SOURCE: "Amina" by Edward Lucas White (The Bellman, June 1 1907)

DESCRIPTION: "As Waldo sat viewing the outlook a woman came around the corner of the tomb...This woman was bareheaded and unveiled. She wore some sort of yellowish-brown garment which enveloped her from neck to ankles, showing no waist line. Her feet, in defiance of the blistering sands, were bare...He remarked the un-European posture of her feet, not at all turned out, but with inner lines parallel. She wore no anklets, he observed, no bracelets, no necklace or earrings. Her bare arms he thought the most muscular he had ever seen on a human being. Her nails were pointed and long, both on her hands and feet. Her hair was black, short and tousled, yet she did not look wild or uncomely...He stripped the clothing from the carcass. Waldo sickened all over. What he saw was not the front of a woman, but more like the underside of an old fox-terrier with puppies, or of a white sow with her second litter; from collarbone to groin ten lolloping udders, two rows, mauled, stringy and flaccid." ("Amina" by Edward Lucas White)

NOTES: The Ghoul Amina looks human except for the large canine teeth and a set of dog-like udders for feeding her young, which there are usually 10 or so. The Ghouls refer to themselves as "The Free-Folk", not Persian, not Muslim. They inhabit old tombs and ruins. The local Arabs kill them on sight and deal harshly with anyone who fails to do likewise.

HISTORY: H. P. Lovecraft's ghouls take some of their inspiration from this tale by White, perhaps their dog-like heads. Of White he wrote in his "The Supernatural Horror in Literature": "Mr. White imparts a very peculiar quality to his tales -- an oblique sort of glamour which has its own distinctive type of convincingness." This quality is evident in "Amina".

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