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Speaker 1: Munster House Presents. Back in twenty sixteen, Karen and I

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recorded an interview with doctor Corey Comvertito, curator of the

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collections at the Fort East Martella Museum in Key West,

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a museum probably best known for its stuffed resident, Robert

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the Doll. In December of twenty nineteen, I was working

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for Apex Process Consultants, an it consulting company out of Michigan,

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and we worked hard, and we traveled a lot, but

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we always ended the year with epic Christmas parties. In

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that year, we traveled to Key West, and while most

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of my team was out focused on enjoying the tropical

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weather and laid back culture of our southernmost American city,

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I just had to go see the subject of doctor

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Convertito's interview, Robert the Doll. Robert is a century old

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doll in a sailor outfit stored at the music in

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Key West. He was the property of third generation Key

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West resident Robert Eugene Otto, a local artist in socialite.

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The doll was named after Gene and is the focal

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point of decades of stories about mysterious behaviors and curses.

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The museum gets letters every day from people around the

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world who think they've been cursed by bad luck from

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this little stuffed character. Of course, I was skeptical of

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the alleged curse, and I didn't bother asking Robert's permission

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for a photo. And not only that, but when we

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were buying our huge bundle of Robert the Doll merchandise,

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my wife saw a stack of what she thought were

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business cards and took a bunch of them, and we

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were halfway home when she realized that they were actually

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promotional stickers and were decidedly not free. Well, what could

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possibly go wrong? China has identified the cause of the

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mysterious new virus, coronavirus. Coronavirus theraphy is a rapidly spreading

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virus has reached Australia.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a rapidly emerging situation.

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Speaker 1: The first US case has been detected. There's confirmation the

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coronavirus has reached Australia. China is urging its citizens not

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to travel abroad. I have today declared that the coronavirus

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presents a public health emergency in the United States. So

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flash forward to the present day. My wife and I

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got the opportunity to participate in a cruise with the

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Skeptoid Podcast, which we use as a way to celebrate

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our twenty fifth wedding anniversary one of our ports of call,

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Key West, and we still had those stickers, so I

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gave a skeptical curated introduction to Robert the Dall to

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quite a few of the attendees, and at the end

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of my talk, I returned those stickers to the museum

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gift shop and concluded by telling the group and having

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returned the stickers to Robert, I find that the pandemic

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has ended. How can science explain this? Well, this is

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Monster Talk, the science Show about Monsters. I'm all joking aside,

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explaining stuff like Robert is what we do here. This week,

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I'm going to follow up on that twenty sixteen interview

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with a deeper look at curses, folklore and more. It's

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actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A giant,

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hairy creature park Ape part Mat in Luckness, a twenty

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four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.

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Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.

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Speaker 1: Monster tal Welcome to Monster Talk, the Science Show about Monsters.

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I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. Hey, they're Monster Talkers.

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Karen's not here this week with me for some sad

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reasons and some happy reasons. She's dealing with the very

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recent passing of her mother and at the same time

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also doing some promotional travel for her newest book, Bitch,

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The Journey of a Word. She must surely be on

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an emotional roller coaster right now, and I'm sorry she's

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having to deal with such troughs and peaks in the

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same timeframe. But I know she'll be back soon, and

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hopefully we'll both be in happier situations, though I myself

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will almost certainly be dealing with similar loss this year

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as my mom's health continues to decline. When Brian Dunning

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of The Skeptoid podcast asked me to talk about Robert Thedal,

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I thought it would be an easy assignment, but going

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back to our episode from twenty sixteen, I realized we

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had been very careful to not grill our guests too

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hard about whether or not there was anything substantive to

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the Robert legends, and there was a reason for the

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kid gloves, and those reasons are still the same today.

