"Are Zombies and Ghouls the Same Thing?" Topic

Title says it all. Discussion?
VR
James Mattes

The standard answer of every tactician… "it depends". Which ghouls and which zombies?

I think of Lovecraft's Dreamlands ghouls like Richard Pickman when I think of ghouls. I realize that's a very specific example, but that's how my mind pictures ghouls: as a "race" with conscious thoughts and communication skills. Zombies to me are just boring re-animated corpses.

So I guess you could say some ghouls are zombies but most zombies are ghouls?
VR
James Mattes

Ghouls are alive (mad humans or distinct race).
Zombies are undead (or living but Voodoo ensorceled).

In AD&D ghouls were once humans that were changed to a ghoul. While a zombie is a magically animated corpse.

Ghouls in folklore are usually like wendigo: transformed by something they did, usually cannibalism. Zombies are usually transformed by something that was done to them (infection or sorcery).

Ghouls usually retain some sentience; zombies usually lose conscious will and become thralls either of their appetite or their creator.

Don't remember the source material, but I have the following ghoul definition firmly implanted in my memory: ghouls eat human flesh, mainly that of the dead, so they live in, around, or under cemetaries; they devolve over time, developing the typical, gaunt ghoul characteristics; and they typically are peaceful, avoiding contact with humans whenever possible.

So, no for me.

Ghouls are eaters of human flesh- ROmeros's original title for Night of the Living Dead – "The Flesh Eaters"

However, among the scientific community zombies ae those transformed by bio/chemical reasons to dead wanting to eat flesh, ghouls are living humans that decend the path to horribleness BY eating human flesh.

From some background material:

link

As developed above, at first totally different.
*But* the difference becomes fuzzy if:
- the 'eaters of the dead' (the original title of 'The 13th Warrior', btw) are contaminated and 'changed' by their meal (Human spongiform encephalopathy? A form was suspected in a cannibal tribe where only men showed the disease AND were allowed to eat human brain?),
- while 'zombification' is a contagious disease ('Resident Evil', ''[Rec]').

In the Anime Hellsing Ultimate, 'ghouls' are zombie-like 'extremely low level' vampires, and vampirism seems to follow the 'Matheson model'.
An interesting consequence could be a form of cross-immunity?

A type of Djinni. Nothing to do with zombies, be they Voodoo or Romero.

I'd say that zombies are basically mindless, stumbling undead with little will or wit.
May or may not eat brains and be allergic to salt.
Often wanders aimlessly.
(Voodoo zombies are different, however.)

Ghouls may be undead, but are not always. They retain some sort of intelligence, and in particular cunning, but are not very bright.
They eat human corpses. Prefer old rotting flesh to fresh (thoug oddly enough not zombie flesh.)
Likes to live in (scratch that, inhabit) graveyards.
Does not show signs of decay, but are lean, wiry and emaciated. Sometimes discoloured.

A ghoul is (most often)a living being who robs graves and eats human flesh (will kill in order to eat…so homicidal and cannibalistic). Ghouls are demonic and compelled to eat human flesh which twists them physically and mentally. Some ghouls, however, do not eat humans but simply revel in death and choose to live close to corpses. (Some would say Norman Bates of Psycho movie fame was a ghoul for keeping the corpse of his mother close by.)

Zombies seem to come in 2 broad types: The first is a re-animated corpse (either by magic or virus or some other agent); the second is a living being who's will has been captured and is now under the control of another person.

That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Most sources I'm familiar with classify zombies as undead but have ghouls as cannibalistic men.
The original 'ghul' seems to be a man-eating ogre who hangs around desolate places and graveyards. Not human but not undead either… from what I can tell.

When I've run Cthulhu games dealing with Bloch's 'cultes des goules' they were a loose network of death-obsessed humans… trading graveyard loot, bits of corpses, snuff films and other nasty contraband. Similar to the two protagonists in Lovecraft's 'The Hound'.
I see them as distinct from the cynocephalic creatures from 'Pickman's Model' and 'Beyond The Gates Of The Silver Key'… including the bit about transformation… since the suggestion is that Pickman was a changeling, not a pure human who became a ghoul (similar to the Innsmouth folk who start off fairly normal looking). Lovecraft's critters seem closer to 'ghuls'.

Does this mean a Zombie can not be ghoulish?
VR
James Mattes

I think zombies are inherently ghoulish… seeing as they have to do with dead things, places of the dead… and, usually, eating people (though I'm trying to think of an instance where a zombie eats someone who is already dead… they seem to prefer live-catch).

