Key West: Robert the Doll, Carl Tanzler, and Florida Keys Cryptids | Creeps, Crimes & Cryptids

Key West looks like paradise until you listen closely. We begin with the Creeps that give the island its edge, from the folklore-soaked walls of Captain Tony’s Saloon to the legend of Robert the Doll, one of the most infamous haunted objects in America. Stories of permission, bad luck, and eerie encounters have followed the doll for decades, but we also examine when those claims actually began and how a single artifact can evolve into a full-blown legend. Along the way, we touch on the Conch Republic and the island’s talent for turning history, rebellion, and humor into something that feels larger than life.

The Crime pulls us into one of Key West’s most disturbing true stories: Count Carl von Cosel, also known as Carl Tanzer. A man who presented himself as a doctor, became obsessed with a young woman who died of tuberculosis, and crossed boundaries that still shock nearly a century later. It is a case that blurs delusion, control, and obsession in a way that feels almost unreal.

We close with the Cryptids and sea legends of the Florida Keys, including the Lusca, the Key West Sea Ape, Goat Man, and the Wrecker’s Phantom, stories born from deep water, isolation, and imagination.

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Creeps, Crimes & Cryptids is a podcast by Ghost City Tours, exploring the strange, sinister, and unexplained history lurking beneath America’s most haunted cities. If you'd like to take a ghost tour in this episode's featured city, or to find tours in a city nearest you, visit www.ghostcitytours.com!

Transcript

Key West Banter And Vibes

Paul 0:00

I want to find a really, really rough place. And I did some googing and I found a quote from a bartender that was like, uh, this place doesn't have a door on the front of it or running water, so you shouldn't go there. And I was like, that's the place we're gonna go. So the sister comes by the house and looks in the window one night and sees this guy to Count Carl von Kassel dancing with her dead sister's body.

Carter 0:20

Oh today's city, our favorite city in the entire world, Key West Florida, baby.

Paul 0:26

Key West, baby.

Carter 0:38

So there I was, right? Sipping on sponge cake. I was also watching the sunbake. All those curves. Damn it. So I was sipping on sponge cake. So there I was. I was nibbling on sponge cake. No, I was sipping. So there I was. I was nibbling on Sponge Cake. I was watching the sunbake, right? Right. All these tours, they're covered in oil. That's what BP does to the coastline. Hey, welcome back to this week's episode of Creeps, Crimes, and Cryptids brought to you by Ghost City Tours, the world's number one ghost tour company. Like always, we're going to give you a creep, a crime, a cryptid, all based in a city in which we do tours. Today's city, our favorite city in the entire world, Key West, Florida, baby. Key West, baby. Like always, I'm Carter joined by Paul and Yumbo. Yeah, we got Tyler, our producer over there. But we don't have a two shot, so we can have a camera on Tyler. Yeah, the Tyler Cam. He's running the ones and twos, doing a fantastic job. And before we get into our creep, of course, our always our first segment, why to thank everyone who's joined us along for this journey. It's a journey. All two of you. We're going to keep developing this show, and it's going to change a little bit throughout the time, but I think we found a uh at least one niche, which is uh, I don't know that used that's not the word. Nish. Nish, niche, interchangeable interchangeable. Thank you. Whenever you and I just bark at each other, yes, that's some good stuff, right? Yes. I love it. I love barking, dude. Yeah. I'm a dog. Sure. You might not get the best information out of this, but you at least be able to take one thread of it in between all of the incoherent ramblings of Paul's conspiracy theories. But today in Key West, we have a deep love for it and a deep appreciation because Paul and I have spent time there together. Yes. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Paul, outside of our experiences of Key West, before we get started, what is your just overall like if you were to paint a picture per se of Key West for someone who's never been, what would you tell them?

