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Tag Archives: Cursed dolls

A little something for Halloween: Last (Dolls) House on the left

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Lenora in Bizarre, General, Ghosts, History, Macabre, Photography

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

baby house, creepy toys, crime scene, Cursed dolls, dolls houses, forensic diorama, Frances Glessner Lee, Ghost stories, HAPS, haunted dolls house, haunted nurseries, legal medicine, miniatures, mother lee, mr james, murder house, murder in a nutshell, nutshell studies, Queen Mary's dolls house, unexplained death

As I won’t be in reach of the internet on the night itself – here is my slightly early offering for Halloween.  Enjoy…

'Strawberry Hill Gothic' style. Image adapted by Lenora.

‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ style dolls house. Image adapted by Lenora.

There has always been something innately creepy about the trappings of childhood – from cursed dolls to self-propelling rocking horses – the contents of the nursery has more often than not been the stuff of nightmare and horror.  Perhaps it is the ease with which such objects of innocence can transform themselves, with only a change in the quality of light or a sense of unobserved movement, into the uncanny or sinister.

Image by Lenora

Image by Lenora

Dolls houses have always held a particular fascination for me, perhaps it is because peering in at the windows of the world in miniature, you cannot help but imagine what dreadful stories might be unfolding behind the twee facade.  I have to admit that as a child, I set macabre tales of grisly murder and haunting in my own dolls house.  Even today, although it is rather a regular sort of faux Georgian dolls house, I still occasionally have the urge to set up seances in the parlour.

WH 3DH 3

Image by Lenora

Household management in miniature

The Stromer House 1639.

The Stromer House 1639. Image source marinni.livejournal.com

Originally dolls houses, or baby houses were not for the grubby fingers of childhood, but rather were used as intricate and exquisite objects of display and prestige by royalty and the elite.  Earliest German examples date from the mid sixteenth century, Albert V of Bavaria had one – clearly demonstrating that boys like dolls houses just as much as girls.  By the eighteenth century every self-respecting (or should that read ‘self-aggrandizing’) grandee had a doll’s house.  The more extravagant and palatial the better.  Examples such as ‘Mon Plaisir’ the eighty room mansion created for the Princess Augusta Dorothea of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt were the height of luxury and, costing a fortune, were only ‘completed’ when the money ran out.

As well as ostentatious display many of these baby houses and cabinet houses also had a more practical and educational role in that they represented the ideal of what a well run home should look like.  They were often used as tools to train up wives and maids in household management.  Houses such as the Stromer House, dating from 1639, now housed in the Germanisches National Museum, have an almost time-capsule quality, showing how people lived (or aspired to live) at that period in history.

Creepy children

creepy girlsThe nineteenth century saw children finally get their sticky hands on Dolls houses in a big way, and the creep factor shot up significantly.  However, rather than dwelling on the possessed playthings of whey-faced and sinister Victorian children (far too obvious!) I would like, instead, to introduce possibly the most disturbing incarnation of the dolls’ house that I for one have ever come across….

Frances Glessner Lee – The Original Jessica Fletcher…

leenutshells_FGL

Frances Glessner Lee. Image source: Frances Glessner Lee Museum

The twee little old lady with her bun and her spectacles, pictured above making dainty little miniatures, has more in common with Miss Marple than Mary Poppins.  The miniature masterpieces she put together were most definitely not for the nursery.  Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy socialite born with a silver spoon in her mouth, found fame in a most unladylike manner by creating the most macabre miniature diorama’s of death, in meticulous detail.  In so doing she helped to pioneer the importance of legal medicine and forensic crime scene investigation.

The dark bathroom. Image source Death in Diorama

The dark bathroom. Image source Death in Diorama

Born in 1878 in Chicago, daughter of the co-founder of the International Harvester Company, Frances Glessner was brought up to be a gentile young lady.  Trained in feminine arts and the skills required to be a society hostess.  Her wish to go to university was thwarted because it was not considered ladylike.  Her brother went to Harvard, and it was one of his friends, George Burgess Magrath, who fired Frances’ interest in Legal Medicine (what we would not call forensic medicine).

