A Boy, His Doll, and the Demon Within

There are few things more endearing than watching a child’s eyes light up as they receive a treasured gift, but what happens when the gift isn’t given with love? What happens when the gift-giver’s intentions are dark and filled with malice? The Otto family learned all too well. In 1908, their youngest son, Robert Eugene, received a cursed, hand-made doll from his caregiver. Though he loved it dearly, it immediately began to wreak havoc on him, his family and many others. In fact, the demon doll still exists to this day and continues to bring misery to the lives of those who are foolish enough to pay him a visit at the Fort East Martello Museum in Florida. This is the story of Robert the doll.

The Otto Family

Thomas and Mini Otto were an affluent couple who built their home in 1898 in Key West, Florida. Now known as “The Artist House”, they lived there with their four beautiful children, Mizpah, Joseph, Thomas, and little Robert Eugene. The home was quite large, so the Ottos kept a staff of servants to help with maintaining the grounds, cleaning, cooking, and looking after the children. The nurse who was caring for the youngest child, Robert, was so integral to the family that they would take her on vacation with them so she could assist with the boy while abroad. Life was good for the Ottos. The nurse, on the other hand, was quite unhappy.

The Curse

There are two conflicting accounts of how Robert Eugene acquired the doll. Some say that it was a hand-made one-of-a-kind doll his grandfather brought back from Germany. Others say that the gift came from Robert’s nurse.

Robert’s nurse, like many of the staff the Ottos employed, is said to have been from Jamaica, though there is some debate that the woman was actually Haitian. Unfortunately, given the time and place in history, there are no recordings of the nurse’s name, so her origin and family history is based on stories that have been passed down by the Otto family and the Key West locals that lived nearby. As the story goes, this nurse practiced voodoo and, displeased with the way the Otto family treated her and the other servants, decided to take her revenge in the only way she knew how. When Robert was 4 years old, she gave him a gift. It was a hand-made doll made in the boy’s likeness and imbibed with the essence of a demon spirit.

The boy was absolutely enamored with his inanimate friend and immediately named it Robert, giving up his own first name and having everyone refer to him as “Gene”, his middle name.

Robert The Doll

The doll itself stands 40 inches tall, which is unusually large for the time. It is stuffed with wood-wool and is dressed in a sailor suit, which many believe came from Gene’s old wardrobe. Robert the doll’s facial features are painted on with his mouth drawn in an expression similar to that of a jester.

Robert and Gene

From the day Gene got Robert, the two were inseparable. Gene brought his new best friend everywhere. Robert slept in Gene’s bed, had his own seat at the dinner table, accompanied him during his bath time, and had his own rocking chair in Gene’s room. Voodoo or not, the doll absorbed a lot of emotional energy from the boy. It didn’t take long for Thomas and Mini Otto to suspect something was wrong though.

The problems began with the types of sounds that would come from Gene’s room. Mini would be milling about the house and would hear Gene talking to someone, his voice small and sweet. The second voice in the conversation was also Gene’s, but the tone was frighteningly low and filled with an intensity and insistence.

On one occasion, Mini crept up to Gene’s room to listen in on a particularly tense-sounding conversation. Without warning, she burst into the room, unsure of what she would find. To her astonishment, she found Gene balled up in the corner of his room with his arms wrapped around his knees while Robert the doll stared down at him from the bed.

Robert Did It

As time went on, the Ottos began to hear inexplicable footsteps and giggling from different corners of the house. They would find Gene’s other toys ripped to shreds and, when confronted about the mistreatment of his things, Gene would always say “Robert did it.” Of course, his parents did not believe him and so Gene was often punished for the random destruction of things around the house. From the broken dishes in the china cabinet to the silverware strewn along the floor to the torn up laundry, Gene’s explanation remained constant: Robert did it. Eventually, the Otto’s began shifting the blame to some of the staff for the things that Gene could not possibly have been responsible for, including locking a servant out of the house at night. It didn’t take long for the servants to become suspicious of Robert the doll themselves.

Perhaps one of the most troubling occurrences for the Ottos was waking up one morning to the sound of their little boy screaming in terror. They rushed to his room and found all of the furniture overturned and his belongings thrown all around the room. Robert sat on the bed and appeared to be glaring at Gene while the little boy looked up at his parents and spoke those three little words. “Robert did it.”

