Spooked - Iconic

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

You know the most haunted places. The houses, the castles, the hotels. And you know the most haunted objects. The mirrors, the necklaces, the dolls. In this episode, we take you to the Stanley Hotel and introduce you to Robert the Doll. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are often surprised by the shadow, startled by the unseen hand, but some of us can see into the darkness and insist instead on surprising them. You're listening to Spooked? Stay tuned. There are booklets you can buy that will tell you where certain ghosts reside. Perhaps we'll give you a little bit of the backstory that caused them to be left behind. I've never purchased one of these pamphlets. I've never read one of the beautiful ornate cards, never gone on a ghost tour through Orleans, Savannah, Boston. I've never sought out the presence of a shade,

but I do understand that some feel compelled as it was drawn to poke the sleeping bear. Perhaps it's like the kid who has to ride the roller coaster over and over and over again until he no longer screams in terror. It feels safer to think. We can know exactly what it is that's waiting in the dark. Even if we know better.

My name is Lynn Washington. Know better. Spook starts. Now, you know some of these people. Some of them all they want to do is go to the haunted places, the scary spots where they know full well that ghosties and goleys dwell. I do not understand this, but I'm grateful. They can go into the darkness and bring back stories.

Spooked. My name is Daniel Noah. I'm a filmmaker. I've always had an incredible fascination with tales of the supernatural since I was a little boy. But I was a real non-believer. I was what you call a hardcore skeptic. I didn't think any of it was real. I'm part of a company that makes horror movies.

And as such, we're frequently invited to events that are deliberately staged at places that are alleged to be haunted. In 2000, maybe 2014, we were at the Stanley Hotel for a film festival called the Stanley Film Festival. The Stanley Hotel is in Estes, Colorado. It is purported to be the most haunted structure in the world or something like that. The Stanley Hotel is very old. It's very beautiful. It's where Stephen King apparently had some sort of an experience that led him to write The Shining. So we were all there for this festival.

And we were staying up late, just talking and hanging out and got a call from another friend that, oh, we were doing a Ouija board up in one of the rooms. And my friends who love this kind of stuff wanted to go up and do it. And I thought it was ridiculous. I didn't believe in Ouija boards. I thought they were silly, and I didn't really want to do it, but I went along for the ride. So we went up to the room. There were maybe 15 people in this fairly large room, hanging out, drinking, listening to music. And then the Ouija board came out.

It wasn't the Hasbro Ouija board. It was a Ouija board that had been made by a local artist. The planchette wasn't plastic. It was like a wood material. And, you know, everything was handmade. It wasn't manufactured in any way. The directions were written in cursive, you know, a piece of paper. So a group of four people got on it and started saying,

If there is a spirit here, please make yourself known. And I'm sitting in the corner. rolling my eyes and nothing happens and and thinking it's goofy and wishing that we would stop so that we could just get back to hanging out and catching up and not wasting time on this silly toy. Then someone said, let's try a different four people. So a different four people went on and again, nothing happened. And they said, well, let's try a different four. So I came up. It was myself and three other people whom I know very, very well. Almost immediately, the plan should be. And started moving.

And this is one of these things that is very difficult to explain to someone who wasn't there. I understand how Ouija boards are purported to work. That you're all moving them unconsciously and, you know, you don't, or someone's doing it deliberately to have fun with everyone, or you're all doing it without realizing it. This was different. Our fingers were on the plan chat. but it was moving with such force and precision that I immediately could not understand what was happening. And I was looking at these three other people going,

is one of my close friends trying to trick everyone? And how? How are they doing this? Because I'm looking and everyone's fingers are just sort of lightly hovering. No one's got a grip on the thing. But this thing is, it's moving with incredible force and precision. It felt like being pulled. There's not a doubt in my mind that I was not pushing this thing.

I wasn't saying anything because I was uncomfortable. There was someone else who was doing the talking. And I have a photo that, so one of the people in the room wrote, transcribed everything that was communicated on the board. and I have a photo of the stationary from the hotel with all of these notes written on them. So it's an exact record of everything. The first word that came through on the board was dad. The second word was mom.

