Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls

Ghouls, revenants, et cetera, part 2

Another case from 1591 involves a nachzehrer, the name for revenants used in northern Germany. Known as the case of the shoemaker of Silesia, it starts off with a family trying to cover up a suicide. The truth gets out, though, because the corpse get out, and terrorises the citizens of Breslau for eight months. We'll pick it up when the townspeople are starting to get suspicious about the widow's claim that her husband had a stroke, when in fact he'd cut his own throat (or had he?):
In the meantime a ghost appeared now and again, in just such a form as the shoemaker had in his lifetime, and during the day as well as at night. It scared many people through its very form, awakened others with noises, oppressed others, and others it vexed on other ways, so that early in the morning one heard talk everywhere about the ghost. But the more the ghost appeared, the less the relatives wanted to celebrate. They went to the president of the court and said that too much credence was being placed in the people's unfounded rumors, the honorable man was being abused in his grave, and they found themselves obliged to take the matter to the kaiser. But now that the matter actually brought about a prohibition, the state of haunting became even worse. For the ghost was there right after sundown, and since no one was free of it, everyone looked around constantly for it. The ones most bothered were those who wanted to rest after heavy work; often it came to their bed, often it actually lay down in it and was like to smother the people. Indeed, it squeezed them so hard that-not without astonishment-people could see the marks left by its fingers, so that one could easily judge the so-called stroke. In this manner the people, who were fearful in any case, became yet more fearful, so they did not remain longer in their houses, but sought for more secure places. Most of them, not secure in their bedchamber, stayed in the rooms, after bringing many others in, so that their fear was dispersed by the crowd. Nonetheless, although they all waked with burning lights, the ghost came anyway. Often everyone saw it, but often just a few, of whom it always harassed some.

Eventually, they can't stand it, and they open the coffin, discovering that the shoemaker looks pretty damn good for a guy who's been dead eight months. In fact, the body showed zero signs of decomposition. Didn't even stink. So they take drastic action, placing the shoemaker's body on a bier where it was guarded day and nigh. Does this stop the hauntings? Hardly.

The exhumation did not help: the ghost, which they had hoped to banish by this means, caused still more unrest. The corpse was laid under the gallows, but this didn't help either, for the ghost then raged so cruelly that one cannot describe it. But now, as the ghost was raging so terribly and thereby causing great inconvenience to many citizens as well as his good friends, the widow went to the council and said that she would admit everything, they could deal with her former husband with all strictness. But in the short time from April 24 to May 7, the body had grown much fuller of flesh, which everyone could see who remembered how it had looked before. Whereupon, on the seventh, the council had the hangman take the corpse out of the other grave. Then its head was cut off, its hands and feet dismembered, after which the back was cut open and the heart taken out, which looked as good as that of a freshly slaughtered calf. Everything together was burned on a pyre built up of seven Klafters of wood and of many pitch rings. But so that no one would gather the ashes and the bones and keep them for sorcery, as tends to happen otherwise, the guards were not allowed to let anyone near. Early in the morning, when the stack of wood had burned up, the ashes, in a sack, were thrown into the flowing water, whereupon, through God's help, the ghost stayed away and was never seen again.

It's all here: the coverup after the death, the family slowly realising that the lie is going to come back to haunt them (literally), and at last the emergence of the truth. The shoemaker of Silesia is a blueprint for lots of revenants that came after him, because people never change, either before or after they die.
You'll often see people using the word "revenant" and "ghoul" as if they're the same. They're not. You got your different risen-from-the-dead varieties, and a ghoul is just one flavor. The categories are kind of fluid, get it? That's why, for us, even vampires could be considered a subcategory of revenant, because they're not demons and they're not spirits. Process of elimination. Plus, they go around in their own bodies, the ones they had back when they were ordinary folk who never craved the sweet taste of type O neg. we've tangled with them twice, and even let them go once-which didn't sit too well with some other hunters.
Anyway, on to the ghouls.