The Ghoul enjoyed inserting the sound of flushing toilets into the middle of a movie scene and blowing up things with firecrackers (a la David Letterman's fetish with dropping things off building to see them smash on the sidewalk below).

The Ghoul especially enjoyed blowing up a character called Froggy, a silly looking frog in a tuxedo that was inspired by the Froggy the Gremlin character from ANDY'S GANG in the 1950s. You could say that the Ghoul's Froggy was the forerunner of the Mr. Bill puppet who constantly got sliced, diced, chopped, pummeled and pureed by the heartless Mr. Sluggo character on NBC's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

Ron Sweed, once told Cleveland.com  "I took what Ghoulardi did ten steps further and made it more radical--that's why they called me punk rock puke."

During one show, a teenager named Russ Stein made a request "Please sing Happy Birthday to me on your show this week." The boy came to the studio with a home-made birthday cake to celebrate the moment. But when it came time to sing, The Ghoul said "I've never done it before and I'm not going to do it now." Then The Ghoul picked up the  birthday cake and smashed it in to the boy's face. The boy responded, "You're Sick Ghoul. Sick! Sick! Sick!" Of course, the whole thing was done in fun.

When The Ghoul was canceled, Sweed took his zany character to Detroit station WKBD from 1974-75. In 1982, he returned home to Cleveland where once again The Ghoul was seen on Channel 61 on Saturday afternoons from 12:00 to 2:00 PM.

Throughout the 1980s, The Ghoul was syndicated in such major markets as Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The Ghoul Show ran on Cleveland's WBNX Channel 55 from 1998-2003.

A similar character The Son of Ghoul played by Kevin Scarpino aired in Canton, Ohio on WOAC Channel 67 in 1987.

External Links

• The Ghoul (IMDb)
• The Ghoul Fan Site
• "What's a Ghoul to do?" (Metro Times Detroit)

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