We Slept in the House Where the Haunted Doll Lived

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Florida Keys Road Trip | November 3, 2026

Hey Keys lovers! Race week is on.

Key West has offshore powerboats running off the waterfront Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and the whole island sounds like a lawnmower convention.

About fifty miles up the road, nobody in Marathon is thinking about boats doing a hundred miles an hour.

They are thinking about claws.

Stone crab season opened October 15, and right now is the stretch of the year when the fish houses in the Middle Keys are at their best. Fresh off the boat, served cold, with a little cup of mustard sauce and a wooden mallet.

And here is the part most people eating them have never thought about.

The crab that grew your dinner is very likely still out there.

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❓ Keys Trivia

Almost every seafood on a Keys menu ends with the animal on the plate.

Stone crab is the famous exception.

What happens to the crab?

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter.

📣 The Mile Marker Roundup

One loud week in Key West, one tasty one in Marathon, and a Wednesday next week worth planning around.

North to south.

🦀 The whole chain: Stone crab season Open October 15 through May 1. Fish markets and restaurants from Key Largo to Stock Island are moving fresh claws right now. Ask what came in today.

🚤 MM 0, Key West: Race days Wednesday November 4, Friday November 6 and Sunday November 8. The Key West Offshore World Championship wraps up Sunday. The course runs on the Gulf side, close enough to watch from the Truman Waterfront, Mallory Square and the bars along that stretch. Check conditions the morning of. Wind moves everything. See the schedule →

🇺🇸 MM 0, Key West: Veterans Day, Wednesday November 11 Key West's Veterans Day parade traditionally steps off on Duval Street at 4 p.m., after a morning ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Garden in Bayview Park. This is a Navy town and it shows up for this one. Expect Duval closures that afternoon.

🎣 MM 17, Sugarloaf Key: The Sugarloaf Showdown November 12 through 14. A backcountry tournament for bonefish, permit and barracuda, with fly, spin and youth divisions. If you have ever wondered who those people standing perfectly still on the front of a flats skiff are, this is their week. See the schedule →

🌴 Partner Spotlight

Make Marathon the Middle

Most people drive straight through Marathon on the way to somewhere else.

That is a mistake this time of year.

Marathon sits in the middle of the chain. An easy morning south to Key West, an easy morning north to Islamorada, and Bahia Honda's beaches about twenty minutes away. It is the fish house capital of the Keys during stone crab season, and the sunsets on the Gulf side are as good as anything at the end of the road.

And once race week clears out, mid-November turns quiet. Warm water, open tables, short lines, and the winter crowds still weeks away.

FloridaKeysResorts.com can help you compare places to stay from Key Largo to Key West, with nobody taking a commission out of the middle.

See Florida Keys resorts →

🧩 Deep Dive

The Seafood That Goes Back in the Water

The stone crab fishery works differently from almost every other fishery in America.

Nobody keeps the crab.

A crabber pulls a trap, measures the claws, and takes the ones that are big enough. Then the crab goes back over the side. Only the claws come to the dock.

Florida does this better than anyplace else, mostly because nobody else really does it at all. By the state's own count, Florida produces about 99 percent of all the stone crab landed in the United States.

The idea behind it is lovely. A stone crab can regrow a lost claw. So in theory, the same crab can feed you this year and somebody else a few years from now.

Here is the honest version, because you deserve that too.

Regrowing a claw is slow. It takes several molts, and for an adult crab, the state's researchers put it at roughly three years for a new claw to get back to near its original size. Older crabs may never fully get there.

And not every crab makes it. How the claw is broken off matters a great deal. A clean break at the joint lets the crab heal and regrow. A sloppy one can kill it. That is why Florida asks crabbers to take care with the break, and why so many crabbers take only the bigger claw and leave the crab one to defend itself and eat with.

The rules have tightened, too. In 2020, after a long decline in the harvest, Florida raised the minimum claw size by an eighth of an inch to two and seven eighths, and moved the end of the season up to May 1.

None of that is a reason to skip them.

It is a reason to order them from people who do it right. Which, in the Keys, is most of them. These are working fishermen who have been doing this for generations and want there to be crabs next year.

A few things worth knowing before you order.

They are already cooked. Claws are cooked soon after they come off the boat, then chilled. You eat them cold. If someone offers to warm them up, you can say yes, but cold with mustard sauce is the classic for a reason.