Auntie Otto

As time passed, visitors and neighbors began to take notice of the doll. Visitors claimed to see Robert blink and heard the mysterious footsteps when he was not in view. Neighbors claimed to see Robert peeking through the windows, appearing to move on his own.

When Gene’s great aunt came to visit, she was immediately uncomfortable with Robert. She believed that the doll was indeed cursed and insisted that Thomas get rid of it. Not wanting to break his son’s heart, Thomas took Robert, placed him in a box, and brought the doll up into the attic where he would stay until the end of the aunt’s visit. Sadly, the woman was found dead in her bedroom the next morning. The official cause of death was a stroke, but Robert the doll was quickly un-boxed and returned to Gene, never to leave his side again.

Little Gene Grows Up

Gene grew up to be an artist. He designed the gallery at the Fort East Martello Museum and married a renowned pianist named Annette Parker. He brought her to live in his childhood home where she first met Robert the doll. Gene was known to be an eccentric character. It was part of his charm, so Annette did not make a fuss about the doll right away. Over time; however, she grew tired of Robert and the toll he began to take on their relationship. Once again, Robert had a seat at the dinner table and a chair by Gene’s side of their marital bed. She grew to detest the doll, and insisted that Gene get rid of it.

Like his father had done many years before, Gene took Robert, placed him in a box, and brought him up to the attic. This only served to unnerve Annette further. Gene and Annette would hear footsteps in the attic and giggling throughout the house until, one day, the entered the sitting room to find Robert in a rocking chair.

Robert the doll stayed with Gene until the day he died in 1974. Annette past away two years later, but the story doesn’t end here.

A New Companion

Myrtle Reuter purchased the Otto home after Annette’s death in 1974. She found Robert the doll and thought him to be an interesting antique. She soon realized that Robert was more interesting than she initially thought.

Visitors to her home claimed to hear footsteps in the attic. In one case, a plumber reported that he heard giggling coming from behind him. When he turned to see what was going on, he said the doll had moved across the room on his own. Myrtle was convinced that the doll was haunted and both her and her daughter insisted that Robert moved around the house unassisted.

The Artist House was gaining in popularity. The locals were fascinated by the story of the demon doll, so a reporter named Malcolm Ross came by to do a story on him. When he was brought into Robert’s room, Malcolm was stunned to see a change in the doll’s expression. Malcolm had been talking negatively about Gene Otto and Robert appeared to glare at him with disgust.

“It was like a metal bar running down my back. At first when we walked through the door, the look on his face was like a little boy being punished. It was as if he was asking himself, ‘Who are these people in my room and what are they going to do to me?’ – Malcolm Ross

A New Home for Robert

In 1994, Myrtle Reuter made the tough decision to donate Robert to the Fort East Martello Museum. She was too afraid to destroy him and thought that if he could be housed in the museum that Gene worked on, he would be appeased. The museum accepted Robert, but Myrtle died a few months later.

The Fort East Martello Museum staff did not initially put Robert on display. They did; however, notice a shift in the atmosphere since Robert had arrived. As word of the doll’s relocation spread around the community, the museum started receiving visitors asking to see Robert.

Not wanting to take any chances, the staff at the museum put Robert the doll in a glass display case. Visitors have complained of having their cameras and electronic devices malfunction when attempting to capture Robert’s image. Even more intriguing are the numerous reports from those who came to see Robert and mocked him. These unfortunate people believe that the cursed doll is to blame for causing their car accidents, random injuries, illnesses, job losses, and divorces. To this day, Robert the doll receives hundreds of letters of apology from visitors asking him for forgiveness and begging him to remove his curse on their lives.

If you are not sufficiently creeped out yet, check out this South Florida PBS clip where museum staff talk about what it is like to watch over Robert.

Reflection

Do you believe in curses that are so strong they can trap an evil energy inside an object such as a doll? Is it possible for a person to anthropomorphize an object so much that they can animate it with their own energy? Do dolls just plain creep you out?

Let me know what you think in comments in the section below.

References: http://robertthedoll.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_(doll) https://www.hauntedrooms.co.uk/robert-doll-story-eugene-otto-enchanted-doll https://www.lorepodcast.com/episodes/15