Official site of author J.W. Ocker chronicling his visits to oddities of nature, art, culture, and history, as well as life in between the oddities.
My name is J.W. Ocker. And this is my website. OTIS. It's a chronicle of my visits to the unusual and an author site for my books . You can also party with me on Facebook , Tiktok , Instagram , and Patreon . Reach out to me at ockerjw@gmail.com. My 2026 Appearance Schedule DON'T GO THERE is out now! In Don't Go There , I explore some of the weirdest, most dangerous, and scariest swaths of this…
March 4, 2025 — Little did I know that steps away from one of the most notorious crime scenes in the state of Massachusetts---the Borden hatchet murders (now a B&B) is another Borden-related crime scene, this time a double-child drowning by Lizzie Borden's great aunt, Eliza Darling Borden. Although it's not a B&B. It's a coffee house. Called Miss Lizzie's Coffee. Learn more about it on Episode 39…
Lizzie's father's death site March 4, 2025 — Seventeen years ago, I stayed the night at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, a crime scene turned morbid historical attraction. It was a Year One OTIS oddity, and I wrote a two-part article on my stay . A few weekends ago, I returned to the scene of that crime. Much has changed in those almost two decades, but mostly with me, not the house. For…
November 1, 2024 — Yesterday, I spent Halloween night in Salem for only the second time in my life. The first was when I was writing A Season with the Witch back in 2015. But now on this night, nine year later, I wasn't on the clock for any book about the city, and I had no plans. I just wanted to be in Salem during the melee. This was how the night went down. I arrived in Salem at six pm, and…
Read Part I: Blame it on the Socials Read Part II: Blame it on the IP Read Part III: Blame it on the Rising Popularity October 24, 2024 — Wait. I can’t hate on Spirit Halloween, can I? I mean, sure, Saturday Night Live just did . But not me. Not a Halloween Lover (new song dropping soon on Spotify). Well, first, let me say, I can hate on anything. I’m good at that. Second, I don’t hate Spirit…
October 18, 2024 — While shoving a small, toothy saw across the lips of a gaping mouth the other night, I was struck by a thought. Well, first that thought had to force its way past the usual thought that pummels me during jack-o-lantern carving—that jack-o-lantern carving is the apex of all Halloween activities. The ultimate moment of the season. Just you and your loved ones, sharp implements,…
October 15, 2024 — I don’t know the history of carving up a bunch of pumpkins, lighting them, and setting them on a trail for people to wander through while holding hot ciders or mulled wine. I assume, like many recent Halloween traditions, it was stolen from Christmas. In this case, light displays, I guess. I also assume that it didn’t really take off until polyurethane foam pumpkins were a…
Read Part I: Blame it on the Socials Read Part II: Blame it on the IP October 10, 2024 — The most repeated response I’m receiving to this “Is Halloween Getting Annoying?” series so far (besides “no”, god love you guys) is, “Who cares? Let people enjoy things.” And that’s valid. Of course, the equally valid riposte is, “I’m not stopping anybody from enjoying anything. I’m just writing thoughts.”…
October 6, 2024 — I don’t know what of value I could tell you about the place that I’ve lived in for the past sixteen years, the only place I’ve ever lived in New England. I guess I can tell you that with more than 90,000 residents and spanning seven exits on the highway, Nashua is the second largest city in New Hampshire. It’s conveniently located at almost the exact geographic center of New…
October 4, 2024 — By now, if you’re a Halloween head, you’ve probably seen all the social media posts about last night’s Haunted Happenings Grand Parade in Salem, Massachusetts—the TikTok videos, the Instagram reels and stories, the Twitter and Facebook posts (including a couple from me). But, because the socials flatten experiences into seconds-long bursts of mild interest bound within tiny…
Part I: Blame it on the Socials September 29, 2024 — So, I think Jack Skellington, ruiner of holidays, might be ruining Halloween this time. Hear me out, because I’m having the same reaction to writing that sentence as you are to reading it. The dude is everywhere. On almost every piece of merchandise this time of year. There’s a house not too far from me that has decorated for Halloween…
September 25, 2024 — I’ll say it up front. Despite the theme of this year’s season, Halloween isn’t getting annoying. The beautiful thing about the holiday and its surrounding season is that it doesn’t ask much. Just know that the world is scary, we’re all gonna die, and, whatever, eat some pumpkin-shaped Reese’s and get lost in the corn. The holiday can take a lot of rough handling that, say, t…
