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Explore every episode of the podcast Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast

Dive into the complete episode list for Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

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TitlePub. DateDuration
Episode 38: Happy Halloween 202429 Oct 202400:18:21

I discuss the 2024 OTIS Halloween Season that I do every year on oddthingsiveseen.com and how it kinda went awry from my original intention, and I go deeper into this year's theme of "Is Halloween Getting Annoying?"

  • Support this podcast and other of my oddity initiatives on my Patreon.
  • Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Instagram.
  • Buy my latest book, Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives. (buying through my bookshop store maximizes support for me and for indie bookstores). 
  • Check out my other spooky books, 
Episode 37: Chasing Zombies in Romero-Land and Savini-ville08 Sep 202400:22:19

In this episode, we travel to Pittsburgh to see horror movie sites connected to George Romero and Tom Savini, while waxing (and waning) nostalgic on how much has changed at both the sites and in my own life since my original 2006 visit to the place back in the first days of OTIS.

  • See photos from my trip here.
  • See photos from the Living Dead Museum here.
  • Read my original OTIS piece on my first visit to the Dawn of the Dead Mall.
  • Support this podcast and other of my oddity initiatives on my Patreon.
  • Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Instagram.
  • Buy my latest book, Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives. (buying through my bookshop store maximizes support for me and for indie bookstores). 
  • Check out my other spooky books, 
Episode 28: Booing Ghosts: My Personal Take on the Paranormal28 Feb 202100:17:16

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 they crop, spellcasting, or fairy. I’m constantly absorbing other people’s takes on the paranormal. And I have a take on it, too. Actually, let’s get specific. Ghosts. I have a take on ghosts.

Episode 27: A Haunted Tower, An Abandoned Base20 Dec 202000:23:14

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 and an abandoned air force base with connections to a UFO abduction. Yeah, this one has it all. Even pirates.

  • Photos from my visit to the Jenny Lind Tower.
  • Photos from my visit to the abandoned North Truro Air Force Station.
  • Address of North Truro Air Force Station: Old Dewline Road, Truro, MA.
  • GPS coordinates of the Jenny Lind Tower: 42.034664, -70.055276.
  • My Cursed Objects book is out now!
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon.
  • I also write other spooky books.
Episode 26: A Reading from "A Season with the Witch"29 Sep 202000:16:04

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 heart of this weird city during its weirdest season. In this episode, I read from that book. I'm also releasing this episode through my YouTube channel, so you can either watch me read or listen to me read. Unfortunately, I come with both versions.

Episode 25 (On Location): Yea, Though I Walk Through an Abandoned Bible Theme Park17 Sep 202000:14:26

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 podcast and, well, I (me?) are made for.

Episode 24: Running [to] the Asylum05 Aug 202000:23:25

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 the next two decades, I visited the site, found the asylum cemetery, watched Session 9 on the site where it was filmed, and, just a few months ago, returned to find the second asylum cemetery. This is the whole story.

Episode 23: I Have a Favorite Cemetery30 Apr 202000:23:46

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 graves of Douglas Adams and Karl Marx and the guy who wrote The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, to the parts that inspired Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and The Abominable Dr. Phibes with Vincent Price, into crypts and through plots of stones invisible under creepers. I hope you fall in love with it, too.

Episode 22: The New York Town That Talks to Ghosts09 Apr 202000:22:19

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 this episode, I tell you about my visit to this strange place and about my own personal session (my very first!) with a medium.

Episode 21: A Tale of Two Torture Museums14 Mar 202000:21:05

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 Wisconsin and one in Florida, and they couldn't have been more different experiences from each other. Let's visit them together now, and learn the shameful secret of all medieval torture museums. With bonus serial killer severed head and alien implant asides.

Episode 20: The Two Most Bonkers Museums in the Country10 Feb 202000:24:38

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"? Throw it out. Doesn't apply. Oddly enough, both of these museums have very boring names, despite being places of breathless bizarrerie and overwhelming wonderment: The City Museum in Missouri and the House on the Rock in Wisconsin.

 

Episode 19: JAWS in a Chicken Wing Joint20 Jan 202000:13:54

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 from the ride. This one's a weird one, so strap on your life jacket, grab a harpoon gun, and make sure your boat is of adequate size.

 

Episode 36: Giant Sky Clams! A Reading from THE UNITED STATES OF CRYPTIDS24 Jul 202400:19:36

In this episode, I read the introduction to my book, "The United States of Cryptids," as well as an entry on one of the weirdest cryptids in its pages: The giant sky clams of Nevada. Come for the bigfoot parties. Stay for the flying mollusks. 

  • Buy The United States of Cryptids here.
  • Support this podcast and other of my oddity initiatives on my Patreon.
  • Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Instagram.
  • Preorder my next book, Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives. (buying through my bookshop store maximizes support for me and for indie bookstores). 
  • Check out my other spooky books, 
Episode 18: She's Also the "I" in OTIS, Part 220 Dec 201900:28:13

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 to go the most, what it's like doing OTIS with kids, and--my favorite part in the entire interview--we talk about ending this OTIS project.