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Museums and parks around the United States a struggling for funding,

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and it turns out that a deep interest in historical

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fact is not a strong cultural value in this country,

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and a desperate need for reliable revenue streams, many such

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institutions are leaning hard into the paranormal, the supernatural, and

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the Gothic of acab in order to get funding. Take

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the Gettysburg Battlefield. There are certainly lots of people interested

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in the American Civil War, the original one, not the

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online one we're having right now, but there simply aren't

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enough wool uniformed LARPers to sustain our national battlefield parks.

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There are, however, a huge and growing percentage of our

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citizens who want to visit these sites to break out

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their ghost hunting gear to find proof of the paranormal,

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the parapsychological, are the supernatural. I don't think there's any

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real science behind that search. I think people are just

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looking to confirm their pre existing beliefs, are looking for

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a little emotional jolt of something numinous. So for financially

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struggling institutions, even if they don't want to endorse such beliefs,

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it would be bad business to turn away revenue just

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because the source of that money is a search for

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things not real, are factual, are scientific. No matter how

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one feels about cashing in on wu wu and mystery mongering,

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the economics are difficult to resist, but also difficult to measure.

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Visiting Robert the Dahal only makes sense in the context

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of his outsized folkloric footprint. As a piece of history,

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he's very niche. His owner, Robert Eugenotto, was a competent painter,

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but not internationally famous. Yet the folklore of him as

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a cursed object, or perhaps as a sentient or possessed object,

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has led to visitors from around the world. There is

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an emerging body of academic research around this kind of

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tourism and its impact on the economics of parking museum funding,

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but so far I haven't found any really succinct or

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definitive indicators as to whether such trends are ultimately positive

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or damaging to the institutions that embrace or engage with

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those revenue streams. But short term economic needs often lead

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to compromises, and this is as true for institutions as

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it is for individuals. I'm sure we'll look at this

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topic more in the future. It's the subject of research

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from guests of the show and students and colleagues, And

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I just got a call for papers from Joe Laycock

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and Natasha Michaels of Texas State University. They're doing a

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second iteration of their of God's in Monsters conference, which

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I was lucky enough to participate in back in twenty nineteen.

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The theme this year is communities and their Monsters, and

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I would be shocked if someone doesn't propose some work

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around this topic of the interplay of economics and narrative

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in the monster space. Maybe that work will come from you.

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Check the show notes for a link to that call

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for papers. But back to Robert the Doll. As I say,

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I was doing research to refresh my memory of the

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legends around the Doll. In case you haven't listened to

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that episode or have not heard of this doll before

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in its legend curse, let's review the story elements as

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their are usually told, and we'll get into more of

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the fact finding stuff after that. Keep in mind that

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the chronology here is from folklore. Figuring out what's historically

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documented versus what's been glommed on through the accretion of

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legend is part of the investigative process. But here we go.

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Robert the Doll's legend begins in nineteen oh four, when

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little gene Otto was gifted a handmade doll from Germany,

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child sized sailor, suited and allegedly filled with straw and spiked.

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Almost immediately, weirdness ensued. Jen blamed mishaps on the doll,

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claiming Robert did it, while the family and staff reported

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hearing giggles, footsteps, and even witnessed the doll moving. One

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great aunt, sensing the doll was a bad influence, banished

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Robert to the attic, only to die suddenly the next day,

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prompting his return as an adult. Gene kept the doll,

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reportedly giving it a seat at the dinner table and

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in the bedroom, much to his wife's horror. After their deaths,

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Robert passed to a new owner, who also endured two

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decades of haunted hijiinks before donating the doll in nineteen

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ninety four to the East Martella Museum in Key West. There,

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Robert became a full time spooky celebrity, allegedly cursing visitors

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who failed to show proper respect, spawning tales of car crashes, divorces,

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and desperate apology letters sent from around the world. And additionally,

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there's still this pervasive legend that Robert inspired the character

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Chucky from the movie series Child's Play that simply isn't true,

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and given the dates on which the Robert legend really

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kicked off, it makes no chronological sense. But since some

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of the legends of Robert involved him moving, perhaps killing,

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and being tied to voodoo, it's not a stretch for

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uninformed people to make this connection. And besides that, anybody

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who saw Child's Play back when it was released would

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absolutely know that Chucky has a satirical take on the

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ubiquitous nineteen eighties my buddy.

