Everyone told Marcy the doll was cursed.
It sat alone in a locked glass case at the back of the museum worn sailor uniform, stitched smile, and wide, knowing eyes. "Don't mock him," the guide warned. "Don't photograph him without asking. Don't stare too long."
Marcy, of course, did all three.
She wasn't into ghost stories. She was there to document old legends for a skeptical podcast series, "Superstition: Debunked." Her co-host, Jordan, joked that Robert looked more like a soggy sock puppet than a vengeful spirit.
They laughed. They filmed. They left.
That night, the laughter stopped.
The audio on their recording was scrambled. Whispering. A faint giggle. Something scraping. Jordan's apartment door was found open. Lights off. Camera still running.
He was never seen again.
Marcy started getting emails from his account.
"You shouldn't have mocked him.""He wants to visit you next.""Don't forget to say sorry."
Then, she found the doll.
Not in the museum.
In her living room.
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The Truth
Robert the Doll was real, a handmade figure given to a boy named Robert Eugene Otto in Key West, early 1900s. Strange things followed: voices, movement, giggling when no one was there. The boy blamed the doll for everything accidents, violence, even thoughts that weren't his.
After Otto's death, the doll was locked away… but the curse spread. Those who disrespected it claimed to suffer accidents, deaths, mental breakdowns. Letters of apology still arrive at the museum today.
But the version Marcy mocked wasn't the original. It was a copy made by someone obsessed with the original, who believed the spirit inside Robert could be divided. Cloned. Cultivated.
Turns out, he was right.
And there's more than one doll now.