Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday.
Speaker 1: The vault hangs open and we journey inside. But this
Speaker 1: time is it so much a vault or is it
Speaker 1: more a crypt? Is it a burial vault full of
Speaker 1: grave flesh? Well, you know how the Google's operate, Joe.
Speaker 1: The ghouls are always a tunneling between one subdraine in
Speaker 1: structure in the next. So they might have began in
Speaker 1: the catacombs, they might have began in a tomb, but
Speaker 1: they ended up burrowing their way into the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind Vault at some point, and now they
Speaker 1: pretty much have the run of the place. This episode
Speaker 1: was originally published on October. It was an October classic
Speaker 1: from a few years ago. So we hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: our exploration of the ghoul. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. A man
Speaker 1: he had known in Boston, a painter of strange pictures
Speaker 1: with a secret studio and an ancient and unhallowed alley
Speaker 1: near a graveyard, had actually made friends with the ghouls
Speaker 1: and had taught him to understand the simpler part of
Speaker 1: their disgusting meeping and glibbering for all their laughter, ghouls
Speaker 1: or a dull lock. Hunger is the fire in which
Speaker 1: they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for
Speaker 1: power over men or for knowledge of the gods, and
Speaker 1: a craze mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only
Speaker 1: a slag of anger and lust. Hey, welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: to bow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And those were two quick readings, the
Speaker 1: first from HP Lovecrafts The dream Quest of Unknown Cat
Speaker 1: and the second from Brian McNaughton's The Throne of Bones
Speaker 1: Um available via Wildside Press. And that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is not only one of my favorite publications that deal
Speaker 1: with Google's it's probably one of my favorite books of
Speaker 1: all time. Now do you love it more than the
Speaker 1: D and D Monster Manual? Well, the two different types
Speaker 1: of reeds there, I mean, I do love the Monster
Speaker 1: Manual for my sort of catalog oriented monster consideration. And indeed,
Speaker 1: guls have have long had a cherished role in the
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons setting. So what is throwing of Bones about?
Speaker 1: Throwing of bones is a it's a collection of short
Speaker 1: stories in one central novella set in a dark fantasy
Speaker 1: setting that's vaguely Roman, vaguely tolkien Esque, I guess. But
Speaker 1: but what has more in common with the works of
Speaker 1: say Clark, Ashton Smith and some of the weird dark
Speaker 1: fantasy writers of an earlier time. Oh, I should get
Speaker 1: into that, because I've recently discovered that I really dig
Speaker 1: Roman themes in in dark literature, because on your and
Speaker 1: Christians recommendation, I read The Great God Pan, which has
Speaker 1: that that fantastic reference to the statues from ancient Rome
Speaker 1: of the you know, the horrific visage of the goat,
Speaker 1: the old goat skin. Yeah. Well, one of the things
Speaker 1: I love about McNaughton's work is that he brings this
Speaker 1: dark seriousness of weird fiction and horror into his writing.
Speaker 1: But there's also this gallows humor. There's this uh, especially
Speaker 1: prominent with the ghouls, because the ghoul is this creature
Speaker 1: that in It's in the versions that I like the most.
Speaker 1: They're they're gross, they're evil, they're sly, but they're also
Speaker 1: a little mischievous. They also have this weird, black sense
Speaker 1: of humor about them. Uh, And I feel like mcnalton.
Speaker 1: It really brings that to life. Well, if you haven't
Speaker 1: figured it out by now, we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about ghoules today, and sadly, I think this is going
Speaker 1: to have to be our final oct Ober podcast. It
Speaker 1: has been a great run this month of monsters and
Speaker 1: demons and madness. You're gonna have to sober up in
Speaker 1: the next episode a little bit and get back on
Speaker 1: track for the holidays. But yeah, it's been a fun right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Google's I think these days, when the average person
Speaker 1: is presented with the concept of a Google, what kind
Speaker 1: of descriptive features are you're going to get? I would
Speaker 1: say they'd be very generic. I mean, what is a
Speaker 1: ghoul to us today? It's just some kind of vaguely
Speaker 1: monstrous creature. In fact, you could even think of Google
Speaker 1: as a broader term into which other monsters fit, like
Speaker 1: the vampire is a type of Google. Well, the word
Speaker 1: is used that way a lot. I have to admit
Speaker 1: that I have to bite my tongue to keep from
Speaker 1: correcting people when someone refers to a non Google as
Speaker 1: a Google. I want to say, no, that's that's technically
Speaker 1: not a Google. That is just a ghost that is
Speaker 1: somebody in a vampire costume. A google is a specific
Speaker 1: thing and you have to use the um appropriately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I brought that up specifically to provoke you. So Robert,
Speaker 1: come on, tell me, what is a ghoul really? All right?
Speaker 1: So it's gonna it's gonna vary, and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: it before we end up at discussing actual science behind
Speaker 1: the google. So yes, that is coming in the second half.
Speaker 1: We're going to discuss the ancient roots and sort of
Speaker 1: the modern fictional roots. But in most cases, you're looking
Speaker 1: at this creature that might be unliving or maybe it's
Speaker 1: just living on the margins of what we think of
Speaker 1: as as an actual appropriate member of the natural world.
Speaker 1: It's very much the monster as outsider, a motif very
Speaker 1: much so. Yeah, making its home graveyards and places of
Speaker 1: of of loss and death, and it feasts upon human remains.
Speaker 1: So it is essentially a cannibalistic scavenger and scavenger in
Speaker 1: the true sense, and that it's sort of dwells at
Speaker 1: the edges of the camp. You know, you have civilization
Speaker 1: as the encampment where our activity dwells. You don't find
Speaker 1: the ghoul in the mid of the city, you find
Speaker 1: the goal trailing behind you, feasting on what you leave behind. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in some cases you have Googles that are
Speaker 1: following armies. I always love that motif and would love
Speaker 1: to see that that that used more, especially in the
Speaker 1: fantasy settings. You have some some sort of army going
Speaker 1: out to fight a battle. If they always do well,
Speaker 1: then surely there are camp followers and there are Googles
Speaker 1: right behind them. Yeah, the other type of camp follower.
Speaker 1: But based on what we've said so far, it should
Speaker 1: be clear that the concept of the goal has not
Speaker 1: remained static over time. I mean it's not even fully unified. Today.
Speaker 1: You've got this generic goal and then you've got Robert's
Speaker 1: very specific goal. How has the ghoul changed over time?
