WEBVTT - From the Vault: Ghoul 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.880 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:11.000 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday. 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.480 The vault hangs open and we journey inside. But this 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:16.600 time is it so much a vault or is it 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.560 more a crypt? Is it a burial vault full of 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.560 grave flesh? Well, you know how the Google's operate, Joe. 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:28.000 The ghouls are always a tunneling between one subdraine in 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:30.280 structure in the next. So they might have began in 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.479 the catacombs, they might have began in a tomb, but 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.920 they ended up burrowing their way into the Stuff to 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:37.120 Blow Your Mind Vault at some point, and now they 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:39.480 pretty much have the run of the place. This episode 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:44.479 was originally published on October. It was an October classic 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:46.640 from a few years ago. So we hope you enjoy 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:54.200 our exploration of the ghoul. Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:54.240 --> 0:01:03.120 Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. A man 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.400 he had known in Boston, a painter of strange pictures 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.760 with a secret studio and an ancient and unhallowed alley 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.080 near a graveyard, had actually made friends with the ghouls 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.399 and had taught him to understand the simpler part of 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:22.160 their disgusting meeping and glibbering for all their laughter, ghouls 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.520 or a dull lock. Hunger is the fire in which 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.480 they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.000 power over men or for knowledge of the gods, and 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:37.800 a craze mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:51.000 a slag of anger and lust. Hey, welcome to stuff 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:52.760 to bow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.480 I'm Joe McCormick. And those were two quick readings, the 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.840 first from HP Lovecrafts The dream Quest of Unknown Cat 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.240 and the second from Brian McNaughton's The Throne of Bones 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.760 Um available via Wildside Press. And that, by the way, 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.440 is not only one of my favorite publications that deal 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.160 with Google's it's probably one of my favorite books of 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.600 all time. Now do you love it more than the 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.560 D and D Monster Manual? Well, the two different types 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:22.799 of reeds there, I mean, I do love the Monster 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:29.239 Manual for my sort of catalog oriented monster consideration. And indeed, 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.960 guls have have long had a cherished role in the 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.120 Dungeons and Dragons setting. So what is throwing of Bones about? 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:38.520 Throwing of bones is a it's a collection of short 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.600 stories in one central novella set in a dark fantasy 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:48.760 setting that's vaguely Roman, vaguely tolkien Esque, I guess. But 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.000 but what has more in common with the works of 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.920 say Clark, Ashton Smith and some of the weird dark 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.880 fantasy writers of an earlier time. Oh, I should get 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.840 into that, because I've recently discovered that I really dig 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.519 Roman themes in in dark literature, because on your and 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.480 Christians recommendation, I read The Great God Pan, which has 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.760 that that fantastic reference to the statues from ancient Rome 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.959 of the you know, the horrific visage of the goat, 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.079 the old goat skin. Yeah. Well, one of the things 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.760 I love about McNaughton's work is that he brings this 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:26.120 dark seriousness of weird fiction and horror into his writing. 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:31.560 But there's also this gallows humor. There's this uh, especially 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.800 prominent with the ghouls, because the ghoul is this creature 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.360 that in It's in the versions that I like the most. 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:41.960 They're they're gross, they're evil, they're sly, but they're also 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.880 a little mischievous. They also have this weird, black sense 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.320 of humor about them. Uh, And I feel like mcnalton. 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.080 It really brings that to life. Well, if you haven't 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:55.280 figured it out by now, we're going to be talking 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:58.360 about ghoules today, and sadly, I think this is going 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.000 to have to be our final oct Ober podcast. It 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.080 has been a great run this month of monsters and 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.480 demons and madness. You're gonna have to sober up in 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:08.520 the next episode a little bit and get back on 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:12.160 track for the holidays. But yeah, it's been a fun right, Okay, 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.520 So Google's I think these days, when the average person 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.840 is presented with the concept of a Google, what kind 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.120 of descriptive features are you're going to get? I would 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:27.039 say they'd be very generic. I mean, what is a 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.680 ghoul to us today? It's just some kind of vaguely 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.520 monstrous creature. In fact, you could even think of Google 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.000 as a broader term into which other monsters fit, like 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.960 the vampire is a type of Google. Well, the word 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:42.880 is used that way a lot. I have to admit 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.000 that I have to bite my tongue to keep from 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.760 correcting people when someone refers to a non Google as 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:51.240 a Google. I want to say, no, that's that's technically 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:53.520 not a Google. That is just a ghost that is 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.600 somebody in a vampire costume. A google is a specific 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:01.200 thing and you have to use the um appropriately. Yeah, 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.279 well I brought that up specifically to provoke you. So Robert, 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.680 come on, tell me, what is a ghoul really? All right? 