Paul 2:58

What makes Key West probably one of the greatest places in the United States is that it is everything great about the beach without the beach, which everyone knows is the worst part of the beach, right? Like if you could just have the smell of the ocean and getting drunk at 10 a.m. and hanging out in the sun, like that's the fun part of the beach. You know what's not the fun part of the beach? Having sand in your ass crack, right? Key West in Hawaii. Also every time you come back home, like months later, you find sand in your sand's everywhere. Everywhere. It sucks. It's awful. But no, Key West, it does have some beaches. There's like two of them, I think. But you know, you don't really go there for the beaches. You go there for the atmosphere, the ambiance. The bad thing about Key West is much like every cool place in the world, it's like slowly being overrun by yuppies. There's always these people, right? I mean, this is a problem in New Orleans, it's a problem in Key West. It's a problem that destroyed New York, but it's a problem in like every really cool place in the world that these people come in there because they think they like the culture of the place, but they don't actually like the culture of the place. They pretend like they like it. So then they come in and they're like, let's put a hot topic in here. And they force out like a business that's been there for 60 years, and they just make everything fucking expensive and awful. And so it's harder when you go to these places now. It becomes sad, but like when you go down to the Keys or you go to New Orleans or even you go to New York, like you gotta go, you gotta deep dive and dig deep to find like the authentic gems because they are still there. There's still some holdouts that still make the places still fucking magical. Um, but it's harder and harder to find them. You know, one of the places in the Keys, I mean, it's not technically in Key West, it's over on Stock Island, is uh is a place called the Purple Porpoise.

Carter 4:28

Imagine uh for our audio listeners, imagine a dive bar. Now, imagine if that dive bar was gutted and people were just shitting on the floor, and then they cleaned it up because you know you can't have shit on the floor at an establishment. But uh yeah, Paul here is a dive bar connoisseur, you might say. Oh, there's the inside of it. And I believe whenever you found this place, you did because as you do when you search new cities, you search for the diviest dive bar in the city.

Paul 4:56

Yeah, I try to find the worst dive bar in any city that I go to. Usually I'll I'll ask a bouncer at a bar, I'll be like, hey, what's the worst dive bar in town? Usually they'll they'll point me in the right direction. But yeah, for the keys, we were doing a drive down there, and I was like, I want to find a really, really rough place. And I did some Googing and I found a quote from a bartender that was like, uh, this place doesn't have a door on the front of it or running water, so you shouldn't go there. And I was like, that's the place we're gonna go. It's perfect. All this has to be cut out because this is boring. Who cares?

Carter 5:23

I don't think it needs to be cut out. Anyway, who cares? That was our intro on Key West. Let's get to the the facts of the matter or what you might. I just I don't have any conspiracy.

Paul 5:35

I just love this place, but I don't have any fun things to say about it. Dude, that's fun. It's go to the purple porpoise. It's it's literally they have ice chests with fireball and like skunked out beer. And that's the only thing they serve there. That's wonderful.

Hunting The Diviest Dive Bar

Carter 5:48

I hated it. All right, let's get to our first segment, the creep of Key West.

Paul 5:54

All right, so for the creepy stories from Key West, I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you with a double dose here. I'm gonna you want the one that's like actually creepy or the like fun one first? The creepy one gets pretty dark.

Carter 6:07

I'm gonna be honest with you. Well, let's let's start with the dark one. Because, you know, this we're trying to bring folks on like a ride, a roller coaster, you know. We just had a little fun. So now let's let's think it was fun, but all right. So look, let's let's go back down.

Count Von Cosel And The Corpse

Paul 6:19

All right, now, all right. Well, here we go. We're gonna talk about Count Carl von Kassel. Okay, so Count Carl von Kassel was a cat back in the 1930s, 40s, 20s, somewhere in that, you know, first half of the 1900s there. Um, he was living down in uh Key West. He claimed to be a doctor. I don't remember if he was actually a doctor or not. You can look it up. But he said he was a doctor. He said he was a doctor, he treated tuberculosis patients, which was a big deal back then. You know, you got tuberculosis, you cough up blood, you're basically dead. I feel like anybody back then who said they were a doctor, like that's all you needed. Yeah, I mean, there was no way to check their medical records. Right, you know. We're just talking about how Tyler probably lied on his resume to get a job here.

Carter 6:55

Yeah.