Speaker 1: And where did the idea originally come from? All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginnings then, if not the
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, because we have to look at
Speaker 1: pre Islamic Arabic mythology. This mythology is so cool and
Speaker 1: I was so delighted to read it, so our main
Speaker 1: sore son. This is a paper by Ahmed al Rawi
Speaker 1: called the Mythical Ghoul and Arabic Culture and this was
Speaker 1: a really fun read. Yes it was. This was one
Speaker 1: of my key sources on the how stuff Works article
Speaker 1: How ghoules work. Um, yeah, and he gets into the
Speaker 1: you know, just the original root of the word word
Speaker 1: for starters, which is from the Arabic ghoule or g
Speaker 1: h u l that may stem from Galu, which is
Speaker 1: the name of an ancient demon correct and the galou
Speaker 1: played a role in some of their their key literature
Speaker 1: and mythology, one of them being the death and rebirth
Speaker 1: mythology of the god Demuzi or the Demuzi is sort
Speaker 1: of equal to Tamus, which is another god of the
Speaker 1: ancient Middle East. But the death and rebirth mythology corresponds
Speaker 1: to the growth and harvest cycle of food crops. So
Speaker 1: there you can see another one of the ways that
Speaker 1: that our mythology ties into our way of life, the
Speaker 1: way we make a living in our and our basic
Speaker 1: material concerns informed the stories we tell about, you know,
Speaker 1: the creation of the world and the behavior of the gods.
Speaker 1: And and there you've got just like the crops die
Speaker 1: every year and then are reborn later in the next
Speaker 1: season or regrow out of you know, the dead fields
Speaker 1: of the previous harvest. You've got the god Demuzi or Tamuse,
Speaker 1: who's a vegetation god, who is abducted and taken down
Speaker 1: into the realm of death. And who is the abductor
Speaker 1: of Demuzi or Tamus. It's the Galu, the demon right.
Speaker 1: And this is fascinating too, because we see the google
Speaker 1: tied into some of our our earliest and most powerful
Speaker 1: myths concerning the flow of the seasons. Totally. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: following its role in the official mythology of of ancient
Speaker 1: Babylon and ancient Mesopotamia, you have this idea of the
Speaker 1: ghoule emerging as more of a ground level folklore creature.
Speaker 1: You know that that it's mentioned all in all of
Speaker 1: the standard mythology and folk tales and superstitions of the
Speaker 1: average person living in ther be In Peninsula, and Arabic
Speaker 1: scholars have actually documented the way in which this monster
Speaker 1: emerged in the thinking of the people. Yeah, Arabic scholars
Speaker 1: of the eighth, ninth, and ten centuries, they compiled various
Speaker 1: Bedouin folk tales involving the Gooules, and many of these
Speaker 1: found their way into the collection The Thousand and One
Speaker 1: Nights and This is key because translations of this book
Speaker 1: of course traveled to Europe in the eighteenth century, as
Speaker 1: did the notion with the ghoul, and this is where,
Speaker 1: as we'll get into later, we see the google emerge
Speaker 1: in Western culture and in the in eventually in fictional
Speaker 1: creations of the late eighteenth century and most importantly the
Speaker 1: nineteentie century. Yeah, so I get the feeling it's more
Speaker 1: the European grave ghoul that ends up becoming the D
Speaker 1: and D monster. Yes, um, though you do see at times,
Speaker 1: say the modern motifs kind of reaching back into into
Speaker 1: Arabic folklore for for some additional depth. Yeah. I here
Speaker 1: we should mention a couple of these pre Islamic ghoul
Speaker 1: accounts because they are fascinating. So one of the stories
Speaker 1: that al Rawi tells in his paper is that it's
Speaker 1: recounted according to the scholar al Masudi, and he writes
Speaker 1: the following. Arabs before Islam believed that when God created
Speaker 1: genies from the gusts of fire, he made from this
Speaker 1: type of fire their female part, but one of their
Speaker 1: eggs was split into hince the kutrube, which looked like
Speaker 1: a cat, was created. As for the devils. They came
Speaker 1: from another egg and settled in the seas. Other evil
Speaker 1: creatures such as the marid inhabited the islands, The ghoul
Speaker 1: resided in the wilderness, and the siloi dwelt in the
Speaker 1: lavatories and waste areas, and the hamma lived in the
Speaker 1: air in the form of a flying snake. So these
Speaker 1: are some awesome monsters that are being described here. I
Speaker 1: love the idea of a lavatory and waste area monster
Speaker 1: because that's again it's a it's a wonderful place for
Speaker 1: a haunting. That's a wonderful borderland. Right. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: place where you're vulnerable and usually where you're isolated, right
Speaker 1: where do you have to go off by yourself? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where you might encounter the supernatural. Um. But then,
Speaker 1: of course there is another source that says that quote.
Speaker 1: The devils wanted to eaves drop on heaven, so God
Speaker 1: threw meteors at them, whereupon some were burnt, fell into
Speaker 1: the sea and later turned into crocodiles, while others dropped
Speaker 1: onto the ground and changed into ghouls. So there you've
Speaker 1: got a ghoule origin and a crocodile origin at the
Speaker 1: same time. They're essentially siblings um and plenty of the
Speaker 1: other stories also depict the ghoul as a shape shifter
Speaker 1: that's able to disguise its appearance. Uh. This appears to
Speaker 1: be a common feature. Other common features are that the
Speaker 1: traditional Arabic ghoul is often female in appearance. And I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. It can be killed with a
Speaker 1: good chopped from a sword. And if I'm reading this right,
Speaker 1: it sort of makes it different from the vampire, the werewolf,
Speaker 1: and these other monsters which can often only be killed
Speaker 1: through magically appropriate means, like you have to have the
Speaker 1: you know, the one magic bullet that is known to
Speaker 1: kill the monster, as to the silver or holy water
Speaker 1: steaked through the heart or or whatever it is for
Speaker 1: that monster. Individually, the ghoul can be killed by violence,
Speaker 1: but it does have to be a very mighty and
Speaker 1: strategic form of violence because an interesting development on the
Speaker 1: myth is that, according to some versions, the ghoul would
Speaker 1: only die if you hit it with one mighty blow
Speaker 1: with a sword, because if you hit it more than once,
Speaker 1: then you would have to hit it a thousand times
Speaker 1: more before it would die. Yeah, that's so you had
Speaker 1: to time your one strike, you know, you had to
Speaker 1: get the one really good one in well, that could
Speaker 1: I could see that making sense In terms of the creature.