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.560 So it's gonna it's gonna vary, and we're gonna get 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.120 it before we end up at discussing actual science behind 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.760 the google. So yes, that is coming in the second half. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.400 We're going to discuss the ancient roots and sort of 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.080 the modern fictional roots. But in most cases, you're looking 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.440 at this creature that might be unliving or maybe it's 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:26.680 just living on the margins of what we think of 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:31.560 as as an actual appropriate member of the natural world. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.920 It's very much the monster as outsider, a motif very 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.479 much so. Yeah, making its home graveyards and places of 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:44.800 of of loss and death, and it feasts upon human remains. 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:49.719 So it is essentially a cannibalistic scavenger and scavenger in 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:52.240 the true sense, and that it's sort of dwells at 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.480 the edges of the camp. You know, you have civilization 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.040 as the encampment where our activity dwells. You don't find 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:01.159 the ghoul in the mid of the city, you find 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:06.320 the goal trailing behind you, feasting on what you leave behind. Right, Yeah, 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.560 I think in some cases you have Googles that are 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.600 following armies. I always love that motif and would love 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.240 to see that that that used more, especially in the 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:17.440 fantasy settings. You have some some sort of army going 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:19.279 out to fight a battle. If they always do well, 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.120 then surely there are camp followers and there are Googles 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.919 right behind them. Yeah, the other type of camp follower. 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:27.919 But based on what we've said so far, it should 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:29.760 be clear that the concept of the goal has not 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.760 remained static over time. I mean it's not even fully unified. Today. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.440 You've got this generic goal and then you've got Robert's 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:40.919 very specific goal. How has the ghoul changed over time? 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.240 And where did the idea originally come from? All right, well, 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.120 let's go back to the beginnings then, if not the 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.240 beginning of the universe, because we have to look at 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:57.000 pre Islamic Arabic mythology. This mythology is so cool and 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.640 I was so delighted to read it, so our main 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:02.520 sore son. This is a paper by Ahmed al Rawi 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.839 called the Mythical Ghoul and Arabic Culture and this was 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.200 a really fun read. Yes it was. This was one 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.920 of my key sources on the how stuff Works article 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.800 How ghoules work. Um, yeah, and he gets into the 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:18.119 you know, just the original root of the word word 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.800 for starters, which is from the Arabic ghoule or g 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:25.480 h u l that may stem from Galu, which is 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.480 the name of an ancient demon correct and the galou 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.120 played a role in some of their their key literature 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.600 and mythology, one of them being the death and rebirth 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:39.680 mythology of the god Demuzi or the Demuzi is sort 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.000 of equal to Tamus, which is another god of the 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.040 ancient Middle East. But the death and rebirth mythology corresponds 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.920 to the growth and harvest cycle of food crops. So 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.040 there you can see another one of the ways that 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.920 that our mythology ties into our way of life, the 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:56.800 way we make a living in our and our basic 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:01.000 material concerns informed the stories we tell about, you know, 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:03.679 the creation of the world and the behavior of the gods. 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.800 And and there you've got just like the crops die 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.080 every year and then are reborn later in the next 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.720 season or regrow out of you know, the dead fields 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:17.360 of the previous harvest. You've got the god Demuzi or Tamuse, 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.760 who's a vegetation god, who is abducted and taken down 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.200 into the realm of death. And who is the abductor 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.800 of Demuzi or Tamus. It's the Galu, the demon right. 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:31.600 And this is fascinating too, because we see the google 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:36.280 tied into some of our our earliest and most powerful 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.360 myths concerning the flow of the seasons. Totally. Yeah, But 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.720 following its role in the official mythology of of ancient 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:46.240 Babylon and ancient Mesopotamia, you have this idea of the 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:51.319 ghoule emerging as more of a ground level folklore creature. 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:54.000 You know that that it's mentioned all in all of 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:58.280 the standard mythology and folk tales and superstitions of the 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.880 average person living in ther be In Peninsula, and Arabic 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.400 scholars have actually documented the way in which this monster 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:11.080 emerged in the thinking of the people. Yeah, Arabic scholars 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.680 of the eighth, ninth, and ten centuries, they compiled various 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:17.800 Bedouin folk tales involving the Gooules, and many of these 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.240 found their way into the collection The Thousand and One 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.120 Nights and This is key because translations of this book 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.680 of course traveled to Europe in the eighteenth century, as 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:29.480 did the notion with the ghoul, and this is where, 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.040 as we'll get into later, we see the google emerge 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.960 