Podcasts by Odd Things Ive Seen: The Podcast
I visit odd things, I tell their stories, and I tell you how to find them.
Further podcasts by J.W. Ocker
Podcast on the topic Reisen und Orte
All episodes
Episode 33: Visiting the Sites of the Martha Stewart of Serial Killers from 2021-08-22T10:05:10
My fascination with serial killers comes with a heaping load of shame, except for in one instance: Ed Gein. That's because without Gein, we might not have Norman Bates. Or Leatherface. Or Buffal...
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Episode 32: The Place Where the Music Died from 2021-07-11T08:53:57
On February 3, 1959, a small plane carrying pop stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper crashed into an Iowa cornfield, killing all three instantly and inspiring Don McLean to writ...
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Episode 31 (Special On-Location): Cryptid Kaiju of the Dakotas from 2021-05-20T21:29:02
In this special on-location episode, I head to North and South Dakota to see a couple of gigantic cryptid statues. In Bismarck, North Dakota, a quartet of Thunderbirds glower above a lightning s...
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Episode 30: That Time I Bought a Cursed Object from 2021-05-01T20:25:56
In this episode, I read from my latest nonfiction book, Cursed Objects, to talk about what exactly is a cursed object, as well as to tell the story of the time I bought one to see what would hap...
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Episode 29: The Man Who Built a Mechanical Messiah from 2021-03-10T18:35:43
We visit High Rock Tower Park, where nineteenth century spiritualist John Murray Spear built his New Motive Power, aka, the God Machine, aka, the Infant Motor, aka, the Mechanical Messiah, all b...
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Episode 28: Booing Ghosts: My Personal Take on the Paranormal from 2021-02-28T18:06:09
I’m a guy who digs the ghostly. I love the macabre. I obsessively search out spooky sites and objects like my afterlife depends on it. That means I always find myself in paranormal circles, be t...
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Episode 27: A Haunted Tower, An Abandoned Base from 2020-12-20T09:20:03
We head to Cape Cod in Massachusetts to find neighboring, but very different oddities: A nineteenth century tower in a forest that is haunted by a famous opera singer who fights the local witch ...
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Episode 26: A Reading from "A Season with the Witch" from 2020-09-29T00:15:15
A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts is my account of living in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, during the entire month of October, getting to the...
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Episode 25 (On Location): Yea, Though I Walk Through an Abandoned Bible Theme Park from 2020-09-17T08:20:32
For this episode, we're going on location to an abandoned Bible theme park (and murder scene) looming over the town of Waterbury, Connecticut. It's oddities like these that this site and that po...
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Episode 24: Running [to] the Asylum from 2020-08-04T21:44:23
My obsession with Danvers State Hospital (aka Danvers Insane Asylum) started with the horror movie Session 9 back in 2001, which was filmed inside the then 120-year-old abandoned asylum. Over th...
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Episode 23: I Have a Favorite Cemetery from 2020-04-30T19:59:32
I take you back to where my love for cemeteries first started...Highgate Cemetery in London. I met her in 1999, returned to her in 2017. We go to both West and East Cemeteries, finding the grave...
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Episode 22: The New York Town That Talks to Ghosts from 2020-04-08T20:31:35
Lily Dale is an quaint little town in western New York that you'd probably like a lot…if you can stomach all the ghosts. But the residents like it that way. After all, they’re all mediums. In th...
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Episode 21: A Tale of Two Torture Museums from 2020-03-14T15:31:43
Torture museums: Are they ghastly tourist traps with acute deficiencies of taste or family-friendly opportunities for history lessons? I have no clue! But I've been to two of them, one in Wiscon...
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Episode 20: The Two Most Bonkers Museums in the Country from 2020-02-10T13:21:55
I don't use the term bonkers lightly, but in this episode, I'm going to tell you about two of the most bonkers museums I've ever been to. And that image you have in your head when I say "museum"...
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Episode 19: JAWS in a Chicken Wing Joint from 2020-01-19T22:14:27
We're headed to Staten Island. to a chicken wing joint. That has a 13-foot-long artificial great white shark hanging from its ceiling whose name is JAWS. But not thee one from the movie, the one...
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Episode 18: She's Also the "I" in OTIS, Part 2 from 2019-12-19T23:42:23
In Part 2 of this interview with my wife about this thing called OTIS, we delve into her photography and how that intersects with the project, some of her favorite oddities and where she wants t...
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Episode 17: She's Also the "I" in OTIS, Part 1 from 2019-12-08T11:39:30
For almost the entire 12 years of OTIS, there have actually been two I's in that acronym, my own and my wife's. Lindsey's never told her half of the OTIS story, though, until now. In this first ...