Don't forget to listen to Part 1, as well as the minisode pulled from the interview where we somehow end up arguing Halloween vs. Christmas. That minisode is going on the OTIS Club Patreon and will be open to all member levels, which means you can hear it for as little as $1.

Episode 17: She's Also the "I" in OTIS, Part 108 Dec 201900:30:10

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 part of the interview, we cover how the whole thing started (which was around the time we met each other), what our first oddities we visited together were, what oddities she is completely uncomfortable visiting, the types of oddities she loves to see, and her take on our night at Lizzie Borden's.

Also debuting today, a minisode pulled from the interview where we somehow end up arguing Halloween vs. Christmas. That minisode is going on the OTIS Club Patreon and will be open to all member levels, which means you can hear it for as little as $1.

Episode 16: Physical Evidence of Hollow Earth Theory...Believers11 Nov 201900:19:18

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 hollow earth cult whose definition of hollow earth is mind-blowing.

Episode 15 (Special On-Location): A Monk Cave, a Vampire Grave, and a Witch Path26 Oct 201900:21:26

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'd tell you more, but it's kind of all in the title.

  • Photos of this road trip on OTIS.
  • A deeper dive into Witch Path.
  • GPS Coordinates for Monk Cave: 42.506533, -72.409833
  • Address of South Cemetery (Grave of Martha Dwight, the Vampire): 143 Mill Valley Rd., Belchertown, MA 
  • Address of Fairview Cemetery (Grave of Edward Bellamy): 687 Front St, Chicopee, MA
  • Witch Path address: Witch Path, Springfield, MA
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon.
  • I also write other books that you can buy. Spooky books.
Episode 14: How to Do Sleepy Hollow04 Oct 201900:23:03

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 Headless Horseman is my favorite monster. 

Episode 13: How to Do Salem13 Sep 201900:19:31

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 on the corpses of the murdered?

Episode 12: PS — New Hampshire is Swarming with UFOs28 Aug 201900:20:09

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 arrived in New Hampshire, spent a night retracing their route through the White Mountains, and then we saw their graves, actual artifacts from the incident, and a bathroom gas station exhibit dedicated to them. The truth is in the Granite State.

Episode 11: The Unabashed Horrors of Zak Bagan's Haunted Museum12 Aug 201900:25:29

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) and features the earthly remains of Charles Manson, Jack Kevorkian's van, a dybbuk box, and a jaw-dropping array of other oddities, murderbilia, and paranormal artifacts.

Episode 10 (Special On-Location): Maryland, Scaryland22 Jul 201900:20:32

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 unmarked grave of Herman Munster, the site where the Ouija board named itself, the Edgar Allan Poe House, and on a whim, we head up to the top of the Washington Monument...Baltimore's Washington Monument.

  • Photos from the trip.
  • Photos of Elijah Bond's Oujia board grave.
  • Photos of the Edgar Allan Poe House.
  • Address for Fred Gwynne's Grave: 2101 Old Westminster Pike, Finksburg, MD
  • Address for the Oujia board plaque (the Baltimore Washington Monument is across the street): 529 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD
  • Address for the George Peabody Library: 17 E Mt Vernon Pl, Baltimore, MD
  • Address for the Edgar Allan Poe House:203 N Amity St, Baltimore, MD 
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon.
  • I also write books that you can buy. Spooky books.
Episode 9: A Giant Squid and an Even Bigger Titan of Biology08 Jul 201900:15:10

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 actual specimens bottled by Charles Darwin himself on his world-changing HMS Beagle voyage. Oh, and I embark on a side quest for an infamous cursed jewel. Lotta stuff going on in this episode.

Episode 35: Movie Monster Museums I Have Loved01 Jul 202400:20:17

I have visited probably a dozen movie monster museums across this country in my time searching out oddity. Three of these museums stand out as my favorites--one in Nevada, one in Connecticut, and one in Massachusetts. Come with me and let's be old-fashioned Monster Kids for a while.

  • See photos from my visit to Tom Devlin's Monster Museum here.
  • See photos from my visit to Cortlandt Hull's Witch's Dungeon here.
  • See super-out-of-date photos of my visit to Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery here.
  • See photos from my visit to the Twilight Zone paintings on the carousel in Rod Serling's hometown of Binghamton, New York, here.
  • Support this podcast and other of my oddity initiatives on my Patreon.
  • Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Instagram.
  • Preorder my next book, Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives. (buying through my bookshop store maximizes support for me and for indie bookstores). 
  • Check out my other spooky books, 
Episode 8: House of a Sinner, Arm of a Saint17 Jun 201900:12:55

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 sites are in Europe. They're in New England. And they are mere hours from each other. The depth of oddity in any given state is astounding.

Episode 7 (Special On-Location): A Jaunting in Connecticut03 Jun 201900:19:53

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 Great Awakening preacher who has haunted me since childhood, a minor witch memorial, the house of a serial killer who inspired a delightful comedy movie, and an abandoned amusement park. This is the episode I show you what I mean by "within a tank or two of gas of any point in this country is some seriously cool oddity."

