If you live in the US, you probably know about the “Florida Man” meme from all of the newspaper headlines.
“Florida Man throws alligator in drive through window”
“Florida Man arrested while snorkeling naked in dumpster”
“Florida Man robs gas station with small army of pet raccoons”
You get the point. If Florida Man were a super hero, you probably would rather be saved by someone else, and you might imagine that growing up in Florida, you develop a pretty high tolerance for weird shit.
I grew up in Florida, but I’m well past my threshold for weird.
This all started about 2 weeks ago when my dad sent me a picture of a doll while he was cleaning out an old storage unit.
“Want this now? ROFLOL” he captioned it, my dad still texts- no, texted- like it’s the early 2000s.
“Oh God, why do you still have that thing?! Leave it there and call me. Now.” I replied
Actually, I may be getting ahead of things. This started 23 years ago, with the events that led to us getting that doll in the first place.
I may have mentioned that I grew up in Florida. Actually my dad did too. My greatgrandparents had been “snowbirds”, coming to Florida in the winter for good weather, and eventually decided to move down there permanently when they got older. My grandparents followed them to Florida.
You might be shocked how many people live in Florida that are not from Florida. The fact is, Florida had fewer than a million people living there less than a century ago, and now it’s one of the most populous states in the union with over 24 million people.
That is all a long-winded way of saying, people whose family’s have lived in Florida a long time are pretty rare, but my friend Leeroy growing up could trace his lineage back to Florida Crackers that had been in the state since before the Revolutionary War.
Now that didn’t really make him royalty or anything, in fact Florida Cracker culture is all but extinct today, kept alive by a few proud folks and museums.
His family lived in an old house, bordering on a cabin, that his parents would fix up themselves. His family had at one point owned over a hundred acres of land, though over the generations it had been divided among children and pieces of it sold off. By the time his dad inherited the land, it was just under 20 acres, and they sold another 5 before I was old enough to remember.
Leeroy’s dad had grown up with my dad, and when they had sons in the same year, our family’s had gotten even closer. Running through the pines on his property was one of my earliest memories.
Leeroy was a true Florida boy. He got a hunting knife for his sixth birthday. He and his dad would camp out on their property every month to learn survival skills.
Leeroy did his best to pass those skills on to me, and we would kayak up the rivers, fish, camp out, swap spooky campfire stories, and play manhunt in the woods with some other kids from town when the full moon was bright.
I’m reminiscing and getting away from the point here.
In third or fourth grade, our best friendship expanded to include Jimmy, whose parents had just moved them to town.
His dad was a doctor of internal medicine, and mostly treated retirees in the town. His mom a lawyer of some sort.
I would say Jimmy was rich. His house was huge and had its own gate and road. He dressed very preppy, though I don’t think that word was in my fourth grade vocabulary. He was also a bit of a wuss, a word that was definitely in my fourth grade vocabulary.
By all means he should not have been friends with me, let alone Leeroy, but despite our differences in class and personality, we had one passion that united us.
We all loved the paranormal.
On our kayaking trips, we would try to spot “the Swamp Ape” (think bigfoot, but you know, in a swamp) past the mangroves. Jimmy had managed to buy a Ouija board (a Hasbro brand or something haha) without his parents knowing, and we would play with it at his house and on our camping trips. We’d watch any scary movies we could, sneaking into the R rated ones, and of course, we continued our campfire stories.
Jimmy told us that before his family had moved, there had been a man who killed his own parents and said he’d been possessed. His dad had told him it was just an excuse, but Jimmy had seen the man’s eyes solid black in the street the day earlier. That’s what got him into the paranormal.
For Leeroy and me, his dad’s stories about Florida ghosts and legends were the origin of our love for the spooky and weird. We had even convinced him to take us to “The Devil’s Bench” one year, but he wouldn’t let us sit on it.
We kept up our antics until we were all teenagers when, one summer, Jimmy convinced his parents to rent us a beach house in the Keys for a week. We were each 16 or 17 and going by ourselves, so it took some convincing for our parents, but they finally caved.
Jimmy drove us down in his dad’s Land Rover and the plan was basically to hang out at the beach, maybe some boating, and get drunk on alcohol purchased with my fake ID.
Well, and we had a few stops on our paranormal tour.
We ate at Sloppy Joe’s, a restaurant and bar built on top of the trees they used to use to hang pirates and where, about a decade early, they had found a bunch of human remains during renovations. The story is super cool, and you should definitely look it up, but unfortunately nothing weird happened while we were there. We had to go during the daytime before they kicked out the under 21 crowd.
The other highlight of the tour was Robert the Doll, and I wish we would have skipped it.
Robert is an old, straw-stuffed doll from the early 20th century. You’re welcome to go read the full story elsewhere, but I’ll include the gist of it.
Basically, this doll was given to a boy by his allegedly voodoo-practicing nanny. People claim you could see the doll smiling in his window, that Robert and this boy would “talk to each other”, and the boy would blame the doll whenever he got into a bit of mischief. Eventually, the boy got old and died, and then someone who had bought his house donated the doll to a museum in Key West, presumably to get it the heck out of the house, where it still sits today.