in Western culture and in the in eventually in fictional 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.160 creations of the late eighteenth century and most importantly the 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.160 nineteentie century. Yeah, so I get the feeling it's more 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:47.040 the European grave ghoul that ends up becoming the D 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.040 and D monster. Yes, um, though you do see at times, 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.520 say the modern motifs kind of reaching back into into 0:09:55.520 --> 0:10:00.199 Arabic folklore for for some additional depth. Yeah. I here 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.960 we should mention a couple of these pre Islamic ghoul 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.959 accounts because they are fascinating. So one of the stories 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.400 that al Rawi tells in his paper is that it's 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.240 recounted according to the scholar al Masudi, and he writes 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:20.240 the following. Arabs before Islam believed that when God created 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.640 genies from the gusts of fire, he made from this 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:27.920 type of fire their female part, but one of their 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:32.040 eggs was split into hince the kutrube, which looked like 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.320 a cat, was created. As for the devils. They came 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.880 from another egg and settled in the seas. Other evil 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.800 creatures such as the marid inhabited the islands, The ghoul 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.720 resided in the wilderness, and the siloi dwelt in the 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:50.400 lavatories and waste areas, and the hamma lived in the 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:52.880 air in the form of a flying snake. So these 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.800 are some awesome monsters that are being described here. I 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.280 love the idea of a lavatory and waste area monster 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.040 because that's again it's a it's a wonderful place for 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.920 a haunting. That's a wonderful borderland. Right. Well, it's a 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.079 place where you're vulnerable and usually where you're isolated, right 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.160 where do you have to go off by yourself? Yeah, 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.360 and that's where you might encounter the supernatural. Um. But then, 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:19.280 of course there is another source that says that quote. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.040 The devils wanted to eaves drop on heaven, so God 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.920 threw meteors at them, whereupon some were burnt, fell into 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.640 the sea and later turned into crocodiles, while others dropped 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.360 onto the ground and changed into ghouls. So there you've 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:36.960 got a ghoule origin and a crocodile origin at the 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:41.280 same time. They're essentially siblings um and plenty of the 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.120 other stories also depict the ghoul as a shape shifter 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.240 that's able to disguise its appearance. Uh. This appears to 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.200 be a common feature. Other common features are that the 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:57.160 traditional Arabic ghoul is often female in appearance. And I 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.680 thought this was interesting. It can be killed with a 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.720 good chopped from a sword. And if I'm reading this right, 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.120 it sort of makes it different from the vampire, the werewolf, 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.360 and these other monsters which can often only be killed 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.760 through magically appropriate means, like you have to have the 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.200 you know, the one magic bullet that is known to 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.040 kill the monster, as to the silver or holy water 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.040 steaked through the heart or or whatever it is for 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.840 that monster. Individually, the ghoul can be killed by violence, 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.240 but it does have to be a very mighty and 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.920 strategic form of violence because an interesting development on the 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.199 myth is that, according to some versions, the ghoul would 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:40.560 only die if you hit it with one mighty blow 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.319 with a sword, because if you hit it more than once, 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.240 then you would have to hit it a thousand times 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.320 more before it would die. Yeah, that's so you had 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:53.520 to time your one strike, you know, you had to 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.280 get the one really good one in well, that could 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:58.760 I could see that making sense In terms of the creature. 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:00.400 You sort of have to get that surprise is hit in. 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.280 You've got to get that. To put in D n 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.640 D terms, you have to get that that that surprise 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.040 attack bonus, right, and if you don't, then you're gonna 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.559 have to apply a lot of smaller attacks to win. 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:12.880 I've also read and this would of course be post 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:19.000 Islamic interpretations, but in these interpretations you could also at 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.640 least drive a Google away with readings from the Koran. Yeah, 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:23.760 that definitely comes up later where you can use the 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.920 holy or spiritual power of of a of a good 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:31.240 spiritual force by like saying the name of Allah or 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.160 by quoting from the Koran, and that will tend to 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.079 drive it into remission. Essentially, it will say, no, why 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:40.160 do you do this to me? But you can also 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.040 whack it with the sword as long as you whack 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:47.640 it really good. Just once. Now, speaking of Islamic traditions, 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:51.600 you're probably wondering, what did Mohammed have to say about Google's. Well, 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.800 Mohammed's words on the existence of Google's vary depending on 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:57.920 which text you read. So the Koran does not mention 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.560 them at all. That's important to stress here. Karan does 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:05.480 mention gin but not not ghoules. Yes, but contested references 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:07.720 do pop up in the head Eat that's a book 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.640 of Mohammed's attributed acts and sayings. Yeah, so they're they're 