The third word was sorry. And then it started to fall into these repeating patterns. Go. Mom. Mom. No, swim, mom, mom. Swim, swim, swim. And then someone asked her name, and she responded, A-V-E.

At no point did she ever say, I'm a girl. We all just knew. And then it became gibberish again, and eventually came back to the word lake, lake, lake, lake, swim, swim, lake, lake. Someone asked her, did you drown in a lake? And her answer was yes. And someone said,

were you drowned in a lake? And the answer was, mom. People in the room are becoming alarmed. The other thing that's happening is that as she's devolving into this repetition of the word swim, swim, swim, swim. The planchette, I, I,

know how crazy this sounds. The planchette started to spin. It felt like this girl was drowning in real time. So someone said, is there anything that you want to tell us? And the answer was, hide. And the person asked, hide from what? And the answer was, him. At that point, about half the people in the room left. Some of them were furious because they thought that we were playing a prank and they didn't appreciate it. What everyone in that room felt that night, even the people that were angry and leaving, was happening on a cellular level. And you hear people say, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was that kind of a feeling. something was happening that was absolutely undeniable. Someone said, is there anything that you would like us to do? And her answer was, follow.

Follow, follow where? And the answer was three, two, four. And that was it. She was gone. The planchette stopped moving. It's like someone turned off some sort of, the static electricity machine or something, your whole body just relaxes.

Okay, it's over. And we suddenly realized, oh, she wants us to go up to room three, two, four. So by now, I would say it's maybe three in the morning. And a very, very small, intrepid group of us decided to go to room three, two, four. So we circle up the stairs. And as we're ascending,

to the third floor. There's a couple standing on the landing who are in hysterics. We've never seen them before. They're just guests at the hotel. The woman is sobbing hysterically. And the man turns to us as we're coming up the stairs behind them. And he says, don't come up here.

So, of course, we immediately went up there. And the woman is, like, crying. And the guy is, you know, he's red-faced and wide-eyed and pale. and we say, what happened? And they say, we saw something in the hallway. We said, well, what did you see? And the woman was incoherent. The man said, it was a tiny figure.

And we said, well, what did it look like? And he said, well, I didn't see it with my eyes. I saw it with my mind. But I think it was a little girl. And we said, well, where was it? And he said, I'm not going down that hallway to show you. At this point, it was just myself and one other friend. We said, we're going to walk and you tell us when to stop.

So we walked and walked and walked. And he said, right there. And sure enough, it was in front of room 324. What will haunt me forever is what would have happened if they hadn't been there? Because she was waiting for us. And would we have seen that little figure? the next day was our last day before we were leaving. I went down to the basement of the hotel to the archive

because when you check in, they very excitedly say the hotel is very haunted and if you should happen to experience anything, go down and report it to the archive, which I thought was silly when I checked in. But I went, I'm going to go report this to the archive. So I went down and I said, can you pull the folder for room 324 please? And she said, no problem.

She pulled it out, and it was report after report about two children, a boy and a girl, who were very sweet, who would pull the covers off the bed or turn the lights on and off or play, run around, giggling. I didn't know any of that. None of us knew any of this going into this experience. A couple of weeks later, someone who had been in the room, he had found a time. tiny little news story about a child drowning in a lake not that far from the hotel. The name didn't quite match up.

It started with A. I don't remember what it was, but it was close enough that we thought, could this be Ava? Could Ava have been her nickname? And it was a lake that no longer existed that had once been sort of adjacent to the property. The events of that night were so undeniable. I won't deny that it was exciting because of course it's very exciting to think that there's more out there

that ghosts exist the significance of that event has sunk in with me insofar as it was the beginning of what seems to be a new chapter of my life in which the denial is gone the skepticism is obliterated and I now consider myself

what they call a sensitive. Thank you, Daniel Noah, for talking back to Ava. I would not have done it. I wouldn't. Now, here's a little PSA for you listeners. Don't, whatever you do, please, just leave those Ouija boards alone, damn it.