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Speaker 2: My body, my body, money, Wherever I go, go my body,

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my boy, I'll feature, you know, my buddy.

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Speaker 1: Like the part of between him. Before we look at

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the histerosity of the Robert legend, we should talk about

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curses in general. And hey, I'm incredibly sympathetic to people

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who think they've been cursed. If I were not a

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hardcore skeptic and rationalist, I'd say I've got plenty of

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reason to think I'm cursed this year. The amount of

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a crude misfortune that my family's seen in twenty twenty

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five feels like someone's writing my life as a cheap

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knockoff of the Biblical Book of Job. But most alleged

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curses are really the results of trying to find meaning

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for a collection of severe or numerically significant unfortunate events.

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A string of such bad events is usually intermingled with

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positive events, But when one is in a cursed mindset,

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the victim starts to keep a mental tally and put

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them under the headings in their head. You don't need

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the supernatural to explain this when perfectly normal biases of

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the human mind can account for it. But take my

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year for example. I hate to go through this, but

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so far in twenty twenty five, I lost my dog Smoky,

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I lost my mentor Joe Nickel. I'm almost certainly going

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to lose my mother. My dad has serious health issues.

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My employer is going through significant layoffs that might affect me.

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My wife's job evaporated right before our trip. My car

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had a very expensive breakdown. I'm having my own health

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issues requiring expensive tests. Am I cursed? I joked about

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that when we did our Robert tour. But no, I

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don't think I'm cursed. I think at my age, it's

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a sad fact that loved ones are going to pass

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at a higher rate, and bad things happen all the time,

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but good things also happen, and curses derived from that

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mental habit of attributing cause to what might better be

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described as category. If you're a longtime listener, you may

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recall me saying, for example, that hauntings aren't a misty

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their solution. Once you decided you're haunted, every anomaly becomes

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evidence for your conclusion. So also with curses. Still, even

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this old hardened skeptic can see the lure of a

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curse to explain all the bad news. There is a

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concept in religious studies called theodyssey, and if your brain

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tells you that that word means trying to explain why

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bad things happen in a world with the divine good

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watching over us, well, ha, you've hit a theodyssey, Homer. Yeah,

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I'm actually pretty sorry that Karen's not here to grow

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and roll arize at that one. But moving on, curses

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make a lot of sense, even though I believe most

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of the time they disappear into puff of statistics and

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psychological biases when placed under close examination. Humans just love

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causal explanations for streaks of order in otherwise stochastic outcomes.

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And I'm not aware of any of the alleged curstories

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around Robert that don't fit this explanation, if they happen

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at all, which is a different question and one quite

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relevant to the larger story of Robert the Dall. Some

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people have tried to explain Robert's legend by saying he's

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a product of voodoo. Some have said he's possessed by

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the ghost of Gene Auto Demonic possessions been proposed, voodoo

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spirits and black magic. Sure, the ghost of a deceased

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secret love child. Yeah, why not? But this is monster Talk,

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the science show about monsters, and I wanted to tackle

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Robert as though I were doing my own cold investigation

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and not just rehashing the focal or from dozens of sources,

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which demands that we have to start with Ray Hyman's

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categorical imperative, which could be summarized as don't try to

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explain something until you're sure there's something to actually explain.

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And for me, this meant trying to get back to

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the root sources for the many legends that I'd heard

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on various podcasts and websites and YouTube videos. I also

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had the paperback book by Key West author and Ghost

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Tour host David Sloane, and of course I had my

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newspapers dot Com account thanks to our beloved patrons, which

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lets me hit many of the historical newspapers that can

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provide insight into the facts behind this kind of story.

