i can't find any walk, run, or death animations on this ghoul, it uses the a_ba for walk,run,die

i can't find any walk, run, or death animations on this ghoul, it uses the a_ba for walk,run,die

You can either examine those animations in a_ba series and just use them, or you can add a new set directly to the model.
The way I do it is like this:
This process inserts that named animation into the local model, which causes that animation to override that from the a_ba series, if it even existed.
This is not an accurate science, especially if positional keys are used. In addition, if bone lengths are different, you may have issues where like if you want two hands to meet on the hilt of a weapon, what happens instead is they pass through each other, or come nowhere near each other. You'll then need to tweek their frame0 position to make a fit. This can be time consuming.
Animations are in the text files like so:
newanim <animation alias> <model name>
...model nodes here and how they are affected...
doneanim <animation alias> <model name>
Unless they are absolutely needed, you should then remove all position keys which are created on the model. Gmax tends to add positional keys even if you aren't specifically telling it to. These occur almost every time I make rotational keys in Gmax, but for all I know it can be disabled by telling it not to be so absolute. Exceptions are usually just rootdummy type nodes, you want that kept where it is, unless it is not actually used for anything (stays at a fixed point all the time). Everything else should be rotational keys only. I often fail to remove these, even thought I wrote a script to do it for me. Not removing them will cause problems for people trying to use this new model as a supermodel with scale differences.
Its far safer - and has less margin for error - to open the animation model in 3DS Max (or GMax) and import the animations from the other model directly into the aurora base.
This is the system I use...
i moved the animation keys out of the way for the ghoul's animations, then i get this error

You mean you deleted or slid the anim keys away from their original position? If so, I think what you are seeing is the export algo telling you that there is no keys to bracket the named anim cycle which is still defined on the aurorabase. So during your export, if this isn't a full on error, I think what it is going to do is export empty anim sequences for those defined which you moved manually.