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Episode 16: Physical Evidence of Hollow Earth Theory...Believers from 2019-11-10T20:46:11
In this episode, I take you to Hamilton, Ohio, to see the hollow-earth-inspired gravestone of one of the theory's biggest evangelists, and then we go to Estero, Florida, to see the remnants of a...
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Episode 15 (Special On-Location): A Monk Cave, a Vampire Grave, and a Witch Path from 2019-10-26T02:03:48
We recently trekked to the Springfield area of Massachusetts to see some seriously weird, creepy, and fascinating oddity, and recording the whole outing. That's the "Special On-Location" part. I...
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Episode 14: How to Do Sleepy Hollow from 2019-10-04T00:38:29
Gather 'round, and I'll elucidate, everything I've learned over a decade of visiting Sleepy Hollow, New York, during the Halloween season. The only thing you need to know in advance is that the ...
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Episode 13: How to Do Salem from 2019-09-13T13:09
In this episode, I answer the four questions I'm always asked about Salem, Massachusetts: When to go there, what to do there, what are my favorite spots there, and how do I feel about partying o...
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Episode 12: PS — New Hampshire is Swarming with UFOs from 2019-08-27T23:28:25
We're one month away from the 58th anniversary of the most famous alien abduction in the history of the lore: The Betty and Barney Hill Incident. On the 47th anniversary, my wife and I, newly ar...
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Episode 11: The Unabashed Horrors of Zak Bagan's Haunted Museum from 2019-08-11T22:47:28
In a first for this podcast, I present a candid, unscripted story of my recent visit to The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. The museum is owned by Zak Bagans (of "Ghost Adventures" fame) an...
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Episode 10 (Special On-Location): Maryland, Scaryland from 2019-07-22T01:19:56
In our second ever Special On-Location episode, I take you with me on a recent road trip we took to Baltimore, Maryland, to see some of the sights that make the state so spooky, including the un...
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Episode 9: A Giant Squid and an Even Bigger Titan of Biology from 2019-07-08T00:35:11
In this episode, I take you behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum in London to witness the most mindboggling biological artifacts in the entire collection: Archie the Giant Squid and a...
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Episode 8: House of a Sinner, Arm of a Saint from 2019-06-17T00:06
In this episode, I take you to the house where infamous occultist Aleister Crowley enjoyed a magick retirement and then to the severed arm of Saint Edmund. Surprisingly, neither of these two sit...
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Episode 7 (Special On-Location): A Jaunting in Connecticut from 2019-06-03T01:02:34
In this special episode of Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast, I take you on location with me on a road trip I took last Saturday to see five oddities in Connecticut: Two sites connected to a Gre...
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Episode 6: The Fire that Froze Pompeii from 2019-05-20T00:00
We're going international in this episode, heading to Italy to see what it's like/how exhausting it is to visit both Pompeii and Vesuvius in a single day. Volcanic ghost towns might be the most ...
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Episode 5: A Garden Full of Cobra Lilies and Corpse Flowers from 2019-05-06T00:00
Plants are 80% of the planet's biomass. So it makes sense that there are some odd plants out there. I've seen a few in my day. Like a swamp full of cobra lilies in Oregon and a seven-foot-tall p...
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Episode 4: Lying in Bed, Just Like Lizzie Borden Did from 2019-04-21T16:00
The story of Lizzie Borden and the ax murder of her parents has been told...to death. But the oddest part of the story is that today...you can stay the night at the crime scene. Which. We. Did.<...
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Episode 3: Playing Chicken with Area 51 from 2019-04-07T21:33
We head out to the Nevada desert to play chicken with Area 51. And see an Independence Day (the movie) time capsule. And eat at an alien-themed eatery. And generally look for the truth that is ...
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Episode 2: Let's Picnic at a Flaming Ghost Town from 2019-03-25T02:59
Centralia, Pennsylvania, is a ghost town...on fire. Beneath its grass blades, a coal fire rages that has burned for half a century and will burn for centuries longer. Smoke wafts over the sites ...
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Episode 1: The Spookiest Statue in the Cemetery…and the Smithsonian from 2019-03-10T15:01
A suicide brought it into existence. A copy of it turned evil. You can find a version of it in a graveyard, at the Smithsonian, at an artist's studio in New England...and outside, just around th...
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Introducing Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast! from 2019-03-01T23:38:29
My name is J.W. Ocker. For more than a decade, in my spare time, I have sought out odd sites and artifacts. I'm terrible at maps and bad at driving, but I believe that within a tank or two of ga...
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