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So my first question was the most basic, what primary

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evidence do we have that Robert the Doll's allegedly weird

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lifelong relationship with Gene Autto was real or documented during

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Jane's lifetime. Now, it is hard to prove. A negative

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absence of evidence does not mean something didn't happen, but

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I was unable to find any documentation from when gene

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Otto was alive of anyone mentioning that he had this

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four foot tall doll or an unhealthy relationship with it

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at all. This doesn't mean Jane didn't own Robert, and

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it doesn't mean he didn't have a peculiar relationship. But

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Geene and his wife were socialites, and if the stories

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about his relationship with Robert were true during his lifetime,

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it does seem like somebody would have mentioned it, or

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that there would be at least one photo of Gene

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00:15:00,279 --> 00:15:05,720
and Robert together, just one, just anything, And it seems

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peculiar given how the stories play up the intense and

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unnatural friendship that was said to exist. For example, to

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hear the story of the popular podcast Lore, you'd assume

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Robert was president virtually every moment of Jane's life, But

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so far as I've been able to see, there is

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no such documentation. And what about this voodoo curse creation

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of Robert, Well, this is the first and most glaring

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discrepancy between folklore. In fact, there are variations of the

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00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:35,799
doll being a kind of Trojan horse stuffed with magical

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revenge instead of Greeks, but the doll's origins are well

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attested by the museum's curators and even the book by

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David Sloane, And as an aside, I don't usually recommend

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pro supernatural books, but Sloane's book has a really interesting

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mix of legends, hearsay, anecdotes, and many primary historical documents

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00:15:56,799 --> 00:16:00,000
that you probably won't find anywhere else. If you're curious

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about Robert the Doll, you'll find lots of details and

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facts here and nowhere else, so it is worth grabbing

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for that content alone. Well, it turns out, as we

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revealed in our twenty sixteen episode, that Robert was made

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by the Steife Toy Company in Germany, and yes, this

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is the same company that invented the Teddy Bear, and

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Sloan's book shares research by the museum staff detailing that

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the doll was originally a harlequin doll and likely a

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window display, never intended as a child's toy. The book

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includes images of what Robert originally looked like, as well

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as documents that show Robert's sailor outfit was likely one

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of Jean's own from his childhood, a photo of Jane

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wearing a similar ones on display at the museum, and

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the lion doll that Robert holds was not crafted until

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nineteen sixty four and was made in Japan. So if

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you're imagining Robert running around in a sailor outfit carrying

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a lion as he causes death and dismay, well instead

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imagine him in a harlequin outfit without the toy lion.

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And honestly, I don't want to keep hammering on this,

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but you probably shouldn't even imagine him running around. Just

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a week before I wrote this episode a ghost hunter

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died after visiting the allegedly demonically possessed doll. Annabel of

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the Warrens fame that Raggedy and Dohl did not kill

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Dan Rivera, but that will not stop news outlets from

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making that connection. Stories like that make good fodder on

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slow news days. And it seemed to me that if

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there were credible stories or claims about Jens Doll, there

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would be evidence in the news or books from Key West.

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And to be clear, there are stories about Jane and

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00:17:34,960 --> 00:17:39,279
his wife, but they are about art and culture and

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not dolls and curses. And there is no mention of

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Robert in Jean's lifetime. And if you find out I'm

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wrong on this, I would love to see some contemporary

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evidence from within Jane's life. Send it my way via

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Blake at monster talk dot org or over at the

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monster Talk Facebook group. I don't do Facebook, but Karen

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and my wife Kathleen see to it that I hear

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00:18:02,519 --> 00:18:08,759
about stuff posted there. So when do the stories about

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Robert actually make it into print? This was where things

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got interesting to me. The first really useful story about

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00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:21,119
the doll shows up Halloween of nineteen eighty nine. In

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an article titled The Legend of Auto's Doll by Scott Iamen.