The hanging farmer. Image source Death in Diorama

The hanging farmer. Image source Death in Diorama

In the first part of the twentieth century coroners did not have to be medically trained and the police were largely ignorant of crime-scene investigation techniques.    As a result many murderers were never brought to justice.  As an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes and no shrinking Violet, the indomitable Frances, and her good friend Magrath, set about addressing this problem.   This was made significantly easier for Frances as by 1930’s she had come into her own, well, she inherited her fortune thereby allowing her to pursue her own ambitions, rather than bend to the will of her family.  And of course, being a grand society hostess and a well brought up lady, she managed to fuse her more gentile talents: such a miniature making and dinner party management, with the retraining of the police force in methods of forensic crime-scene investigation.

In the 1930’s she founded the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine, in 1942 was the first woman to be made Captain of the New Hampshire State Police, and as if that wasn’t enough, by 1945 she had instituted Harvard Seminars in Homicide Investigation for leading crime-scene investigators  (it was later renamed Harvard Associates in Police Science (HAPS)). This is where the dinner party skills came in handy – the end of the week-long course was celebrated at the Ritz Carlton with a swanky dinner.  No doubt the grande dame enjoyed being the centre of attention.

Murder in Miniature – the Nutshell Studies of Frances Glessner Lee

Frances Glessner Lee firmly believed that the purpose of crime-scene investigation was to “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell,”  and she must have realised that practical experience counts for much more than a week of lectures on the subject.  With this in mind from the she made use of her skills as a miniaturist and her money, to create 20 precise and deadly murder diorama’s, of which 18 still survive in the collection of the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office.

The Kitchen. Image source: Corinne Botz via 99percentinvisible

The Kitchen. Image source: Corinne Botz via 99percentinvisible

Lee used a combination of actual cases, witness statements, court records and even literature to create individual and obsessively detailed crime scenes in the scale of one foot to one inch.  Jerry Dziecichowicz, interviewed in the Telegraph, stated that Lee had a solution to each scenario in mind, however the importance of the diorama’s goes beyond a mere who dunnit.  They are about a methodical approach to observation – Lee favoured a clockwise spiral of observation – and identifying clues as to the nature of the death: was it murder, suicide, and accident?  It was as important to clear the innocent as to convict the guilty and the lesson was how to read the crime scene effectively.

Image source: Sarah Fask via Baltimore Fishbowl

Three room dwelling. Image source: Sarah Fask via Baltimore Fishbowl

She worked with her carpenter at her New Hampshire farm, The Rocks,  to make the nutshells.  Although she sourced some mass-produced materials, often she made the items herself, often going to obsessive lengths to get them just right.  She put together the dolls and is known to have hand knitted stockings for them using straight dress makers pins.  She also carefully painted their flesh in just the right colours of putrefaction to match the time of their death.

Murder at the parsonage - complete with decomposing flesh. Image source: death in diorama

Murder at the parsonage – complete with knife in ribs, bite marks and decomposing flesh. Image source: death in diorama

Those who attended the seminars, and invitations were highly sought after, were given only 90 minutes to study each scene,  the only tools being a flashlight and a magnifying glass.  Some of the clues were tiny or only observable if you moved items, in one scene, a lady dead in bed can be discerned to have been smothered by a tiny smudge of lipstick on a pillow.  In another, the Cabin, a tiny bullet lodged in a beam is the key to guilt or innocence.  Lee understood the importance of these clues in identifying what the nature of the scene was – looking beyond the obvious to identify whether it was murder, suicide or an accident.

