By far, this is the creepiest, as well as the most facinating object that I found on my trip. This may not look like much more than an old doll the resembles a burn victim dressed as a sailor, but it has been the object of many television shows, the most powerful story in both island ghost tours and ghost books, and is known to be one of the most active entities on the island. I do believe this calls for a history lesson...
The Enchanted Beginning - In the early 1900's, a rich man by the name of Dr. Otto lived in Key West, and took several 'servants' (actually they were slaves) from the Bahamas. In what many speculate was actually an act of revenge, a Bahamian servant gave his son, Robert Eugene Otto a doll made of a wire frame, cloth, straw, and most likely, a soulstone. This type of enchantment in some voodoo practices involves a small crystal being placed into an object, thus imbuing it with power by taking a soul of its own. At the time the doll was given to the boy, his sister had recently died, and he was very impressionable. Eugene immeadiately took to Robert, and gave him his first name and demanded that he be called Eugene from that day forth. Throughout his childhood, whenever something bad would happen or something would be blamed on Eugene, he would say, "I didn't do it. I don't know anything about it. It must have been Robert." ...some question whether this may have happened.
The Artist's Life - Eugene continued to have a close relationship with Robert until he left to study art in Paris. In Paris, he met his future wife, Anne, and they soon were married and moved into his former home in Key West, which is now known as "The Artist House". It was when they returned that Anne finally learned about Robert. Eugene had craftsmen construct a room scaled to Robert's size built in the third floor turret of his victorian style home, and even had furniture built, and the ceilings lowered. Anne thought that Robert was strange, but never said much of anything. Eugene refused to allow people inside the house to visit them, and for good reason. Children on their way home from school (and many have been interviewed--always with the same results) claim that they would see Robert move around in the upstairs windows even when no one was home, and on some occassions, he would jump from one window, move to the other side, and go into the window on the opposite side of the room. As Eugene aged, he became increasingly abusive to Anne, and it was discovered that on many occassions, he would lock her in a slanted closet beneath Robert's room under the stairs for several days at a time. After Eugene's death and burial in the Key West Cemetery, Anne left for her family's home in Boston, and allowed the house to be rented out.
The Tale is Far From Over... - When Anne left, she left Robert locked in his upstairs room, and put in a lease agreement that 'Robert must at all times remain the sole occupant of the attic room', or the contract was void. This remained true up until her death in 1976. The first new reports were from a plumber working after Anne left. The plumber reported:
"I was doing some work in the larger part of the attic of the house. The people there wanted to make it an additional room so I was running the lines for a new toilet. The doll looked pretty creepy sitting there on the little chair holding its stuffed animal, but I had work to do so I didn't think much about it at first. As my work continued I had to make a few trips to get some parts from the van. Each time I returned I could swear the doll had moved a little bit. Like I said, I had work to do so I ignored it as much as I could, but when I was just about finished with the job and started decending the stairs, I heard a little kid giggling behind me. When I turned around the doll was on the opposite side of the room. The first thing I did was look to see where the kid was, but no one was there. I wasn't really frightened, but it was weird so I just continued down stairs and left. Some of my tools are probably still up there."