OTIS (Odd Things I've Seen)

My  name is J.W. Ocker. And this is my website. OTIS is a chronicle of my visits to the unusual ...oddities of nature, art, science, and culture. I also write books and party on my Facebook Pa...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2014/07/welcome-to-otis.html

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 ...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/killing-christmas-in-salem.html

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 l...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/its-christmas-time-jack-skellington.html

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 se...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/bleary-christmas-lalas-litle-nugget.html

December 15, 2023 — For the past year I’ve been working on a nonfiction book called Cult Following about various strange and disturbing cults. It’ll be out autumn 2024. I bring it up h...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/the-cult-of-christmas.html

DECEMBER 12, 2023 — Despite the theme of this here blog, I did actually decorate for Christmas this year. I mean, originally, I had visions of turning my house into Scrooge’s—a Marley k...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/dark-christmas-trees-are-great-metaphors.html

Is man no more than this? DECEMBER 8, 2023 – Since I talked about my satanic glee at a wet Christmas earlier on this blog, it snowed again. At first, I took it personally, and I shook my ...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/frosty-woe-man.html

DECEMBER 7, 2023 — I love A Christmas Carol. I think it’s one of the greatest stories in the language. But guess what? Its theme really has nothing to do with Christmas. Wait, what? I...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/a-christmas-carol-is-christmas-con.html

  DECEMBER 4, 2023 — So far December has been...rainy. November, too, although we had one morning of light snow cover the day before Thanksgiving that turned to fog by noon. Man, there is...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/dreaming-of-wet-christmas_6.html

December 3, 2023 — THIS is how you Christmas, folks. Blood and screams and jump scares just like the old-fashioned Christmases that Granny used to host. Quick refresher: Fright Kingdom is...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/now-thats-christmas-fright-kingdoms.html

  DECEMBER 2, 2023 — Yesterday, in kicking off this Christmas villain of a project, I mentioned some of the underlying truths and falsehoods of Halloween and Christmas. I think we should...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/christmas-vs-halloween-st-nick-vs-old.html

DECEMBER 1, 2023 — Welcome to the OTIS Christmas Season Blog! I haven’t done one of these since 2010 when I was trying to “content market” myself to a successful first book, The New E...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/12/i-am-war-on-christmas.html

So. Did Halloween save J.W. Ocker? Of course not. But you knew it wouldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t. Carapace Clavical Moundshroud knew it wouldn’t. That spooky old pirate guy from Garfi...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/11/happy-halloween-2023.html

October 30, 2023 — When it comes to Edgar Allan Poe, I’ve done a lot. Held his hair in my hands. Pieces of his coffin. His wedding ring. I’ve given talks at exhibition openings of Poe a...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/benching-edgar-allan-poe-newest.html

OCTOBER 29, 2023 — It felt like a moment of destiny for me: Finally seeing the original Annabelle doll with my own two eyes. The infamous haunted/cursed Raggedy Ann toy is the most infamous it...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/raggedy-ann-in-box-annabelle-doll.html

October 28, 2023 — I wasn’t planning on stopping at the PEZ Visitor Center. My girls and I were fleeing the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, New York , and were on a mission to see the...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/the-one-candy-youll-never-get-in-your.html

October 27, 2023 — Headless horsemen galloped everywhere. An entire heard of them. On murals and advertisements. On Halloween décor and in gift shops. On street signs and business names. K...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/ichabod-crane-would-have-no-chance-in.html

October 26, 2023 — We almost didn’t carve jack-o-lanterns this year. Since I only see the girls about a third of the time, it was difficult to fit it in among our other activities. Also, ...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/there-are-four-jack-o-lanterns.html

OCTOBER 26, 2023 — My oldest daughter and I were in Salem the other night for a Halloween party. At one point, as we wandered the dark, blustery streets that had been freshly power-washed by a ...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/two-photos-two-decades-one-salem.html

October 22, 2023 — Happy birthday to my youngest! Five years ago today, her mother and I walked into the hospital not knowing if we were having a boy or a girl. We had prepared a girl’s name ...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/the-october-ocker.html

OCTOBER 21, 2023 — If you drive through the town of Townsend in the northern area of central Massachusetts, you will see a middling, two-story brick edifice that is one of the town’s ele...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/weathervein-spalding-memorial-school-bat.html

October 19, 2023 — One night, a few weeks ago, I rolled my garbage bin down to the curb. The street was quiet and dark, the air chilly. A few dry leaves scratched across the asphalt like skitte...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/october-19-2023-one-night-few-weeks-ago.html

October 17, 2023 — I’m exhausted. Like all the time and for a lot of reasons, but at least this past weekend exhausted me for mostly good reasons. The girls were around, and we squeezed i...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/hallowasted-and-halloworn-out.html

OCTOBER 16, 2023 — Haunted Overload is one of the best haunts in the entire Halloween-celebrating world. And I say that without having been to the haunt in over a decade. Sort of. I haven�...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/haunted-overload-more-than-haunt.html

October 13, 2023 — My eldest had been asking me to do it for a long time. “Can we watch all the Friday the 13th movies?” She had gotten into slashers ever since she saw Scream (and that was...

https://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2023/10/chasing-after-jason.html