The Horror of Montyburg

The Horror of Montyburg is a legend infamous in the small town of Montyburg, Mississippi. The legend revolves around a demon supposedly living in the woods outside of Montyburg, often kidnapping children (and sometimes young adults), and then turning them into crude handheld dolls of themselves, of course the history behind this legend, is probably just as morbid-sounding, if not worse.

The legend supposedly started somewhere in the 19th century, when Montytown was an isolated, but bustling settlement. There was a man called Toby Lazarus who lived alone in a house in the woods outside Montyburg. Lazarus was a very odd, quiet man, rarely ever leaving his house. The only times he ever left his house was to do some shopping for either food or drawing supplies. Lazarus was a bit of an artist, though he only drew dolls, and even made dolls out of whatever simple materials he could find.

Eventually, children started to disappear, one by one, day by day. Nobody knew how or why the children were vanishing, but several of the townsfolk suspected that Lazarus was the kidnapper, as during each of the kidnapping days he began to develop an increasingly disturbing personality every time his visited the town.

When all of Montyburg began to suspect Lazarus, they went into the woods to his home to find that he was indeed the kidnapper, but what they found in his house was disturbing.

They found that he had murdered all of the children and had used several of their body parts to make crude handheld dolls that looked like the children he killed. Not only that, but he was also carving weird symbols onto the bodies of the children and used them and the dolls to perform some kind of ritiual, so not only was Toby Lazarus accused of murder, he was accused of witchcraft.

When found out, Lazarus openly admitted to his actions, in fact he relished the very fact, as if what he did was a mere hobby. That was proof enough for the horrified townsfolk, so they tried him and then burned him at the stake. According to legend, Lazarus' death may have been part of the ritual he performed, because before he was found out, Lazarus made another doll for himself, except this one was different than the the ones that looked like the murdered children, looking rather demonic, having a goatlike head and wearing robes. Lazarus wore this doll around his neck while being burned alive. When the town finished executing Lazarus, the goatlike doll was no longer around his neck, it was as if it vanished.

Later in the 1940s, a hermit by the name of Thomas Burwell was arrested for kidnapping children and murdering them in the same way Lazarus did, he admitted to the crime, claiming that a goat-headed creature wearing black, ragged robes told him to do it. Nobody believed Thomas at the time until the local priest and his brother, a historian learned about Lazarus' execution in the 19th century, and speculated that Lazarus had come back from the dead as a rare demon called "Bambola Demonio", which was Italian for "Devil Doll", and was continuing his twisted dollmaking ways through another person, the latter being Thomas Burwell. This speculation terrified the townsfolk, so the subject was dropped.

But then in the 1960s, a man named George Kaysen began a killing spree on the town, all in one night. When Kaysen finished killing at least 100 people in the town, he and the bodies had vanished the next day, and each of the houses of all the victims had a crude little doll modeled after each victim hanging on the front doors, as if someone or something had left them there. That horrific night is known to historians as the Montyburg Doll Massacre. The townsfolk of Montyburg suspected the evil spirit of Toby Lazarus being responsible for the Massacre, as he possibly was with the Thomas Burwell case, so since then the people refuse to leave town and head into the forest where Lazarus' house still stands, fearing that his evil spirit, the Bambola Demonio, haunts the area.

To this day, the legend of Toby Lazarus and theBambola Demonio is now called the Horror of Montyburg. There are still disappearances in Montyburg every now and again, yet the people refuse to do anything about it, fearing the legend of the demon and it's roots. And Toby Lazarus is now a legend parents tell to their children in order for them to behave, but they know he's out there in the forest, still turning people into dolls.

Written by JC-the-Hyena