Posts tagged "Robert the Doll"

East Martello Museum Photos

Some more Photos from East MartelloMuseum

EastMartello (82 photos)
20 August 2009

Note: To see the pictures in the original Picasa album, click here

East Martello Museum

3501 S. Roosevelt Blvd. – www.kwahs.com/martello.htm

Another old Fort!

The East Martello museum is located in an old unfinished Civil War Fort on the south side of the Island right next to the airport facing the ocean. It’s not quite as impressive as Fort Zach and definately not as cool as Fort Jefferson, but it’s still an old brick fort, and that makes it worth a visit in my book! Also it’s the home of Robert the Doll, and I definitely wanted to meet him, so we hopped in the car and took a drive over. It’s biking distance (well the whole island is if you don’t mind a long-ish ride) but it was pretty hot, and we just weren’t feelin’ it that day, so we mounted the trusty 4-runner steed and hit the trail!

The East Martello is designed after a style of italian forts called oddly enough, Martello Towers.  Construction began in the early 1860′s and was never finished because the advent of exploding cannon shells made the fort Obsolete. It never saw any hostile action, and is the best-preserved example of Martello-style fort construction in the US, and also the very last fort in the world to ever have been built in that style.

The Bulwark (Outer walls) and the citadel (Inner tower) walls are 8 feet thick and made of solid granite slabs encased in red brick. The inside is similar to other forts of the time with intricate barrel-vault arched ceilings.

The fort is open-air and even in the dead of summer, the breeze blowing through the windows and the coolness of the surrounding marble and brick keep it quite pleasant inside. I don’t find Key west to be as hot as most people think it is, you just need to get out of the sun and you’re fine. And if you can go inside a structure made of solid stone you’re even better off! Add a Corona to that equation and I’d have been pretty much in heaven, but alas they didn’t serve any alcohol. I guess not everything in Key West is focused on drinking!

This is perhaps the most eclectic museum I’ve been to…

The East Martello seems to be in a constant state of… I don’t know.. disarray!  It’s a lot more like a huge garage full of antiques than an actual museum. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, and the exhibits are worth going to see, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, just don’t be surprised if you feel like you’re wandering through someone’s basement.

Everything is dusty, and there are areas where it’s looks as though someone got halfway toward finishing a new exhibit or moving an old one when the happy hour bell rang… 3 months ago.

All in all the Martello has the overall appearance of a place that doesn’t get a lot of upkeep. This seems to be a common thread here in Key West! They say things move more slowly in the islands, and they ain’t lyin’. No one is in much of a hurry for anything. I’m down with all that though, so I really enjoyed the Martello; I love old stuff, and I love to see it in a situation where it’s not all roped off and behind glass in an air-conditioned sarcophagus. You can definitely lose yourself in the sheer reality of it all.

The outer perimeter (bulwark) section houses exhibits and such, including Robert. When you wander in from the entrance (where you’ll pay 6 bucks to come in) you hit the ‘gift-shop’ which is just a room with some tables and a strange mix of key west souvenir stuff. You can even get your own Robert the Doll doll! Christina was very adamant that I NOT get one. Damn. We wandered through the gift-shop, and eventually made our way out into the exhibits, and around the perimeter of the bullwark through all sorts of odd, eclectic jumbles of antiques and displays.

When you make it past the inside exhibits, you enter the courtyard at the center of the fort. There’s an 80 year old child-scale play house out here. I’m sure there’s some historical significance to it, but there aren’t any plaques explaining it, and I didn’t bother to look it up online. It’s full of dolls though, and you can duck into it if you’re brave enough to deal with the combined heat and creepiness of being stared at by about 40 really old dolls.

Take the tower!

It was time to hit up the citadel. We walked around the circumference of the courtyard which is mostly just overgrown grass and some gardens that appeared to have been kept up at one time, but now were falling to rampant growth.

I started wondering if they needed some volunteers or grant money or something.. not that I have any.

We came to the entrance to the citadel which was a really cool brick arch type thing.. only one way in! The sign said children only allowed under adult supervision, and I wondered if that included immature adults like myself, but I figured I had Christina with me, so I was covered.

This place really was cool, but if you’re claustrophobic, you might not like the bottom floor very much, it’s a pretty tight maze of corridors and rooms. Personally, I’m usually pretty claustrophobic, but didn’t find it unbearable. From here, you can mount the rickety old cast-iron spiral staircase in the center of the tower to reach the upper floors.

The Art of the Citadel

The citadel houses a display of ‘junkyard art’ sculptures by the now deceased keys artist Stanley Papio.

Papio (1914-1982) lived in Key Largo and made sculptures by welding junkyard debris into art. He was quite unpopular at the time with his neighbors because he would line the road near his home with his ‘art’. He was in constant battle with the local zoning department over his yard where he kept his ‘art museum.’ Papio never became famous in his lifetime, and only now is he considered one of the more important folk artists of his time.