Red Bedroom - a murdered prostitute. Image source - murder diorama

Red Bedroom – a murdered prostitute. Image source – Death in Diorama

Dark Bathroom, detail of vodka bottle and single glass. Image source: murder diorama

Dark Bathroom, detail of vodka bottle and single glass. Image source: Death in Diorama

As much as the nutshell’s were intended to educate, they also inform – about Frances Glessner Lee herself.  They are almost obsessively detailed, she included things that anyone else would have left out – a fire escape and hidden window at the back of the Pink Bathroom are mentioned by Bruce Goldfarb,  assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner at Maryland, and curator of the Nutshells.  Further indications of Lee’s biases are noted by Laura J Miller in her article for Harvard Magazine: most of the victims are white, the majority women, and of the lower classes.  The crime scenes may be objective but the decor and trappings are indicative of Lee’s view of the tawdry lives lead by those marginalised by society who inhabited rented rooms and cheap lodgings.  Alcohol, drugs and prostitution go hand in hand with these brutal deaths.  Miller goes on to say that Lee “disclosed the dark side of domesticity and its potentially deleterious effects: many victims were women ‘led astray’ from the cocoon-like security of the home – by men, misfortune, or their own unchecked desires”

If you want to explore the nutshell studies in more detail I have added a link to the excellent Death in Diorama website below – it is well worth a visit.

From murder in the doll house to a Haunted Dolls House

Queen Mary's Dolls house under construction. Image source

Queen Mary’s Dolls house under construction. Image source The Royal Collection.

Queen Mary, wife of King George V of England, didn’t have a lot in common with Frances Glessner Lee, but one passion they both shared was miniatures.  In the 1920’s Edward Lutyens, the famous architect, was commissioned to create the palatial dolls house, now know simply as Queen Mary’s dolls house, for the lucky monarch.

Perfect in every detail, cram packed with every luxury an early twentieth century royal could want: running water, flushing toilets, and a fully stocked wine cellar, it also boasted an extensive library.  And of course the doll’s house has a dark secret….a murder and a haunting!  Well, no not really, unless you believe MR James who wrote his Haunted Dolls House tale for the Royal dolls enjoyment, knew something we don’t! Based on the Mezzotint, the Haunted Dolls House tells of an avaricious collector who (rather too cheaply) obtains a lovely old dolls house in ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ style that harbours a nasty secret.  And he soon finds himself the helpless witness to a murder and a haunting.

If you fancy a little Halloween ghost story, links to the text and a short film adaptation of MR James Haunted Doll’s House can be found below.

'Strawberry Hill Gothic' style. Image adapted by Lenora.

A little something extra for Halloween…

For Frances Glassner Lee’s murder diorama’s under the magnifying glass, visit: http://www.deathindiorama.com/

The dark bathroom. Image source Death in Diorama

Also the website of Corinne Botz, who is behind most of the excellent photographs of the Nutshell Studies out there, and who produced a book on them:  http://www.corinnebotz.com/Corinne_May_Botz/Nutshell_Studies.html

For a tour of Queen Mary’s Doll’s house, inspiration for MR James Haunted Dolls House, visit: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/queenmarysdollshouse/book.html

6419513-11_aMR James ghost story The Haunted Dolls House can be found in the Portmanteau of Terror

You can find a dramatization of the Haunted Doll’s House, directed by Stephen Grey and starring Steven Dolton, on You Tube.  Rather like a scary version of Trumpton – this short ‘no-budget’ adaptation is well worth a watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdWwhMse1M

Happy Halloween!

Insidious, 2010, Dir James Wan

Sources

Diorama Photo’s – most of the photos of the Nutshells used in this post were taken from Death In Diorama, but I’m not who the photographer was.  Diorama operate the following licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Pasierbska, Halina, Dolls’ Houses, Shire, 1991

Ramsland, Katherine, ‘The Nutshell Studies of Francesl Glessner Lee’, PDF sourced from the internet.

http://brucegoldfarb.com/the-nutshell-studies-of-unexplained-death

Miller, Laura J, http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/09/frances-glessner-lee-html

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/lee.html

http://www.thin-ghost.org/items/show/142

Richardson, Nigel, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11370223/Nutshell-Studies-the-extraordinary-miniature-crime-scenes-US-police-use-to-train-detectives.html

Roman, http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-nutshell-studies/