Paul 6:56

It's fine. Anyway, so uh he he's down there and he's he gets this young tuberculosis patient, a beautiful young Cuban lady whose name I don't remember. Um, but he starts treating her, and then wouldn't you know it, she dies. So the uh the count, there he is. The count convinces himself, I suppose you could say, that he was in love with this beautiful young Cuban girl and that she was in love with him, that they were soulmates. So every night he would go down to her grave and he would sing her songs and he would talk to her, which is sort of like a nice, you know, tragic Edgar Allan Poe-esque thing. Sure. And then one night the Count claims that uh her ghost called to him from the grave and said, Hey, I want you to take me out of here and bring me to your house. So he does that. So he breaks the body out of the jail and he brings her to the house. He fills her up with wires and plaster and all kind of wax and things, and um keeps her in his home uh where he proceeds to live with her uh as his wife. Ew. Yes. So as the body decayed, he put more and more plaster on her, more and more wires and things. Anyway, her sister finds out about this, right? She goes down, she's like, she hears the rumors, because people whispered about how the Count had her body like in his house, but nobody had ever proven it. So the sister comes by the house and looks in the window one night and sees this guy, the Count Carl von Kassel, dancing with her dead sister's body. Oh told you it's a dark story, dude. Um, so obviously she calls the police, they go in, they arrest him. And at the time, all the newspapers frame this story as like a oh, it's this beautiful, you know, Romeo and Juliet tragic romance. They, you know, left the necrophilia out of it. Um and she's a glaring omission. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's not great. So anyway, the uh the count then, you know, he goes to trial, they ultimately acquit him of the blame, and they're like, well, you just gotta get out of Key West, because we don't like that here. Um oh, but before he does that, before they throw him out of town, they bring the body out and they put it on display in Key West, where literally thousands of people lined up to look at this corpse who had been basically mummified. And um yeah. Which is really fucked up. Like, I don't know why, what is wrong with people? There's actually there's a really sick picture of people like lined up, and there's one lady who's like gleeful because she's so excited. I don't know. It's gross. Gleeful? Yeah, it's like uh lined up where she's lined up to see the the mummified chick. Uh so the pictures that we're looking at, that's that is what the body looked like after he covered her in plaster and plastic and stuff. Good lord.

Carter 9:40

Yeah. For our audio listeners, I suggest you go to our YouTube page and check this part out. Or don't. I suggest you don't. Yeah. But you could Google it. Yeah, it's uh it's worth a goog.

Paul 9:54

I don't know that it is. Anyway, so they basically tell the count whose real name was Carl Tanzer. They're like, dude, you gotta get out of town. We can't have this in here. We're uh we're a fun loving people. We don't like guys who steal bodies and stupem. Is this guy a vampire? Well, he uh I'll tell you this, he had a wife and children who were living up in Miami.

Carter 10:15

Get out of town. Yeah. So wait, that's that's as far as he had to go. It was just Miami, dude. It was it was like 1920, dude. You just that was a few hours down the road. Yeah. I don't know if the uh what's the the the highway call that gets you down to the keys? A1A? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if A1A existed back then. I mean it probably did.

Paul 10:34

It was just like a 25 mile an hour wooden bridge. Oh yeah. So it was probably like a three-day drive, you know, to get all the way down there. What a drive of shame that one is. Yeah, you had to feel real well. So here's the you're ready for the dark ending of the tale. Oh boy. On the uh the night before the count leaves Key West, um her tomb, where she was reinterred at was blown up. What do you mean blown up? Like an explosion. Uh-huh. That's like a kaboom.

Carter 11:08

That's what I thought you meant.

Paul 11:10

Um, and then there are reports that the count had either stolen her body again, or that he had made a uh dummy of her that he lived with until he died. Apparently in the house back with his wife and kids.

Carter 11:23

Oh.

Paul 11:24

You know, this was back in the day when women were more understanding. Were they? I mean, his wife stayed with him. You would think. Anyway, so that's our dark, creepy story about uh Count Carl von Castle. And if you want to hear more about Count Carl von Castle and the other ghosts of Key West, what should they do, Carter?

Ghost City Tours Key West Plug

Carter 11:45

They should go to ghostcitytours.com and take a ghost tour. We have some of the best tour guides in all of the world that will give you historical, very interesting stories about the town in which you're in with this underlying paranormal ghost attachment to it that people love so much. And Key West specifically, we got a pub crawl.

