Looking at Salem from the outside in with J.W. Ocker

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J.W. Ocker surrounded by witches in Salem

An award-winning macabre travel author, J.W. Ocker wrote A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts.

WitchesMassBay: In 2015, you spent the month of October in Salem. If you could distill one moment in time that captures your month-long adventure in a nutshell, what would it be?

J.W. Ocker: That’s a real soul-searcher, that one. I’m tempted to go small, like sitting in the living room of the mid-19th century house I was renting and watching Halloween masks file by outside my window. Or big, like standing out on the common on Halloween watching a massive witch’s circle being cast while hordes of trick-or-treaters flowed by. But really, I think it was my late-night weeknight walks in the city. Most of the crowds were gone. You could hear the leaves scratch across the cobblestones. See tour groups from afar, each member holding a candle as they walked. I would duck into bars decorated for Halloween and have an autumn-themed cocktail or two and then head back out into the night, walking under the dark silhouette of the House of the Seven Gables, past the sparkly blackness of Salem Harbor, the spookiness of the Old Burial Ground, through the wisps of fake fog off the Haunted Neighborhood, my way lighted by the Halloween decorations glowing in every window. At that time of night in October, you can really feel the weight of the city’s history and the strangeness of its present.

WitchesMassBay: What are your favorite haunts in Massachusetts Bay?

J.W. Ocker: Let’s see, sticking as close to the coast as I can and leaving out Salem and Boston, it would be: The Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Hammond Castle in Gloucester, and Dogtown in Cape Ann. The house of a macabre artist, the castle of a wealthy eccentric, and a preachy ghost town. It’s a cool place, this Massachusetts Bay.

WitchesMassBay: In your book, you explain the dichotomy between the lovers and the haters of anything witchy in Salem. How can Salemites reconcile the past and embrace the future?

J.W. Ocker: Honestly, I’m not sure if they can. And I’m also not sure that I want them to. That friction between past and present, between art and kitsch, between the different types of tourism—all of it keeps this city interesting and energetic and oddball. Gives it a soul. Keeps it from being any other city. And everybody has something to prove there, whether it’s the witches or the historians or the art museum or the residents or the tour guides or the churches. That leads to some bad moments, sure, but in the end leads to a thriving, ever-changing, continually fascinating city character. It’s like people. Show me somebody who has figured him- or herself out and I will show you a boring person.

J.W. Ocker writes the Odd Things I’ve Seen (or OTIS for short) blog that documents his adventures. Besides A Season with the Witch, his books include the 2015 Edgar Award-winning Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allen Poe, The New England Grimpendium: A Guide to Ghastly and Macabre Sites, and (yes!) even spooky kids’ books.