Halloween Question Time!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Hey, guys, what's the difference between a ghost and a ghoul?

I have my own thoughts, but I want to see what you folks say before I contaminate the data.

Comments

[cysfics.livejournal.com]

I always thought ghouls were more corporeal than ghosts.

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

A ghost is nothing but a spirit. A ghoul is a spirit who hasn't left the dead body yet, and eats flesh.

Just my idea though.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Ghouls are corporeal (and at least per AD&D, are flesh-eaters).

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Also per H.P. Lovecraft - see "Pickman's Model".

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

Ghouls eat the dead, ghosts are the dead. Ghouls have physical bodies, ghosts are corporeally challenged.

[marag.livejournal.com]

Without looking at anyone else's comments or googling, isn't a ghoul a flesh-eating thing rather than just a disembodied spirit?

And now I'm off to google :)

[willowistari.livejournal.com]

I always thought of ghouls as super badass ghosts in a physical body. A ghost is to a ghoul as a bobcat is to a tiger. :O

[mel-redcap.livejournal.com]

Ghosts: dead, incorporeal, fixed to one location, often not truly 'aware' but repeating their deaths or important memories.

Ghouls: EITHER sort-of zombies (dead, rotting, eat flesh) OR a race of living humanoids that look pretty gross and eat carrion.

[renshai.livejournal.com]

I figured the major difference was corporeality. If that's a word. Oh, and ghouls eat dead flesh - they're like zombies except sentient and malicious.

(unless there's just been a nuclear apocalypse, in which case ghouls are people exposed to too much radiation who had the misfortune not to die. Also, they occasionally go mad and eat people.)

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Of course either of us could just look it up, but:

Ghosts are the spirits of the deceased, bound to the living world usually by strong attachment or unfinished business.
Ghouls are either reanimated corpses (thus nearly the same as revenants) or monsters which merely resemble reanimated corpses, and which consume human flesh (in which case they're basically what people have in mind when they talk of zombies).

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Of course either of us could just look it up

True, but I'm curious about how it's understood by individuals, and how consistent it is. I like to see actual usage and personal connotation.

So, thanks for helping satisfy my curiosity!

[songfire3.livejournal.com]

All recent fuck-ups in mythology (courtesy of TVD) aside, I'm reasonably sure that ghosts can't actually eat you. Don't you have to be corporeal to consume something?

I'm going with Ghosts - Scary, Inconvenient, not able to eat you

Ghouls - body-eating, scary (also inconvienient)

What do you think?

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I am reading my way through The Dresden Files, so at the moment Ghosts are green and may be axeweilding and Ghouls are either dressed as little old ladies or attractive men and will try and eat your face

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

My go-to reference for this kind of question is the epic Scale of Undead Creatures thread on the Irritability webcomic forums (http://forum.icomix.com/showthread.php?t=65). Here are the appropriate entries from the most recent full list (http://forum.icomix.com/showthread.php?t=65&page=23):

15. Haunting ghosts including Hungry Ghosts, etc. (can be scary; sometimes try to do things like trick people into walking off cliffs; some types have death screams which most people nowadays have been rendered immune to due to listening to Marilyn Manson and whatnot)

12. Ghouls including Ghasts and Lacedons (like zombies, only faster and meaner)

A smaller number indicates a stronger undead - Jack O'Lanterns are the bottom, at #17. #1 is Liches.

[die-monster.livejournal.com]

ghosts are dead spirits of actual people, incorporeal but occasionally able to physically manipulate their surroundings or possess people. ghouls are their own species/monster that is bestial and eats the flesh and bones of the dead. think Pickman's Model or the Night People from Ringworld. vaguely canine, intelligent, sometimes used to be people who just fell in with a bad crowd, a la Pickman's Model again or The Graveyard Book. I like ghouls :B

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Ghosts are spirits of the dead, ghouls are soulless revenants that eat human flesh. Kind of like zombies but not, they like to hang out in graveyards and eat the newly buried.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

A ghost is just shiny air. A ghoul has... parts.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Ghosts are incorporeal, an echo of someone who's died, with no physical form. Details vary beyond that.

Ghouls are solid creatures who eat dead humans. Whether they're undead, daemons, or just some sort of carrion-feeding creatures varies with the source.

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

A ghost has a soul but no body.
A ghoul has a body but no soul.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

I think of ghouls like this picture except more fleshy and pulpy and kind of ethereally rotty. Like a really deformed messed-up-shaped human, turned corpse and rotted for about a week or two.

Ghosts I think of just Halloween costume white-sheet kinda things, except as incorporeal spirits.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Ghosts are spirits of the dead (or Christmas, sometimes).

Ghouls are cadaverous sub-humanoids who eat the flesh of the dead. Sometimes they're portrayed as sapient, sometimes animalistic, but rarely as slow, shambling, and mindless like Romero's zombies (which are otherwise more like ghouls than traditional voodoo zombies).

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Ghouls have some physicality to them. Ghosts don't.