Paul 12:06

We got a we got a regular adults tour. Yeah, we do have a pub crawl. Point is down in Key West, go take a go to ghostcity tours.com, look at Key West, you're going down there, you want to see some ghosts, it's a good time. So we have three tours in Key West.

Carter 12:20

Thank Christ you found it. We have the Dark Side of Key West tour, which is 16 and up. We have the all-ages ghost of Key West tour, and of course, as you alluded to, we have the 21 and up Key West haunted pub crawl tour. Fantastic tours. Go down to Key West while you're there. Take a ghost tour. Yeah.com for more. All right, let's get back to the show. All right, that was a creepy as shit story. Um, didn't you say you had another

Captain Tony And Jimmy Buffett Lore

Carter 12:48

one though? I do.

Paul 12:48

I have a nice fun one, a wholesome story. All right, so this is a story about the ghost of a one uh a captain, a swarthy sea captain. By the name, huh? By the name of by the name of Captain Tony. Hey! So down in Key West, one of the best damn bars, you might say, is a place called Captain Tony's saloon. The greatest saloon in all the world. It is. Captain Tony's, it used to be Sloppy Joe's. It was the original location of Sloppy Joe's. Sloppy Joe's wound up moving across the street a little ways. Doesn't really matter. But everybody's drank at Captain Tony's, right? You know, freaking Ernest Hemingway, Jimmy Buffett, Oprah. Me, you, me. I played there. Yeah, you did play there. That's right. Some guy let me play his guitar. It's a great time. It's this bar bra's all over the place. It's got a hanging tree in the middle of it, right? They used to allegedly hang people in the uh bar itself. At one point it was supposedly a morgue and an ice house because they had ice and you got to keep the bodies there. And at one point it was a jail. None of those things are true, but they claim that anyway, and it's fun. They also claim that they've had found bodies under the floor, which is also not true. Um, but you know, it's fun to pretend. Anyway, that's not the important part of this story. This story is about the ghost of Captain Tony, right? And the ghost of Captain Tony is immortalized in a song. You know what song the ghost of Captain Tony was immortalized in? What song? The Last Mango in Paris. By by the great, late James William Buffett III. AKA Jimmy Buffett. The the one, the only Jimmy Buffet, you know. He's he's the king. Listen, I mean, it is what it is. He was he was the goat. He created an and for anybody out there who doesn't like Jimmy Buffett, fuck you, okay? The man created an entire fucking genre of music and became a multi-billionaire solely based off of one fucking song. Okay? God love him. He was the fucking greatest. It's the American dream. He really, dude, all joking aside, like Margaritaville's fine. It's whatever, it's an okay song. The restaurant train sucks, but that's neither here nor there.

Carter 14:48

But I got a standing ovation out of Margaritaville in Destin, Florida, for singing If I Could Dream by Elvis. That's not too bad.

Paul 14:56

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, some of them are fun. They're fun. I like the drinks. The food is whatever.

Carter 15:01

But look, if you go listen to a B side of a Jimmy Buffett album, you're gonna have a good time. Oh, dude, Jimmy Buffett's songs that people don't know are so much better than the ones that they do.

Paul 15:09

Finn's is a crappy song. All right, but you know. But it's got horns and people want to hear it. Yeah, it's it's fun. You can do this at the concerts. I mean, not anymore. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Carter 15:20

Is that the end of the uh Captain Tony story? No, no, no.

Paul 15:22

So the last the last mango in Paris, right? So the story goes, according to the tune. A one uh young Jimmy Buffett, shortly after the passing of the great Captain Tony, wanders into Captain Tony's saloon to go have himself a a drink and get out of the heat, right? There's an old man who sits next to him and he tells him the tale of how he ate the last mango in Paris. What's the rest of it? This is this is your show, buddy.

Carter 15:46

No, dude. Come on. I actually don't know the lyrics of that song. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm serious. Took the last train out of Saigon. I'm not a uh not a not a lyrics guy. I can tell you the chords.

