Fern Flower
Published on February 19, 2020

Ghoul

  • Vurkolak

Regions of expansion

Russia 1
Russian Federation

Description

The word "ghoul" in Ushakov's Explanatory dictionary has the meaning "werewolf, fearsome to people, vampire". In many works, the word "ghoul" is synonymous with the term "werewolf", and in the meaning of "ghoul" and "vampire" began to be used not so long ago.

The word itself appeared in the Russian language in the first half of the XIX century. and can be attributed to the number of neologisms invented by writers and poets. This word owes its appearance in the Russian language to A.S. Pushkin. He used a distorted basis of the word "volkolak" (a man turning into a wolf, a werewolf) in an 1835 poem from the cycle "Songs of the Western Slavs".

The image of a ghoul formed by literature represents a revived vampire-a dead man or a person bitten by another ghoul. He drinks the blood of his relatives, the closest people, which is why entire villages are empty. Hunts at night, gnawing the bones of the dead on their graves.

Ghoul in popular culture