Trantor is a demonic troll who transforms children into wooden dolls to feast upon their energy out on Briarville, Missouri in the late 19th Century. He is captured by the townsfolk and Premature burial an oak tree. One of the village elders, Phineas Worrell, an ancestor of Ernest, establishes the seal. Out of vengeance, Trantor places a curse on the Worrell family, stating that he can only be released on the night before Halloween and by the hands of a Worrell. As part of the curse, every generation of Worrells will get "dumber and dumber and dumber", until the dumbest member of the family is foolish enough to release him from his earthly prison, culminating in Ernest P. Worrell.