They come in sizes. Usually medium, large, jumbo and colossal, priced by the pound. Bigger claws mean bigger pieces of meat and fewer shells to crack. Smaller claws mean more cracking and, many locals will tell you, just as much flavor.

Cracked claws do not keep. If you buy them cracked at a market, plan to eat them that day. Uncracked, they will hold in the fridge for a couple of days.

Ask what came in today. It is the best question you can ask in any fish house in the Keys, and the answer is almost always worth hearing.

🍹 Four Things We'd Tell a Friend

Eat stone crab where the boats come in.

The best claws in the Keys are not on a white tablecloth. They are at a picnic table on a working dock, with pelicans watching you like they are owed something.

Stop at Bahia Honda on the way down.

MM 37. November is beach weather there. Walk up to the top of the old bridge for the view of the channel, then get your feet in the water. Go early, because the park can close the gate when it fills up.

Plan around next Wednesday in Key West.

Veterans Day brings a parade to Duval in the afternoon. Come watch it. Just do not plan on driving through Old Town that day.

Book the quiet part.

Race week ends Sunday. The two weeks after it, before Thanksgiving, are some of the easiest and prettiest weeks of the whole year in the Keys.

📖 One More Thing

Lost in the Keys: Mile Marker Thoughts is out.

It is about this drive. The bridges, the bars, the stops you mean to make and the ones you make by accident, and what goes through your head on a road that is mostly water.

If you have read it, a review helps more than you would think.

Get the book → Lost In The Keys

🛏️ Where We Stayed

We Slept in the House Where the Haunted Doll Lived

This week we stayed at 534 Eaton Street.

You have probably walked past it. Everybody stops. Lavender shutters, gingerbread trim on two levels of porch, a turret on the corner with a pointed silver roof, a Conch Republic flag out front, and, because this is Key West, a disco ball hanging over the front door.

It is called the Artist House. It has been standing there since around 1890.

And it comes with a story.

The name comes from the man who grew up in it. Gene Otto was a painter. He studied art in New York and Paris, met his wife Anne there, a concert pianist, and brought her home to this house. They lived here until he died in 1974.

When Gene was a little boy, around 1904, somebody gave him a doll. A big one, close to three and a half feet tall, in a sailor suit. Gene named it Robert, which was his own first name.

Gene never really put Robert down.

The doll lived in this house for most of the century. Neighbors told stories. Kids walking past swore he moved from window to window. Legend puts him up in that turret, looking down at Eaton Street.

After Gene and Anne were gone, a woman named Myrtle Reuter bought the house, and Robert came with it. She kept him about twenty years. In 1994 she gave him to the Fort East Martello Museum and said, for the record, that she believed he was haunted.

He is still there. Behind glass.

So yes. We knew all of that when we checked in.

Our room went all the way into the Victorian. Tall wood ceilings, crown molding, a vine-patterned wallpaper border, gilt-framed portraits on the walls, and a dark four-poster bed big enough to get lost in.

Out back, behind the gate, is the part you cannot see from the street. A brick courtyard with a little plunge pool, a lion head fountain pouring into it, palms overhead, and white iron tables. A few Halloween cobwebs were still hanging on the lattice, which in this house feels less like decoration and more like a statement.

Breakfast was out there too. Coffee in a heavy mug with the house on it, Circa 1890, Conch Republic. A square of glazed cake with a stripe of berry jam through the middle. Bacon crisp enough to snap. Hot sauce on the table, because Key West.

Sunglasses on, nowhere to be.

That is the whole review.

It is about as peaceful a spot as Old Town has.

If you go: it is a small guesthouse and the No Vacancy sign was out when we were there, so book ahead.

When you are ready to book, reach out to Sophia and book direct.

Book direct at the Artist House →

Then drive out to Fort East Martello on South Roosevelt and meet the former roommate. The museum's tradition is that you ask Robert's permission before you take his picture. People who skip that step have been known to mail him letters afterward. Apologizing.

We asked.

✅ Trivia Answer

It goes back in the water.

Only the claws are kept. The crab is returned alive, and it can regrow a lost claw over several molts, which for an adult takes around three years.

It does not work every time, which is why Florida asks crabbers to break the claw carefully and why many take just one.

But it is the rare dinner where the animal gets a second chance.

If you have a stone crab spot you swear by, hit reply and tell us where. Fish house, restaurant, dock, your cousin's boat. We will pass the good ones along.

And if you have never had them, this is the month.

Until next week, keep your windows down and your watch off.

The Florida Keys Road Trip Team

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