Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581577729
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
From the author of The New England Grimpendium comes a new travelogue and insider’s guide to wicked, weird, wonderful New York. When J. W. Ocker’s first book, The New England Grimpendium, emerged on the scene, Max Weinstein of Fangoria.com called it “a travelogue for those who revel in the glory of their nightmares.” Rick Broussard at New Hampshire Magazine said of it, “I’ve read a dozen books about New England ghosties and weirdnesses, and this one is my favorite. It’s also one of the few that actually came up with stuff I didn’t already know about.” Now the author of that Lowell Thomas Award winner has unearthed hundreds of similarly creepy and colorful places in the Empire State that will make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end! Ocker’s essays on these places, some little known, some area landmarks, include directions and site information along with entertaining anecdotes delivered in his signature wry style. It’s definitely a wild ride from a jar full of the harvested brains of dead killers to horror movie filming sites around the state; from a ships’ graveyard to lake monster sightings. If it’s in New York and it’s bizarrely noteworthy or wonderfully wacky, you’ll find it in The New York Grimpendium.
The New York Grimpendium: A Guide to Macabre and Ghastly Sites in New York State
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581577729
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
From the author of The New England Grimpendium comes a new travelogue and insider’s guide to wicked, weird, wonderful New York. When J. W. Ocker’s first book, The New England Grimpendium, emerged on the scene, Max Weinstein of Fangoria.com called it “a travelogue for those who revel in the glory of their nightmares.” Rick Broussard at New Hampshire Magazine said of it, “I’ve read a dozen books about New England ghosties and weirdnesses, and this one is my favorite. It’s also one of the few that actually came up with stuff I didn’t already know about.” Now the author of that Lowell Thomas Award winner has unearthed hundreds of similarly creepy and colorful places in the Empire State that will make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end! Ocker’s essays on these places, some little known, some area landmarks, include directions and site information along with entertaining anecdotes delivered in his signature wry style. It’s definitely a wild ride from a jar full of the harvested brains of dead killers to horror movie filming sites around the state; from a ships’ graveyard to lake monster sightings. If it’s in New York and it’s bizarrely noteworthy or wonderfully wacky, you’ll find it in The New York Grimpendium.
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581577729
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
From the author of The New England Grimpendium comes a new travelogue and insider’s guide to wicked, weird, wonderful New York. When J. W. Ocker’s first book, The New England Grimpendium, emerged on the scene, Max Weinstein of Fangoria.com called it “a travelogue for those who revel in the glory of their nightmares.” Rick Broussard at New Hampshire Magazine said of it, “I’ve read a dozen books about New England ghosties and weirdnesses, and this one is my favorite. It’s also one of the few that actually came up with stuff I didn’t already know about.” Now the author of that Lowell Thomas Award winner has unearthed hundreds of similarly creepy and colorful places in the Empire State that will make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end! Ocker’s essays on these places, some little known, some area landmarks, include directions and site information along with entertaining anecdotes delivered in his signature wry style. It’s definitely a wild ride from a jar full of the harvested brains of dead killers to horror movie filming sites around the state; from a ships’ graveyard to lake monster sightings. If it’s in New York and it’s bizarrely noteworthy or wonderfully wacky, you’ll find it in The New York Grimpendium.
The New England Grimpendium
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581578628
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
An insider’s guide to wicked, weird, and wonderful New England. A rich compendium of macabre and historic New England happenings, this travelogue features firsthand accounts of almost 200 sites throughout New England. This region is full of the macabre, the grim, and the ghastly—and all of it is worth visiting, for the traveler who dares! Author J. W. Ocker supplements directions and site information with entertaining personal anecdotes. Topics include: Legends and personalities of the macabre Infamous crimes and killers Dreadful tragedies Horror movie locales Notable cemeteries and gravestones Intriguing memento mori Classic monsters
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581578628
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
An insider’s guide to wicked, weird, and wonderful New England. A rich compendium of macabre and historic New England happenings, this travelogue features firsthand accounts of almost 200 sites throughout New England. This region is full of the macabre, the grim, and the ghastly—and all of it is worth visiting, for the traveler who dares! Author J. W. Ocker supplements directions and site information with entertaining personal anecdotes. Topics include: Legends and personalities of the macabre Infamous crimes and killers Dreadful tragedies Horror movie locales Notable cemeteries and gravestones Intriguing memento mori Classic monsters
Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581576765
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 613
Book Description
Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581576765
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 613
Book Description
Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.
