Images and archetypes -- the ghoul

What do you see?

This came across my digital transom a few minutes ago.  I found it on Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters site.  The picture comes originally from a news station in Northern Louisiana, and they claim to have received it from a viewer who wants to remain anonymous.  The viewer swears that it is legit.

I don't know whether it is or not, and I'm not really bringing it up for the purpose of probing its probity.  I thought my own reaction to it was interesting.  When I saw it, I said to myself, "That looks like a ghoul."

Now, why would I say that?  Somewhere, I suppose, I had "downloaded" the general description of ghoul and could recognize possible specimens.  But what is the definition of a ghoul?

ghoul [gool]

–noun

1. an evil demon, originally of Oriental legend, supposed to feed on human beings, and especially to rob graves, prey on corpses, etc.

2. a grave robber.

3. a person who revels in what is revolting.

Oh, that's nice.  Blech.

I think I can remember reading the word in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.   If not there, then possibly in Fritz Leiber's Fafhred and the Gray Mouser stories, or other classic fantasy fare.  I know it's a creature category in the grandaddy of all role playing games Dungeons and Dragons (yeah, I'm a geek, I played that).  Most likely, artworks like these are where I got the mental image of a ghoul.  But am I right that this looks like a ghoul?  I mean, I've never seen a "real" ghoul.  How do I know what one looks like?  Is there any agreement on this amongst the artists and writers who use ghouls in their work?

I went on an image search with the word "ghoul".  There are a lot of different images, but many of them do look like that fellow up there, and all of them carry at least some of its traits -- pale to the point of being colored white (ie, bloodless); emaciated; evil looking face; shiny eyes.  Usually wearing little or nothing, implying a lack of civilization.

This one is close, if you get rid of the stuff he's wearing.

I would be comfortable calling it a ghoul, and from what I've seen, I suspect that "ghoul" is an archetypal image.  What this means is that the image resides within all of us, available for us to call forth from the depths of the collective unconscious, or as I call it, dreamspace.

That being the case, it certainly resides within most artists interested in working with dark, scary images.  And that means there's every chance the image above is as fake as we all immediately thought it was when we saw it.

But I remember that Jung thought the archetypes were actual creatures residing within our reality somehow, which can and do interact with us, even physically, if they want to.

We wants the precious!

But even when they don't come down and knock at the door, they are active in our dreams and our art.  Just look at Gollum up there.  He isn't called a ghoul, but look how many traits he shares with that archetype.

Look, I'm in a mausoleum and a sewer!

I notice how all the pictures here show the same general pose, with at least one hand on the ground, crouching.  This implies both a kind of "knuckle dragging" lack of intelligence, but also a preparedness for pouncing.

To dwell among the dead, but not to partake in death itself.  To hate life, light, and the living, but to depend upon it for sustenance.  Something in this image fits the cryptoterrestrials that I've been looking into.

Who, me?  But I'm not even crouching!