Ronald D. Sweed (January 23, 1949 – April 1, 2019) was an American entertainer and author, known for his late-night television horror host character "The Ghoul".
[4] In an interview with his mother, Metro Times reporter Anita Schmaltz asked, "Did you ever expect to give birth to a Ghoul?"
He wore the gorilla suit to a live appearance by Ghoulardi, a popular Cleveland television personality played by Ernie Anderson on WJW.
Known for his zany, early-adolescent humor (particularly surrounding his abuse of a rubber frog named "Froggy," his well-known penchant for blowing up model ships and aircraft with firecrackers, and his habitual smearing of Cheez Whiz over everything in sight), late night monster movies were a unique experience for Cleveland viewers in the 1970s.
The Ghoul would typically take a horror movie and dump in sound bites at appropriate moments, using audio clips from novelty records, George Carlin, Firesign Theater and rock albums of the '60s and early '70s.
[10] "Shooting from no-budget studio sets, the Ghoul inserted his own dialogue and sound effects over insufferably bad B movies, blew up food, model cars and figurines with firecrackers, and produced strangely compelling, culturally relevant skits and parodies.
"[11] Later in the 1970s, Kaiser Broadcasting syndicated The Ghoul Show to Detroit, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
[8][19] The Ghoul returned to Cleveland TV in 1998 on WBNX-TV (channel 55) where he remained for the next six years airing on Friday, then later Sunday nights.
He also did a Saturday night request show on classic rock station WNCX (98.5 FM) during the same time period.
[20] Said Robert St Mary, a Detroit journalist and author of The Orbit Magazine Anthology: Re-Entry:[21] "Ron understood that times had changed from the beatnik version of Ernie.
", "Scratch glass, turn blue", "Stay sick, climb walls", "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!
[10] An interesting side element is that the aforementioned rubber toy referred to simply as "Froggy" (and much abused by the Ghoul) was a toy dating from 1948 by a company named Rempel and featured often in comedic skits on the 1955 television show Andy's Gang where he was named Froggy the Gremlin.
[24] In 2020, he was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.