and morbid, allowing authors to name almost any cannibalistic, flesh-eating, or simply creepy monster after them. Ghouls have become the poster-children for various flesh-hungry offshoots, such as Zombies, Wendigos, and Vampires, as time has passed.

If ghouls are forced to eat normal food, their physical condition will deteriorate, making them vulnerable to man-made tools such as guns, knives, and swords. They will die if they sustain life-threatening or critical injuries that kill them before they have a chance to heal.

A ghoul can also be killed by decapitation, although what weapon or object is used remains a mystery. Some Ghouls, however, are capable of surviving this, and they can reattach their heads even after they have been chopped off and have sustained damage that would kill an ordinary ghoul.

The earliest extant literature that includes ghouls is One Thousand and One Nights, and many of the stories in that collection involve or reference ghouls. Ghouls are mentioned in Vathek, an Arabian Gothic novel. Ghouls are shown as faithful troops of the White Witch in the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

Ghouls are relatively innocuous monsters who reside in the homes of wizards in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novel, creating loud noises and occasionally groaning. Ghoul, a Netflix original series set in India in a dystopian future when fascism reigns supreme, follows the interrogation of a feared terrorist Ali Saeed in a secret government internment camp, which sets off a chain of terrifying and supernatural occurrences.