Cursed Objects
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1683692373
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world’s most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale. They’re lurking in museums, graveyards, and private homes. Their often tragic and always bizarre stories have inspired countless horror movies, reality TV shows, novels, and campfire tales. They’re cursed objects, and all they need to unleash a wave of misfortune is . . . you. Many of these unfortunate items have intersected with some of the most notable events and people in history, leaving death and destruction in their wake. But never before have the true stories of these eerie oddities been compiled into a fascinating and chilling volume. Inside, readers will learn about: • Annabelle the Doll, a Raggedy Ann doll that featured in the horror franchise The Conjuring • The Unlucky Mummy, which is rumored to have sunk the Titanic and kick-started World War I • The Dybbuk box, which was sold on eBay and spawned the horror film The Possession • The Conjured Chest, which has been blamed for fifteen deaths within a single family • The Ring of Silvianus, a Roman artifact believed to have inspired J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit • And many more!
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1683692373
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world’s most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale. They’re lurking in museums, graveyards, and private homes. Their often tragic and always bizarre stories have inspired countless horror movies, reality TV shows, novels, and campfire tales. They’re cursed objects, and all they need to unleash a wave of misfortune is . . . you. Many of these unfortunate items have intersected with some of the most notable events and people in history, leaving death and destruction in their wake. But never before have the true stories of these eerie oddities been compiled into a fascinating and chilling volume. Inside, readers will learn about: • Annabelle the Doll, a Raggedy Ann doll that featured in the horror franchise The Conjuring • The Unlucky Mummy, which is rumored to have sunk the Titanic and kick-started World War I • The Dybbuk box, which was sold on eBay and spawned the horror film The Possession • The Conjured Chest, which has been blamed for fifteen deaths within a single family • The Ring of Silvianus, a Roman artifact believed to have inspired J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit • And many more!
Twelve Nights at Rotter House
Author: J.W. Ocker
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1684423708
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he’s carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country’s most haunted places, after haunting them himself. When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for 13 nights, he believes he’s finally found the location that will bring him a bestseller. As with his other gigs, he sets rules for himself: no leaving the house for any reason, refrain from outside contact, and sleep during the day. When Thomas Ruth, Felix's oldest friend and fellow horror film obsessive, joins him on the project, the two dance around a recent and unspeakably painful rough-patch in their friendship, but eventually fall into their old rhythms of dark humor and movie trivia. That’s when things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement. Felix realizes the book he’s writing, and his very state of mind, is tilting from nonfiction into all out horror, and the shocking climax answers a question that’s been staring these men in the face all along: In Rotter House, who’s haunting who?
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1684423708
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he’s carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country’s most haunted places, after haunting them himself. When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for 13 nights, he believes he’s finally found the location that will bring him a bestseller. As with his other gigs, he sets rules for himself: no leaving the house for any reason, refrain from outside contact, and sleep during the day. When Thomas Ruth, Felix's oldest friend and fellow horror film obsessive, joins him on the project, the two dance around a recent and unspeakably painful rough-patch in their friendship, but eventually fall into their old rhythms of dark humor and movie trivia. That’s when things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement. Felix realizes the book he’s writing, and his very state of mind, is tilting from nonfiction into all out horror, and the shocking climax answers a question that’s been staring these men in the face all along: In Rotter House, who’s haunting who?
A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581575548
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
Edgar Award-winning travel writer spends an autumn living in one of America's spookiest tourist destinations: Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts, may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history—the Salem Witch Trials of 1692—transformed it into the Capital of Creepy in America. But Salem is a seasonal town—and its season happens to be Halloween. Every October, this small city of 40,000 swells to close to half a million as witches, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts (and their admirers) descend on Essex Street. For the fall of 2015, occult enthusiast and Edgar Award–winning writer J.W. Ocker moved his family of four to downtown Salem to experience firsthand a season with the witch, visiting all of its historical sites and macabre attractions. In between, he interviews its leaders and citizens, its entrepreneurs and visitors, its street performers and Wiccans, its psychics and critics, creating a picture of this unique place and the people who revel in, or merely weather, its witchiness.