Speaker 1: You sort of have to get that surprise is hit in.
Speaker 1: You've got to get that. To put in D n
Speaker 1: D terms, you have to get that that that surprise
Speaker 1: attack bonus, right, and if you don't, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to apply a lot of smaller attacks to win.
Speaker 1: I've also read and this would of course be post
Speaker 1: Islamic interpretations, but in these interpretations you could also at
Speaker 1: least drive a Google away with readings from the Koran. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that definitely comes up later where you can use the
Speaker 1: holy or spiritual power of of a of a good
Speaker 1: spiritual force by like saying the name of Allah or
Speaker 1: by quoting from the Koran, and that will tend to
Speaker 1: drive it into remission. Essentially, it will say, no, why
Speaker 1: do you do this to me? But you can also
Speaker 1: whack it with the sword as long as you whack
Speaker 1: it really good. Just once. Now, speaking of Islamic traditions,
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering, what did Mohammed have to say about Google's. Well,
Speaker 1: Mohammed's words on the existence of Google's vary depending on
Speaker 1: which text you read. So the Koran does not mention
Speaker 1: them at all. That's important to stress here. Karan does
Speaker 1: mention gin but not not ghoules. Yes, but contested references
Speaker 1: do pop up in the head Eat that's a book
Speaker 1: of Mohammed's attributed acts and sayings. Yeah, so they're they're
Speaker 1: definitely conflicting bits of scholarship about what Mohammed had to
Speaker 1: say about ghoules. If anything, but to quote, I'll RAWI
Speaker 1: again on the people who do say that the prophet
Speaker 1: had something to say about ghouls. What he said was quote,
Speaker 1: Ghouls are the demons or enchantresses of genies that hurt
Speaker 1: human beings by eating or spoiling their food, or by
Speaker 1: frightening travelers when they're in the wilderness, and in order
Speaker 1: to avoid their harm, one can recite a verse from
Speaker 1: the Holy Koran or call for prayer, since they hate
Speaker 1: any reference to God. And that first part mentioned something
Speaker 1: about the wilderness. This is something that pops up again
Speaker 1: and again in the literature about the about the ghouls.
Speaker 1: That you know these ancient ghoul folk tales is you
Speaker 1: don't expect to encounter them in the middle of civilization.
Speaker 1: There you counter them on the road in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: Between places they're in that intermediary world. I like to
Speaker 1: how this mentions um eating and spoiling of food. It's
Speaker 1: tied uh inherently to our survival via consumption of food
Speaker 1: and the potential violation of that food, and and and
Speaker 1: just into general um ideas of purity and cleanliness in
Speaker 1: our food. Yeah, well, I mean, you certainly don't want
Speaker 1: something that eats corpse flesh getting into your pantry, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just going to tear it out in there, obviously.
Speaker 1: But you may have noticed that so far there hasn't
Speaker 1: been a whole lot, if anything, about the eating of
Speaker 1: corpse flesh. That's right, And that's something that we'll get
Speaker 1: into in a bit now. In some accounts, Mohammed dismisses
Speaker 1: ghouls as completely non existent. In others, he gives advice
Speaker 1: on banishing them. His companion, though, abou Asada al Sadi,
Speaker 1: takes a more balanced approach, and he states that ghoules
Speaker 1: lived in the pre Islamic past, but that Allah no
Speaker 1: longer permits them to exist. Meanwhile, there's also a legend
Speaker 1: that umar have been I'll caught him. Another of Mohammed's
Speaker 1: companions put a google to the sword on the road
Speaker 1: to Syria. Yeah, this was great. So the story goes
Speaker 1: a female ghoul stops him on the road and asks
Speaker 1: him where are you going, and Umar says it is
Speaker 1: none of her business, and then she does the move
Speaker 1: from the Exorcist where she turns her head all the
Speaker 1: way around. That's really part of the story. It said that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then he splits her down the middle with the sword. Alright,
Speaker 1: so single I'm guessing single blow there, right, he does it, right,
Speaker 1: he hits her with the one blow. But then later
Speaker 1: he comes back and the body is gone. So either
Speaker 1: she survived or the other googles came and took her
Speaker 1: body away, or more some sort of magical disappearance. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so if we consider the google that eats human flesh
Speaker 1: a kind of perversion of the idea of corpse cannibalism,
Speaker 1: what is the ghoul that eats ghoul flesh? It's like
Speaker 1: meta cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and it's only ties
Speaker 1: in with with how we see scavengers behave towards their
Speaker 1: own sometimes. And that's that's key here, because although ghouls
Speaker 1: were sometimes associated with scavenging hyenas in a in Arabic test,
Speaker 1: they really don't have this grave ghoul association where they're
Speaker 1: going to come and take your dead loved ones from
Speaker 1: the graveyard after the funeral and eat their corpses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This particular detail, according to al Rawi, seems to emerge
Speaker 1: from Anton Galan's French translation of The Thousand and One
Speaker 1: Nights in the early eighteenth century. So not only did
Speaker 1: Ghalan take liberties in his translation, he even introduced and
Speaker 1: allegedly created a female character named Amina who prefers the
Speaker 1: company of graveyard ghouls to that of her new husband. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this and you can see this definitely appealing to
Speaker 1: some of the Gothics andsibilities of the time in Europe. Right,
Speaker 1: But this inaccurate translation was hugely influential in the Western
Speaker 1: world and and in you know, informing their the Western
Speaker 1: worlds understanding of the Middle East, so inspiring the work
Speaker 1: of William Beckford, the eighteenth century author of the Arabian
Speaker 1: theme novel thatfic, and the folkloric studies of of another
Speaker 1: individual named Sabine Baring Gould. So we see. So that's interesting,
Speaker 1: and you have this rich tradition of ghouls within in
Speaker 1: Arabic traditions. Just some wonderful details. They're already a fabulous creature,
Speaker 1: but then it gets tweaked a little bit, either in
Speaker 1: you know, mistranslation or creative embellishment of the myth as