People say the doll is still evil, and if you take its picture or are rude to him, he’ll curse you. Plenty of people have blamed accidents and misfortune on this.
I’ve heard this doll is the inspiration for the Chucky movies, but I’m not sure if that’s true. He was certainly the inspiration for the truly awful Robert movies released in the past few years. Typical spooky doll shit.
We, being the type of naive kids that played with Ouija boards and called out Bloody Mary in front of mirrors in dark bathrooms, obviously were going to go provoke this doll for our own entertainment.
When we actually saw the thing, we hesitated.
We believed the paranormal stuff, but mostly for the thrills. When you go to a haunted house or a scary movie, you know nothing is really going to hurt you, but the possibility works its way past your defenses. That feeling just before the third “Bloody Mary”, when your heart falls into icy waters and every nerve in your body screams at you to stop was the whole reason we loved this.
Maybe it’s a Florida thing
Robert the Doll is messed up. You wouldn’t give that thing to a child unless you had a long con going that requires you to bankrupt them in therapy costs as an adult. The thought of him haunting us was not a pleasant one.
The notes around him begging forgiveness didn’t help.
“Maybe we shouldn’t” Jimmy said.
Honestly this surprised me. He was still a wuss, but in a way he was the craziest of the three of us, in a way that only a rich, white boy can be. He had an air of invincibility and entitlement that almost made you believe he actually was invincible.
He was the kind of guy that might snort coke and belly flop into the pool from a 4th floor hotel balcony. In fact, a few years later I heard he landed himself in the hospital and, subsequently, rehab doing exactly that.
I didn’t say anything, but looked meaningfully at Leeroy.
“God, y’all are such chicken shits. Must be all that yank blood.” He laughed. “I’ll go first then.”
He erected his middle finger and stuck it against the glass.
“Hey Robbie, how d’ya like that?” He asked the doll
I was emboldened by this, and his grouping me with Jimmy stung.
I grabbed my crotch and shouted too, “yeah you dumb doll, what you going to do about it?”
Jimmy still looked uncomfortable with the whole situation, but finally joined in and said something lame like, “yeah, did your mommy pick that outfit?”
Leave it to the rich kid to pick on his clothes off all things.
After that, we took turns taking pictures with the doll with disposable Kodak cameras. We didn’t ask permission.
As we left, Jimmy hung behind, and I heard him apologizing. I didn’t tell Leeroy.
Before I tell you this next part, I want to say that Jimmy and I both had our notes on display at one point in time in that museum. His said,
“I never wanted to go along with that. I’m so sorry I offended you. The other two are to blame. Take them.”
Mine said
“If we knew, we never would have said those things to you. I’m sorry. Please bring my friend back.”
I’m not friends with Jimmy anymore.
That night at the beach house, we got drunk. A storm had rolled in, and we were watching the waves crash on the shore from a covered, second floor balcony.
“Man, I thought maybe there would be something to that doll.” Leeroy said with disappointment in his voice “Next trip we go on should be to the Devil’s Bench and actually sit on it.”
“I knew it was bullshit” Jimmy chimed in.
Leeroy and I laughed.
“Screw you guys, I’m gonna go take a piss” he said, and he stood up and left.
I turned to say something to Leeroy, when a flash of lightning illuminated his face and his eyes widened.
“The hell is that?!” He said, pointing at the beach.
I squinted and couldn’t see much in the darkness.
“I.. I don’t see anything?” I said confused
“Wait for the lightning” he said, staring.
I kept my vision tracked on the beach where he was looking. When the lightning flashed, I saw the silhouette of what appeared to be a child.
“Fucking Jimmy.” I said. “Trying to freak us out to get even.”
“I saw that not two minutes after Jimmy left. You trying to tell me he’s The Flash or something?”
“Would explain the lightning” I meekly tried to joke. Neither of us laughed.
Another flash of lighting. Maybe it was my imagination, but the shadow seemed closer to the house this time.
“Shit, do you think that’s a kid? Maybe we should see if we can find Jimmy” I said
Leeroy kept his eyes peeled on the spot. “You go. I’ll keep an eye on this thing”
I got up and turned into the house. As I opened the door, a crash of thunder tore the sound barrier apart and the lights in the house died. I cursed to myself and made my way to the hall.
Jimmy wasn’t in the upstairs bathroom. This seemed to confirm my suspicions that he was behind it. I eased up a bit and returned to the balcony.
“Jimmy you prick! We know it’s you!” I yelled out. Silence.
I tried again, but as I was finishing up “you asshole”, Jimmy walked back out onto the balcony.
“What did I do now?” He said
“I checked the bathroom, you weren’t there. We know you’re trying to spook us.” I said
Leeroy was still staring out at the beach this whole time, not saying anything.
“I had to shit, so I went downstairs for privacy. Which one of you killed the lights? I pissed on my shoes because of that.”
That took me off guard. “I thought you were shitting?” I asked
“Yeah and then I stood up to piss afterwards. What kind of man pisses sitting down?”