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:16.760 definitely conflicting bits of scholarship about what Mohammed had to 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:20.800 say about ghoules. If anything, but to quote, I'll RAWI 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:23.680 again on the people who do say that the prophet 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:26.880 had something to say about ghouls. What he said was quote, 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.720 Ghouls are the demons or enchantresses of genies that hurt 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.320 human beings by eating or spoiling their food, or by 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.760 frightening travelers when they're in the wilderness, and in order 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.040 to avoid their harm, one can recite a verse from 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.200 the Holy Koran or call for prayer, since they hate 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.640 any reference to God. And that first part mentioned something 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.240 about the wilderness. This is something that pops up again 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.360 and again in the literature about the about the ghouls. 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.560 That you know these ancient ghoul folk tales is you 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.200 don't expect to encounter them in the middle of civilization. 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.200 There you counter them on the road in the wilderness. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.920 Between places they're in that intermediary world. I like to 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.400 how this mentions um eating and spoiling of food. It's 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:14.960 tied uh inherently to our survival via consumption of food 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.920 and the potential violation of that food, and and and 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.680 just into general um ideas of purity and cleanliness in 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.840 our food. Yeah, well, I mean, you certainly don't want 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:29.880 something that eats corpse flesh getting into your pantry, right, Yeah, 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:32.400 they're just going to tear it out in there, obviously. 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.840 But you may have noticed that so far there hasn't 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.360 been a whole lot, if anything, about the eating of 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:39.920 corpse flesh. That's right, And that's something that we'll get 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.360 into in a bit now. In some accounts, Mohammed dismisses 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.200 ghouls as completely non existent. In others, he gives advice 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:51.520 on banishing them. His companion, though, abou Asada al Sadi, 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:54.720 takes a more balanced approach, and he states that ghoules 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.760 lived in the pre Islamic past, but that Allah no 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:02.200 longer permits them to exist. Meanwhile, there's also a legend 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.840 that umar have been I'll caught him. Another of Mohammed's 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.200 companions put a google to the sword on the road 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:11.520 to Syria. Yeah, this was great. So the story goes 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.120 a female ghoul stops him on the road and asks 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.560 him where are you going, and Umar says it is 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.560 none of her business, and then she does the move 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.120 from the Exorcist where she turns her head all the 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.760 way around. That's really part of the story. It said that. Uh, 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.160 and then he splits her down the middle with the sword. Alright, 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.120 so single I'm guessing single blow there, right, he does it, right, 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:34.040 he hits her with the one blow. But then later 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.920 he comes back and the body is gone. So either 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.760 she survived or the other googles came and took her 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:46.120 body away, or more some sort of magical disappearance. Yeah. So, 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.400 so if we consider the google that eats human flesh 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:53.240 a kind of perversion of the idea of corpse cannibalism, 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.040 what is the ghoul that eats ghoul flesh? It's like 0:16:56.160 --> 0:17:00.520 meta cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and it's only ties 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:04.040 in with with how we see scavengers behave towards their 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:07.600 own sometimes. And that's that's key here, because although ghouls 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:11.919 were sometimes associated with scavenging hyenas in a in Arabic test, 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.560 they really don't have this grave ghoul association where they're 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.240 going to come and take your dead loved ones from 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.640 the graveyard after the funeral and eat their corpses. Yeah. 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.800 This particular detail, according to al Rawi, seems to emerge 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.160 from Anton Galan's French translation of The Thousand and One 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:29.960 Nights in the early eighteenth century. So not only did 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:34.200 Ghalan take liberties in his translation, he even introduced and 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:39.399 allegedly created a female character named Amina who prefers the 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.119 company of graveyard ghouls to that of her new husband. Yeah. 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.080 So this and you can see this definitely appealing to 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:48.760 some of the Gothics andsibilities of the time in Europe. Right, 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:53.439 But this inaccurate translation was hugely influential in the Western 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:57.720 world and and in you know, informing their the Western 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.359 worlds understanding of the Middle East, so inspiring the work 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:05.320 of William Beckford, the eighteenth century author of the Arabian 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:10.440 theme novel thatfic, and the folkloric studies of of another 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:15.320 individual named Sabine Baring Gould. So we see. So that's interesting, 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:17.960 and you have this rich tradition of ghouls within in 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:23.639 Arabic traditions. Just some wonderful details. They're already a fabulous creature, 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.560 but then it gets tweaked a little bit, either in 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:31.720 you know, mistranslation or creative embellishment of the myth as 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:37.600 it translates into European um fiction and folklore and European 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.520 understandings of the Middle East. Yeah, it's fascinating, this evolution 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.400 of the ghoul meme, because if you trace the ancient 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:48.240 pre Islamic Arabic ghoul up through the way the grave 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:52.479 ghoul comes to be understood in European culture. What's the 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:56.280 common thread there? I mean, you've seen the evolution basically 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.960 of a word, the word ghoul, But is there a 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.439 common themeat dick element that remains the same throughout it 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:07.320 despite just general monstrousness or malevolence. Yeah, I think it works. 