Robert the Doll of Key West

When

since c. 1904 date reconstructed from later accounts

Where

Fort East Martello Museum, Key West, Florida, United States

Verdict

Legend

A doll in a sailor suit said to giggle and change its expression. Visitors to the Key West museum write it letters of apology.

What happened

Robert is a doll about a metre tall in a white sailor suit, probably made by the German company Steiff. Around 1904 it was given to young Robert Eugene Otto of a wealthy Key West family – later a painter – who named it after himself. The doll spent decades in the Otto family home on Eaton Street. According to local stories it walked about the rooms, looked out of the attic window, giggled and changed its expression, and little Otto blamed every mischief on it, saying: “Robert did it.” After the Ottos died the doll stayed in the house, and in 1994 it was donated to the Fort East Martello Museum. Today it sits in a glass case surrounded by hundreds of letters from visitors apologising for taking its photograph without permission and describing the misfortunes that followed.

Witnesses

Key West residents, later owners of the Eaton Street house, museum staff and visitors.

Explanations and hypotheses

There are no documents confirming any supernatural events – the legend grew around an eccentric artist and his toy only after his death in 1974. Versions about a girl of Bahamian descent who supposedly gave the boy the doll out of revenge are late additions. Religious studies scholar Joseph Laycock suggests that Robert may have inspired the whole pop-culture trope of the evil doll, from Chucky to Annabelle. For the museum and Key West the doll is above all a tourist attraction today.

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)