Leave them alone. Just a safety tip from your boy, Glenn. And here's another PSA. Daniel and his best friend, Mr. Elijah Wood. They make horror movies together. And now they have a podcast called, about all things scary and wacky and wonderful. Check at our website, spookpodcast.org, for information on their amazing show.

The original score for that story was by Davy Kim. It was produced by Eliza Smith. Oh, it's not over. It is never over. Spook continues in just a moment. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Spooked. You listen to the iconic episode.

Now, our next story takes us a key word. are the most beautiful spots in the lower 48, an island off the southern tip of Florida, known for sunsets and warm surf for being the birthplace of key lime pie. An unlikely setting for a ghost story, perhaps. Or maybe if you're a spirit, there's no better place to be. I've never been to Key West. It's an amazing island.

There's some people think that the reason that it's such a haunted city is because when people died, still not ready to leave. David Sloan is a writer, and when he moved to Key West, he heard about this one house he really had to see. The artist house is one of the most photographed houses in Key West. It's beautiful. It was built in the late 1800s, and it has this turret, or cupola, towards the front. It's two stories. It's known for its beautiful purple shutters. And it's just an amazing house. It's very grand when you go,

in multiple rooms, a beautiful staircase going up. There are many legends about the artist house. David heard it was haunted by a woman named Anne. So when he went there, he asked the owner if they had a ghost. And he said, oh, you want to hear about Robert? I said, no, I want to hear about Anne. Who's Robert? And he started telling me this crazy story about a haunted doll.

And he said, do you want to see the room where he used to live? And I said, yeah, I do. they've got this very narrow staircase and it leads up to the attic and there's this hatch that you open up to go into the attic and when we got in there there was little furniture

little chairs little tables it looked like somebody was setting up for a party for children, a little tea party and this negative heat energy filled the room and it wasn't like when you walk into an attic it wasn't a hot attic like that it was definitely a more involved, more powerful feeling. David learned that Robert, the doll that had lived in that attic,

had been donated to a local museum years ago. They kept him locked in a back room. I called the museum and I said, hey, can I come see Robert? And the person who answered the phone said, you can, but not when I'm working. Eventually, the curator of the museum agreed to let David see the doll. She brings Robert out into the room and he's sitting in this little chair and Robert is he's about three feet tall. He looks like a small child.

I mean he's stuffed with straw covered with fabric dressed as a sailor. Robert wears a four-piece sailor suit consisting of pants, vest, jacket, and hat. He had shoe button eyes painted black. When you look closely at his face, you can see a little bit of color in his cheeks and you can see some accents around his eyes. and over the years he had termite damage. So he has little holes in his face that make him look like a burn victim. He definitely has a creep factor to him.

The curator set Robert down on a table and started talking to him. Robert, this is David. He wants to take some photographs of you. And she set him down on the table and then she left, so it was me and the doll alone in the room. I snapped a couple of pictures of him. And then I wanted to remove his hat

so I could get a picture of him without it. And as I went to grab for the brim of his hat, he didn't move, but he came alive. His eyes took on a gleam and like, boom, there was something in him. He changed. He wasn't just this inanimate object. There was a definite energy to him. And I thought, oh, my God, I've got to get a picture of this. So I grabbed the camera.

I tried to take a shot. It wouldn't fire. I go to take another shot, nothing. Three shots, absolutely nothing happens. I set the camera down on the table to look at it. Boom, boom, boom. It takes the three pictures, not look. at the doll. I go back to try to shoot the doll again. It wouldn't happen. And then the life

went out of him and he went back to looking just like a plain old doll. David had made a mistake. Visitors who come to the museum to see Robert the doll, and many do, must ask his permission before they take a photograph. Because if they don't, strange things tend to happen. Dear Robert, I'm writing to apologize to you for taking so many pictures without asking. asking your permission. I've read hundreds of letters that people have sent to Robert, asking him to remove a curse or to forgive them. Since our visit to the museum, we've been under a dark cloud.