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.159 Like I feel like that the google as we have 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.800 seen it and discussed it in in pre European traditions. 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.159 I feel like it's able to take on the mantle 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.960 of of corpse eating rather rather honestly like it adds 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.359 another dimension to it and certainly tweaks it in a 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:28.120 new direction, but not in a direction that feels out 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:32.000 of character with its origins. Okay, I can accept that. Now, 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.199 if we look elsewhere in the world, do we find 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.760 myths of creatures that are similar to the ghoul we do? Uh? Yeah. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.560 It's definitely worth noting that even if the original Arabic 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.520 ghouls didn't eat corpses, they have peers in Asian folk 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:52.160 tales that do so. In the Tamil mythology of India, 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.879 they have the shaggy haired creatures known as the pay 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.000 who sought out human battle so as to lap blood 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.360 from the open women of the dying um. Still, other 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:05.560 ghoules emerge in the eighth century. In the eighth century 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.400 Tibetan Book of the Dead, which details the Buddhist journey 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:16.480 through death and into the realms beyond death, the reincarnation um. Here, 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.400 in the dream like state known as Bardo, the departed 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.199 soul encounters that the the Pisach ghouls, and these are 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:28.200 fierce female beings with be steel heads and an appetite 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.160 for bones and viscera. That's interesting. Now, another thing that 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.919 we see commonly here is that in these early visions, 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:39.320 the ghouls are very often female like, explicitly described as 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.320 female and appearance, whereas the ghouls that I think we 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:46.080 think of today tend to be either sort of um 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:51.840 androgyni is tending towards masculine or or fully male. Yeah. Yeah, 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.359 I think there is a definite tendency to to generate 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.400 a masculine idea of the ghoule in Western culture, though 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:02.359 though some of my favorite books on the matter have 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.960 definitely have female googles. Now. In the conclusion of his 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.919 article uh al Rawi, he says that the ghoules may 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.000 have been inspired just by you know, things that people 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:17.720 actually did encounter in reality, like people with various birth defects. Yeah, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:21.560 particularly things like cleft pal at cleft lip, distortions of 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:26.439 the mouth, and facial features you know, which sadly do 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:31.760 um can and do interfere in our interpretation of of 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.040 of an individual substance. Yeah. I think this is a 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.120 common feature you see in the origins of monster legends. 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.679 This is often hypothesized that we would just see someone 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:45.119 that uh that had you know, some kind of atypical 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:49.639 way of looking, and that we would interpret that as well, 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:52.359 you know, this person is cursed or evil or there 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:54.520 there's something wrong with them. They didn't have the light 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:56.879 of modern medical science to just say no, they're a 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.280 person like anybody else. Yeah, very much in keeping with 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.960 the change link to editions that you find in Europe, 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:04.600 right that surely that this year your actual child was 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.560 taken away by fairies and this is the goblin that's 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.480 left in in its place. YEA. Now, on top of that, 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.240 Victorian adventure and Middle Eastern scholar and just all around 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:19.359 fascinating individual. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. Uh. He explained 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:23.359 the Arabic ghoule as a mythical creature that embodies human 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:28.600 fears and tampoos concerning graveyards check, desert wastes check and 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.840 cannibalism and specifically survival cannibalism. If we're to tie it 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.000 into other mid cycles that such as the Wind to Go, 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:39.800 that did definitely have such a strong resonant place in 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:43.560 uh in the Native peoples of North America, because it's 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:46.800 tied with that fear of survival cannibalism as an a 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.920 as a possible necessity during harsh winters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:55.760 I can see a very strong sort of theme emerging, 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:57.960 which is that all of these disparate things are sort 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:02.200 of united by the sense that they're playing on fears 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:05.760 of the periphery, the edges, the outside, and the taboo, 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:16.800 as as many monsters do. Yes, So, as previously mentioned, 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.639 thousand and one Night serves as this cultural bridge, and 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:22.560 it's kind of a slightly distorted cultural bridge by which 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:27.760 Middle Eastern ghoules migrate into Western fictional traditions. And in 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.720 addition to the above examples, in the original Arabic text, 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.680 the ghouls of thousand and one Nights are also vile 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:38.760 tricksters and depending on again those translations, they may be 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:43.120 flesh eaters. They kidnapped victims, They lure lustful me into 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:45.840 their doom by taking on the guys of beautiful women. 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.879