Speaker 1: it translates into European um fiction and folklore and European
Speaker 1: understandings of the Middle East. Yeah, it's fascinating, this evolution
Speaker 1: of the ghoul meme, because if you trace the ancient
Speaker 1: pre Islamic Arabic ghoul up through the way the grave
Speaker 1: ghoul comes to be understood in European culture. What's the
Speaker 1: common thread there? I mean, you've seen the evolution basically
Speaker 1: of a word, the word ghoul, But is there a
Speaker 1: common themeat dick element that remains the same throughout it
Speaker 1: despite just general monstrousness or malevolence. Yeah, I think it works.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that the google as we have
Speaker 1: seen it and discussed it in in pre European traditions.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's able to take on the mantle
Speaker 1: of of corpse eating rather rather honestly like it adds
Speaker 1: another dimension to it and certainly tweaks it in a
Speaker 1: new direction, but not in a direction that feels out
Speaker 1: of character with its origins. Okay, I can accept that. Now,
Speaker 1: if we look elsewhere in the world, do we find
Speaker 1: myths of creatures that are similar to the ghoul we do? Uh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's definitely worth noting that even if the original Arabic
Speaker 1: ghouls didn't eat corpses, they have peers in Asian folk
Speaker 1: tales that do so. In the Tamil mythology of India,
Speaker 1: they have the shaggy haired creatures known as the pay
Speaker 1: who sought out human battle so as to lap blood
Speaker 1: from the open women of the dying um. Still, other
Speaker 1: ghoules emerge in the eighth century. In the eighth century
Speaker 1: Tibetan Book of the Dead, which details the Buddhist journey
Speaker 1: through death and into the realms beyond death, the reincarnation um. Here,
Speaker 1: in the dream like state known as Bardo, the departed
Speaker 1: soul encounters that the the Pisach ghouls, and these are
Speaker 1: fierce female beings with be steel heads and an appetite
Speaker 1: for bones and viscera. That's interesting. Now, another thing that
Speaker 1: we see commonly here is that in these early visions,
Speaker 1: the ghouls are very often female like, explicitly described as
Speaker 1: female and appearance, whereas the ghouls that I think we
Speaker 1: think of today tend to be either sort of um
Speaker 1: androgyni is tending towards masculine or or fully male. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there is a definite tendency to to generate
Speaker 1: a masculine idea of the ghoule in Western culture, though
Speaker 1: though some of my favorite books on the matter have
Speaker 1: definitely have female googles. Now. In the conclusion of his
Speaker 1: article uh al Rawi, he says that the ghoules may
Speaker 1: have been inspired just by you know, things that people
Speaker 1: actually did encounter in reality, like people with various birth defects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: particularly things like cleft pal at cleft lip, distortions of
Speaker 1: the mouth, and facial features you know, which sadly do
Speaker 1: um can and do interfere in our interpretation of of
Speaker 1: of an individual substance. Yeah. I think this is a
Speaker 1: common feature you see in the origins of monster legends.
Speaker 1: This is often hypothesized that we would just see someone
Speaker 1: that uh that had you know, some kind of atypical
Speaker 1: way of looking, and that we would interpret that as well,
Speaker 1: you know, this person is cursed or evil or there
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with them. They didn't have the light
Speaker 1: of modern medical science to just say no, they're a
Speaker 1: person like anybody else. Yeah, very much in keeping with
Speaker 1: the change link to editions that you find in Europe,
Speaker 1: right that surely that this year your actual child was
Speaker 1: taken away by fairies and this is the goblin that's
Speaker 1: left in in its place. YEA. Now, on top of that,
Speaker 1: Victorian adventure and Middle Eastern scholar and just all around
Speaker 1: fascinating individual. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. Uh. He explained
Speaker 1: the Arabic ghoule as a mythical creature that embodies human
Speaker 1: fears and tampoos concerning graveyards check, desert wastes check and
Speaker 1: cannibalism and specifically survival cannibalism. If we're to tie it
Speaker 1: into other mid cycles that such as the Wind to Go,
Speaker 1: that did definitely have such a strong resonant place in
Speaker 1: uh in the Native peoples of North America, because it's
Speaker 1: tied with that fear of survival cannibalism as an a
Speaker 1: as a possible necessity during harsh winters. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see a very strong sort of theme emerging,
Speaker 1: which is that all of these disparate things are sort
Speaker 1: of united by the sense that they're playing on fears
Speaker 1: of the periphery, the edges, the outside, and the taboo,
Speaker 1: as as many monsters do. Yes, So, as previously mentioned,
Speaker 1: thousand and one Night serves as this cultural bridge, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a slightly distorted cultural bridge by which
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern ghoules migrate into Western fictional traditions. And in
Speaker 1: addition to the above examples, in the original Arabic text,
Speaker 1: the ghouls of thousand and one Nights are also vile
Speaker 1: tricksters and depending on again those translations, they may be
Speaker 1: flesh eaters. They kidnapped victims, They lure lustful me into
Speaker 1: their doom by taking on the guys of beautiful women.
Speaker 1: Again that shape shifting motif. Yeah, that's a common thing
Speaker 1: you see in the Arabic stories, is that there's a
Speaker 1: like a female ghoul hanging out by the road and
Speaker 1: calling men to come over and see her. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: over come over and see me sometime and desert wells.
Speaker 1: And of course that's a wonderful uh, a classic monster
Speaker 1: troupe that we continue to play with today. Um. But
Speaker 1: then of course also sometimes they break into your storerooms
Speaker 1: and they much on your dates. I think that's what
Speaker 1: Mohammed was mentioning. Yeah, but Some of the key early adapters,
Speaker 1: if you will, to Goulden were po Lord Byron and
Speaker 1: hands Christian Andersen. Yeah, they all made mention of ghouls
Speaker 1: um in the in the nineteenth century and their writings.
Speaker 1: What what did Hans Christian Andersen write about ghouls um?
