Ghoul

 

"Amine Discovered with the Goule", from the story of Sidi Nouman, of the Arabian Nights.

A ghoul is a cannibalistic monster that eats freshly buried corpses and consuming human flesh, abducts young children to eat, attacks unwary people into abandoned places, often classified as undead. The creatures usually dwells in graveyards and cemeteries. The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights and ghouls have made one of their best appearance in George A. Romero's cult film Night of the Living Dead . The term was first attested to in English in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek,^[1] which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.
By extension, the word ghoul is also used derogatorily to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger.

 Early etymology

Ghoul is from the Arabic ghul, from ghala "to seize".^[2] Marc Cramer and others believe the term to be etymologically related to Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon.^[3][4]

 In Arabian folklore

In ancient Arabian folklore, the ghūl (Arabic: literally demon)^[5] dwells in burial grounds and other uninhabited places. The ghul is a devilish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis.^[6]
Ghoul is a corporeal demon that can assume the guise of an animal. It lures unwary people into the desert or abandoned places and waits to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins and eats the dead,^[5] taking on the form of the one they previously ate.
In the Arabic language, the female form is given as ghouleh^[7] and the plural is ghilan. In colloquial Arabic, the term is sometimes used to describe a greedy and/or gluttonous individual.