Too see photos from this trip, visit the OTIS Patreon Page, and download Issue 157 of the weekly OTIS Club Newsletter. This particular issue is free to the public, and if you like it, please consider joining so that I can do more podcasts like this one and so that you can have the maximum dosage of oddity in your life as recommended by the surgeon general.

Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon. I also write books that you can buy. Spooky books.

Episode 6: The Fire that Froze Pompeii20 May 201900:13:58

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 fascinating ghost towns.

Episode 5: A Garden Full of Cobra Lilies and Corpse Flowers06 May 201900:13:55

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 phallus-shaped corpse flower in New Hampshire. Let's get botanical.

  • Pics from our time among the cobra lilies.
  • Pics of our our meeting with a corpse flower.
  • Address for Darlington State Park: 5400 Mercer Lake Rd, Florence, OR
  • Address for the Dartmouth Life Sciences Center: 15 Dewey Field Road, Hanover, NH
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon.
  • I also write books that you can buy. Spooky books.
Episode 4: Lying in Bed, Just Like Lizzie Borden Did21 Apr 201900:21:30

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.

Episode 3: Playing Chicken with Area 5108 Apr 201900:17:53

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 out there. 

Episode 2: Let's Picnic at a Flaming Ghost Town25 Mar 201900:16:50

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 where neighborhoods once stood. Roads choke on overgrowth. Pockets beneath the topsoil are waiting to cave in at the next footstep. The idea of the place is terrifying. But the reality of the place is...fascinating. Heck, I brought my family with me on one of my visits.

Episode 1: The Spookiest Statue in the Cemetery…and the Smithsonian10 Mar 201900:22:09

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 the corner from the White House. Come with me, J.W. Ocker, as we visit the Adams Memorial and its Mr. Hyde, the Black Aggie, and learn the strange story that entwines them.

Photos on OddThingsIveSeen.com of the funerary sculptures.

Sites you can visit:

  • Rock Creek Cemetery (Adams Memorial): 201 Allison St NW, Washington, DC
  • Druid Ridge Cemetery (Black Aggie pedestal): 7900 Park Heights Ave, Pikesville, MD
  • Howard T. Markey National Courts Building (Black Aggie): 717 Madison Pl NW, Washington, DC
  • Hay-Adams Hotel (Site of Clover Adams' suicide): 800 16th St NW, Washington, DC
  • Saint-Gauden's National Historic Site (Home of sculptor, with a casting of the statue): 139 St Gaudens Rd, Cornish, NH
  • Smithsonian American Art Museum (Site of a casting of the statue): F St NW &, 8th St NW, Washington, DC

Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Patreon.

 

 

 

 

Introducing Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast!02 Mar 201900:01:46

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 gas of any point in the country are oddities worth trekking to on a Saturday afternoon. And I have the stories as proof.

Episode 34: Digging Through Mulder's Office: The X-Files Preservation Collection24 Jun 202400:23:19

The X-Files is my favorite show of all time. I was on the couch for its debut on September 10, 1993. So when I found out a museum of original props had opened a mere three hours from me, I wasted only two years to get there.

  • See photos from my visit here.
  • Visit the museum website here.
  • Read about my top eight favorite episodes here.
  • Support this podcast and other of my oddity initiatives on my Patreon.
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Instagram.
  • Preorder my next book, Cult Following: The Extreme Sects that Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives. (buying through my bookshop store maximizes support for me and for indie bookstores). 
  • Check out my other spooky books, 
Episode 33: Visiting the Sites of the Martha Stewart of Serial Killers22 Aug 202100:15:46

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 Buffalo Bill. Or the Firefly family. So my shame load was only a mild one as I visited sites related to him in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin. With my wife and two kids.

  • See photos from our visit to Plainfield here.
  • Hardware Store Address: 110 S. Main St., Plainfield, WI. 
  • Plainfield Cemetery Address: 6590 5th Ave, Plainfield, WI.
  • Property Address: Archer Avenue and Second Avenue.
  • Want to learn about the oddities I visit in real time? Follow me on TwitterFacebook, or Patreon.
  • I also write spooky books, including my latest The Smashed Man of Dread End.
Episode 32: The Place Where the Music Died11 Jul 202100:21:59

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 write American Pie. We trudge into that cornfield, to see the place where the music died.

Episode 31 (Special On-Location): Cryptid Kaiju of the Dakotas21 May 202100:23:20

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 storm on the banks of the Missouri. Then I drive five hours southwest through snow and rain and flocks of pheasants to Keystone, South Dakota, to see the world's largest Bigfoot statue, right in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. Come with me.

 

Episode 30: That Time I Bought a Cursed Object02 May 202100:16:37

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 happen.

Episode 29: The Man Who Built a Mechanical Messiah10 Mar 202100:15:44

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 based on plans that the ghosts of Benjamin Franklin and Socrates gave him. Then the story gets weird.

Episode 39: Return to the Lizzie Borden House04 Mar 202500:38:08

For the second time in my life, I stay the night at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, a crime scene turned morbid historical attraction. Hear me and my girlfriend Dani October talk about our experience there, as well as at the crime scene next door, where Lizzie's great aunt drowned two of her children. It's not a B&B, though. Just a coffee house. Called Miss Lizzie's Coffee.

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