FANTAST IN FOCUS: J.W. OCKER
Possibly Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest fan, J.W. Ocker is an accomplished author whose articles and op-eds have appeared in places like Atlas Obscura, The Rue Morgue Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic. He also runs his own travel blog, O.T.I.S: Odd Things I’ve Seen, and has written two “Grimpendiums” focusing on the lesser known “macabre and deathly sites” in New England and New York. Ocker has a mythopoetic sixth sense for perceiving the cultural and architectural spectres in landscapes, much like Poe, one of the “three crowns” of Dark Romanticism. Ocker spoke with us about a few unique customs of his own, as well as his forthcoming book.
The Custodian: What first inspired you to start the O.T.I.S. Halloween Seasons?
J.W. Ocker: So that began in 2010. I’d been celebrating a long Halloween Season offline for years, but Halloween 2010 was unique for a few reasons. My first book, The New England Grimpendium had just debuted, and I wanted a forum to regularly bring up all the creepy stuff in the book. To go along with it, New England Halloweens in general were still new for me as I’d only moved up here a year and a half previously. Finally, it was my first daughter’s first Halloween. She was 10-11 months old at the beginning of the season, so not old enough to celebrate, but old enough to add some perspective and context to my own celebrations. So I was looking to do something special with that Halloween Season. Blogging it seemed perfect. I’d been following other Halloween blogs for years, and thought I could take my own angle on it. The blog ended up being so much fun and added so much to my season by giving me the opportunity to write about stuff I don’t usually get to write about, by motivating me to have an active season, and through the dialogue online with other people wearing the orange and black. It’s hard to imagine a Halloween Season without it now.
Mostly, though, I love the idea of documenting the season. Some spring and summer nights, I’ll go back and re-read the posts and look at the photos just for the nostalgia rush. That said, I really want to push the O.T.I.S. Halloween Season a bit. Make it a Halloween Season truly documented, as opposed to chopped into articles and treated like content. I have some ideas around that I’m hoping to try at some point.
C: Growing up you were a fan of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Which of their poems did you take a special liking to?
J: For Poe, it was The Raven—all the way and to this day. Although Ulalume is also one of my favourites if you want a poem with fewer cultural barnacles all over it. Lovecraft, I’m not as familiar with his poetry. Stuck to his stories. The Rats in the Walls is what I’m always looking for every horror story to be.
C: Can you tell us more about your “Poe-phernalia”?
J: Sure. I’m a collector, and a segment of my collection is Poe-related. In the beginning, I just had some scattered, cheesy, mass-marketed stuff because it blew my mind that there was cheesy, mass-marketed stuff that relied on a 200-year-old poet with a death obsession. Over the course of writing Poe-Land, I accrued more just naturally. None of it’s valuable, per se, but all of it is special to me. Like a massive portrait of Poe that was given to me by a guy who runs a local haunted house that I wrote about for last year’s Halloween Season. He pulled it from a defunct museum in Salem. Also, a 100-year-old printing of The Raven that I was given by the world’s biggest Poe collector. A bottle of Poe-themed wine that was made for a celebration at Poe’s grave that I attended in Baltimore in 2013. A golden Poe bobblehead used for fundraising for Boston’s new Poe statue. That kind of stuff. They’ve almost all become mementos less of Poe himself and more of my time writing and travelling for Poe-Land.
C: Have you done any urban exploring in other countries? I feel like you’re the kind of person that would do something like this.
J: I rarely get to do any urban exploration, as far as sneaking into abandoned buildings. And the few times that I’ve done it, it wasn’t daring at all. I do kind of love everything about it when I see photos from other people’s jaunts, but it’s just not how I tick. My favourite type of urban exploration (if you’ll allow me to take the word in a painfully literal manner), is to plot out a course of sites and walk to them. I log serious miles in cities. When I was doing The New York Grimpendium, I averaged seven to eight miles a day in Manhattan over the course of three or four days. I hit every part of that island on foot. Saw amazing sites and amazing sights between the sites.
C: What gave you the idea to start the Grimpendiums?
J: The macabre is a major theme on O.T.I.S., and a theme that has more variety than it’s usually given credit for. There are tons of books that are guides to haunted sites or detached spooky folklore or grisly historical anecdotes. But none that really gave that variety of the macabre that I love and very few that were based completely on firsthand experience at physical sites. So that became the ingredients of the Grimpendiums.
Also, again, moving to New England motivated it. It was brand new world to me, and I was exploring it like nobody had ever been here before, treating all six states like they were just different streets in my new hometown. I had to write a book about this place.
C: Do you have any plans for a Grimpendium of the American South? New Orleans and Charleston seem like perfect gothic haunts.
J: I would love to do Grimpendiums for every state in the country. Both of those cities are fascinating places, no doubt. Have racked up some great experiences in them. If I could choose any area to do next, it would be the Mid-Atlantic. That’s where I grew up and I feel guilty for not exploring it the way I should in all the decades I lived there. Plus I have family back there, so the logistics would be much easier. But, that said, there’s not a section of the country that I can’t fall in love with. So I’m up for any Grimpendium anywhere.
C: What are you working on now?
J: Well, I have the usual spate of O.T.I.S. backlog posts that I’m always trying make headway on. I have a completed fiction project that I’m actively trying to sell. But my big project is my next nonfiction book, which I haven’t officially announced yet because I’m still awaiting the contract in the mail. It’s another weird book. Travelogue. Macabre. It’ll fit in with the Grimpendiums and Poe-Land perfectly, though, while still being different from any of them. Might even tie in with your first question. Can’t wait to announce it.
To find out more about the Grimpendiums and J.W.’s other projects, check out the O.T.I.S. web page.