Speaker 1: I think it's just in one particular story, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they play a huge role, but they pop
Speaker 1: up like clearly they were, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: many magical creatures. He was too, and they're just in
Speaker 1: the mix there in the cultural mi asthma. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they end up picking him up, playing with him
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, and then you have a new
Speaker 1: generation come along in the twentieth century Lovecraft, of course,
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, who we've mentioned other weird fiction authors of
Speaker 1: the day, including Clark Ashton Smith who wrote some wonderful
Speaker 1: ghoul stories. They continue to cultivate gould them in a
Speaker 1: new dark form, tying it in with some of the
Speaker 1: the dark weird motifs that are a part of weird fiction. Uh,
Speaker 1: particularly in lovecraft case. You have Pigman's model, Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you read correct. Yeah, yeah. Robert told me before
Speaker 1: this episode that I should read Pickman's model and I did.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting, and it's also one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about it to me is that it is
Speaker 1: different from all these other stories that where we've been
Speaker 1: saying that the ghoul is sort of on the periphery,
Speaker 1: as a scavenger on the outside, trailing behind the camp
Speaker 1: or whatever. In this story, the ghoul emerges as a
Speaker 1: feature of a sort of shadowy meta city, a shadowy
Speaker 1: city within a city that there's a part of the
Speaker 1: city that the narrator is taken to by Pickman, who's
Speaker 1: this creepy artist who draws creepy things or I guess
Speaker 1: paints creepy things, and they go to his house in
Speaker 1: this bizarre part of the city where suddenly there are
Speaker 1: tunnels going back to seemingly maybe back in time to
Speaker 1: Salem and witchcraft and monstrous things maybe emerging from them,
Speaker 1: and it's right there in the heart of Boston in
Speaker 1: that story, right, Yeah, it is. There's very much this
Speaker 1: feeling that the ghoul kind of resides in the city's
Speaker 1: history as well as in its architectural history. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a sense that the bodies that the ghoules
Speaker 1: feed on, or not even current graves they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of feasting on the past. So Pigman's model is a
Speaker 1: key work in the Western ghoul and we see here
Speaker 1: that it really gets its clause into our our horror literature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are several key scenes describing well describing paintings of
Speaker 1: ghouls eating the dead flesh of human beings and uh.
Speaker 1: And from here this spreads that Lovecraft of Courses is
Speaker 1: hugely influential, and so his idea of Gouldham spreads into
Speaker 1: various works of fantasy and dark fantasy. Again Clark, Ashton Smith,
Speaker 1: Brian McNaughton, Neil Gaiman. More recently, do you even see
Speaker 1: ghouls show up in the Harry Potter series, though not
Speaker 1: that convincingly. Now, if we're gonna go with the D
Speaker 1: and D model, what would you what type of creature
Speaker 1: would you say, Lord Voldemort is Is Is he more
Speaker 1: of a Lich or he's kind of got some ghoul features? Right? Then?
Speaker 1: He I feel like he's a he's a variation on
Speaker 1: the Lich, you know, like what with the whole of
Speaker 1: storing of the soul and the various hor cruxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he has a ghoulish appearance for sure. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: I was curious. I didn't have time to look this
Speaker 1: up before we recorded, but I just had the thought, Um,
Speaker 1: what about the nasgool in Tolkien? Do you think that
Speaker 1: the ghoul in Nascol meaning the nasgoul or the ring
Speaker 1: wraiths in Lord of the Rings and these evil spirits
Speaker 1: who are obsessed with with finding the Ring of Power
Speaker 1: and they want to grab it and bring it back
Speaker 1: to their master. Uh. And and I believe the word
Speaker 1: nasgoul means ring wraith, and so the ghoul there being
Speaker 1: some kind of evil spirit I won or if Tolkien
Speaker 1: was inspired by the Arabic word ghoul there, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not that much of a Tolkien scholar, so we
Speaker 1: have to have to call out for our listeners to
Speaker 1: see if anybody has any insight on that. But and
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent he was interested in
Speaker 1: Arabic culture and Arabic languages. I know he was in
Speaker 1: the language end the language, and it seems completely possible
Speaker 1: that he would have been familiar with with these tales.
Speaker 1: So I would if I had to bet on it,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, he surely the nas goal has
Speaker 1: two has its origins in pre Islamic Arabic folklore, and
Speaker 1: of course we continue to see great works of horror
Speaker 1: and other fictions that involved the ghoul. Catlin R. Kiernan
Speaker 1: has a great um has a great novel called Daughter
Speaker 1: of Hounds that deals with ghoules. I recommend that he's
Speaker 1: a wonderful old weird tale short story called Far Below
Speaker 1: by Robert Barbara Johnson, and this involves ghouls in the
Speaker 1: New York subway system. That's a great read if you
Speaker 1: can find a copy, oh man, that does sound great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and comics and TV we see plenty of examples there.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful episode of Tales from the Crypt called
Speaker 1: Morning Mess that involves uh a shadowy organization that seems
Speaker 1: to be very interested in in supplying burial for vagrants
Speaker 1: and transients who die. But of course there's a ghoulish
Speaker 1: secret at the heart of it. Oh No, Now, I
Speaker 1: recall a particular Tales from the Crypt comic segment that
Speaker 1: I read years ago that was about It was about
Speaker 1: a tale of a tragic tale of young lovers. And
Speaker 1: the woman dies and she her body is entombed in
Speaker 1: a crypt, and then her lover is locked in the
Speaker 1: mausoleum with her like locked into the crypt and he
Speaker 1: cannot get out, and he's trying to escape and he can't.
Speaker 1: And then much later the police find him and they
Speaker 1: find that he actually survived in there for a long time.
Speaker 1: And the ominous ending is that I find he died
Speaker 1: of formalde hyde poisoning. Well, that's that's a pretty good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to go back and read some of these
Speaker 1: old tales from the crypts. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with actual comics, but oh I haven't read
Speaker 1: many either. That's a one. That's one a friend of
Speaker 1: mine recommended to me. Excellent to have to look that up. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we men, and we mentioned Dungeons and Dragons already that
Speaker 1: the Gohougles have have a long played a role in
Speaker 1: in in Dungeons and Dragons. They've always been in the
Speaker 1: monster manuals, both Googles and I believe, and they also
Speaker 1: have a like an advanced version of the Google called
Speaker 1: a gas and then variations on Googles that pop up
Speaker 1: in different add on. So tell me just basically, what
Speaker 1: is your encounter with the ghoul? Look like it's just
Speaker 1: basic sword fodder, Like it's not very very tough. The
Speaker 1: standard Google isn't particularly tough. We're intelligent. The gas is
Speaker 1: a little more potent and uh in a little more yeah,
Speaker 1: and a little tougher to encounter. But they're not They're
Speaker 1: not high end monstering counters, unless, of course, you encountering
Speaker 1: them in significant numbers. But despite all this, the Ghoul
Speaker 1: has never really, as you I think eloquently put it
Speaker 1: in our notes, exploded into the main stream, at least
Speaker 1: not in the way that the vampire or the werewolf
Speaker 1: for or even Frankenstein's creature has. You know, we never
Speaker 1: got the universal monster movie of the Ghoul. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there have been occasional films that I think
Speaker 1: there was even a Boris Carla film titled the Ghoul though,
Speaker 1: really yeah, but it's not particularly in keeping obviously, I've
Speaker 1: never seen it. Yeah, So yeah, it's just I guess
Speaker 1: the Ghoul is not that sexy. The Ghoul the ideas
Speaker 1: that it represents are maybe maybe not as comfortably uh
Speaker 1: contemplated as that of vampires and werewolves. Well, certainly not
Speaker 1: as sexy. I mean, that's the thing about if you
Speaker 1: go back and watch a bell Legostis Dracula, it's it's
Speaker 1: very slick. You know, it's Dracula is kind of sexy.
