J.W. Ocker > Quotes

“Because you trust your house, right? It's your house. It protects you from the world and, even more important, all the people out there. It sees you naked every day. It knows your sins. It's the only place where you are your true self. So when that gets corrupted, when that becomes haunted, that's terrifying.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“We have come to the end of our parade of cryptids. I hope you enjoyed every monstrous float. And I hope that you find some value in the idea that cryptids have significance beyond whether or not they physically exist: that they are symbols of hope that our planet is capable of unlimited surprises; that they can rally a spiraling town by bestowing both an identity and an economy; that they help preserve stories from history that would otherwise be lost. Seen this way, cryptids are more important culturally than scientifically. But the best thing about cryptids, for me, is that they’re just a lot of fun.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“Tea's like magic, man. I felt like I could slip a tea reading into a church potluck and everyone would be amused, as opposed to the horrified reaction I'd get slamming a deck of Tarot cards beside the green bean casserole.”
― J. W. Ocker

“It was a strange experience to be looking out the window of an eighteenth-century Chinese house at a seventeenth-century colonial graveyard full of people in twenty-first-century Halloween costumes. Salem, guys.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“But cryptids exist in yet another way beyond stories and monuments. Many who love cryptids love them more as symbols of the natural world than as secrets of it. Cryptids are hopeful concepts: hope that the world is still a diverse place full of discovery. Hope that humankind hasn't zoned every square inch of the planet for McDonald's franchises. Hope that we haven't grown bored with our mother planet, that she still harbors wonders for us.”
― J.W. Ocker

“Where else was I wrong? It was the same question I had asked myself when I'd finally sloughed off Christianity. Where else was I fundamentally wrong about life and the universe and how everything worked? Is life a cycle of us realizing how stupid we are over and over again until we die.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“When you place a man like Poe in your rot garden, you need to holy it up real fast, so three years after Poe was buried, they built a church in the graveyard. Actually, they built a church on top of the graveyard.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“Scary movies are predominantly about atmosphere. The same creep show watched at 11 a.m. during the summer in a house with no central AC is a much different experience than the same one watched in October on a dark and stormy night hunkered under an afghan.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“It was even rumored that he bought old European gravestones to line one of the foyer walls. That sounds creepy, but in my travels, I’d come across the practice many times, always from wealthy people obsessed with Europe for one reason or another. It was often a jerk move. Sometimes it was a romantic gesture. Mostly, it was cheap building materials.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Thomas, whom I had seen here or there, but didn’t know, walked up behind me and said, loud enough that I slammed shut the notebook and hid it under my Bible, “Are those the Sentinel Spheres from Phantasm?”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Proctor’s body was thrown in the crevice on Gallows Hill like the rest of the victims. Also, like the bodies of many of the victims, his was supposed to have been rescued under cover of night by family to be buried anonymously and respectfully on his own land. Which today is a median on an off-ramp.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“When would the next shattering evidence against my beliefs happen? Does it ever stop, or is life a cycle of us realizing how stupid we are over and over again until we die?”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“We have robots on Mars and supercomputers in our pockets, and people are still afraid of the hoodoo.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“That’s generally the way things go. The States has cool stuff, but we don’t know it until Europe clues us in. Like the blues.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“I wondered: if I now believe in ghosts, does that mean I automatically have to believe in Ouija boards, too? What does believing in the paranormal mean you have to believe? Everything? Alien abductions? Bigfoot? Or was it more like sects of Christianity, where each believes varying things but everybody can at least agree on Jesus. Man, and that doesn’t even count the implications of an afterlife that I’d have to sort through … again.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Anger, I was learning, is the most powerful antidote to fear. You can’t be afraid of a ghost if you’re pissed off. You can’t be afraid of anything if you’re pissed off.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“In Australia the idea of the platypus was so preposterous that European scientists declared it a fake even after handling a preserved body. I still have my doubts about it, honestly.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“Good old custom-made for a horror movie dolls, with old-fashioned dresses, porcelain faces. Lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a shark’s eyes.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Today, it was three stories, forty rooms. Enough space for at least three suicides, eight murders, two deaths of undetermined cause, four deaths of unbelievable cause, two disappearances, and it was once used as a hideout by a multiple murderer. This was going to be a blast.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“The Snallygaster looks like a chicken crossed with a dragon choking on an octopus. It has wings, claws, a sharp beak full of tentacles, either one eye or three, and a long tail. It likes to eat people. It may have died a long time ago, dissolved in a vat of moonshine.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“In 2016. We have robots on Mars and supercomputers in our pockets, and people are still afraid of the hoodoo. Yet”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“It’s the only place where you are your true self. Most of your cash goes into it. So when that gets corrupted, when that becomes haunted, that’s terrifying.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“I had gotten used to thinking that “haunted” was a quirk of the house, like noisy pipes and smelly water. I used to doubt haunted stories when the people put up with the haunting for months or years, but I was realizing how faulty that criticism was. They had adapted. Although, it’s all fun and games until someone gets possessed, I guess.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“The ingredient list for a spell is much less interesting than the effects of the spell itself.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“But being Fundamentalist, we were both raised to believe in ghosts—plus demons and angels, talking animals, god-stuffed humans, resurrection, the evils of movie theaters and women in pants.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Because you trust your house, right? It’s your house. It protects you from the world and, even more important, all the people out there. It sees you naked every day. It knows your sins.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“Be bold—reach much—write much—publish little—keep aloof from the little wits, and fear nothing.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“I also like those kinds of people better. I much prefer the guy who makes curly fries at Arby’s during the day and runs through an abandoned mansion at night with an electrical device of dubitable purpose than the guy who spends his day looking at analytics reports and hits the beach on the weekends.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House