We wandered around for a bit looking at all the cool sculptures and decided to take off to the roof. We hit the spiral stairs again and made our way to the top floor.

I make fun of the ‘rickety’ spiral stairs but in fact they feel quite solid for being over 130 years old. They sure LOOK scary though.

Fetchez la vache!

The view from the top of the citadel is pretty nice. You can see back toward the airport on one side, and out to the ocean on the other, and down into the courtyard at the silly english kiniggits down there.

Back downstairs and up front by the gift shop there’s another art exhibit in a series of air-conditioned rooms – a very welcome break from the heat of the tower top! There are paintings by local artists, and a few of Mario Sanchez’s woodcutting pieces. Cool stuff.

All in all a cool place to visit. You can see the whole deal in about a hour or so, just in time to find a place to put your feet up and pop the top on a frosty cool Corona. Don’t forget the lime! More photos here: East Martello Gallery.

Are all burglars in Key West this dumb?

Insomnia Sucks

Last night around 1:00 AM I was having trouble falling asleep so I wandered into the living room and sat down at the computer to try to shut down my brain. After about 20 minutes I decided that the internet held nothing for my state of emotional unrest, and I sat just staring at the dark room over the laptop monitor. I hadn’t turned any lights on, but the computer cast a bit of a glow, and I sat trying to call up some ghostly apparitions from the dark corners.. maybe Robert the Doll would come visit me, maybe he was responsible for my lack of sleep?? I was pretty sure I’d asked properly before taking his photo the other day, so I was pretty sure that wasn’t it.

After a few minutes of just mentally drifting in and out in the dark room I heard some rustling noises. What the fuck! For a brief moment I actually thought maybe I had conjured up some restless ghost, but I quickly came to the realization that the noises were coming from outside. I got up and went to the front door. I peeked through the blinds to the street and noticed a couple of dudes out there. This is nothing strange in and of itself because Key West never fully goes to sleep, and there are people walking up and down the streets at all hours. What was strange was that one of them was walking back and forth from my side of the street to the other looking up and down the street as if waiting for someone.. maybe a cab I thought.

The other guy disappeared in front of the building next door, then reappeared and walked into the little ‘alley’ between my apartment and that building. At this point I began to realize there was something up. There’s a gate there (albeit a very non-secure one) but you have to move the two of those large green trash bins to even get to the gate. I moved to the window above our couch that looks into the alley. I say alley, but it’s really just the space between the buildings.. maybe 6 feet wide if that. Being dark in my apartment, he didn’t notice I was watching him from my window as he proceeded to pry at the plywood panel screwed over a window in the building across from mine. Let me tell you, prying a plywood board off of a wooden frame window at 1:30 in the morning makes no small amount of noise. Did he think we were all deaf? It’s not like there were no front porch lights to let him know there were people home.

Great. Call the cops or go out and ask this brain surgeon what the hell his problem is? Part of me wanted to just go out and shoe his ass off, but then my desire to see this idiot go to jail got the better of me. Cursing my luck, I sat back down at the computer and googled KWPD, called the number and explained to the young lady who answered that there was a really dumb burglar trying to gain entrance to the realty business next door to my appt.. while she asked me for a description of the perp, Christina wandered out of bedroom and went into the bathroom. I didn’t think about this at the time, but the bathroom window faces the little alley, and she had turned the light on in there. How this guy didn’t see the light come on and bolt right then, I have no idea.

This guy isn’t terribly smart

I went back to the window and gave the officer on the phone a description… White male, short brown hair, 6 ft tall, white t-shirt (WHITE!!!!), dark shorts, no apparent implements of destruction, etc.

Now, I’m no expert on burglary, but if I was going to knock off a building at night, I might try to dress in something a little more appropriate, and I dunno..maybe try not to make enough noise to wake the dead. Fucks sake man, have a little respect for your craft!

It was right about then that I made the connection that dude number 2 on the far side of the street wasn’t waiting for a cab at all, but was this guys lookout! Well, dude number 2 must have given a signal because right then all hell broke lose; number 2 bolted, and my robber scurried out of the alley just as the police officer reached my front porch. He took off like a bat out of hell down the street, with two cops in hot pursuit. About 30 seconds later a police cruiser with lights blazing and sirens wailing flew past, and parked in the street a bit up the road. So exciting! I went outside and counted at least 4 police cruisers. It must have been a slow night at the station, they were all out in force! All said it was no more that 45 seconds after I called, that the police came running down the street.. pretty damned impressive response time. At least I know if there’s ever anything really bad happening I don’t have to worry about waiting for the fuzz!