Speaker 1: He's not gross and monstrous. The ghoul is disgusting. Ye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a big reason, but it continues
Speaker 1: to be. It's kind of like one of those bands
Speaker 1: that never really you know, takes off into stupid superstardom,
Speaker 1: but they always have their following, right, So I would
Speaker 1: say that ghouls are kind of like the Maybe they're
Speaker 1: the fish of the monster world, right, Like, not everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot of familiarity with them or be
Speaker 1: able to tell you what their top ten hits are,
Speaker 1: but they have a hardcore following and they're not going
Speaker 1: away even if you know some of the details about them,
Speaker 1: you know, are a little ambiguous. So we've discussed the folkloric, mythological,
Speaker 1: fictional history of the ghoul from ancient pre pre Islamic
Speaker 1: Arabic traditions on up into the latest edition of The
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons Monster Man. Yeah. But of course, the
Speaker 1: eating of dead flesh is not merely the stuff of fantasy.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a This is not only something
Speaker 1: you commonly see in the natural world. It is a
Speaker 1: standard way of making a living for many organisms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've discussed on this show before. In the past,
Speaker 1: we've discussed basic cannibalism as it occurs in nature is
Speaker 1: a very When you strip away all the human complications,
Speaker 1: it makes a certain economic sense. Sure, you're just talking
Speaker 1: about flash, you're talking about energy. You're talking about absorbing
Speaker 1: the energy back into a viable being. I think a
Speaker 1: question we should keep in mind throughout the course of
Speaker 1: this part about science is the question of why cannibalism
Speaker 1: is such a taboo among humans and it's and obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be quite clear why violent cannibalism
Speaker 1: is so like you kill somebody and eat their flesh.
Speaker 1: But I'm talking about the kind of cannibalism that, as
Speaker 1: you just alluded to, makes a kind of basic energy
Speaker 1: economics sense, Like your loved one dies and then we
Speaker 1: say no, no, you will not eat their flesh. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like the big theme here. We'll discuss another
Speaker 1: possible theme in a minute, but the big one, of course,
Speaker 1: ties right into what we've previously talked about concerning UH
Speaker 1: natural burial versus UH modern burial traditions. Is that we
Speaker 1: just get wrapped up in the idea of that corpse
Speaker 1: still being the person than it was. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we did definitely allude to this in our episode called
Speaker 1: Human Remains Past President in the Future. But there there
Speaker 1: is the idea that we can never fully accept that
Speaker 1: the dead body of the person we loved is not
Speaker 1: in some sense still that person, not in some sense
Speaker 1: still in a way alive, and thus in that way,
Speaker 1: there really among humans at least may not be such
Speaker 1: a thing psychologically as non violent cannibalism. Like if you
Speaker 1: if your cousin dies and you rationally know you're no
Speaker 1: longer hurting him by eating his body, you just can't
Speaker 1: on some level except that you're doing violence to his flesh,
Speaker 1: and it seems like you're doing a harmful thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's go on a journey, Okay, traveling back down
Speaker 1: the highway of human evolution and human ascension. Uh, a
Speaker 1: road that as we travel, what you're gonna see some
Speaker 1: rather ghoulish characters standing along the wayside. I think if
Speaker 1: we look back into early human history, we can see
Speaker 1: both of the major aspects of the goal, both the
Speaker 1: scavenger aspect and the cannibalistic aspect. Okay, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: travel back two point five million years to the dawn
Speaker 1: of the Polistocene epoch, and you'll find our austro look
Speaker 1: pithy scene ancestors scrambling to deserve diversify their diets in
Speaker 1: a changing world. Okay, so these are people who are
Speaker 1: they're not living a comfortable existence like us, supported by
Speaker 1: agriculture and supply to stores of food. They're living at
Speaker 1: the edge r at the edge of hunger. They need
Speaker 1: to find food constantly. Yeah, and uh, according to the
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen paper Humans and Scavengers the Evolution of
Speaker 1: Interactions and Ecosystem Services that's published in the journal Bioscience,
Speaker 1: where specific we're talking about increasing seasonality in uh, precipitation
Speaker 1: in the African savannahs, and this is forcing our austro
Speaker 1: lepithasine ancestors to diversify again to cope with the developing
Speaker 1: seasonal bottleneck in fruits and other soft plant foods. So
Speaker 1: it's becoming harder to make a living gathering plant matter exactly.
Speaker 1: So you end up with two approaches to responses to
Speaker 1: this bottleneck. Okay, you have some early hominides that turned
Speaker 1: to seeds and roots, they start diversifying in that direction. Uh,
Speaker 1: the roots are going to be available year round. UH
Speaker 1: seeds can be uh can be acquired in different seasons
Speaker 1: as well. That doesn't sound very good to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's what's the what this other group decided. And
Speaker 1: they're the ones who decided to try out some of
Speaker 1: the meat to be found on large vertebrate carcasses. But
Speaker 1: they're not hunting because we're not like hunting. Hunting is
Speaker 1: a is a technological advancement, but also hadn't come along yet. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, think about all of the deficiencies human human
Speaker 1: beings have as natural hunters, and we don't have uh
Speaker 1: teeth and claws and powerful jaws like a lion or
Speaker 1: a tiger or something like that. We do have smarts
Speaker 1: and we can make tools, but we can't just chase
Speaker 1: down a gazelle and rip it apart the way that
Speaker 1: these other large predators can. And that's what these early
Speaker 1: meat eaters had to do. They had to they had
Speaker 1: to wait, they had to watch, they had to look
Speaker 1: for the signs they have vultures in the sky, or
Speaker 1: or the movements of known predators or larger known scavengers.
