According to those who know, Key West is one of the most haunted cities in America, and one of the most famous island ghost stories surrounds Gene Otto, a painter born in 1900 in The Artist House. As a child, Gene received a doll as a gift. He named the doll, "Robert." From the time he received the doll, Gene's life began to change... and not always for the better. Gene blamed "Robert" for his many misfortunes, and many people who knew the family agreed that "Robert" was indeed responsible for a host of evil deeds. Continue reading about this ghost story!

This stuff is right up my alley. I love reading about ghosts. Love watching Ghost Hunters. Read this just now. Cool!

If you ever make it to KW you should go on the Ghost Tour. They tell the story about Robert and many others as you take a stroll through KW.

I agree, Beachnut, ghost stories are neat!

Man, someone posted a great ghost story here last night and I guess they deleted it. What happened to it? It was cool....

(Two eerie but “true” encounters with ghosts)


Most people just don’t believe in the supernatural until they actually see it for themselves, I myself included. One day while looking for trees and shrubs to potentially transplant to a rehab property I had bought, I remembered a large 10 year old Queen Palm that sat on a rather run down older homes lot within driving range of my home at the time.

Thinking to myself hey, that would go great as a centerpiece in the new homes front lawn I decided to drive on over to see if the owners of that old home would be interested in selling it. Upon arriving I was able to drive just about 10 feet away from the tree that I had my sights on, before going to the door I figured I’d give the old tree a good look first before bothering whoever might be in the home.

While taking my first few initial steps out of my car heading for the tree I felt a strange presence but just shook it off, as I walked closer to the tree I begin to hear a muffled growling then a more pronounced barking and finally a swift breeze around my pant legs with barking and growling and what felt like something trying to attack and bite me!

This freaked me out to say the least and I got back in the car as fast as a guy could scramble as if a mean dog where on ones heals, needless to say I didn’t get a good look at that tree I had my eye on.

The next day I returned to speak with the neighbors of that home to ask them if a dog had ever lived next door, eventually these people became friends but they confirmed my notion of some crazy unseen animal attack, when the wife said OH yes the deceased owners did have a fairly good sized dog that guarded that yard with noted voracity and his area mainly encompassed the immediate area surrounding that tree!

I still get Goosebumps to this day when I think about it and now know that dogs do have some remainder of spirit in places they have been. That’s all I want to say about this.

People are skeptics by nature and I’ll admit I was too. About a year after my mysterious dog encounter above, my wife and I where invited to visit my aunt at her recently purchased home in Ft Lauderdale Florida. My wife and I headed out early to get a jump on our day from Tampa so this put us into Lauderdale around 1 Pm just after noon, my aunt said that she would leave a key and to just go on in if we arrived before she returned home from work.

We arrived at her waterfront home well before my aunt got home from work so we went on in and relaxed while we waited for my aunt Renate to get home. After getting something to drink taking a self guided tour and winding down we decided to kind of settle in, I took up a position at a breakfast bar counter and began looking at the days newspaper which was left on the counter, not paying much attention to what my wife had chosen to do, while reading the paper I saw a blonde woman out of the corner of my eye (chill bumps again folks) looking at me from around a corner that I could see just above the top of the paper that I had in front of me, knowing no one else was in the house but us I shouted out to my wife “And just what do you think you’re doing, I see you over there” no answer! So I said hey come out from over there I seen you, no answer!

At that point I got up and rushed over to catch her hiding behind the wall but she wasn’t there? Then I made my way to the Florida room to try to catch her on the run but she wasn’t there either so I continued the rest of the way to the screen porch area and there laid my wife, sleeping like a baby as sound as one could be in the afternoon after a long drive down from Tampa. (She was calm and very asleep) Whoa! Then who was that I just saw looking at me with the long blonde hair? I checked the entire house and there was just her and I there.

This again freaked me out, my aunt arrived awhile later and I asked her, who did you buy this house from? She said it was an estate sale, I said wait don’t tell me. There was an older lady who died here and she had long grey hair right? My aunt looked right at me and said how did you know that? I said because SHE’S STILL HERE! I saw her today while I was reading the paper and began to tell her the story that I told you above.

My aunt said that’s strange and told me that I was sitting in the exact same spot where the older lady’s husband used to sit to read the paper when he was alive. That was enough for me. After the dog previous and now this, I am convinced that there is an afterlife and that sometimes we don’t always leave this earth upon our body’s finale breath.

Now some people won’t believe any of this and I ‘m sure I would have been the worlds biggest skeptic but once it happens to you, then you come over to the other side of thinking too! Keep and open mind because these things do exist! DanAuito

Yeah, that was it. Cool! Welcome to the forums Dan!

Great post Dan & welcome to the forums ~~

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Great story Dan and glad you came aboard.

Glad to be here and thanks for the warm welcome gang. Those two incidents definitely changed my perspective on ghosts, up to those points I was a relative non-believer, these days I maintain an open mind and don't summarily dismiss everything as my imagination. Glad you enjoyed the post.