The Haunted Artist House, Key West: Home of Robert the Doll

Robert the Doll is the most famous ghost story in Key West, and it started at 534 Eaton Street. This lavender-shuttered Queen Anne house was the Otto family home for most of the 20th century. Gene Otto, the painter who owned Robert, grew up here, came back with his wife Anne and spent about four decades in the house. Robert sat in the turret window while Gene painted, and schoolchildren walking past swore the doll moved from one side of the window to the other.

Robert now lives in a glass case at Fort East Martello Museum, but the house he left behind has been a guest house since 1978. The Artist House is happy to talk about Robert on its own website, and guests and local ghost tours tell stories of their own: a woman in a wedding dress on the staircase, a little girl in a white nightgown sitting on the steps, and doors and lights with minds of their own.

The ghosts of the Artist House

Robert the Doll

Robert is about 40 inches tall, dressed in a sailor suit, with a stuffed body and painted face. The inn dates him to 1904, the year Gene, then four, received him. Where he came from depends on who is telling it. Key West legend says a servant, often described as Bahamian, gave the doll to the boy, either as a gift or as revenge for a wrong. Other accounts, including the inn’s own, link him to the Steiff company in Germany, and some say Gene’s grandfather bought him there.

What everyone agrees on is that Gene adored him. He named the doll Robert, his own first name, and went by Gene from then on. As a boy he blamed Robert for broken toys and mischief, and the household servants told stories of giggling in the turret and a voice that was not Gene’s. As an adult, Gene built Robert a small room in the attic with furniture and toys, and the doll sat propped in the turret’s southwest window while Gene painted. Passersby said his expression changed and that he moved between the windows.

Anne Otto on the staircase

Gene married Annette “Anne” Parker, a Boston-born pianist, in Paris in 1930. The stories say she disliked Robert from the start and wanted him shut away. After Gene died in 1974, she is said to have insisted the doll stay in the attic, locked in a cedar chest.

Anne is the ghost most guests mean when they talk about the house. Ghost City Tours, which partners with the inn, describes guests seeing a woman in a wedding dress on the stairs, and some say they have spoken with her. Others report waking to a shadowy woman standing at the foot of the bed. The usual reading is that Anne has made peace with the house and does not mind the company.

The little girl on the stairs

Keys Weekly published a 1992 account from Poochie Myers, who described a girl of about five in an old-fashioned white nightgown with long, light brown curls, sitting hunched on the stairs and sometimes crying. Nobody knows who she might be. One theory points to Emeline Abbott, who worked as Gene’s nanny: census records suggest she lost a child in the first decade of the 1900s, and in 1924 she sued the estate of Gene’s father. Psychics have since linked the child to Robert himself. None of this is proven, and it is best taken as part of the island’s storytelling.

Doors, lights and the attic

Smaller reports collected by local tours include doors that open and close on their own, flickering lights and a heavy atmosphere near the attic, where Robert’s little room once was. A medium who visited for Keys Weekly described a sudden chill, the smell of medicine and a shadow crossing the ceiling.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Turret Suite: The room to ask for. It sits on the second floor with a queen sleigh bed, a private balcony and the 12 foot octagonal turret, with seven tall windows and a second bed. This is where Gene painted and where Robert sat at the window. It sleeps up to four, with an extra charge per person beyond two.
• Anne Suite: The former master bedroom on the second floor, with a four-poster king bed, fireplace and pine floors. Named for Anne Otto, the ghost most often seen in the house.
• Eugene Studio Suite: A first floor suite in what the inn describes as a former painter’s studio, named for Gene himself.
• The main staircase: Where the woman in the wedding dress and the little girl in the nightgown are both said to appear.
• The attic: Not a guest space, but the part of the house most closely tied to Robert, who had his own room up here and later spent years locked in a chest.

History of The Artist House

Thomas Otto, a Key West doctor, and his wife built the house between 1890 and 1898, and the family moved in in 1898. It is a Queen Anne Victorian with columns, two tiers of verandas, gingerbread trim, 12 foot ceilings and the turret that makes it one of the most photographed homes on the island. Gene, the youngest of three sons, eventually inherited it.

Gene studied art in Chicago and New York and then in Europe. In Paris he met Annette Parker, a music student from Boston, and they married there on May 3, 1930. Anne went on to play jazz and concert piano, including at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, before the couple settled back in Key West. They lived at 534 Eaton Street for about 40 years. Gene died in 1974 and Anne in 1976.

Robert stayed with the house. A later owner, Myrtle Reuter, moved out several years after buying it and took the doll with her. In 1994 she gave him to the Key West Art and Historical Society, and he has been on display at Fort East Martello Museum ever since, with his teddy bear.

The house became a guest house in 1978, and the inn calls it one of the oldest continuously operating guest houses in Key West. Today it has seven rooms, several of them named for the Ottos, plus a plunge pool and a shady garden where breakfast is served. Older versions of this guide said Anne went insane in the house; we could find no reliable source for that, so we have left it out.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book the Turret Suite direct. It is a named room, so you can choose it on the inn’s own site or by phone (305-296-3977) rather than hoping for it through a third party.
• Visit Robert first. Fort East Martello Museum is a short drive from Old Town. Ask Robert’s permission before you photograph him; Key West takes that rule seriously.
• Check the age rules. The minimum age to rent a room is 21, and children under 10 cannot stay.
• Plan parking. There is only a 15 minute unloading spot out front. Free street parking a block away is not guaranteed, and nearby garages cost around $35 a day.
• Take a ghost walk. Several Key West ghost tours stop outside the house at night, and it is a short walk from Marrero’s Guest Mansion.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Marrero's Guest Mansion, Key West: Enriquetta’s vow and Room 7, a few blocks away on Fleming Street
• La Concha, Key West: a 1926 hotel on Duval Street with its own ghost stories
• The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables: Miami’s most haunted hotel, on your way to or from the Keys
• Haunted hotels in Florida
• Haunted hotels in Key West

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• The Artist House: history
• The Artist House: Robert the Doll
• The Artist House: rooms and policies
• Fun in Key West: The Artist House
• Keys Weekly: Key West's legendary haunted house
• Ghost City Tours: The Artist House

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