The Witch of Long Road

Welcome, one and all, whether you're a newcomer to this little town or you've lived here for some time everyone is welcome to hear a story from this old timer! It's nice to see new faces here in Long Road, Ontario. Well, new if you don't count those construction fellas gentrifying our neighbourhoods of course. I do worry for them, working in abandoned buildings late into the night especially so close to Halloween. I hope they don't plan on attempting to renovate that old asylum though, that old place should just be left alone and all its spirits in it. Especially her.
Oh that's right, you new folks don't know about Long Road Asylum do you? It was opened back in the 1700's not long after the area was colonized. That old thing has had a bad reputation since the beginning, and really it's a wonder it stayed open until just before the First World War broke out. It's haunted that's for sure - oh, you wanna know what I meant by "Her", eh? Why, the person I'm referring to is our little town's most infamous resident, someone so feared that even now most of the folk here won't even say her real name. They just refer to her by what the newspapers used to call her by, "The Witch Of Long Road". Actually, now that I think about it that's a good spooky story in and of itself to share tonight. Scoot close by the inn's fireplace, and this old dog will tell you quite the tale.
Now, the Witch was born on Halloween night in the year 1866 and baptized under the name Fumiko Legba. Her mother was a young Japanese shaman who had lived in the town for two years, while her father was a wealthy merchant and a former slave who took the Underground Railroad from the States a little over a year prior to Legba's birth. They were quite the happy family until tragedy tore them apart. See, reportedly a rich man's wife was found dead, and the merchant despite his innocence became the only suspect. The result was a five year old Fumiko being forced to watch as both her parents were beaten to death by a mob in front of their house. If it wasn't for the sheriff at the time, Fumiko would've never grown up.
She was put into the foster system after that, going from home to home. Despite this tragedy she seemed to grow into a mature, stable minded young adult. She finished school despite everything stacked against her back then and became a well known artist. Unfortunately I don't know much details about her complete upbringing, for not much details have been found. The most I could tell you is that reportedly she had a friend from childhood that was killed accidentally when another girl pushed her into a puddle that had a live wire dangling in it. The only other thing known about Fumiko is that she studied and had a fascination with the magic arts, specifically Voodoo.
It was between the years 1885-87 when the bodies started to appear. Over the course of two years 44 victims were found in various locations across town, all in the same kind of state. Several lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by what appeared to be a large fishing hook were on the corpses, along with bite marks clearly caused by human teeth. A look of sheer terror could be seen in their lifeless eyes. Of course, it wasn't a victim of the Witch if it wasn't for her signature in the room, a canvas with a perfectly captures portrait of the victim nearby. There weren't enough pieces of evidence to tie the killings to Fumiko Legba, and so she went undetected for two years.
So how did she get caught, you may ask? She slipped up with her last victim by leaving a piece of her hair on the body, leading to her being tracked down. The Long Road Witch was finally arrested in May of 1887 in the town theatre, in the midst of fighting a mass murder that was causing trouble around that time. Both women were taken to the station and put on separate trials, where the same sheriff that rescued her years before could see that something wasn't right with Legba. He listened as she twitched every couple of minutes, smacking herself in the temple while explaining her motive. In front of the township she admitted to being compelled by voices in her head to trap her victims minds in illusory nightmares that they couldn't escape before killing them.
"I didn't mean to kill them," Legba reportedly stammered, "I just wanted them to hear and see what I hear and see. It was the voices that told me to kill and eat them."
The whole trial was so dark and twisted that many of the jury reportedly had nightmares for weeks afterwards. In the end Fumiko Legba went down in history as our town's most infamous serial killer, and for her madness she was locked away in the asylum. It was clear to everyone that behind those bright emerald green eyes was a twisted mind, one that had unresolved trauma that had now broken and needed help. Unfortunately, asylums in that era weren't as advanced as mental institutes are nowadays, and while not much is known about her time there it's well documented that in the end Fumiko Legba's body was found unmoving in her room on November 1st, 1888, just the morning after her 22nd birthday.
So what was going on within the mind of the Witch? To this day the answer isn't clear. What's clear is that after her mysterious death, multiple deaths and disappearances began to occur at the asylum, the first being the head doctor that oversaw her treatment. That kept happening until the place was abandoned, however that didn't stop the disappearances of any foolish soul dumb enough to go into the asylum. It's said that she's still there, stalking the rotted halls filled with vengeance, waiting for her next victim. I pray that those construction workers don't end up being next.
Category:Ghosts
Category:History