Paul 15:59

Oh, wait, can you can you beatbox the chord? Like, can you do the chords with your mouth while I sing it? No. It's a copyright. That's how good I am. Point is that the ghost of Captain Tony sat next to Jimmy Buffett and uh told him the these these lyrical things. You should go look up the song. It's a catchy little tune. It's a stupid song, but it's a catchy tune. And then uh it turns out that those lyrics are actually written on the bathroom in the men's room at uh Captain Tony's, which is also fun. Captain Tony was just a great guy. He was a guy who loved booze, fishing, and broads. He was a good guy. He was uh he was one of my people. And it's a dirty Italian.

Carter 16:35

And allegedly his ghost was giving Jimmy Buffett some beautiful song lyrics. That's it, man. Fun. All right, that that is a that's a fun creep. Yeah, sure. Why not?

Paul 16:46

I just felt like we'd have to do something else because a guy having sex with a corpse is pretty not fun. There's also Robert the Doll. Oh, that's right. Shit, I forgot about that

Robert The Doll Myth Versus Evidence

Paul 16:56

one. Okay, let's talk about haunted dolls, which are definitely a thing and totally exist.

Carter 17:01

Make sure you check out our episode with the paranormal princess of the Ghost City Tour podcast. Uh, if it's if not out right now, it should be out within the next week or so. And if it is out, go watch it.

Paul 17:11

So, Robert the Doll is probably the second most haunted, famous haunted doll in the world behind uh Annabelle, which I don't know why, because I feel like Robert the Doll looks so much creepier than Annabelle. Yeah. Annabelle is literally just a raggedy Ann doll. She does not look anything like the Annabelle doll in the movies, and uh she's very disappointing. Also, the story of Annabelle directly mirrors the plot of a Twilight Zone episode that happened 20 to 30 years before the alleged Annabelle haunting. Just saying. Anyway, so back to Robert the doll. He's basically got the same thing. You're supposed to ask him permission before you take a picture of him, and this, that, and the other thing. Supposedly he moves by himself and uh giggles and shit like that. He belonged to a guy named Robert Otto, who is a Key West artist, right? And he would do paintings and things, and when he was a young boy, someone gifted him this giant doll. I t's a big fucking doll. Like it's it's really big. Yeah, I think it's huge. And it's uh so Robert Otto named it after himself, and legend goes that his mother would hear Robert having conversations with people in the attic, and she'd be like, Hey Robert, who are you talking to when he was a young boy? And there would be no one up there, but she'd heard two distinct voices. Um, you know, all that type of stuff. Today, Robert the Doll sits in a museum down there in Key West. You can go see him, you can take pictures of him. Again, they say you're supposed to ask him permission before you take a picture so he doesn't come home and haunt you.

Carter 18:38

Although the Paranormal Princess uh told us that you shouldn't ask dolls for permission because that gives them power.

Paul 18:44

Yeah, that's uh, you know, if there's a demon in there and then you're acknowledging the demon. Um, the problem with Robert the Doll, you ready for this? You're ready for me to poop all over what I just talked about. Well, love your poop. Is that there is no actual accounts of it being haunted until long after Robert Otto died and people just started making this shit up. So, like, there is no evidence that the doll has done anything or said anything, and it's just become this legend that everybody talks about because it's a creepy-looking doll. Yeah. Allegedly from Germany.

Carter 19:12

Allegedly from Germany.

Paul 19:14

They do make creepy dolls. They do a lot of creepy stuff in Germany.

Carter 19:18

Well, you don't have to go to Key West if you want to take a ghost tour. You can go all across the United States. We're in over 40 cities across the U.S. from the west to the east to the south to the north. Oh, just let's off some of your favorite cities we do tours in.

Paul 19:29

Oh, uh man. You know, San Antonio, Galveston, New Orleans, Savannah, Key West, Baston, Philadelphia.

Carter 19:44

A lot of different cities. Eureka Springs. Yeah, it's a but cities on cities on Chicago. You can take a great ghost tour. We have St. Louis, fantastic tour guides, Los Angeles. They do their research. San Francisco. They'll give you the factual history, San Diego with the underlying of Ghost and Paranormal. Phoenix, go to Ghost CityTours.com, Tombstone to take a ghost tour today. Austin. All right, let's get back to the episode.