I gave the officer on the phone my number and hung up. She called back a few minutes later telling me that an officer was coming to talk to me. I hoped that they’d gotten him. I waited on the porch for the officer, and when he arrived he took me down to his car to drive over to where they’d apprehended the guy so I could give a positive ID. I’d never been in a cop car before! At least I got to ride in the front seat. We did a drive by so I could see the guy. Yep, that was my dumb-ass burglar. He was shirtless at this point, but it was him.

Back at my apartment, I filled out a statement (Another first!), and said goodnight to the officers. They remained outside for about another hour playing CSI in the alley. We shut off the lights and went back to bed. I had to read myself back to sleep after all that.. I’d been trying to mellow out so I could sleep, and wound up championing the forces of good! I guess I’m glad I was awake to call the cops though, no telling what the perp could have gotten in that realty office. Important newspaper listings? Secret paperwork?

All in all a little rattling. I guess even paradise has its issues!

Robert the Doll

Robert did it…

Robert the Doll has perhaps one of the more famous ghost stories of Key West. He certainly has one of the more tangible and creepy ones; tangible because he’s still around and you can go visit him, and creepy because.. well he’s just really creepy.

Young Robert Eugene Otto lived with his parents in Key West in the early 1900′s in what is now know as the Artist House. His parents were well off and had in their employ a few Bahamian ‘servants’ (Slaves?). It was rumored that they were stern people, and kept Robert under strict rule. They were also rumored to have been fairly unpleasant to their servants, one in particular, a woman who gave the then 5-year-old Robert a life-size doll in his own likeness shortly after the death of his sister. The doll made of wire, cloth and straw, and some say Robert’s own hair. It is also said to contain a soulstone. (This practice involves a small crystal being placed into an object, thus imbuing it with power by taking a soul of its own).

Robert struck up a strong bond with the doll, naming it Robert after himself, and demanding everyone from that point on refer to him as Eugene. Whenever Eugene would be scolded for something by his parents, he would always blame the doll.. “Robert did it!”

Eugene eventually went off to Paris to study painting and met his wife Anne, whom he brought back to Key West. His parents had died and left Eugene the family home, and upon moving in, Anne learned of the Doll Robert. She thought the relationship between her husband and the doll strange, but kept her thoughts to herself in the beginning. Eugene reportedly had Robert by his side at all times, wether painting or relaxing and this began to wear thin on Anne.

Reports vary, but the story basically goes like this; Anne had had enough, and insisted Robert be put in the attic, but after only a short time Eugene told her that Robert wanted his own room, and he hired carpenters to come in and construct a Robert-Sized room in the third floor turret room of the house. The room was complete with low ceilings, and doll sized furniture. Eugene sat Robert at the window so he could look out over the street.

Children on their way to school would walk by and claim to see robert moving about in the attic room, the curtains moved, and they said Robert would change positions. They’ve been interviewed as adults and still hold true to their claims.

Eugene became abusive towards Anne in his later years and would always tell her that “Robert did it.” After his death and burial in the Key West Cemetery, Anne locked Robert in his third floor room, moved back to her family in chicago, and leased out the house with the proviso that Robert remain the only occupant of the turret room.  This remained the case until her death in 1976 when the new occupants decided to renovate part of the attic to accommodate another bedroom.

This is the account of a plumber hired to work in the room:

“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.”

Subsequent occupants reported the sound of children giggling, thumping, and footsteps coming from the turret room. The often would enter the room to find robert in a different place than where they had set him. They were so disturbed by this that they locked Robert in a sea chest in his room.

Eventually the contents of the house were willed to the East Martello Museum where they discovered Robert in his chest and put him on display. I just had to go see this!

These days robert still holds court in the East Martello Museum

And he really does hold court. People come from all over to see him, they leave notes.. they write letters, there is an official ‘Robert the Doll Day’ in Key West. It’s said that Robert drains batteries, and causes all manner of disturbances with cameras. People report of having an entire roll of film come out black, others report having the entire roll be photos of Robert instead of the rest of the museum. Three People have had their pacemakers fail while visiting Robert. If you don’t ask Robert’s permission to photograph him, or say hello and goodbye to him, you will have bad luck, even sickness.

I went in thinking to myself.. I’m not going to ask permission, that’s silly.. besides how am I going to know if it’s true or not!

I chickened out. I asked. I’m a little ashamed of it, but at the last minute I decided that I was on a mission to have less strife and more harmony in my life so I needed all the superstitions help I could get.. no matter how silly it was.

Seeing Robert up close and personal is a little unsettling. I don’t know if it was because I’d read so much about him, or if there was really something emanating from him. It’s not so much that it feels evil as develish.. like a little kid holding a burning bag with a dog turd in it, trying to decide who’s porch to drop it on…

Goodbye Robert!

We took turns taking our pictures with him, and we said our goodbyes.

I haven’t experienced any bad luck or anything, but Sunday Christina and I had a little fight.. I wonder if it was Robert working his mojo on me…

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!