There's weird stories about deer. When driving back from the keys, a deer ran out in front of our car. We almost hit a tree. Hearing giggling from somebody holding the doorknob when nobody's in the house. Last night, I was home all alone. I heard a voice coming from the basement. It was Robert. At first, all David knew about Robert were the rumors he'd heard around town,

that the doll had belonged to the original owners of the artist house, the ottoes. One of the early stories that I heard about Robert was that he was created by a servant of the family who had been mistreated. And that there was some kind of voodoo involved. Somebody started saying that he was the inspiration for Chucky. I am Chucky, the killer dog, and I dig it! He was not the inspiration for Chucky. You know, I wanted people to know the facts about the doll because I did want to dispel a lot of these legends.

David decided to set the record straight on Robert the doll. He started doing research. There were six boxes of Otto family archives. So I just uncovered this treasure trove. Gene Otto was born in 1900 in Key West. His father was a doctor. When he was five years old, Gene received. the doll as a gift.

Gene's real name was Robert Eugene Otto. When he got the doll, he gave it his own name. The sailor suit that he wears was a suit that Gene Otto had as a child. So Gene actually ended up dressing the doll in his own clothes. There was this bizarre attraction that he had with the doll. They were inseparable. It was clear even then that Robert was no ordinary doll. His parents would leave him playing with the doll

and they'd hear two distinct voices coming from the room. And whenever something happened, you know, something was broken, if something that kids would get in trouble for, Jean would say, I didn't do it. Robert did it. Eventually, Gene grew up and left childish things behind. He became a painter and moved to Paris, joining a group of expatriates like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. There are some great pictures of him in France where he was wearing a beret,

and he just looked like he had the world at his hands. In France, Gene met another young American. Her name was Annette. She also went by Anne. She was a concert pianist. Annette was strikingly beautiful. She stole the scene in any room that she walked into. She was glamorous.

She was funny. She was smart. She had everything going for her. Anne and Jean fell head over. her heels in love. They moved to New York. He painted, she played piano. They even wrote songs together. But then, Jean's mother became ill. He returned to Key West to take care of her in the same house he grew up in, the same house where he played with Robert the doll. Anne went with him. When they came to Key West, she gave up her piano career to be the artist's wife.

The couple made a big splash in the Key West Society pages. And for her warm hospitality and delicious key lime pies, Jean for his landscapes. He'd paint the street scenes. He'd paint old conch houses. He was known for his amazing ability to capture the harsh sunlight of the Florida Keys like nobody else could. But as they both grew older, that's when the weird thing started happening.

In his later years, Gene's health deteriorated. He was sick. And I think with everything that was going on, he might not have known what he was doing. He struck up his relationship with Robert again. Gene started to spend more and more time with the doll. Gene used to paint up in the turret room because there was good light up there. People who grew up in town then say that they'd see Robert sitting up in the window. Kids would go by and they'd see Robert. move from one side of the window to the other.

Anne couldn't stand the doll. Things got bad between her and Jean. He was cruel to her later in life. People say that he used to lock her in a closet. And then when confronted with the abuse, he'd say, I didn't do it. Robert did it. Gene died in a Miami hospital in 1974. After his death, Anne learned that,

after everything she'd given up for him, Jean had written her out of his will and left everything to his sister. Jean had done one portrait in his life and it was a portrait of Anne and the sister wouldn't let her have it. What he did left her with nothing and she was very bitter about that.

Anne moved to Boston where she lived out the last years of her life. It's a terrible ending. Didn't have to be that way. She refused to be buried next to her husband. husband. The artist's house was eventually sold to new owners, and Robert the doll remained in the attic, though he didn't stay quiet about it. A plumber was doing some work in the attic. He saw the

doll, and the doll was sitting there. He started to go to work, and he heard giggling coming from behind him. And he turned around, Robert had moved from one side of the room to the other. He was so freaked out. He left his tools. He never even went back to the house. One day, the owner of the artist's house showed up at the museum, with Robert. She brought him in and said, this is Gene Otto's doll. It's haunted. I don't want it anymore. And she said, it locked me in my room. I do not want this doll anymore. After doing all this research about the history of Robert the doll, David decided to write a book. I think a lot of people appreciate that it is a true biography of the doll. I show where the legends came from.

present the real information about Robert. David's work revealed that Robert the doll's true origin wasn't an angry servant with voodoo powers. In fact, the doll was made by the same company that invented the teddy bear in Germany. I discovered records showing Jean's mother traveling to Germany right before his birthday. But the legend about the servant does have a kernel of truth to it. David learned about a man named William Abbott and his wife. William Abbott was a man-servant for Jean's grandfather. And he had a wife, and her name was Emmeline or Emmeline.

