Ghoul

Ghouls are undead humanoids notorious for their hunger for carrion. The precise origin of the species is unclear, though their existence is referred to in the Chronicles of Vash Edom and it is generally understood that the original necromantic rites for their creation are several thousand years old. Unlike some undead, ghouls retain a fragment of the intellect that they had in life and are even capable of speech - though their insatiable hunger dominates their minds and blots out almost all traces of the person that they were in life.
Ghouls are not a natural part of the ecosystem, and most scholars agree that they do not tend to rise spontaneously - though many folktales speak of those who indulge in cannibalism, or extreme debauchery and evil in life, returning as ghouls after death. Most ghouls are thought to be created by deliberate magical means; aside from the most familiar necromantic rites which can animate corpses, it is rumoured that there exist powerful rituals which can animate a large number of ghouls at once. Such rituals are sometimes said to be linked with the necromantic contagion known as Ghoul Fever, a horrific but mercifully rare occurence that is spread by infected ghouls and causes those whom they wound but do not kill outright to sicken, die, and then rise in turn as ghouls several hours later.
Ghouls have jagged claws which inflict terrible wounds and are capable of paralysing living beings with a mere scratch. For reasons that are not widely understood, Elves are immune to the paralytic talons of the ghouls; this protection is shared by Eladrin, though not by most other fey.
There are a number of subspecies of ghouls, the most well-known of which are referred to as Ghasts; they are also somehow related to a kind of demon known as the Maurezhi, though the details of this relationship are obscure.