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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.
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.
SALEM has long been notorious for the witch trials of 1692. But a hundred years later it was renowned for very different pursuits: vast wealth and worldwide trade. Now Death of an Empire tells the story of Salem's glory days in the age of sailing, and the murder that hastened its descent. When America first became a nation, Salem was the richest city in the republic, led by a visionary merchant who still ranks as one of the wealthiest men in history. For decades, Salem connected America with the wider world, through a large fleet of tall ships and a pragmatic, egalitarian brand of commerce taht remains a model of enlightened international relations. But America's emerging big cities and westward expansion began to erode Salem's national political importance just as its seafaring economy faltered in the face of tariffs and global depression. With Salem's standing as a world capital imperiled, two men, equally favored by fortune, struggled for its future: one, a progressive merchant-politician, tried to build new institutions and businesses, while the other, a reclusive crime lord, offered a demimonde of forbidden pleasures. The scandalous trial that followed signaled Salem's fall from national prominence, a fall that echoed around the world in the loss of friendly trade and in bloody reprisals against native peoples by the U.S. Navy. Death of an Empire is an exciting tale of a remarkably rich era, shedding light on a little-known but fascinating period of Ameriacn history in which characters such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster interact with the ambitious merchants and fearless mariners who made Salem famous around the world.
It’s no surprise that the historic Massachusetts seaport’s history is checkered with violence and heinous crimes. Originally called Naumkeag, Salem means “peace.” However, as its historical legacy dictates, the city was anything but peaceful during the late seventeenth century. Did the reputed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, strike in Salem? Evidence supports the possibility of a copy-cat murder. From the recently pinpointed gallows where innocents were hanged for witchcraft to the murder house on Essex Street where Capt. Joseph White was bludgeoned to death and then stabbed thirteen times in the heart, Sam Baltrusis explores the ghost lore and the people behind the tragic events that turned the “Witch City” into a hot spot that has become synonymous with witches, rakes, and rogues.
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.
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!
Tells the story of the victims, the accused witches, and the scheming officials that turned a mysterious illness into a witch hunt.
Is shamanism all that different from modern witchcraft? According to Christopher Penczak, Wicca's roots go back 20,000 years to the Stone Age shamanic traditions of tribal cultures worldwide. A fascinating exploration of the Craft's shamanic origins, The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft offers year-and-a-day training in shamanic witchcraft. Penczak's third volume of witchcraft teachings corresponds to the water element - guiding the reader into this realm of emotion, reflection, and healing. The twelve formal lessons cover shamanic cosmologies, journeying, dreamwork, animal/plant/stone medicine, totems, soul retrieval, and psychic surgery. Each lesson includes exercises (using modern techniques and materials), assignments, and helpful tips. The training ends with a ritual for self-initiation into the art of the shamanic witch--culminating in an act of healing, rebirth, and transformation. COVR Award Winner
When Dr. Elizabeth Cowrie shows up in Salem, Massachusetts, to study the witch trials, Hazel and her best friend, Roxy, are both instantly attracted to the workaholic professor. Roxy snags a date with Elizabeth first, but when their chemistry fizzles out, Hazel sees an opportunity to pursue Elizabeth herself—until she realizes Elizabeth is avowedly anti-magic. That’s definitely a problem since Hazel is a bona fide witch: rides a broom, has a black cat, brews love potions, lives in a haunted house, and has a vampire ex-girlfriend. Roxy is the only person who knows the truth, and Hazel has gotten used to hiding who she is, but she can’t live a lie with the person she loves most. Can Hazel give up magic to make it work with Elizabeth? Or will she give up on the love of her life instead?
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.