Speaker 1: Strategic meat acquisition. Yeah, find find where they're going and
Speaker 1: try and either pick up the pieces afterwards, or try
Speaker 1: and steal it again. These are scavengers. Are their whole
Speaker 1: past is scavenging, and so if they're going to start
Speaker 1: in quote, encompassing meat into their diet as well, then
Speaker 1: they're gonna try to do it through scavenging strategies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you can even see this in what scientists say
Speaker 1: about the most ancient human tools we've discovered, because what
Speaker 1: do you think the first human tools are. Obviously what
Speaker 1: would come to your mind is hunting tools, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think about like, yeah, yeah, spears, axes, stuff like
Speaker 1: that to kill animals with. Uh. And obviously if we
Speaker 1: do go back to certain periods, we do find ancient
Speaker 1: hunting weapons, but a lot of what you find appears
Speaker 1: to be early tools used for the processing of animal carcasses,
Speaker 1: So not necessarily for the killing, but for for processing
Speaker 1: for like a butchery. Yeah, like very much. The idea
Speaker 1: of finding the body and needing to get that narrow
Speaker 1: out right, trying to get some neat out of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this dead large vertebrate. Uh that can that you can
Speaker 1: can sustain you, but you're gonna have to use your
Speaker 1: tools to do it. Yeah, it's a smart strategy, and
Speaker 1: hominids are not the only animal species that has ever
Speaker 1: tried it. But yeah, you you look to what the
Speaker 1: predator has already done, and then you engage in klepto parasitism,
Speaker 1: the stealing parasitism. You you take advantage of their word
Speaker 1: and claim it for your own. Yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: take you to the next level, you engage in confrontational scavenging.
Speaker 1: So this is uh. And this is something we still
Speaker 1: see to this day, uh in rare instances. And and
Speaker 1: they're these are the kind of traditions that you know,
Speaker 1: may not survive too much longer in our modern world.
Speaker 1: But there are Cameroonian villagers who continue to steal meat
Speaker 1: from lion kills to this day. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: smart strategy. It totally makes sense. The lion has done
Speaker 1: the work, and if you can bluff your way in
Speaker 1: just long enough to just to scare him away enough
Speaker 1: to where you can cut off a little bit of
Speaker 1: the kill and run off with it. And then instead
Speaker 1: of hopefully instead of coming after you, they'll just return
Speaker 1: to their own kill to harvest the rest of the
Speaker 1: meat for themselves. Yeah, you can bribe the lion with
Speaker 1: the work it's already done. Yeah, bribe it with the work.
Speaker 1: It's already done. Steal just enough to where they're not
Speaker 1: going to miss it, and and come after you. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, this eventually develops into more powerful huntings hills. Right,
Speaker 1: we developed the technology and the strategies and the brain
Speaker 1: power to not only drive away the hunters, but to
Speaker 1: usurp their role as hunters. And according to that paper
Speaker 1: published in the General Bioscience quote, the close association between
Speaker 1: human hunters and vertebrate scavengers probably played a role in
Speaker 1: the diversification of cultural services. So this is interesting because
Speaker 1: we're all used to these motifs of the the early
Speaker 1: hunter and gatherer, right, and we tend not to think
Speaker 1: about scavenging too much in that scenario. We don't think
Speaker 1: about the ghoulish history of human ascension and the idea
Speaker 1: that there was a time where we're essentially hyenas were
Speaker 1: essentially vultures. And maybe that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: the the the the idea of the google still is
Speaker 1: so repellent because it does mirror our own history. Well,
Speaker 1: there is something that we find inherently distasteful about scavenging
Speaker 1: as a way of life. Right, Like, I think that
Speaker 1: is very common among humans to sort of see it
Speaker 1: as essentially ignoble or unchivalrous, almost like it is honorable
Speaker 1: to hunt and kill your food, you know, that's a
Speaker 1: sort of an admirable struggle. But there's something just kind
Speaker 1: of like gross and unpleasant about scavenging and looking through
Speaker 1: you know, trash piles and dead bodies and stories roadkill. Right.
Speaker 1: It's probably one of the modern ideas that it's just
Speaker 1: you tend to just to triot b to like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a screwed up hillbilly thing to do to eat
Speaker 1: the deer that you hit with your car. But really,
Speaker 1: why Like if you ran over a deer with your
Speaker 1: car and you're into eating deer meat and the problem
Speaker 1: and you have the means to process it, that's still
Speaker 1: a fresh kill. It's just as fresh as the one
Speaker 1: that the dude shot from a deer stand. So why not. Now,
Speaker 1: if we think of these ancient hominids as in a
Speaker 1: way very economically conscious, essentially that they're making maximum use
Speaker 1: of what skills and tools they have to get inner
Speaker 1: resources from their environment, and the main way they find
Speaker 1: to do that is scavenging, even maybe kind of dangerous
Speaker 1: and scary forms of scavenging. Did they ever turn that
Speaker 1: scavenging impulse in word, Yeah, that's the big, big question, right,
Speaker 1: because it leads into into concerns about, well, how does
Speaker 1: this scavenging creature, this creature that has that has learned
Speaker 1: the value of meat, has adapted to survive via meat,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly suddenly it puts new it applies new
Speaker 1: meaning to their own debt. Suddenly, Hey, I could go
Speaker 1: out and I could try and steal this body from
Speaker 1: a lion, but here's a dead member of our own community.
Speaker 1: It's made out of meat. I can eat that meat.
Speaker 1: And it's also worth noting too that eventually, as we
Speaker 1: developed technologies to to better process and cook meat, we're
Speaker 1: better able to deal with some of the disease issues
Speaker 1: that are inherent with scavenging. Right, we reduced some of
Speaker 1: the natural risk. Yeah, but why not why not turn
Speaker 1: to that meat, especially if I have and really built
Speaker 1: up as much uh, you know, human cultural whole taboos
Speaker 1: regarding the consumption of that food. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: some scientists think that we did make that leap. Yes.
Speaker 1: According to paleontologist Isabelle Cassaries, our ancestors likely turned to
Speaker 1: cannibalism due to lack of resources and competition for territory
Speaker 1: at critical points and their ascensions. So you basically we're
Speaker 1: talking again about survival cannibalism. You find ways to supplement
Speaker 1: your diet when it gets tough, you can, you can
Speaker 1: deal with you can scavenge for meat. But then what
Speaker 1: happens when that runs low. Bat's when you turn to
Speaker 1: your own dead and you give it a try. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What did ancient hominids and the Donner Party have in common? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they knew what made economic sense. Yeah, and it makes sense.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the economy of cannibalism. It's widespread death
Speaker 1: throughout the animal kingdom, including among human and non human primates.
Speaker 1: Because sure, killing and eating your own kind tends to
Speaker 1: interfere with the long term genetic mission of just reproducing
Speaker 1: and making more of yourself, but it works like a
Speaker 1: charm in terms of short term survival. Nevertheless, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, there is this intensely strong taboo against it.