September 22, 2024 — I live in a black house on the edge of a forest. At night…it disappears. But during the Halloween Season, it glows purple and green and finally has a real existence in the dark. Today, on the first day of fall, after visiting a pair of Hollis, New Hampshire, farms for apples three ways (cider, cider donuts, and pies) to fuel the autumnal fires of our steam engines, we spent a…
September 17, 2024 — Maryland is a scary land. It’s the state where Edgar Allan Poe lived, died, and was buried. The burial site of Fred Gwynne, the original Herman Munster. The birthplace of John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. The Ouija Board was invented here. Horror director Mike Flanagan learned the craft at college here. And, of course, it’s the home of the Blair Witch. It is this latter…
September 15, 2024 — “I think they’re shooting the Beetlejuice sequel near my neighborhood.” That was the text I got from my best friend. He lives in Melrose, Massachusetts. It was July 2023. “You sure?” I said, treating the conversation like we were Hollywood insiders trading movie industry secrets over steaks and whiskey at the Brown Derby. “From what I understand, they’re filming in East…
September 12, 2024 — I have never, ever, ever kicked off a Halloween Season like this—with a Rob Zombie/Alice Cooper concert. I’m not a concert guy. Not even close. I like keeping my music between my ears and the speakers, intimate, private, meditative, unwitnessed. Even when I’m digging though the ditches and burning through the witches. The few concerts I’ve gone to in my life have been cozy…
September 10, 2024 — I have a new nonfiction book out as of today, this very day. It’s called Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations — and Take Over Our Lives . In some ways, it’s my usual shenanigans: essays about all the weirdest, most macabre things in our world. In other ways, it’s a step deeper into the void. In my previous nonfiction book, I merely had to deal with…
Now I'm the Corpse Bride September 8, 2024 — So…this is like the awkward Halloween Season, right? Last year was my first themed season: Can Halloween Save J.W. Ocker? For that one, I lifted the scalp of my Jack-o-lantern a smidge and showed some of my raw guts to you folks (even though all you asked for was a mere trick or treat). As I mentioned in the final entry of that blog series, Halloween…
September 8, 2024 — You might have a difficult time coming up with a reason to visit Pittsburgh, but horror movie fans like me and mine don't. It's the city where zombies first shambled their way into popular culture, thanks to a director named George Romero and his seminal (appropriate use of the word alert!) Living Dead trilogy. It's also become a horror movie mecca in general, thanks to special…
September 8, 2024 — So in 1978, a sequel to an extremely important zombie movie was released. It was filmed almost completely inside a shopping mall outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today, in a country full of dead malls, that mall still survives. And there's a museum inside it dedicated to zombies. Want to hear more? Check out Episode 37 of Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast, Chasing Zombies…
July 1, 2024 — This re-visit from a couple months back has been a long time coming. I first entered Cortlandt Hull's Witch's Dungeon in 2007, back when it was in a shed in his backyard and only open in Octobers. These days, it's on public display year-round in a permanent spot in the town of Plainville. Cortlandt Hull is the great nephew of actor Henry Hull, who played the titular character in…
June 24, 2024 — The X-Files is my favorite show of all time. I was even on the couch for its debut on September 10, 1993. So when I found out a museum of original props had opened a mere three hours from me in Saratoga Springs, New York, I wasted only two years to get there. Listen to the latest episode of Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast to hear all about my visit to the astounding X-Files…
December 26, 2023 — We did it. Christmas is no more. Vanquished. What was once peace on earth and cozy vigils for Santa are now stacks of flattened cardboard on back porches, dead trees on curbs, and so many plastic gift cards in pockets. It’s time to take the set down. My daughters and I spent the weekend watching kaiju movies, driving to oddities, playing games, and just generally enlivening the…
December 22, 2023 — A strange thing has happened to the concept of time for me in this, my first ever anti-Christmas season. Wait a minute. Anti-Christmas. Antichrist-mas. Whoa. Is it too late to rename this blog? I sometimes remember the Christmas seasons past that I loved as a panicky series of rapid moments that quickly disappeared like time was running at the speed of Santa’s sleigh—trying to…
Ah, Christmas. December 17, 2023 — I was in Austin the other week, having BBQ at an extremely Texas-feeling restaurant with a friend. We were discussing how Austin’s fabled weirdness seemed to be fading. Well, not fading. Becoming more commoditized, corporate, synthetic. She decided to take me to see some old-school Austin weirdness to show me it still existed, although she caveated it with,…