I didn’t have time to figure out how to reply to that because lightning struck again.
“Who the hell is that?!” Jimmy shouted.
Well, there went my theory.
The wind started to pick up into a howl, and I wondered briefly if a hurricane had somehow formed and made landfall without a news broadcast. I was considering going to find our beach radio, when the sound of a door opening and slamming several times downstairs interrupted the thought.
Leeroy stood up.
“Y’all stay here.” Was all he said. He flicked out a pocket knife and walked inside.
When the lightning struck again, there was no figure on the beach.
I looked at Jimmy for a minute. He looked like he would be pissing himself if he hadn’t just been to the bathroom.
“We can’t just let him go by himself,” I said finally.
“He’s a freaking swamp man! Me going would just be a liability!” He said
“Come on. I’ll go first.” I said and walked inside. He followed me as far as the bedroom.
I walked into the hallway and the door shut behind me with the click of a lock. Coward.
As I reached the stairwell, I could hear grunts and a sound like a chair sliding across a wood floor. I quickened my pace.
Nobody believed me when I told them what I saw next. “Trauma memory distortion” was the official verdict. It didn’t help that Jimmy never backed me up
Leeroy was bloody and bruised already, but there was nobody else in the room. He stood, surrounded by disoriented furniture, holding his pocket knife pointed at nothing, turning every few seconds.
When he saw me, his eyes widened into a look of sadness and fear. “Run” was all he said.
A chair flew from the table across the room and hit him at shoulder height. Knocking him over.
I took a step towards him, and a couch skidded towards me across the floor. I jumped back into the stairwell as it slammed into the railing.
As Leeroy regained his feet, I saw him turn towards a hail of knives flying from the kitchen. He ducked, but one managed to hit him in the shoulder, and he dropped his pocket knife.
I tried to climb over the couch to get to him, but as I stepped on it, it lifted into the air and spilled me painfully onto the stairs again.
As I got back to my feet, I saw Leeroy lifted into the air where he hovered for a second before being thrown into a wall and crashing to the ground.
I tried to get over the couch again.
A door opened.
I managed to get onto the couch, and jumped over and off of it as it tried to spill me backwards again.
Lightning illuminated the room again in a series of four flashes. Blink blink-blink blink.
In a window across the room I saw Robert the Doll, smiling a shit-eating grin with his middle finger pressed against the glass.
Leeroy, at least unconscious, maybe worse, began to slide across the floor towards the open door.
I ran for him. I got hit with a kitchen chair. I got up in time to see the door slam behind him.
The lights sputtered back on, and Robert was no longer at the window. I got Jimmy and looked for Leeroy for 2 hours along the beach before I finally gave up and called the cops.
That was the last I saw Leeroy.
The cops believed that he was abducted, but obviously not by a haunted doll.
Jimmy corroborated that there was a figure on the beach that Leeroy went downstairs to find, which at least alleviated the suspicion thrown on me.
They chalked my haunted doll memories up to trauma and my injuries up to me being knocked out in a scuffle with whoever took Leeroy. That also apparently explained the displaced furniture.
Some local tabloid papers published my actual account of events, which was good advertising for the museum I guess.
Leeroy’s parents didn’t blame me for him missing, but they did blame me for “telling tales” about what happened. I think his dad thought I was afraid the kidnapper would come after me for retribution if I helped the cops.
A month later, I wrote my apology to Robert, and asked for Leeroy back. I should’ve tried sooner, but part of me had hoped the cops would just find him. Maybe the chair to the head really had scrambled my memories.
A couple weeks after I got a letter back saying the museum would give Robert my letter, I saw Leeroy’s dad’s car at my house when I got home from school.
As I was walking in, I heard.
“-because of that boy’s stories! That bastard is just messing with us now.”
When I opened the door, he stopped talking, excused himself, and left.
I walked in to where my dad was sitting and was horrified to see Robert on the couch.
Then I realized it wasn’t Robert. It was wearing Leeroy’s jeans and the T-shirt with an alligator on it he had been wearing that night. He had blue beady eyes and brown hair painted on. This was a doll version of Leeroy.
“Someone left it on their porch” was all my dad said.
It didn’t feel right to throw out that doll, but I couldn’t stand to look at it. I left it in my closet, and when I went to college, I sat him on my bed and said “you can have this room now.*
I could swear I heard Leeroy’s voice say “thanks man.”
I hope this explains why I was so panicked to see the picture my dad sent me of that doll after all these years. I had almost entirely forgotten the story.
My dad replied “ah, too late, I tossed it in the junk pile. Not worth keeping those bad memories around now, son”
And now, 2 weeks later, my dad is nowhere to be found. I flew down to Florida to help with the search party, although I knew it wouldn’t help.
Today I finally mustered up the courage to check the storage unit, and sitting just behind the roll up gate, I found two dolls. Leeroy and my dad.
I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my mom. I don’t know what I can do with these dolls.
Tomorrow I’m going to find or make some cases for them, some warning signs, and find a spot for them. I just hope nobody else provokes them in the meantime.