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Once killed by a ghoul, how long does it take the victim to transform into one? For instance, a party of 4 are fighting 3 ghouls. One ghoul kills the party monk, how long before that monk can rise and attack the remaining party members as a ghoul?

Interesting question. Flicking through the MM undead, only relevant information which I can see is detailed under the Vampire:
"Any human or humanoid drained of all life energy by a vampire becomes an appropriately strengthened vampire under control of its slayer. This transformation takes place 1 day after the creature is buried, but if and only if the creature is buried." (MM, p. 99)

But your transformed vampire is quite a bit more powerful since it seems to retain its previous class levels.

For a ghoul, first thought would be one round after death. But perhaps one turn might be more reasonable.

For ghouls, the MM entry also suggests to me that burial is required for the transformation: "Any human killed by a ghoulish attack will become a ghoul unless blessed (or blessed and then resurrected)." The blessing sounds like some form of last rites, which is reinforced by addition of resurrection. I'm at least partially being influenced by HPL here, since there's a ghouls-oriented short story in _Delta Green: Alien Intelligence_ that has been playing tricks with my subconsciousness.

And, what if a PC or NPC wasn't blessed prior to raise dead or resurrection?: what kind of strange and twisted villain would result?: an unturnable and living champion of ghouls? the great cannibal leader who raises an army of ghouls and ghasts to ravage the countryside? a necromancer who lives with the damned wisdom of one how has already died?

I guess the question I have is, is the spell intended to have new ghouls rising up (from slain NPCs and PCs) in the middle of combat. Or, is this the sort of thing the PCs can stop if they kill all the ghouls present and then chop of the head or something similar. I ask because this came up in a game this weekend (TPK) and it wouldn't have been if I hadn't raised a ghoul after 1 round to join the combat.

Bear in mind that ghouls are eaters of the dead, so a character coming back as a ghoul would have to not be eaten by them. That suggests it is not an immediate spawning process to me.

Ghouls kill in order to eat, right? So, I'd imagine that the ghouls would have to kill and feast on quite a few people before the remaining food started to come back to un-life.

I'd have thought (well, on one occasion in the past I thought) that waiting for a period equal to the paralysation duration would capture that Romero feel. The fight ends, the PCs camp, when slowly and unexpectedly the fallen comrade rises from his litter...

Matthew wrote:Bear in mind that ghouls are eaters of the dead, so a character coming back as a ghoul would have to not be eaten by them. That suggests it is not an immediate spawning process to me.

This is a good logical call. Can't feed on something thats popping up in 1 round. Man, time for some DM backtracking shim-sham.

Yeah, on reflection, I don't think one round is going to do it, and even one turn might be too soon. I would probably default to one day, as per the vampire. Or perhaps, 1d6+6 hours might not be unreasonable, if you're looking for something quicker.
I was looking at the Olive slime in the MM2, and it creates a slime zombie in 7-12 days. The FF yellow musk creeper can create a zombie instantly. I think though it's perhaps hard to draw a comparison to these two(since it's plant action).

Traditionally I always played it as the next day after burial (which is to say that it pretty much never actually happened), which I think was the intent, but given the current prevalence of zombie movies in which the transformations occur much more quickly, if I were running a new campaign it would be very tempting to go with something like that - perhaps 1d20 rounds or 1d4-1 turns or something like that

Nothing is said explicitly BTB. It's up to the DM.

There may be some info in REF5 Lords of Darkness...

Up to you,
Prespos

Ps.
The next Sunset may be a good time, going by "The Rule of Cool".