Behind The Walls of Nightmare: Robert the Doll

Monday, 22 February 2016

Horror Movies Inspired by Real Life

There's an interesting online article about movies, complete with trailers, inspired by real-life events. Some of them I had already heard of. For example, Child's Play was inspired by Robert the Doll, and The Conjuring was based on Annabelle the doll. I've featured both Robert and Annabelle in previous posts. I knew that Psycho was based loosely on convicted killer Ed Gein, but I was not aware of Wes Craven's inspiration for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

If you'd like to check out the article, you'll find the background stories very intriguing.

Monday, 9 February 2015

Robert the Haunted Doll

I had heard of Chucky, the evil doll of the Child's Play franchise, but until I was doing research for my second supernatural novel, I wasn't aware that Robert the Doll was in fact the inspiration for Chucky.

Robert is a hand-crafted doll made around the turn of the 20th century and named for Robert Eugene Otto, to whom the doll belonged until his death in 1974. As a child, Otto invested the doll with a human identity, often talked to him, and blamed the doll when he was accused of misbehavior. According to Otto's parents, the doll talked back to their son, giggled, and was capable of movement. After Otto's death, the doll remained in the house, and the new owner took Robert with her when she moved six years later. In 1994 she donated the doll to the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, saying that the doll was haunted. (She too had observed the doll's ability to move from room to room.)

(Source: http://www.kwahs.org/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/robert-the-doll/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_%28doll%29.)

Robert the Doll now has his own website at http://www.robertthedoll.org/, Twitter account at https://twitter.com/Robertthedoll, and Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/robert.thedoll.5. You can also send him an e-mail at robert@robertthedoll.org.

And if you'd like your own Robert doll, you can buy one from the Key West museum where Robert currently resides.

Next week's post ... Annabelle the Doll

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robert@robertthedoll.org

Robert Eugene Otto