Gene Otto and Robert the doll were inseparable for much of Otto’s life. According to Slate, Gene would carry Robert everywhere with him, and at night, Gene’s mother could hear him holding conversations with the doll, who spoke in his own voice. Though she originally assumed Gene was doing both voices, she would later come to question her assumption about this. Gene was never without Robert: The doll had his own chair at the dinner table and slept every night in Gene’s bed. Even weirder, Gene talked about Robert exclusively as if he were a living entity. Later, Gene built Robert his own room in the attic, complete with furniture and other, smaller toys meant for Robert, including the little dog (or bear? … lion?) that Robert can still be seen holding today.

One habit of Gene’s that a number of people have found quite concerning was his tendency to blame his own bad behavior on Robert. Gene was known for frequent tantrums, which he would say were Robert’s fault. Spills or overturned chairs would get blamed on the doll as well. At every turn, whenever chaos and disorder followed the young Gene throughout the Otto home, “Robert did it” would be the refrain.

Perhaps surprising no one, Anne Otto did not care for her weird husband’s even weirder friend, and so Robert found himself confined to the Artist House’s turret room when the couple moved into Gene’s family home. As it turns out, that wasn’t enough to stop his antics.

Where does a doll like Robert come from? How does a simple child’s toy end up causing mayhem and terror for those who disrespect him or his childhood friend? Well, officially — like, officially officially — Robert was a gift to Gene Otto from his grandfather on his fourth birthday in 1904. His grandfather bought it for him on a trip to Germany, presumably from the window display at the Steiff Company. But the legends surrounding Robert the doll are something else entirely.

The Artist House website says the doll was a gift to Gene from a young Bahamian girl, either as a gift or as retaliation for some wrong perpetrated by the Otto family. Slate relates the story that the doll was a gift from the family’s Bahamian maid. The added element of the Bahamas seems to exist to bring in the idea of voodoo, and indeed Florida Keys Treasures says Robert’s toys included small voodoo dolls that he would hold in his lap and throw across the room when angered.

The official Robert the doll page entertains the possibility of voodoo being at the heart of Robert’s antics, but seems to give more consideration to the idea that Gene imbued the doll with all sorts of potent emotional energy by constantly blaming the doll for everything negative in his life. Whatever the case — laden with a voodoo curse, filled with negative energy, or sharing a piece of his human friend’s soul — Robert’s activity has continued long after leaving the Artist House.

In addition to any mischief Robert might make by running about the museum or gumming up the works in electronic devices, the impish little doll is most famous for placing curses on visitors who disrespect him, specifically by taking his picture without permission. Past visitors to the museum have attributed any number of misfortunes to encounters with Robert, including “car accidents, broken bones, job loss, divorce” and many others. According to the curator of the museum, Robert receives one to three letters a day, and while some are fan letters, the vast majority are apologies from visitors who had disrespected Robert during their visit and subsequently suffered some catastrophe in their life.

The Robert homepage contains scans of a few letters sent to Robert, including one from a child who wants to be pen pals with Robert for some reason and somewhat disconcertingly asks if he has a girlfriend. Another is a desperate letter of apology for taking Robert’s picture without permission from someone who had subsequently received a speeding ticket and continuous car trouble. The best, though, is the kid who writes to cheer on Robert for destroying those who disrespect him. Many of the numerous letters of apology to Robert are pinned up to the walls around his display as a warning to visitors. Other pieces of Robert’s fan (?) mail ask Robert for advice or just to curse their enemies with eldritch doll power.

Perhaps needless to say, there is also a gift shop, where you can buy your own replica Robert doll, among other creepy things.

While Robert has inspired no shortage of popular horror films about possessed, enchanted, or otherwise maleficent dolls, Robert himself has made something of an impact on popular culture all on his own. Notably, Robert left Florida for the first time when he was taken to Las Vegas to appear on Zak Bagans: Mystery Mansion on the Travel Channel in 2015. He later appeared on an episode of Ozzy and Jack’s World Detour, where the Osbourne boys visited Key West’s spookiest boy and bought one of the replicas available in the gift shop. Additionally, Robert’s life story was featured on both the podcast and TV versions of Aaron Mahnke’s Lore.

But perhaps most interesting, depending on your definition of “interesting,” is the Robert the Doll film franchise. Since 2015, writer/director Andrew Jones has produced a movie about Robert at the staggering rate of one film a year, starting with 2015’s Robert and continuing through The Curse of Robert the Doll in 2016, Robert and the Toymaker in 2017, The Revenge of Robert the Doll in 2018, and Robert Reborn in 2019. Apart from using the Ottos’ names in the first film, very little of Robert’s real story is preserved, as the setting is moved from 1904 Key West to 2015 Wales, and it features a doll that is somehow even uglier than the real Robert. The later films set Robert’s origins during World War II, decades after his actual manufacture, so one of the movies features a haunted doll killing a train full of Nazis. That part’s cool, at least.