"The Grinning Ghoul"

by Robert Bloch
originally published Weird Tales, June 1936

Our (again!) unnamed narrator was once a prominent psychologist, but now finds himself an inmate of the same sanitarium he once committed patients to.

It seems not long ago he was visited by one Alexander Chaupin, a tall, thin man with some kind of skin condition and unhealthy pallor.  Chaupin claimed to be a professor at Newberry College.  He was troubled by disturbing dreams in which he was led into a vault at a local cemetery,  and from there into underground caverns and tunnels beneath the cemetery, where he witnessed ghouls engaging in sinister worship and other ghoul-ish activities.

What's more troubling for Chaupin is that he believed these dreams to be, not dreams, but actual events.  His readings in the usual forbidden tomes led him to believe that ghouls were real.  And a visit to the cemetery led to his quickly finding the vault and the tunnels, as seen in his dreams.

The u.n. of course believed Chaupin to be crazier than a shithouse rat, his calm, articulate and gentlemanly demeanor notwithstanding.  Figuring the only course of action was to prove that there was no reality to the tunnels or the ghouls, he accepted Chaupin's invite to meet at the cemetery on an upcoming evening.  

Upon arriving, Chaupin led him to the vault, into the tunnels, with which Chaupin seemed all-to-familiar, and finally to a meeting with the ghouls themselves, of which Chaupin was revealed to be one!!!!

This is very early Bloch - he'd have been about 19 when it was published - and, like his other early Mythos goodies, it shows.  The story is written in a heavily Lovecraft-Poe style - though I must add that Bloch pulls off Lovecraftian Purple with a certain campy charm.  

The real weakness is the plot, which really makes no sense.  Why would the ghouls reveal themselves to the doc in this manner?  What was the point?  Practical joking?  Do ghouls just like pranking squares?  I guess its possible.  I mean, they live underground and eat corpses so, having any number of other unnapealing practices seems unsurprising.  Clearly, a little more thought and plotting on Bloch's part could have alleviated the gaping lapse in logic that the whole story is predicated on.  Still, I won't deny it's a fun read.