The interesting thing about her, in the 1900 census, she shows zero children living, zero children deceased. In the 1910 census, she shows zero children living, one child deceased. We don't know how old the child was. We don't know a lot of things, but we know that she had a child. When her child got sick or when her child was injured, where is she going to take that child? She's going to go to the doctor's house. Remember, Jean's father was a doctor. So I believe that she took her child to the artist house.

And I believe her child died in the house. And I think that's the spirit that entered Robert the doll. What do you think the child wants? I think he wants what any child wants, you know. He wants to be loved. He wants people to be okay. There was an autistic boy who went to see Robert. He was very drawn to the doll.

The boy's mother took a photo of her son with Robert. If you look in it, you can see a little boy, the silhouette of a little boy standing in the back. It looked like he was just holding his hand there. There's energy placed on things. Some people love Robert and they see him for this innocent little doll. If you weren't a doll, I think we could be friends. Then there's other people who talk about the horrible things that happened with Robert. It started with my kitten suddenly dying, my bank account being fraudulently used.

When we arrived home, our dog, who is very friendly, began to attack. Robert, we both know the truth. Both of those are a result of the energy that is placed on the doll. Please forgive me. Please reverse this curse. Did I mention how sorry I am and how cool you are? After solving the mystery of Robert the doll, David moved on with his life. Now, he runs an annual key lime pie festival in Key West, which is the birthplace of key lime pie.

We have a new chip! We do the world key lime pie eating championships. Record time for eating at a nine-inch key lime pie is 55 seconds. We do the key lime pie drop where we drop key lime pies from the top of the lighthouse and try not to have them break on the way down. And this is what brought him back to the artist house because he managed to track down Ann Otto's key lime pie recipe. And he got an idea.

Wouldn't be so cool to make Ann Otto's key lime pie in the kitchen where she used to make it. So he got permission and he baked the pie. And then when I was leaving the house, I was walking down through the main hallway and I heard the creek on the floor behind me and I heard somebody coming up and I turned around and nobody was there but I felt this whoosh go through me

and I could smell the sweetest perfume it was almost like a lavender there was no tree blooming around nobody was there and I'd like to think that that was Anne very pleased that somebody was actually talking about her instead of talking about that damn doll.

Thank you, David Sloan, for sharing your story with us. Now, I feel like I have to keep saying this over and over again, but I'm going to say it one more time, don't mess with haunted stuff. Now with the Ouija boards, and never, never with a haunted doll. I do not understand, but I'm grateful all the same for David's coming on our show and telling us all about Robert. And thank you, Robert.

for letting him do it. The original score for that story was by Renzo Goryo. It was produced by John Vassiel. Remember, the story never ends. The story, the story is eternal. But they won't know that unless you tell them. Tell them about spook.

Don't travel this dark path alone. 26, brand new episodes of Spook, season three, the full season. Be afraid. And remember, If you like real stories without the ghosts and goblins, check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment, amazing stories. Real people, killer beats.

It's cinema of soul. What is not to like? Snapjudgment.org Spook was brought to you by the team that always dresses appropriately for this season. Mr. Top had himself, Mark Ristich, Anne Assessment of Chief Spooksters Eliza Smith, John Fasiel,

Renzo Gorial, Leon Morimoto Tiffany Elisa, Ann Ford. Eric Yonius, son of Khan, original scored by Lauren Newsom, Marissa Dodge is there. The spook theme song, though, is by Pat Messini Miller. My name

is Glen Washington. So whatever it is, you do, wherever it is, you travel. Always remember to never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, Never, never, never, ever, ever, never, ever.