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I'm going to read some excerpts from the article The

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Legend of Auto's Doll, but check the show notes and

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you can see the full article The Legend of Auto's

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Doll by Scott Iimen. The snapshot is blurred, as if

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the camera are the object it was photographing moved. It

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is too poor in quality to be reproduced, but it's

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just as well for the images unsettling. The picture shows

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a doll about the size of a six year old child,

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dressed in a pink and green harlequin costume. Its face

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00:18:56,079 --> 00:18:59,599
is round but with pinched features. The eyes are blank

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black beads. The overall effect is subtly unpleasant. Robert Eugene

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Otto loved this doll. He had loved it since he

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was a child in the early part of this century,

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when it had been given to him by a black

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girl his parents helped raise Gene. Otto adopted the doll

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as his alter ego and named it Robert. When he

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would get in trouble, he would blame the doll. Robert

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did it, he would say. Otto grew up met his

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future wife at the Sorbonne and brought her home to

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Key West to live with Robert in the family house

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at three pot fifty four Eden Street. He built a

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special attic room for Robert, complete with his own proportionally

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correct furniture and toys. It was about this time, in

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the nineteen forties that stories about Robert began to leak

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out of the house. A plumber doing work in the

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attic swore he heard the doll giggle, and when he

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00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:50,000
turned his back and looked at the doll again, it

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00:19:50,039 --> 00:19:53,960
had moved through a different place. Little beaded voodoo figures

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that rested in Robert's lap would occasionally be found against

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the opposite wall, as if Robert had heaved them in

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00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:02,079
a fit of temp It was said the doll was

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00:20:02,119 --> 00:20:04,359
in some strange way of wear of what went on

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around him. Jeane Otto died in nineteen sixty nine, and

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it was said that in the months preceding his death,

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as his health failed, he spent a great deal of

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time in the attic room talking with Robert. A few

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years later, when his wife became ill with the cancer

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00:20:18,839 --> 00:20:21,440
that killed her, she sold the house with the proviso

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that the attic room and cedar chest in it that

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contained Robert would be undisturbed. It was in the late

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00:20:28,319 --> 00:20:32,640
seventies that Malcolm Ross, a teacher at Florida Keys Community College,

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was invited to look at Robert and his room by

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00:20:35,319 --> 00:20:38,759
some friends who were renting the house. He walked into

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the room and felt a kind of strange force field.

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Ross was riveted by Robert's eyes at first when we

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walked through the door. The look on his face was

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like a little boy being punished. It was as if

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he was asking himself, who are these people in my room?

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And what are they going to do to me. Ross's

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friends explained the legend that surrounded Robert and began pointing

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00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:04,920
out the kitty furniture. Ross looked at the doll and

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00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,960
noticed a change in his expression. It seemed that Robert

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00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:12,079
was following the conversation. Ross's friends made an airy comment

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about what a fool Auto must have been to make

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00:21:14,039 --> 00:21:17,279
such an emotional investment in a doll. When Ross glanced

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00:21:17,319 --> 00:21:20,680
at Robert, he saw an expression that he remembers this disdain.

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This doll is listening to us, he thought. Soon after,

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the man who had bought the home from Otto's widow

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00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,119
died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty exhaust system

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00:21:32,119 --> 00:21:35,160
in his car. It was then purchased by Tom Belford.

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Somewhere in all of this, Robert vanished. Nobody who lives

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00:21:38,559 --> 00:21:41,039
in the house now has ever heard of him. Jeane

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00:21:41,039 --> 00:21:43,440
Otto is buried in the family plot at the Key

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00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:47,359
West Cemetery. It's fenced in and bricked over like a patio.

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00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:49,720
There's a statue of a deer there to mark the

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00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:53,839
grave of particularly beloved family pet. Beside Otto, his wife

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00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:57,880
and his parents, several dogs are interred. There was evidently

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no place for poor Robert, which is surprise. It was

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00:22:00,799 --> 00:22:03,640
the least Gionado could have done. Whatever their bargain was,

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00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:07,680
Robert appears to have kept up his end. A few

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00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,599
things of note here. First, did you catch how the

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00:22:10,640 --> 00:22:14,799
dolls described He's wearing the harlequin outfit, not a sailor's outfit.

