Whilst writing my new YA horror novel, Frozen Charlotte, I did a bit of research into spooky dolls. Although they’re all quite different from my Frozen Charlottes, reading about other dolls helped me to get in the mood for my book, and was a great starting point for what some of these demonic toys are supposed to get up to. I’ve always found old fashioned dolls a bit creepy anyway, especially if they’re ancient, so here are some of my favourite haunted dolls, starting with one of the most famous:
Robert the Haunted Doll
I first found out about Robert long before I started writing Frozen Charlotte. He appears in my Weird Florida book, as well as many more of the Unexplained Phenomena books I collect. Robert is a stuffed straw doll, about three feet high, dressed in a white sailor suit. He was given to a 4-year-old boy named Robert Gene Otto in 1906 by a servant who was said to be skilled in black magic and voodoo.
The boy gave the doll his first name, Robert, and insisted on being known himself as Gene from that day forward. Gene was often heard talking to the doll upstairs in his Key West home and being answered by a voice that was not his own. Servants and visitors to the house said they sometimes heard Robert giggle, or saw him move, or blink, or that the expression on his face changed. Robert actually has buttons for eyes so I’m not too sure what this button-blinking would involve, but let’s not let that ruin the story . . .
Anyway, if anything bad happened at the house, like if something was broken or stolen, or if another toy turned up mutilated, Gene would always say: “Robert did it.” And the neighbours frequently reported seeing Robert at one of the upstairs windows, then disappearing only to pop up at another window, and then another, as if a child was running around up there, holding him up to the glass. Except the family were out and there was no one else in the house at the time.
Later on, Gene started screaming in the middle of the night, and when his parents went rushing into his room, they’d find furniture overturned and Gene sat in bed looking terrified. He would always say the same thing: “Robert did it.”
Robert did it, Robert did it . . .
Gene continued to live in the house as an adult and died many years later. Robert was left in the attic until a new family moved in with their 10-year-old girl, who played with Robert for a while before the screaming in the night started once again and she claimed that the doll was alive and wanted to kill her – a claim that she continued to repeat to interviewers more than thirty years later.
Today Robert resides at the Key West Martello Museum where he is said to torment employees by tapping on the glass of his case, messing up visitors’ cameras and even wandering around the museum at night. During October, the month Robert is said to be most active, he goes on vacation to be put on display at the Historic Custom House. Staff put a little bag of peppermints in the case with him to try to get him to behave himself. It’s said that there are always some missing from the bag the next morning . . .
And there’s plenty more where Robert came from! Look out for another haunted doll on my blog next week.
