I'm a sucker for the sites too, I'll usually send in a mage to grab the free troops once my research is chugging along (or send in a mage right away if it's good summons like devils, winter wolves, or mummies).
Ghouls can actually be pretty useful. They're great for defending walls without starving. They've got morale 18 to avoid Awe, and do 50AN fatigue damage (MR-resistable) if their claw hits for at least 1 damage. So against something using just Awe-mistform, they are good (thanks Executor
).