 

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Robert the doll: The Haunted Doll of Key West

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Lenora in Bizarre, Hoodoo and Voodoo, Supernatural

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Cursed dolls, Eugene Otto, Florida legends, Fort East Martello Museum, haunted dolls, Hoodoo, hoodoo curses, Key West, Robert the doll, Voodoo

scary doll small

Image source unknown, edited by Lenora

It takes a lot to freak me out, as a child I had the kind of bedroom that most of my friends thought was pretty wierd…lots of creepy old stuff, masks, dusty books, moth-eaten old fur stoles from long dead great great aunts….a distinct lack of anything girlie and pink.

Like many children I was compelled to go for piano lessons.  I hated them.  But I loved my piano teacher (a close family friend) and her house – she and it were like something out of another era.  The house was packed full of antique furniture and strange knickknacks.  Mrs A had lived in the far East for a time, and from what I gather, lived in rather grand style.  Even in her old age there was very much something of the Grand Dame of the British Empire about her.  Despite her sometimes imperious manner, she also had a wicked sense of humour, and owned possibly one of the most terrifying dolls I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

I remember the very first time I saw the doll – I must have been 6 or 7 and I remember loathing it on sight.  It was a Victorian Porcelain doll, with (I swear) GREY hair, glassy staring eyes and a mean little mouth.  And worse of all at some point during its existence the doll had undergone some kind of cranial autopsy courtesy of Hannibal Lecter because the entire top of its head came off  – grey hair and all (as Mrs A loved to demonstrate) – leaving its gimlet eyes staring at you with nothing but empty air above them.  If I managed to hold my nerve when the doll came out to play, I definitely lost it when Mrs A invariably lifted its ghastly lid.  If ever a doll was possessed, as a child, I was convinced that one was….which brings me neatly to the subject of this post.

Robert the Doll

The Otto home, Key West, Florida.  Image source unknown.

The Otto home, Key West, Florida. Image source unknown.

The story of Robert the doll begins in the early years of the twentieth century in Key West Florida in an elegant mansion on the corner of Eaton and Simonton Street.  The Otto family had lived in the house since the mid 1890’s and if you believe the rumours, they were non to kind to their servants.

The Otto’s young son Robert Eugene was particularly fond of a Bahamian maid who was employed to look after him.  The maid was dismissed in 1906, some say for practicing Voodoo, others that Mrs Otto was jealous of Robert’s fondness for the girl.  Before she left, the girl made a 3 foot tall, button eyed, straw doll for Robert.   Robert adored it.

servant girl blurSoon the family began to suspect that things were not all that they seemed with Robert and the doll.  Robert was heard whispering to the doll, not so unusual children often confide in dolls, but what was unusual was that the Otto’s and their servants heard another deeper voice answering back…

The doll seemed to exert some kind of hold over the young Robert.  He is said to have begun using his middle name Eugene or Gene because he said the doll’s name was Robert.

Violent commotion was heard in his bedroom at night, upon entering, Gene would be found cowering in his bed, Robert sitting opposite glaring at him with furniture overturned, toys mutilated.  When questioned Gene invariably said ‘It was Robert, Robert did it.’

Robert tumblr_lyfol4mB8l1qctrs7

Robert the doll, image from Tumblr

Soon servants began to leave and the family became convinced that the Bahamian maid had somehow cursed the doll.  The doll was banished to the attic of the family home…it is said that the aunt who put him there died of a stroke that very night.  Despite his banishment  rumours persisted…the sound of tiny footsteps and childish laughter was often heard in the attic….

As Gene grew to become an adult he became an artist and married.  When his parents died he inherited the old family home and he and his wife Annette moved back in.

It was not long before Gene found Robert in the attic and the two were reunited.  The adult Gene was constantly accompanied by Robert much to the distaste of his wife, who is said to have loathed the doll.