The Conch Republic Declares “War”

Carter 20:10

All right, so we kind of did a crime already, Paul, and that's your bad. Yeah. That's not it. That's on me. But we are professionals. So we're gonna do a quick pivot, and but it's still Key West centric. We're talking about the Conch Republic.

Paul 20:22

Yes. The great, the great Conch Republic. If you go down to Key West, you'll see a blue flag with a with a conch shell on it all over the place. That is the official flag of the Conch Republic. See, back in the 1980s. There it is. Okay, it's got a sun on it too. Anyway, back in the 1980s, the government decided that there was a problem with uh cocaine coming into the United States, right? It is a southernmost part of the United States. It is, and they claimed that there was a bunch of cocaine flowing in through uh Key West, right? And definitely not through Mina, Arkansas. Down boy. All right, anyway, point is so uh what they did is at the top, so there's only one way in and out of the Keys, right? There's a bridge up at the top there. So they actually put border patrol agents at the mouth of the Keys in order to catch drug runners and traffickers and stuff. So the mayor of Key West went up to uh Miami, where the federal courthouse was, basically trying to stop the federal government from restricting, because it was essentially it was causing these giant, giant uh traffic jams because there was only one way in and out of the keys, and the keys at that time and even today, especially today, like tourism is their primary source of revenue, right? And people weren't flying in. This is the 80s. People were driving. People drove down from Miami, they would drive out from across the country. But if it takes you like six hours to get down to the freaking keys just through the traffic park, is it gonna take you four other hours to just drive down there? Sure. Nobody's gonna come. So it was destroying the economy of the keys because of this stupid freaking blockade, because the government never does anything that makes sense. Anyway, so the mayor like pleads his case and they're like, go fuck yourself, basically, because we're the government, we can do whatever the fuck we want. We don't care about you. So what the mayor decides to do. Is uh he decides he's going to declare his own nation. He goes back, he said the walks out of the courthouse, they say, What are you gonna do now? He says, We're gonna secede from the union. If they're gonna treat us like a foreign country, we're gonna be a foreign country. So he goes back to Key West, they secede from the Union, they say we are officially legally the Conch Republic, and uh then they declared war on the United States. Mm-hmm. How'd that go? Well, they surrendered basically immediately. Um short-lived. And then requested war reparations for damages to the United States. A bunch of dicks. Um, but the the benefit of it was that it bought brought a bunch of publicity to the situation, and so the federal government quietly removed their uh border patrol blockade, and all are welcome. And so now you can get in and out of Key West without having to show a passport or get checked for cocaine. Thank God.

Carter 22:57

All right, so before we get to a cryptid, we already did a plug. You're right. Yeah, if we got all the ads, it didn't, that's not where it normally goes. But you know, this is our kind of our last episode doing it like this. So the form is gonna change anyway. So who gives a damn?

Paul 23:10

Yeah. This episode is also brought to you by the purple porpoise. If you're down in the stock island in the Keys and you're looking for a terrible time, try the purple porpoise.

Carter 23:18

All right.

Florida Keys Cryptids And Sea Monsters

Carter 23:19

So for today's cryptid, uh, I'm gonna give you just a few of them actually. Ooh. So I'm gonna just kind of list off some of them. In fact, yeah. Uh I think there's maybe like five of them, but that's more than a few, buddy. Yeah, what whatever. Semantics. The I have a bonus one first. And there's only I was doing some research earlier, right? Right. And there's only one website on the entire internet that mentions this cryptid, and there's a website called footgrabber.com.

Paul 23:42

Ooh.

Carter 23:42

It is not an OnlyFans sex. Apparently, go to footgrab.com.

Paul 23:50

I think they check our search history. I don't know.

