Date Night with Robert the Doll
Meet Robert the Doll, the infamously haunted doll of Key West. Robert is big on manners, as any fellow in a dashing sailor suit should be. When you meet him in person, greet him and introduce yourself, and before you take his picture, make sure he’s ok with it. Don’t mock him or act like an ass. Don’t be rude and tap on his glass case, it would annoy you, too.
If you insult him, Robert will make sure you pay. He receives hundreds of letters a year from visitors that didn’t act right, and are now begging his forgiveness and to lift his curse.
We took an after-hours ghost tour of the Fort Martello Museum in Key West and got to meet Robert the Doll in person. The tour was a small group, 7 total, about two hours long and supplied us with an assortment of ghost-hunting equipment for the evening.
The first hour was spent being guided through the decommissioned Civil War fort. Before we would enter the next room, our guide would send a couple in to investigate on their own for a few minutes before the rest of the group joined them.
We got sent in to meet Robert on our own.
He sits in a polished glass case in the middle of a long room, with a single directional light from above, putting him in a strange spotlight. I was more excited than you could imagine. It felt like I was meeting a celebrity. I didn’t want to rush him (that would be rude), so I did my best to contain myself and walked up to his case, EMF detector in hand. It blipped as soon as I approached. I introduced myself, told him how happy I was to meet him, and asked if it was ok if I took his picture. The meter lit up quickly again, and I took that as a yes.
The rest of the group joined us, and we were seated in a semi-circle around his case for a talk from the guide. I was seated about two feet from the case, and now and again, my meter would light all the way up. I kept my phone away from it so there was no interference, and it kept going all the way on. Just enough to let me know yes, there is something here.
After the talk finished, we were let loose in the fort to ghost hunt on our own. There was a table full of equipment we were welcome to use. I chose dowsing rods, and Brian took a spirit box. A few other people from the tour were hanging around Robert, so we went off to walk around the grounds for a bit.
A bit of backstory about Fort Martello: After the Civil War, the fort was used as a quarantine hospital during a yellow fever epidemic. So many died within the walls that they had to get creative with transferring the remains around (think a very morbid game of chutes and ladders).
We went back to a particular hallway that was used as body storage. Brian’s spirit box started to immediately pick things up as we walked through. It was the first time I had ever used one, and the way it works is that it quickly cycles through radio frequencies and picks up EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon). You’re basically scanning through channels for ghost radio. scan. static. scan. static. scan. static. scan. wtf did that just say? scan. static. And so on. To be honest, it did pick up a lot, but I couldn’t make out what any of it was saying. You hear a split-second word in between a pattern of noise and aren’t able to play it back.
In the room adjacent to the hall, our guide had set up a motion detection device earlier in the night during our walking tour. It was a little box that threw a laser grid on the room and had a little screen on it. He told us he had just gotten it and was excited to try it out. Brian and I went to check it out when we left the hall and saw on the screen weird stick figures, herky-jerky dancing around. We didnt really think anything of it and assumed it was picking up on us in the room, even though we were outside of the grid. Later while yapping with the guide, I asked why it was picking up on us standing behind it, and he looked confused. He asked what we were talking about, and his jaw literally dropped when we told him what we saw.
Then, we hung out with Robert again.
With all due respect, Robert is unsettling to look at. He’s a child-sized doll, about 40”, and is now over 120 years old. His facial features are worn and pockmarked, and his eyes are flat black buttons that have long lost their sheen. The company that made him designed the original teddy bear, and his face has the same seam circling his mouth, giving him an uncanny-valley expression.
It does feels like he is observing you while you’re there. It’s not that the air around him is heavy or charged, it’s just … there. Something. That something you feel out of nowhere when you’re alone in a room and all of a sudden you know that you’re not. I cant say if it’s intelligence or cunning, but it is sentient. It is aware of you and makes sure you are aware that it is aware of you. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I absolutely would not want to be outside of what felt like a controlled environment with him (as far as I know, there is no warding around him, so it is only the perception of safety because it was a fun night). He did not make me feel threatened, but there was, without a doubt, a boundary laid out. Treat him with respect, and he won’t lash out.
The best I can describe what it feels like to be there with him is the same feeling when you are observing a snake at the zoo, and the lizard part of your brain kicks in with ‘that thing will fuck you up real bad’. So, don’t tap on the glass. (I did bonk my forehead right into it because I am an absolute bobo with poor spatial relations. I apologized, and it did feel like he eye rolled at the awkward goon hitting her face against the case).
When the night was wrapping up, we said our goodbyes (closing off any parasitic attachments) to Robert and told him again how great it was to meet him.
I of course hit the gift shop on the way out, and in retrospect, am grateful Brian gave me the Virgo Stare when I was trying to justify maxing out a credit card for the $2,500 life-sized replica.
I highly recommend Ghost Key West’s “Robert the Doll After Dark” tour with the ghost hunt VIP added on. Our guide’s name was Jeff, who was absolutely awesome and honestly the best ghost guide I’ve ever had. Jeff answered the non stop questions I had about everything, was truly sincere about the lore and the weirdness that surround Robert & the fort, and was as excited as I was to be there.
A few notes: Jeff recommended to us not to put Robert on any sort of pedestal. Be polite, but don’t act as if he/it is superior to you in any way. He also told us that the little guy Robert holds (it’s a lion) was given to him somewhere along the line.
Robert is on a 24 hour video surveillance with motion detection. Jeff told us that the sensors had been going off more than usual that week.
These are the polaroids I took of him. The last photo was taken without diffusing the flash. I was expecting the usual asterism reflection and instead got that.
Leave a comment