Ghoulish began life not as a font, but as a series of drawings for a layout in , a publication exclusively devoted to horror in culture and entertainment. Art Director Pullin was aiming for the shock-factor of Corman film titles of the 1960's. Inspired by , a font by Rotodesign, the art director drew the letters he needed by hand--adding creepy serifs and skewing the finished letters to stagger zombie-like above and below the baseline. The result was a fit for his pages, but far from a font until Chad Savage, a one-man design agency for the horror house industry, called to see if Pullin's design was available for his own work.

Readers who frequent PCWorld's font downloads may already know the four frights of Savage's . No slouch at font creation, Savage proposed a collaboration. Pullin replied by sending a master file of his letterforms. These were re-mastered in Adobe Illustrator. The pair filled the gaps in the set; Savage hit the send button; and Ghoulish went digital.

Ghul, the font's namesake, is a late 18th century Arabic term for a shape-shifting desert demon said to rob graves and devour corpses. The font Ghoulish resembles not so much a ghastly gourmand as the dark forest where this demon sleeps off the banquet. Pullin's top serifs are twigged--winter-bare and fragile. The emphasis on weight in the font's vertical stems mimics a heavy trunk, with lower serifs adding the effect of bare roots.

Ghoulish is a display face with a display face's quirks. The set is good and not so good, but clever designers shouldn't be put off. The font's range of characters is limited; some letter pairs require more attention than others; upper and lowercase letters often share the same forms. Applying the shift key makes no difference, except in a few cases in which a capital design flips on its horizontal axis to make a mirror-image. Design tips: Use a change in scale for secondary words requiring a less important level of emphasis like and, of, or the, to create contrast on the page. A torn and ragged hyphen makes a versatile ornament when tracked tight, which can even be done using the advanced settings under the Format>Font menu in Microsoft Word.

Weighty Ghoulish works in measured doses of 72 points and above. Narrow counters and a minimal use of negative space within angled letters like W, M and V become a problem at 60 points and below.