They're distasteful, morbid, kind of mean and certainly not for polite society, but ghoul pools are just good nasty fun for the people who play them.

    Sometimes called "dead pools," they're running bets on which celebrities will be the next to die. Pick a winner and the pay-off can be substantial in some of the larger games, but profiting isn't really the point. Players say it's all in fun.

    In a culture that elevates politicians, rock stars and TV talk show hosts to the altar of public adoration, gambling against their lives borders on sacrilegious.

    Most ghoul pool participants are happy to collect when their candidates croak, although they don't really want the person to actually die. But worshipping the public personas of celebrities we know only through the media dehumanizes them in a way.

    To people who play the ghoul pools, betting on their deaths seems no more callous than changing the channel.

    Most dead pools are loosely organized among people who work in the same office, drink at the same bar or use the game as a fun way to keep in touch over long distances. It's a morose bonding experience — a way of socializing among the living by betting on who may soon be dead.

    Every group has its own rules, but there are a few constants. The pools must include celebrities only, although every group has its own way of determining celebrity status. Some pools require a small deposit — $5 is common — but many go by the honor system. Deadlines are set for the entry of picks and the confirmed dates of death.

    Swissvale's Gerard Rohlf is part of a loosely organized dead pool that connects living people scattered across the country. Each year on Dec. 31, he calls old friends he may not have seen in years. In their pool, each person picks three celebrities that they don't know personally and agrees to cough up $5 if their candidate doesn't win. No duplicate choices are permitted. Whoever picks the first celebrity to die in the coming year wins the pot.

    "It's considered bad form to pick someone who's on life support, but someone always does," says Rohlf. "It's also bad form to pick religious leaders, but they do that, too."

    Perennial picks include the Pope, the Queen of England and Michael Jackson. This year's pick paid off early when Carl Perkins played his final licks in the spring.

    Some of the picks in Rohlf's ghoul pool are no-brainers. Frank Sinatra and George Burns were, well, dead give-aways. But Rohlf says with a little research, long shots occasionally pay off.

    "The best place to find picks is in the National Enquirer or the Star," says Rohlf. "That's where you can find out who's under stress, who's in trouble and who's living a high-profile, dangerous life. One year, for instance, the winner was Jessica Savitch, who had just done an expose on ties between the Mafia and the NFL and the Vatican. Now that's thinking."

    Another player cashed in on the death of college football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. "The guy figured that football was all Bear was living for," says Rohlf, "and he died not long after he left the game."

    This year's contest stopped running when Perkins' heart did, but Rohlf says he thought he had a winner: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "I thought the Palestinians would blow him up for trying to stop the Middle East peace process," he says, "or the Israelis would blow him up for secretly trying to implement it."

    The owner of one Pittsburgh bar has been running a ghoul pool since 1982. With $5 bets and about 200 people in the game, the payoff for picking a winner is about $1,000. He asked that his name and the name of his bar be withheld because of the way the Liquor Control Board feels about gambling in bars.

    "It started with just a dozen people who needed an excuse to get together and have a few drinks," he says. "We put a few bucks into the pot and winner would buy the drinks." Over the past 15 years, however, the bar's ghoul pool has become so large and the take so inviting that a more complicated system had to be devised.

    In their monthly game, "pall bearers" from small groups of players place the bets and collect from the losers. If there's a question as to the celebrity status of one of the picks, an "eternal remembrance committee" determines if the would-be cadaver is famous enough to count. Each month, the players gather at the bar and the winner delivers a eulogy to the deceased before claiming the cash. No one has ever been too shy to take the money, but if a winner has a problem with public speaking a predetermined "eulogist" makes the speech.

    To keep the game interesting, organizers recently changed the bylaws. First death of the month pays 70 percent of the pot. Those who choose the month's remaining deaths split the other 30 percent. If no one else dies, the winner gets the whole thing.

    In September, somebody won big on George Wallace. This month the Queen Mother is in the pool with Bob Hope.

    The bar owner says he tries to keep the pool lighthearted, but sometimes the bets become an ugly exposition of wishful thinking. "One guy, a Vietnam veteran, used to put his money every month on Jane Fonda," he says. "I asked him why he kept betting on someone so young and healthy. He said, 'Because what she did in North Vietnam was wrong and I hope she dies.'"

    Ghoul pools are distasteful — that's kind of the whole point. But even among the morbid there are limits of respectability.

    In the bar's pool, famous children are acceptable picks, but kids suffering from an illness are out of bounds.

    Despite the camaraderie, the money and the chance to do something in public that's generally considered disgusting, sometimes ghoul pools aren't very fun.

    "One of the biggest hits in the pool was also one of the worst wakes," says the bar owner. "Mayor Caliguiri. Everybody was a little down when that happened. Nobody felt very good about it. But we kind of adhere to the Irish tradition — we cry when a baby is born because that's the toughest part of life, and celebrate when they die because they're moving on to something better."

    Because it's sort of a disgusting practice, many participants in office ghoul pools don't want their games to be made public.

    But Pittsburgh's most visible ghoul pool operates on the air on WDVE's Morning Show, where the pursuit of all things disgusting has been turned into a highly profitable form of art. Listeners initiated The Morning Show's ghoul pool by calling in with updates on who the hot picks were in their own games. 'DVE started reporting the contenders in area ghoul pools and eventually began their own pool among Morning Show staffers.

    "It really started when Frank Sinatra was going in and out of the hospital," says the show's producer Bob McLaughlin. "People started calling in and saying, 'When's he gonna die?'"

    There are no limitations to the 'DVE pool, but no local celebrities have ever been included and members of the morning team are squeamish about choosing young people with debilitating illnesses.

    "The first time I went in was last year and I had Mother Teresa," says McLaughlin. "I felt bad about it and pulled her name out, but if I had left it in I would have won. Another was Kirk Douglas. I was going to pick him, but I saw him on TV and he looked so bad I thought 'that poor guy.' We try to keep it fun and not be mean about it."

    WDVE's ghoul pool picks are posted on their Web site at dve.com. under Morning Show. Gut feelings on who is about to kick can be offered by e-mail.

    "Cris Winter wins every time," says McLaughlin. "It's, like, eerie. If she picks your name it's the touch of death."