They are Ghouls

Despite his reputation as a master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe did not generally write poems about supernatural bogeymen. Instead, his poems were all about setting up the mood where any bump in the night is suspected to be our dead lover, and melancholy is so thick it turns to dread and suspense that you can cut with a swinging pendulum. Although Poe did not write about ghosts and goblins, he makes one exception for one character who recurs in a few poems: the ghoul.

Poe’s ghouls are not central to his narratives, but they are sufficiently developed that we can describe them and distinguish them from the stock archetype. In fact, their peripheral nature blends into the type of character Poe’s ghouls represent—they are background figures, they may be unseen, operating in the shadows.  For example, in the poem “Dream-Land” (1844), they are mentioned in a passing allusion, merely to add weight to the atmospheric setting:

By the grey woods,—by the swamp   

Where the toad and the newt encamp,—   

By the dismal tarns and pools 

Where dwell the Ghouls

We see no ghouls. The aforementioned ghouls are not encountered in this poetic outing, but Mr. Poe teases us with the affirmation that they are there. Nothing else is revealed about their existence, but we can imagine. Any being that dwells in “dismal tarns and pools” is a wretched creature indeed. Here we find an important departure from the traditional ghoul of folklore, which remains constant in Poe’s mentions of these creatures: Poe’s ghouls are not confined to cemeteries, nor do they feast on cadavers. If you want a cadaver-eater, Poe ain’t your man.

We get our first good look at Poe’s ghouls in his poem “The Bells” (1848). Actually, an early draft of the poem contained a stridently graphic description: Poe describes his ghouls as “pestilential carcases disparted from their souls.” In the final version, Poe withdraws the abhorrent physical description and focuses on the soullessness of these beings:

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone—

They are neither man nor woman—

They are neither brute nor human—

They are Ghouls

The point is not to describe gross rotting zombies like in a George Romero nightmare, but beings who remain unseen, aloof (“up in the steeple/All alone”), yet who “feel a glory in … rolling/On the human heart a stone.” In the poem, these shadowy creatures toll the funeral bells, taking joy in the suffering and dread that their announcement provokes in human hearts. Their ‘ghoulish delight’ in human misfortune recalls the “hideous throng” from Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” (1839)—who “laugh—but smile no more.”

Finally, “Ulalume: A Ballad” (1847) begins conventionally enough: as in “Dream-Land,” Poe places the ghouls in the ‘grey woods,’ using them to weigh down the ambiance of his setting, “In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.” The poem progresses and, in the predominant version found in most anthologies, ends, without any further word about these forest-inhabiting ghouls. It just makes this timberland extra spooky for us to know it is creeping with these retiring, but perhaps ill-intentioned, beings.  Those lucky enough to have a collection that includes the suppressed last stanza, will be in for a fascinating twist. In the extra verse, after Poe unexpectedly stumbles upon the tomb of his lost love, he wonders:

“Ah, can it 

Have been that the woodlandish ghouls— 

The pitiful, the merciful ghouls— 

To bar up our way and to ban it 

From the secret that lies in these wolds— 

From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds— 

Had drawn up the spectre of a planet 

From the limbo of lunary souls— 

This sinfully scintillant planet 

From the Hell of the planetary souls?”

In this iteration, we go from malicious creatures who feel a glory in rolling on the human heart a stone to “pitiful, merciful” beings, who create a fantastical mirage in the sky to distract the narrator and spare him any suffering from walking up to the tomb of his love. We do not know whether Poe intended this as an innovation on the ghoul character type, or whether the narrator’s view originates from a dazed confusion, akin to the narrator in “The Raven” (1845) when he imagines that there are angels in his chamber incensing the room to bring him “respite” and obliviousness to his woes. Perhaps Poe excised the last stanza to avoid needless confusion, purposefully intending to keep the ghouls, well, ghoulish.