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00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,640
And Jean's wife is conspicuously not buried in that family

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00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:23,279
plot despite what the article claims. There's no mention of

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00:22:23,319 --> 00:22:25,799
the now classic elements of the Robert legend, despite this

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00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:29,559
being much closer to the origins of the tale. And

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did you notice that the doll vanished Nobody who lives

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00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:36,039
in the house now has ever heard of him? Well,

383
00:22:36,079 --> 00:22:41,119
that's not consistent with fact either. But of a particular

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interest to me is the bit about the teacher Malcolm

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Ross being invited to look at the doll. I did

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00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:48,440
some digging, and it looks like Ross was really big

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00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:51,640
into theater and dolls, and as a teacher, of course,

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00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:53,680
he had access to hundreds of students to whom he

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00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:56,079
would have been able to tell his experiences with the

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00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:59,880
scary doll. He seems like a likely vector for the

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00:23:00,079 --> 00:23:03,400
spread of these Robert legends, although this is merely speculation,

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00:23:04,319 --> 00:23:07,680
and the article mentions the house as a rental. I

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00:23:07,799 --> 00:23:10,880
frequently would read that after Jene died, Anne had moved

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00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:14,440
to Boston, and there's more to that story, as documented

395
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:16,319
in the Sloan book, and it's a sad story about

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00:23:16,319 --> 00:23:19,559
bitter disputes over inheritance. I don't know what sort of

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00:23:19,599 --> 00:23:22,079
a person Gene was, but it sounded like he had

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00:23:22,119 --> 00:23:24,480
a big ego and was quite disappointed by failing to

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00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,079
ever emerge as a dominant painter in Key West's culture.

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00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:31,640
Anne herself was a talented pianist who gave up for

401
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,160
dreams of professional music to be a socialite wife. I'd

402
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,480
like to know more about what their real marriage was like,

403
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,599
but one can draw many dramatically different images from the

404
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:45,799
few dots that document their story. When both of them

405
00:23:45,799 --> 00:23:48,880
were gone, the house became a rental property, and there's

406
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,480
various ads for the property to be found in Key

407
00:23:51,519 --> 00:23:54,799
West to Miami papers. The home was and still is

408
00:23:54,839 --> 00:23:58,720
a beautiful and well placed property. Notably, there was a

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00:23:58,799 --> 00:24:01,400
turretid room built for the Auto children. It seems very

410
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:04,359
plausible the Autos had decorated it as Jane remembered it

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00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,680
from his childhood. They'd both moved away, but returned in

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00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,400
the nineteen forties when Jeane's mom was dying. After her death,

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00:24:11,599 --> 00:24:13,519
they restored the house, and I can't help but wonder

414
00:24:13,559 --> 00:24:16,799
if they simply used this oversized harlequin doll as a

415
00:24:16,839 --> 00:24:20,200
decoration for an attic playroom which was already adorned with

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00:24:20,279 --> 00:24:24,720
furniture from Jane's childhood. It would probably seem to an

417
00:24:24,799 --> 00:24:28,279
uninformed outsider that the room was not decorated with a doll,

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00:24:28,799 --> 00:24:34,880
but rather for the doll. Myrtle Reuterer bought the house

419
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:37,160
in the early nineteen seventies and held on to it

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00:24:37,319 --> 00:24:41,079
and the doll until nineteen ninety four. According to Sloane's book,

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00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,599
she donated the doll because she felt it was haunted

422
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:45,400
and that the doll had locked her in a room

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00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,039
at one point. Now this story's in the book, but

424
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:52,119
the donation documentation does not show any mention of supernatural antics.