No,No and No! When Night of the living dead was being created, George Romero was thinking of his critters as Ghouls but they later evolved into THE classic movie Zed.

Lord I am such a geek…….

For unenlightened superstitious people, the degenerated 'Martense' family of Lovecraft's 'The Lurking Fear' would appear to be ghouls [ah, the effects of inbreeding! Was remembering them when watching the royal & princely guests at the recent Monaco wedding :)]

The most 'classic', canonical zombies are the Voodoo ones.

No. Ghouls have some form of autonomy, zombies don't.

Agreed to several above…the basics hold true regardless of the current media takes with various types and such.

Ghouls are still alive but are fell men with an insatiable hunger for human flesh…but as this is a measure of the loss of humanity there are also elements of being more of an animal and thus animals fear man…so they hide in shadows, run the night, and even scavenge graveyards for flesh. One would say that when you remove a man's soul then what is left behind is a ghoul.

Zombies, be they voodoo/necromancy/or virus are first and foremost no longer living…they are animated by some other fuel then life provides.

*****

For me ghouls make far more sense than any zombie type, other than an alien brain slug perhaps :)

Would Lovecraft's Martense be taken as Wendigos by the Natives?

A form was suspected in a cannibal tribe where only men showed the disease AND were allowed to eat human brain?),

I think you're thinking of Kuru (or "laughing sickness"), which is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that was endemic among the Fore people of Papua-New Guinea. It was actually the women and children who suffered disproportionately from the disease because it was spread through funeral rites during which the surviving relatives ate the body of the deceased. The men ate the good cuts while the women and kids got the leftovers; this included the brain, where the majority of the disease-causing prions were found. The women also cleaned the corpse and might have absorbed the prions through cuts on their hands.

Many of the early symptoms of Kuru (unsteady walk, loss of muscle control, tremors, slurred speech) might be mistaken for zombification but the bursts of uncontrolled laughter don't really fit the bill.

The incubation period for Kuru can be as long as 20 years (!); the last known sufferer didn't die until 2005.

LT

I think you're thinking of Kuru (or "laughing sickness"), which is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that was endemic among the Fore people of Papua-New Guinea. It was actually the women and children who suffered disproportionately from the disease

My mistake -thanks for the correction. I remembered the case as interesting and implying differential cannibalism, but the details were blurred.
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Many of the early symptoms of Kuru (unsteady walk, loss of muscle control, tremors, slurred speech) might be mistaken for zombification but the bursts of uncontrolled laughter don't really fit the bill.

A madly laughing zombie? That would be specially scary! Like an almost human-looking hyena…

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If ghoulification, most of zombification, and vampirism, are all caused by infectious agents, each "class" may imply a bunch of genetically related strains causing different symptoms: re flu, its yearly new forms and the 'aberrant' ones appearing by integration of alien microbial genetic material, H5N1 and the like. As I remember, the agent of a variant of rabies carried by baths shares a lot of genetic material with the 'traditional' one, but causes death through very different symptoms.
This may explain disagreement about the remaining abilities of 'infected' zombies incl. the possible risk of being contaminated by eating zombie flesh TMP link .

[ghouls] eat human corpses. Prefer old rotting flesh to fresh (though oddly enough not zombie flesh.)

Since ghouls were roaming for centuries in the lands of the One Thousand and One Nights, while Voodoo appeared in Haiti at most in the very late 16th C., their interactions cannot be recorded in old, 'canonical' documents. Da Vinci may have had the mind to provoke and observe their interplay, but he lived in far too early times. A 18th C. 'natural philosopher' would be the first to set up such experiment, fitting in the Age of the Encyclopedists.

Now, if indeed ghouls don't eat zombie flesh, it would strongly support the hypothesis that zombies are NOT magically animated rotting corpses but living, if brainwashed or diseased, people.

How does the *authentic* wendigo fit in the ghoul semantic domain?

A madly laughing zombie? That would be specially scary! Like an almost human-looking hyena…

Okay, I really like that idea. Researchers studying Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease stumble upon a secret government project (variant: Nazi experiment) aimed at producing weaponized prions that will turn enemy populations into mindless slaves. There is the inevitable lab accident (or an insufficiently tested treatment, a la I Am Legend) and the world is overrun with shambling, moaning, giggling zeds. Move over, George Romero, here comes Night of the Laughing Dead!

All I ask is a "based on an idea by" credit.

LT