ghoul

   Technically a ghoul is an evil spirit which robs graves and preys on corpses. The word is used more loosely of someone who shows a morbid interest in unpleasant matters. ‘How did he die, sir? Cut his throat? Stab himself? Hang himself, maybe?’ asks a character in An Indecent Obsession, by Colleen McCullough. ‘You would be the one to want to know that, wouldn’t you, you little ghoul,’ replies the man to whom the questions were put. In Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton, ‘ghoul’ is used as a friendly term of address to a man by a girl. The word appears to be part of her idiolect, used without justification as far as its meaning is concerned. She later calls the man ‘you ghoul’, and eventually ‘my darling ghoul’.