Eventually Annette, exasperated by Gene’s obsession with the doll, exiled Robert once again to the attic.  He does not seem to have liked that and Gene is said to have told Annette that Robert had demanded a room with a view of the street.  Naturally Gene obliged and fitted out the Turret room, his studio, for Robert.  Gene would spend hours locked away painting and talking to the doll.

Rumours soon spread about the neighbourhood, children going past the mansion on their way to school would try not to look up at the turret room because Robert had been seen staring malevolently back at them. Worse still, he had been seen running from window to window when the family were out.  People said that the doll was filled with evil voodoo relics, tiny animal bones, had a crystal heart, had human hair…was possessed by evil.

Popular tradition also embroidered the legend to say that Annette died insane because of the cursed doll.  Whether this is true or not, when Gene died in 1974 Annette was sane enough to get out quickly and leave Robert behind.  It is said that Gene Otto’s will stipulated that the house could be leased but that Robert should be left in peace.

The Legend Grows…..

Robert looking rather appealing and cute

Robert looking rather appealing and cute

The new family who took over the old Otto house had a 10-year-old daughter and with the typical perversity of childhood when she saw Robert, she loved him.  Robert however had less than affectionate intentions towards his new owner and soon the girl was having horrific nightmares and had become convinced the doll was trying to kill her.  Even decades later she is still convinced that Robert did attack her and try to kill her.  It was her terrified family who donated Robert to the Fort East Martello Museum where he resides today.

Robert the doll with letters from his victims, image source Tumblr

Robert the doll with letters from his victims, image by Cayobo

Robert sits safely behind glass in the Museum, travelling once a year to the Old Post Office to be displayed and occasionally featuring in paranormal conventions.  Yet despite being over 100 years old, and looking a little worse for wear, Robert is still a force to be reckoned with.  Museum staff claim he has been found in different positions, cameras break in his presence, footsteps are heard around the museum at night, and his expression is known to change in a way that can chill the blood.  Visitors are advised to seek Robert’s permission before photographing him, or risk being cursed, in fact letters from apologetic photographers cover the walls of his display cabinet.

The truth behind the curse…

Many people visit Robert as skeptics and leave convinced that there is something to the story.  But how much of the story is real?  Could it be that an affluent white family chose to blame the disturbed behaviour of their son on the evil magic of a black servant?  Was this easier to believe than that their child may have had a mental illness?  None of the sources that I have found on the internet have named the ‘Bahamian Servant’ or provided any substantial detail about her, so her story is unheard.  Has an act of fondness been twisted into a tale of black magic and revenge?

Is it also not possible that Robert Gene Otto, dropped the  name Robert, simply because his father was also called Robert? Perhaps it was easier for the family to distinguish between the two of them that way?

aura

During Atlantic Paranormal Society’s Convention in Clearwater, FL., Sandy Duveau captured Robert’s Aura with a special camera

The voodoo (or should that be hoodoo) association is enforced by the long-held belief that Robert the doll’s hair is made from human hair, more precisely the hair of Gene Otto himself, and that it has grayed over time.  However, tests have revealed the hair to be a natural fibre such as wool.

It has to be said that museum has a vested interest in keeping the curse story alive, there is a website, Facebook page and twitter account for Robert; and after all who doesn’t enjoy the frisson of coming face to face with something really evil..so long as it is safely contained behind glass…

I wonder whether the curse of Robert the doll, hasn’t actually become real simply because people want it to be real.  The idea of the curse has been reinforced for nearly 100 years now, strange things do happen around Robert.  Perhaps the conjuring was not carried out by the Bahamian maid, but by all of us, every time we politely ask Robert for permission to take his photo….just to be on the safe side…

You can visit Robert at the Fort East Martello Museum.

Her is a short film about Robert the Doll from You Tube:

Sources

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/robert-doll
http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_the_Doll:_True_Story
http://forteanfolly.com/tag/robert-the-doll/
http://www.robertthedoll.org/
http://www.squidoo.com/dollrobert
http://thehorrortree.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/robert-doll.html
http://voices.yahoo.com/voodoo-black-magic-robert-doll-perpetual-halloween-6635676.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_the_Doll

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