By Tim Binnall

A man walking along a beach in Florida was aghast when he stumbled upon a nightmarish doll sporting what appeared to be human teeth. The haunting find was reportedly made by Bruce Robertson as he was visiting a spot near Cape Canaveral and spotted something odd that had washed ashore. Upon closer inspection, he was stunned to see that it was a rather creepy doll.

The eerie, six-legged figurine appeared to be fashioned out of coconuts and had snakeskin as well as feathers affixed to it. While those details alone were pretty strange, Robertson was struck by one particularly unsettling bit of craftsmanship centered around the mouth of the doll. "What was really sort of terrifying or horrifying or interesting was that it had actual human teeth," he marveled.

Upon showing it to some other people on the beach, the reluctant new owner of the oddity was advised to throw it back into the ocean because it was probably a voodoo doll. Although he heeded that advice, Robertson later regretted his decision because a subsequent investigation led him to conclude that the totem actually represented an African spider deity which, he says, "was the God of slaves that came from Ghana to the Caribbean and they used it for good luck and protection."

However, not everyone agrees with Robertson's assessment as the owner of an African bookstore in the city of Cocoa told a local TV station that, in fact, it probably was a voodoo doll. Pressed by a skeptical reporter as to whether or not people still practice these often-stereotyped spiritual beliefs, the bookstore owner declared adamantly, "yes, of course they do! They do it all over in Florida, Louisiana, New Orleans. Voodoo is real!"

While we may never know for sure if the object that Robertson found was a genuine voodoo doll, Coast Insiders can learn more about the belief system as well as the life of legendary practitioner of Creole Voodoo, Marie Laveau, by checking out the 2/19/20 edition of C2C with author Denise Alvarado. Not a Coast Insider yet? Sign up today.