Episode 19 - Robert the Doll

You are excited about your new job. You found it through a friend. A large, austere house, owned by a young married couple was hiring extra cleaning staff. They paid well, better than similar jobs throughout the city, but oddly their staff was quite small.

It seemed they had trouble keeping people, in spite of the pay. On your first day, you arrived. You were given a key to the staff door by the couple, before they went on their way. You were working this shift alone. You began going from room to room, giving yourself a tour of your new work place.

The first floor was nice, simple and well-kept. The dining room was set modestly, it seemed your new employers did not entertain very often.

Moving upstairs to the second floor, there were a number of bedrooms, their doors hanging open, two closets, and… at the far end of the hall, a shut door.

Feeling only a slight trepidation, you make your way to the door and test the knob. It swings open freely. It is another bedroom, but small. A child’s room. Complete with a bed, a small dresser, and a set of shelves. And there in the window, as if looking out over the city, in a small wooden rocking-chair, was a doll…

Haunted dolls hold a special place in urban legend. Dolls, particularly antique dolls, have a reputation for hauntings and curses. An association born primarily from one story.

Although the roots of the superstitions have their origin in the totems and effigies used in religious and magical rituals dating back as far as ancient Egypt and Rome, the modern stories of cursed dolls seem to stem from the story of Robert.

Robert came to be owned by a young boy, Robert Eugene Otto, who went by Gene his whole life. For many years, they were inseparable, and although Gene’s attachment was noted as strange, it was not until much later that they revealed themselves to perhaps have a darker source.

Robert the Doll is a famous case of a haunted or cursed object. If you believe all the stories, Robert has caused all manner of misfortune. He has been blamed for bad luck, car accidents, injuries, divorces, and job loss, and a wide array of other problems.

Of his 115 year life, he spent the vast majority in the Key West home of Gene Otto. It wasn’t until many years after Gene’s death that Robert was donated to the East Martello Museum, where he has become a popular tourist attraction.

My name is Andrew Eagle, and I would like to invite you to join me in exploring the story of one of America’s most famous ghost stories, the story of Robert the Doll.

Short of the strange doll’s room, the rest of your employer’s house seemed completely normal. And you quickly put it out of your mind. They were after all, paying you well and the couple didn’t raise any red flags.

You were back for the fourth time. After the first day, you simply went to the side door, unlocked it and made your way inside. Neither member of the couple had been home yet, and you went about your business, leaving through the side door and locking it behind you when you were done.

This time however, you were perhaps halfway through cleaning the first floor when you heard something upstairs. Thud thud thud. Three small knocks. You stopped in your tracks, pausing to listen, you weren’t sure if you had really heard the sound.

Nothing, but as you started to move about again, thud thud thud. You stop again, sure you had heard something. You make your way upstairs slowly.

Maybe one of the owners was home today for some reason. You reach the second floor. Each door is as they always are. All the bedrooms hanging open and there at the end of the hall is the shut door of the doll’s room. You check the master bedroom, expecting to see one of the owners, but there is nothing. You find nothing in the guest room. As you arrive back in the upper hall, confused. You hear the sound again clearly.

Thud thud thud. There was only one possible source, you realize with a strange mix of horror and disbelief. The sound was coming from behind the shut door.

Robert’s story is told with one of two beginnings. Generally, believers claim that the doll was made by a young Bahamian woman who worked as a maid for the Otto family. The story claims that she cursed it, and filled it with magical energy, before gifting it to Gene as retaliation for cruelty by the boy’s parents.

Skeptics tend to hold to a more mundane origin for the doll. They report that the doll was manufactured in Germany by the Steiff Company. Gene’s grandfather purchased the doll while on a trip, and brought it back for Gene as a birthday present. The doll was dressed in a sailor’s costume that reportedly was worn by Gene when he was very young.

In either case, the result is the same. Robert the Doll came to be in the ownership of Gene Otto, who would grow very attached to the doll, keeping it until his death 70 years later.

You convinced yourself it was nothing. You really weren’t sure how, but you somehow rationalized the sound. Creaky walls, maybe. Then you left. And in your shifts since, nothing out of the ordinary.

That helped. The fact that nothing happened the next times you were there, you nearly manage to forget the sounds you had heard.

A while passes, until one day, you arrive to the house, unlock the side door, and make your way inside. You do a round of the house, to see if the couple is home. Upstairs you notice something odd. The door to the doll’s room is open. The room inside, neat and the doll sitting in the rocking chair by the window.

Beyond that you’d not seen them leave the door open, you thought nothing of it. Confirming that nobody else was home, you return downstairs and begin cleaning. You make your way upstairs and into the master bedroom. Quickly, you finish up in that room and move toward the guest room. Straight ahead you see the doll’s room.

It’s there in the corner chair. And you are a few steps into the guest room when you realize… The doll was not in the corner chair before. It had been in the window seat, hadn’t it? You peer back into the room. The doll sitting upright in the corner chair. And impossibly, horribly, looking straight down the hall.

As soon as Gene received Robert, the two were inseparable. The boy named the doll Robert, after himself, and dressed it in clothes he wore when he was very young.

It did not take long for the Otto’s to note strange happenings however. The early reports were easy to brush off. The maids and other staff would hear Gene in his bedroom talking to himself in two very different voices. The first, Gene’s own voice. The second, deep and gravelly.

As time went on, the stories escalated. The family would later report that they would sometimes wake to Gene screaming, and rushing into his room, would find him in bed surrounded by upturned and scattered furniture. Gene would blame the doll for these episodes, saying Robert would get angry and throw a tantrum.

Other stories involved servants noticing the doll having moved from one side of the room to the other while they weren’t looking; or hearing a child’s laughter even while Gene was not home.

Over time, the doll was relegated to its own bedroom in Gene’s house. Eventually, after many years of marriage, Gene’s wife moved the doll to the attic, where it remained for the rest of Gene’s life.

After his wife’s death two years after her husband’s, the house was sold to a woman named Myrtle Reuter who inherited ownership of much of the contents of the house, including Robert.

Myrtle Reuter lived in the house for 20 years along with the doll, keeping it in its attic room.

She reported throughout that time that she experienced unexplained sounds of movement and thuds coming from the attic, and she simply did her best to ignore it. Eventually, the occurrences took their toll, and Reuter brought the doll to the Fort East Martello Museum. When asked why she wished to donate the antique she simply answered… The doll is haunted.

It took them some time, but eventually the museum did display Robert, and his popularity as a tourist attraction has only grown since.

To this day, people flock to the small museum to see Robert. He spends most of the year sitting in a glass case, displayed alongside the many letters that are sent to Robert asking for forgiveness, or for Robert to lift the curse the sender’s believe have been placed on them.

To make his story even more compelling, the museum reports that the cameras and sensors they have in Robert’s room malfunction far more often than any other sensors in the building, and visitors often report that pictures they take of Robert come out blurry and wrong, as if he doesn’t want them to capture his image.

The museum warns visitors against taking pictures without first asking Robert for permission, they say that he has a habit of cursing those who disrespect him in that particular way.

Robert is one of the most famous haunted dolls in the world, and it is claimed that he is possessed by a number of spirits. If you believe in such things, he may even be possessed by powerful demons among the most powerful of all Hell’s forces.

Other than inspiring fear and superstition, Robert also inspired the 1988 horror film Child’s Play.

He, and his story, have left a huge mark on urban legend and modern folk lore over the course of his 115 year life, and thus far, he shows no signs of stopping.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed it. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, urban legend, and myth.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.