Morbid Monday: J.W. Ocker

Odd Things, Gin, Dead Skyjackers, and Zombie Rock 'n Roll

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of hosting Edgar Award-winning horror author J.W. Ocker in my living room over a gin cocktail and a horrible 80s horror flick.

Jason’s work covers non-fiction and middle-grade horror novels, such as The Smashed Man of Dread End, The Black Slide, Poe-Land, A Season with the Witch, and Cursed Objects. He has appeared in Vice, New Hampshire Magazine, and has been a guest on The Last Podcast on the Left. He also runs a travel blog, OTIS (Odd Things I’ve Seen), where he chronicles his travels to macabre, strange, and just downright odd places all over the world. However, it was his first book, The New England Grimpendium, that put him on my radar when I found it by complete chance a few years ago in a one-off, mom-and-pop ethereal shop in Savannah, GA, owned by an older couple I befriended during my time down there. I entered a back room of the store and found a lone copy of the book sitting prominently on a shelf. It consisted of numerous “spooky” sites around New England, and when I saw Jason lived in New Hampshire, I scooped it up immediately.

J.W. Ocker

As it turned out, he lived only 90 minutes from me, so I knew I had to reach out via email. We chatted for about a year or so, trying and failing several times to set up a time to meet so he could sign my book, but we finally did on a warm April day while I was en route to explore an abandoned trail tunnel in Massachusetts. A friend and I took a slight detour to meet Jason at a Barnes & Noble in Nashua, and we chatted for the better part of twenty minutes (or more? Or less? I was recovering from a hangover). We ran into each other a couple of times over the next few years before reconnecting in earnest this past September. We decided an evening of cocktails, takeout, and horror films was a good way to relax, so he drove up and took a seat on my couch next to Woodrow Wilson III, my life-sized human skeleton replica.