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581575548
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
Edgar Award-winning travel writer spends an autumn living in one of America's spookiest tourist destinations: Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts, may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history—the Salem Witch Trials of 1692—transformed it into the Capital of Creepy in America. But Salem is a seasonal town—and its season happens to be Halloween. Every October, this small city of 40,000 swells to close to half a million as witches, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts (and their admirers) descend on Essex Street. For the fall of 2015, occult enthusiast and Edgar Award–winning writer J.W. Ocker moved his family of four to downtown Salem to experience firsthand a season with the witch, visiting all of its historical sites and macabre attractions. In between, he interviews its leaders and citizens, its entrepreneurs and visitors, its street performers and Wiccans, its psychics and critics, creating a picture of this unique place and the people who revel in, or merely weather, its witchiness.
The New York Grimpendium: A Guide to Macabre and Ghastly Sites in New York State
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 0881509906
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
Part personal travelogue, part detailed guidebook, this book covers hundreds of macabre sites, attractions, and artifacts, all drawn from firsthand experiences of the author.
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 0881509906
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 355
Book Description
Part personal travelogue, part detailed guidebook, this book covers hundreds of macabre sites, attractions, and artifacts, all drawn from firsthand experiences of the author.
Death and Douglas
Author: J. W. Ocker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510724621
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Douglas has grown up around the business of death. Generations of his family have run the Mortimer Family Funeral Home. The mortician and gravediggers are all his buddies. And the display room of caskets is an awesome place for hide and seek. It’s business as usual in Douglas’s small New England town. Until one day an incredibly out of the ordinary murder victim is brought to the funeral home. And more startling: others follow. On the cusp of Halloween, a serial killer has arrived. And unsatisfied with the small-town investigation, Douglas enlists his friends to help him solve the mystery. With sumptuous descriptions of a bucolic town and it’s quirky people, fascinating yet middle grade–appropriate insider information about the funeral process, and a crackling mystery with a heart-pounding conclusion—Death and Douglas has something for readers young and old.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510724621
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Douglas has grown up around the business of death. Generations of his family have run the Mortimer Family Funeral Home. The mortician and gravediggers are all his buddies. And the display room of caskets is an awesome place for hide and seek. It’s business as usual in Douglas’s small New England town. Until one day an incredibly out of the ordinary murder victim is brought to the funeral home. And more startling: others follow. On the cusp of Halloween, a serial killer has arrived. And unsatisfied with the small-town investigation, Douglas enlists his friends to help him solve the mystery. With sumptuous descriptions of a bucolic town and it’s quirky people, fascinating yet middle grade–appropriate insider information about the funeral process, and a crackling mystery with a heart-pounding conclusion—Death and Douglas has something for readers young and old.
The Witches of Eastwick
Author: John Updike
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679645888
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche. “A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”—Newsday
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679645888
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche. “A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”—Newsday
Homer & Langley
Author: E.L. Doctorow
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588368971
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
“Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston Globe SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Booklist Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers—wars, political movements, technological advances—and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves. Praise for Homer & Langley “Masterly.”—The New York Times Book Review “Doctorow paints on a sweeping historical canvas, imagining the Collyer brothers as witness to the aspirations and transgressions of 20th century America; yet this book’s most powerfully moving moments are the quiet ones, when the brothers relish a breath of cool morning air, and each other’s tragically exclusive company.”— O: The Oprah Magazine “A stately, beautiful performance with great resonance . . . What makes this novel so striking is that it joins both blindness and insight, the sensual world and the world of the mind, to tell a story about the unfolding of modern American life that we have never heard in exactly this (austere and lovely) way before.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Wondrous . . . inspired . . . darkly visionary and surprisingly funny.” —The New York Review of Books “Cunningly panoramic . . . Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that cpature the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness.”—Elle
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588368971
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
“Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston Globe SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Booklist Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers—wars, political movements, technological advances—and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves. Praise for Homer & Langley “Masterly.”—The New York Times Book Review “Doctorow paints on a sweeping historical canvas, imagining the Collyer brothers as witness to the aspirations and transgressions of 20th century America; yet this book’s most powerfully moving moments are the quiet ones, when the brothers relish a breath of cool morning air, and each other’s tragically exclusive company.”— O: The Oprah Magazine “A stately, beautiful performance with great resonance . . . What makes this novel so striking is that it joins both blindness and insight, the sensual world and the world of the mind, to tell a story about the unfolding of modern American life that we have never heard in exactly this (austere and lovely) way before.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Wondrous . . . inspired . . . darkly visionary and surprisingly funny.” —The New York Review of Books “Cunningly panoramic . . . Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that cpature the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness.”—Elle