Speaker 1: We we just do not feel generally like this is
Speaker 1: an okay thing to do, or at least I can
Speaker 1: I can speak for myself and say that no, that
Speaker 1: does not seem like an okay idea, and it I
Speaker 1: think to most people seems that way. Yeah, Like, even
Speaker 1: if the sandwich is really good and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this is such a good sandwich, in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind you're thinking, but this this used to be ron.
Speaker 1: Now I'm eating and ron as a sandwich and that's
Speaker 1: really messing it up. Oh he's so savory. But there
Speaker 1: may be reasons for this taboo beyond what we mentioned before.
Speaker 1: So earlier we were talking about the idea that it's
Speaker 1: just hard to shake the feeling that the flesh of
Speaker 1: a dead person is not still in some way able
Speaker 1: to be harmed or in somebody still that person. But
Speaker 1: there could possibly be selection pressures that favor a taboo
Speaker 1: against cannibalism, right, yes, And this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: where we end up talking about curu disease and all
Speaker 1: and and discussing prions. So what are prions. Well, prions
Speaker 1: are abnormal proteins that induce irregular protein folding in brain cells,
Speaker 1: and this construction leads to flawed brain tissue, resulting in
Speaker 1: progressive and incurable brain damage. One of the most notable
Speaker 1: examples here, certainly for our purposes, in this podcast is
Speaker 1: Curu disease, which is found in New Guinea among the
Speaker 1: for A people. It's a rare breed of of disorder
Speaker 1: caused by by this type of prion. Also, it's known
Speaker 1: as the shaking disease what's what kuru means right, and
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as the laughing disease because scientists observed
Speaker 1: fits of hysterical laughing among those afflicted. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: obviously it is a it is a fatal, very terrible
Speaker 1: disease that you do not want to get at all.
Speaker 1: But what scientists observed is that it only really tends
Speaker 1: to happen though it's comparable to some other prion diseases
Speaker 1: like like c j D, but it only really seems
Speaker 1: to happen in the for A tribe of New Guinea.
Speaker 1: And this is related to the some of the rituals
Speaker 1: practiced by this tribe of Indo cannibalism, which sort of
Speaker 1: flips the script on cannibalism, like we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: I mean, from our cultural perspective, we've got this taboo
Speaker 1: on cannibalism because we think of it as a kind
Speaker 1: of disrespectful or harmful thing to do to the remains
Speaker 1: of a person, but it's not necessarily thought of by
Speaker 1: everyone in that way. I mean, this is a sort
Speaker 1: of respectful cannibalism, the the the loving incorporation of a
Speaker 1: dead loved one's flesh back into your society in the
Speaker 1: form of food. Yeah, taking your dead loved one back
Speaker 1: into yourself as food into your body, taking their body
Speaker 1: and spirit into yourself. So it in their beliefs and
Speaker 1: their traditions that the cannibal indo cannibalism takes on a
Speaker 1: form of of beauty. Really. Yeah, So this in a
Speaker 1: way that my seems strange to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: could be a beautiful way of looking at the consumption
Speaker 1: of human flesh, excepted that it did have this very
Speaker 1: very unfortunate medical consequence of leading to kuru disease, right,
Speaker 1: and doctors first first really focused in on this in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties when curu was popping up among the
Speaker 1: four A tribespeople decimating whole villages, and the science is
Speaker 1: quickly discovered that the only way to acquire the disease
Speaker 1: was through the consumption of contaminated brain tissue. So they
Speaker 1: just had to shut down the funeral rights, and that
Speaker 1: is how they were actually able to to stop the
Speaker 1: spread of Kuru disease among these tribes people. But the
Speaker 1: obvious idea here is if it is possible to get
Speaker 1: an extremely dangerous fatal disease by consuming In this case,
Speaker 1: I believe the brain tissue of your dead loved ones,
Speaker 1: but possibly there could be other cases where consuming the
Speaker 1: dead tissue of human beings is a disease threat. Would
Speaker 1: there eventually be an evolutionary selection pressure against cannibalism? Well,
Speaker 1: would there be enough of a pressure that that is
Speaker 1: an argument is often made. However, I did find us
Speaker 1: some work by a medical researcher, Michael Alper's, and he
Speaker 1: points out that the widespread presence of genes protecting against
Speaker 1: prior disease suggests that human endo cannibalism was fairly common
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. So we see the genetic legacy
Speaker 1: of continuous Indo cannibalism, the continuous consumption of human debt
Speaker 1: enough to where we build up a certain amount of
Speaker 1: resistance to these prior on So why do we need
Speaker 1: a gene for Indo cannibalism taboo? If we can just
Speaker 1: have a gene for Indo cannibalism, I don't know. Shield
Speaker 1: that makes it safe. It's basically like finding a cannibalism
Speaker 1: cookbook in your on your friends bookshelf. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: confining what you have this if you didn't right right
Speaker 1: like clearly clearly that we know what the secret ingredient
Speaker 1: is in the meat loaf. Now, so it seems like
Speaker 1: there are some lines of evidence indicating that in the
Speaker 1: past humans were eating some some some grave flesh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I believe so based on the research material we
Speaker 1: were looking at. Scavenging, just scavenging for dead meat is
Speaker 1: a part of our evolutionary history, and so is the
Speaker 1: consumption of our own debt. And therefore the the idea
Speaker 1: of the graveyard ghoule is very much a dark reflection
Speaker 1: of if not who we are today, then at least
Speaker 1: of who we have been as a species in the past.
Speaker 1: The scavenger. Yes, so I think about that the next
Speaker 1: time you you see an episode of I don't know, Supernatural,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes as ghouls, or you watch an Old
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypts episode, or read some delightful fiction
Speaker 1: that involves the Google death. Well, unfortunately, as I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I think this episode is going to
Speaker 1: have to conclude our October lineup of creepy and monstrous content.
Speaker 1: But please keep listening because even after October, we will
Speaker 1: continue to serve up to all of you intellectual scavengers
Speaker 1: some tasty and sometimes forbidden morsels. Indeed, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the mothership. That's where you'll find all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes. You'll find videos, including a new Monster
Speaker 1: Science episodes that have been going up. You'll find blog
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Speaker 1: accounts uh such as Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
Speaker 1: mind on both of those, and we are Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind on tumbler. And if you want to
Speaker 1: write to us and let us know your favorite appearance
Speaker 1: of ghouls in literature, or your favorite scientific fact about
Speaker 1: scavenging or cannibalism or any other eating of corpse flesh,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.