Carter 23:53

Uh don't image search it, dude. Too late. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, some old website from like 1999. Um, that thing up there, I guess, is what the foot grabber was. But you know, when Post when Ponce de Leon came and discovered Key West, allegedly this creature was, you know, hanging out in the keys and grabbing people by the feet and doing some weird shit. That's basically all I could uh get from that homeludo website. That's more just history of Key West than anything about the foot grabber itself. But they're still paying for the website. Is it so it's a what does it look like? I don't even know what it looks like, but I guess by the picture it's some sort of frog type amphibious creatures out there grabbing feet, just grabbing feet. Today we'd call that a pervert. You might call it that. Outside of the foot grabber, which once again this website is the only place I could find anything about that thing. So it might just be one guy's like, they're grabbing the feet, you gotta look at them. That guy's fun. But there's the uh the Looska, which is a Caribbean sea monster. It's like a giant octopus, octopus slash sea cryptid, uh, near the Caribbean blue holes and deep waters around the Bahamas and the Florida Keys. Let's see if we can get a picture of this. Yeah, it's like an octopus octopus type creature, said to be a massive octopus or shark octopus hybrid living in underwater caves. Fisherman claimed it drags boats or divers into blue holes, and stories describe tentacles up to 75 feet long. How did they not go with sharktopus? Ah, yeah, they they missed that. And I think this was kind of all before the giant um squid was discovered. So could have been that.

Paul 25:27

Yeah. That tracks.

Carter 25:29

Outside of that, we have the Key West sea ape. Is this Bigfoot? It's an aquatic humanoid cryptid. Reported in the late 1800s near Key West, described as hairy, long arms, part human, part ape, swimming upright.

Paul 25:43

Hmm.

Carter 25:44

Some possible explanations are that it's an escaped primate, a misidentified manatee, or just sailor tall tales. So I was talking to uh look at that thing. Ooh. That looks that looks more like an otter. A seal. Dude. Speaking of otters, Amazonian otters are one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet. I'm not even kidding. Like they're in the Amazon River? Yeah. Give that a goog. Amazon sea otters. Vicious, vicious little creatures. Oh, he's doing it. What were you saying?

Paul 26:22

Oh, I was talking to the lady who runs the uh Florida Bigfoot Research Organization. We're talking about skunk apes. And uh which skunk apes is basically like South Florida's Bigfoot. Right. But she was saying that they're actually a different um subspecies. Oh, a Bigfoot? Yeah, not a subspecies, but almost like you have like a laboratory retriever and a chihuahua, and they're both dogs. Okay. So anyway, that's what I was wondering. So I don't know.

Carter 26:51

Maybe this is another like part of it, but back to the giant river otters.

Paul 26:55

Yeah. They're big.

Carter 26:56

Uh-huh. Often called the Amazonian menace or river wolf. It's a massive, highly social and territorial freshwater predator reaching up to six feet in length. Good lord. They will fuck you up.

Paul 27:08

Dude, I saw some otters at the zoo last week.

Carter 27:11

They were those are those are nice otters. These are, you know, they're just vicious Amazonian monsters. Yeah, that's scary than any cryptid I could ever think of.

Paul 27:22

I mean, it looks so nice, dude.

Carter 27:24

But you know, we were just talking about the key west sea ape, which must be just some sort of derivative of the the the what is it?

Paul 27:34

Shit, I just lost the name of it. What did I just say, Tyler? Don't ask me. The the swamp apes. No, skunk ape, skunk ape.

Carter 27:42

Skunk ape, that's it. Yeah. Um, now Robert the doll, you mentioned Robert earlier. Yeah. Bobby the doll. Some say, according to some, aka J B T. Uh Robert Doll had a shadow companion. Ooh. Some museum staff claim that they've seen a small shadow figure moving near Robert's case. Security cameras have caught movement when no one is around. Visitors report feeling something follow them out of the museum. So I don't know if that's really a cryptid, more just more Robert the Doll shenanigans. Yeah, also, like, where are these videos? I would like to see those videos. Let us know in the comments if you found the videos, because we're not going to do it. There's also the Key West Goat Man. Oh. Yeah. Now, local urban legend says that a half goat creature roams the mangroves and old bridges. Common claims are that it has that hoof prints have been found near fishing camps. There's screaming sounds at night, and fishermen seeing a horned figure watching them. Now, it could be, of course, escaped livestock or just Caribbean folklore creatures. And there's all kind of mainland goat legends that exist throughout the United States, this being one of them. I don't know, that sounds pretty bad. Moving on. That was bad. Finally, well, actually, not finally, we got a couple more. We have the main we have the mangrove stalker. Now, this is a new cryptid. Ooh. Built from the real environment, Paul. The keys mangroves for us are extremely dense and creepy at night. I remember them. They're described as long-limbed, pale, or allergy-covered skin. Move silently through mangrove roots, eye shine, spotted by night fishermen. Look at that thing.