425
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:55,440
But they do mention that the doll was donated along

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00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:59,119
with the clothes, and that the doll's clothes and the

427
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:05,480
lion were formerly gene autos. Since nineteen ninety four, Robert

428
00:25:05,519 --> 00:25:08,759
has resided at the museum, but was not always on display.

429
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:12,119
To begin with, he was kind of a curiosity, only

430
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,839
shown by request, But as the folklore around the doll grew,

431
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,480
he became a focus of local interest. In two thousand,

432
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:22,400
David Sloane, who had been growing a ghost tour business

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00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:26,039
in Key West, wrote his book about the doll. Even

434
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:28,640
his book doesn't have all the creepy folklore that has

435
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,920
now accreed it into the narrative fog around Robert. And

436
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,960
that is the real truth about Robert the Doll. The

437
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:39,799
documentation about him will tell you he's a century old

438
00:25:39,839 --> 00:25:44,839
window display stuffed with excelsior, But any folklorist would tell

439
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:49,319
you he's actually stuffed with story. He has become a

440
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:54,119
magnet for folklore, the nucleation point for a sprawling storm

441
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:59,519
of curses, death, obsession, and dark magic. Or maybe he's

442
00:25:59,559 --> 00:26:02,880
just an old doll in a sailor's outfit. It would

443
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,759
be really fascinating if there were documentation of some of

444
00:26:05,759 --> 00:26:09,119
the many legends, but folklore is about the spread and

445
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:12,559
growth of stories, and Robert the Dahl is an extraordinary

446
00:26:12,599 --> 00:26:16,519
example of how legends don't require evidence. We stitched them

447
00:26:16,559 --> 00:26:20,039
together from patchwork and loose threads until they form a

448
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,559
life of their own. This episode would not have been

449
00:26:23,599 --> 00:26:26,400
possible had it not been for the Permuter Triangle Adventure

450
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:29,960
cruise that was put together by the Skeptoid podcast. Brian Dunning,

451
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:32,640
the longtime host there, and Jeff Wagg were especially helpful

452
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,839
in preparing this episode, and I should thank my wife

453
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,559
Kathleen for twenty five years of marriage and so many

454
00:26:38,599 --> 00:26:41,559
of our own adventures. My co host from the in

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00:26:41,839 --> 00:26:45,119
Research of podcast, Jeb Card, gave me a lot of feedback.

456
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:47,799
And thanks to all the folks who actually joined me

457
00:26:48,079 --> 00:26:50,839
to visit Robert the Doll in Key West. What a

458
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,440
treat that was. It was so great meeting so many

459
00:26:53,519 --> 00:26:56,000
of you and face to face. And I know years

460
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,400
ago we tried to arrange a similar crews to visit

461
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:01,799
Atlantis with Ken Fader, and this felt very much like

462
00:27:01,839 --> 00:27:04,279
a little bit of that dream coming true. And I

463
00:27:04,319 --> 00:27:06,839
hope someday we get to do a Monster Talk trip

464
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,319
like this, because it's an absolute joy to basically have

465
00:27:10,319 --> 00:27:14,519
a roaming conference at sea and imports. But even if

466
00:27:14,519 --> 00:27:17,000
I never do anything like this again, I will always

467
00:27:17,039 --> 00:27:22,039
treasure the memory of this trip. Monster Doll, You've been

468
00:27:22,079 --> 00:27:25,799
listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm

469
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,720
Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. You just heard a

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00:27:29,799 --> 00:27:32,039
summary of my research on Robert the Doll from my

471
00:27:32,079 --> 00:27:35,319
twenty twenty five trip to Key West. Karen wasn't able

472
00:27:35,319 --> 00:27:37,240
to be here this week, but please pick up a

473
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,279
copy of her latest book, Bitch, The Journey of a Word,

474
00:27:40,599 --> 00:27:44,359
which is available at bookstores and online. Monster Talk theme

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music's by Pete Stealing Monkeys. Next week we'll be talking Magpies.

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This has been a Monster House presentation