Published in Issue 142, October 2025
When I was a kid I had this friend. His name was Cooney. He was a raccoon and the best friend I’ve ever had. He showed up alongside several other somewhat forgettable gifts one Christmas morning and we hit it off immediately, sharing many of the same tastes and opinions. We were quite inseparable, Cooney and I. We built forts together, rode BMX together, and every night before bed, he would perch atop my head so we could both read comics before going to sleep. I know, we were adorable. We had a rich, full friendship despite his notable impediment of being an inanimate stuffed animal.
It never seemed to be much of a hurdle for us really. Looking back, I remember Cooney as having a very distinct personality. A somewhat more pragmatic and bashful version of myself. He was a comfort when things creaked in the night and an ally when my brother was hogging the Nintendo controller. In fact, he seemed so much like a person to me, that had he come to life all of a sudden — had I woken up one morning to find Cooney making us both breakfast and suggesting activities for the day — I wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised.
I think every kid with a cherished stuffed animal expects this to happen on some level. That their chum might wake up at any moment, and the two of them can finally get some real work done. Move into their own apartment, start a band, buy dirt bikes, all of it. It never happened, which is fine. It doesn’t happen for everyone. But what if it did happen? And what if the friend you got wasn’t very nice at all. What if he was, simply put, a monster?
In a small museum in Key West, Florida there sits a doll named Robert. He is dressed in an old-fashioned sailor suit and his fabric skin and hair are faded to a dull grey-brown, flecked with holes of natural decay, understandably, as Robert is more than 100 years old. He is kept behind glass and gets hundreds of visitors every year. He has been featured in countless television shows and books and has even had a few awful (just awful) films made about him. “Why?” you ask. Because Robert is allegedly haunted as fuck. Like trunk-of-a-serial-killer’s-car haunted. Like ancient-abandoned-amusement-park haunted.
Robert the Doll was gifted to young Robert Eugene Otto when he was about 6 years old. One story says the doll was simply a gift from his grandfather, while another tells it was given to him by a disgruntled former employee of the Otto family: a Bahamian maid who was fired after being accused of theft. Some stories say she made the doll herself using some of the boy’s own hair, but frankly, that story seems a little too Hollywood (and maybe a tiny bit racist?). Whatever its origin, the boy became immediately enamored with the doll. He would play with it for hours on end, even gifting the doll his own name and insisting that the family call him by his middle name, Gene, instead. This was only the beginning of what would prove to be a very long, very strange friendship.
The doll slept in Gene’s room and even had a seat at the dinner table. Gene’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Otto, swore they would hear the boy carrying on long conversations with the doll late at night. First hearing their son speak, and then a completely different voice reply. They figured their son was just playing both roles but then things took a darkish turn. Gene began to misbehave, upending furniture, breaking china and causing huge messes. When confronted, the boy would fly into fits of anger, claiming that it wasn’t him but rather Robert the Doll was responsible. “Robert did it” became a very common phrase within the Otto household. Mr. and Mrs. Otto even claimed to have heard the sound of giggling coming from Gene’s room when the boy was not at home.
Gene grew up and inherited his parents’ house after they died. He became a respected artist and took a wife, Anne. Upon arriving in her new home, Anne quickly came face-to-face with her husband’s strange habits. Anne disliked the doll immediately, and who wouldn’t? It’s a little tough to move past: “Welcome to your new home, honey. Oh, by the way, we will be sharing it with this malevolent stuffed toy that may or may not be a manifestation of some darker side of my personality.” She tried to lock the doll away in the attic but Gene wasn’t having any of it. He insisted that Robert needed his own room where he could see the street.
Robert was sequestered to the Turret Room, but the little creep wasn’t through causing mischief. Not by a long shot. Neighborhood kids began to report seeing Robert scowling at them out of the windows of the Turret Room, and a couple of them even claimed to have seen the doll moving around. Gene began spending more and more time in the Turret Room as well, working on his art and speaking in hushed tones with his odd companion. Often his wife would hear him break into full-on arguments, shouting and smashing up furniture. She would rush to the room to find her husband standing amid a maelstrom of scattered papers and overturned furniture, those familiar words on his lips, “Robert did it.”
After Gene died in 1974, his widow remained in the home they shared but kept the Turret Room locked tight. Even so, she would occasionally hear giggling and the sound of soft footfalls emanating from the room and, at some point, noted the fuck up and decided to lock Robert away in a chest in the attic like she had wanted to do all along. She died shortly after her husband.
Some years later, a new family reportedly moved into the Otto home (now called The Artist’s House) and their young daughter is rumored to have found Robert the Doll in the attic chest and claimed him as her own, because of course she fucking did. That night, after sending their daughter to bed with her new companion, they were awoken several hours later by shrieks of terror emanating from the girl’s room. They arrived to the sounds of screaming and giggling coming from within, and the door strangely jammed. Eventually, the family was able to force their way in, only to find the room completely wrecked. Their panic-stricken daughter huddled on the bed claiming that she had woken up to find the doll climbing up her bed trying to hit her in the face. They locked the doll up because apparently they couldn’t find a volcano to throw it into.
In 1994 Robert was donated to the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West. It is said that Robert regularly moves around inside of his glass enclosure and the sound of giggling and the pitter-patter of tiny, evil feet are an almost nightly occurrence. It should also be noted that the Fort East Martello Museum is also home to the world’s most terrified janitor. Furthermore, camera malfunctions while trying to take Robert’s picture are apparently very common, and those who have managed to snap a photo of the doll without first asking his permission are said to fall victim to any number of unfortunate events including car crashes, divorce, financial ruin and even death. People believe in Robert’s destructive power so much that the walls of his display case are covered in notes and letters apologizing to Robert for taking his picture without permission and asking for his forgiveness. For snapping a picture? Come on, Robert. Just tryna get some Insta hits over here.
So what can be said about the strange, and somewhat melancholy life of Robert Eugene Otto and his fiendish little pal. Is this simply the story of a mentally unhealthy man projecting his anger issues onto a childhood plaything as a means of coping? And if so, what of the voices? The laughing? The reports of the doll moving and the alleged attack? I often think back to those days, kicking it with Cooney and how much of a person he felt like to me at the time. And I wonder. I wonder if maybe a person can believe in something so much that it changes reality a tiny bit. I wonder if we can put so much of ourselves, our dreams or our anger, into an object that a piece of our very being rubs off on it. That the inner life we have embedded in it catches and spreads and manifests a whole new consciousness. A consciousness with its own agenda and emotions and likes and dislikes. And I guess when that happens you just have to cross your fingers and hope that it doesn’t turn out to be a complete asshole. And that it never finds out you said its movie sucks.
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It’s a big, weird world. Don’t be scared. Be Prepared.
Jordan Doll is a standup comedian, illustrator and actor from Denver, CO currently living in Los Angeles. If he looks familiar it may be because you saw him in a couple of commercials or maybe even doing comedy on Viceland’s Flophouse. Or maybe you saw him performing at Just For Laugh’s Montreal, or the High Plains Comedy Festival, or San Francisco Sketch Fest? Or maybe you saw some of his art someplace and want to get some of your own! That’s not it either? No worries, go ahead and follow his ever depending social media addictions by clicking the little buttons at the end of this bio. Still NOT ENOUGH!?!?!?! Well sorry … That really about it … Website | Instagram | Twitch
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