Paul 29:23

Hmm.

Carter 29:24

The mangrove stalker.

Paul 29:27

That looks like a Scooby-Doo villain.

Carter 29:30

Almost certainly. And finally we have the Wrecker's Phantom. Now, this is like a ghost/slash cryptid hybrid. Okay. Key West used to have wreckers, people who salvaged ships that crashed on reefs, right? Legend says that a strange creature or ghostly figure appears before ships wreck. A glowing humanoid walking on water, a dark shape riding the waves. Some sailors believed it lured ships onto reefs. Now this just sounds like some sailor gobedy goog to me. But perhaps there was some sort of entity that was you know, back in the day, sailors didn't have the best intentions. So maybe this thing got this wrecker's phantom got to the shipmen before they could get to the people of the island. Who's to say? You saying there was a ghost going after pirates? Is that what you're trying to employ? Maybe. I mean. Do ghosts ever go after people like preemptively? In order to know that, there would have to be ghosts, so there would be. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for watching Creeps, Crime, and Cryptids brought to you by Go City Tours, the world's number one ghost tour company. Paul, any final thoughts about Key West you want to impart

Wisteria Island Squatters Survival Story

Carter 30:46

the viewers on? Yeah, I mean, I don't know why we didn't talk about Wisteria Island, man. That is the cryptid of all cryptids. Yeah. So Wisteria Island is an island, of course, in the name, off the coast of Key West. It is inhabited by squatters? You call them? Yeah, that's a nice word for it. They're not really, we're not really talking about cryptids, but but they are interesting folk who live off the land, off the grid, and they're kind of untouched by the government. The government doesn't really, you know, fuck with them.

Paul 31:18

Yeah.

Carter 31:18

And um, there's some there's there's a man who just kind of run the uh run the island. His name was Jeep.

Paul 31:26

Guy with the top hat.

Carter 31:27

Yeah, there it is. Paul, anything to hand about Wisteria Island?

Paul 31:34

If you ever find yourself down in the Keys and your buddy says, hey, let's take a kayak over to that island and go party with some uh squatters, um, because a man named Captain Island tells you that he has booze and hash and other things. And then you find yourself on set island with your friend, and then uh you can't get the service to call the boat that took you out there back again, uh, and then you start getting worried because it's starting to get dark outside, and you realize that you're the two best-looking things on this island, and uh they all look very lonely and start to gaze in your general direction in a way that makes you just feel a little bit like a piece of meat.

Carter 32:14

Make sure you have a ride to and from the island during the day if you are to go visit Wisteria Island. There's some nice folks on that island. There are. Guitar was very nice. Guitar was nice, Captain Island was nice. Captain Island was great. I love Captain Island.

Paul 32:26

Shout out Captain Island. Wherever you are, Godspeed, sir. And that guy who saved us, the pirate guy with his little dog. Yeah. Thank God for that guy. Yeah, I don't remember his name. No. I think he's in Michigan now. He's leaving the next day. Anyway, that's a story for you.

Comments Subscribes And Next Stop

Paul 32:43

Leave us a comment, leave us a like, leave us a hate, you know? We'll take some hate comments. Yeah.

Carter 32:48

Talk about how, you know, Robert Dahl's really haunted and Paul's an idiot. Yeah, please. Let us know how big of an idiot Paul is in the comments below. And if you have a friend who likes this kind of stuff, share this with them. For now, we'll see you next time where we're gonna wrap up talking about once again the great city of New Orleans. But this time, we got a special twist for you. Stay tuned.

Paul 33:07

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on whatever platform you use for podcasts, and be sure to check out our other content on the Ghost City Tours YouTube page. The stories, theories, and opinions shared on creeps, crimes, and cryptids are those of the hosts alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ghost City Tours, living, dead, or otherwise.