Last Podcast On The Left - The United States of Cryptids: An Interview with J.W. Ocker

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Ben 'n' Henry sit down with author J.W. Ocker to discuss his new book "The United States of Cryptids", what makes mysterious creatures so interesting, his unique outlook on believing in the unknown, hometown cryptids across the country, Cursed Objects, and MORE!Classy Night Out Tickets Available Here! Fri, December 30, 2022, 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM PST The Pack Theater 6476 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90038  For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, what's up, everyone? How you doing? Ben Gissel here hanging out with Henry. Oh. Thanks, I'm doing my big foot cry for J.W. Very good. Thank you all so much for giving me to our patron. Without you, we're absolutely nothing. Today's guest, he is the author of many books. But the most recent book is the United States of Cryptids.

J.W. Ocker is with us. J.W., thank you so much for being on the show. I don't know. Thank you for me on. I am jazz about this. This is great. I just actually find it kind of interesting that we can even capture you. I am a bit elusive usually, yes. Well, would you say that, all right, honestly, though, are you a primate? I'm just going to get here.

Are you primate? Are you interdimensional? Oh, I'm, oh, primate, definitely primate. Excellent. Interesting, indeed. We often talk about how Casey Anthony is a 10 when it comes to murderers. But in real life, she's about a six, you know. But when it comes to cryptozoologists or cryptozoologists.

Cryptozoologists. Fantastic. He's learning. You, you were about an 11. You're a very attractive man. You can actually, it seems as if you're clean. And I know there's a lot of times. I didn't know what this kind of podcast.

Yes. Within the cryptic contingency, there's some people. What do you got underneath the Zoom? I can't actually. I can't see below the bill. Yeah. There's some people who resemble the skunk ape or maybe the moth man in more than one way, specifically when it comes to odor.

But you're very well kept. Well, I cheat though. So those people actually do the real work of looking out in the forest, the swamps, and the fields and find these things. I just go to local tavern and see what, cryptid theme beers they have behind the box. I'm not that good of a cryptosolologist. That's called the power of being the executive.

Absolutely. You're leading them. Can I ask just straight up? We'll do one of the, you know, it's a hacky question, but like, what brought you to here? Like what got you to the point where you were a professional cryptozoologist? Well, that's the thing. I'm not a professional cryptosologist.

I'm a professional faker. Great. So I basically chase oddities. anything weird. I want to learn about and write books about and it could be anything. It could be paranormal stuff.

It could be artist relations. You're like an expert on Edgar Allen Poe as well. Exactly, yeah. So I spent a year of my life tracking down every site building piece of him that still existed on the planet everywhere he lived.

So yeah, it's just something weird and different and not, you know, me in a cubicle and, you know, whatever for it. Was it just about that? Was it just about like trying to not be a cubicle warrior or is it something deeper. A cubicle warrior.

Yep. That sounds cool, actually. Sure, sure, sure. I mean, a lot of guys become cubical warriors, but it's bad. Yeah, it really is. Oh, yeah. No, for me, it's mostly depression and boredom. Yeah, a lot of that.

When I just left my apartment, which I actually lived, I'm from Maryland. I was living in a small little town, the next town over from the Blair Witchtown, actually. Oh, wow. And I just got realized I was like in a bad spot. So I just left my apartment one day, it started driving to weird stuff and writing about weird stuff.

And then suddenly over the course, years it turned into a thing. That's awesome. Were you able to dabble in opium when you were experiencing everything that Edgar Allen Poe experienced? Did you dabble in what he was dabbling in? I did not. I did not try to become an opiodic, although it's one of my many families, so honestly.

You're going to get in the headspace. You really do. So let's talk cryptids. Now you wrote this book. Now this is kind of, this book is, it is a little bit of an encyclopedia of sorts, right? Like you do definitely, you have chapter head. But as you go through the world of cryptids, I guess that's what it is. You know, in last podcast and left, we've been covering various level of cryptids for years.

And I think the big question that always seems to come to mind is how materially real do you believe something is? And especially like or like, you know, I suppose it could vary as well between what cryptid is, you know, the Loch Ness versus Sasquatch or New Jersey Devil. On your spectrum of cryptids, what feels, quote unquote, materially. real. And what is more in the realm of what we joked about up top, but maybe something interdimensional? Or is there something to like folklore coming to life? Yeah, which cryptid could you actually have sex with? Save that for the end, if you would. That's right. We need to anticipation on that one. So yeah, well, the thing is, I'll give you some obvious answers. Sorry about that. The obvious answers is anything underwater that you can't

see all the time, right? Yes. The truth is, you know, cryptids happen all the time, right? The The Crackin, right, was just a mystery that nobody knew about. And then suddenly now we have giant cephalpods and tanks in the Smithsonian, right? So that's a real one. The gorilla was a cryptid at one time. There was rumors of this giant, hairy, dark creature in jungles that nobody believed until most of the world. Obviously, some people knew about it. Until somebody went and found the pelts and found some skulls and brought it back to the rest of the world.

The platypus is my favorite one, right? That's another one that was a rumor that nobody believed to suffer some people in this island down the corner of the world. they found a body, brought the body out to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world was like, this is not real. You made this. Right. So, they sewed a duck's bill into a beaver's body.

So they actually had to get a live animal for them to believe that creature existed. So those kind of, those kind of cryptids do exist. Like the actual, like, not, because the definition of a cryptid is an animal that mainstream science doesn't accept as real or is real anymore. And that happens all the time. So they do exist. Now, the more fancable you get, right?

then you get to the range of like extremely plausible biological entities, right? These are giant primates, right? Because all of us are primates right here. So they exist. You know primates exist. You just make them a little bigger, a little hairier, and throw them on the forest. And that doesn't stretch your imagination. Right.

You go all the way to like a snally gaster, then you're kind of like stretching your imagination a bit. So it's a nice little spectrum, which makes a lot more. Now what's a snally gaster? You don't know a snally gaster? No, yeah. Educate them. Oh, snally gats. This is a good one.

This is one from Western Maryland. So Sally Gasser looks like a chicken and a dragon mated and is choking on an octopus. So it's got a beak. It's got tentacles coming out of the beak. It's got wings, leathery wings. And it's just rumored to fly around, you know, Western Maryland. And I think the biggest story about it is the most known one died in a giant vat of moonshine. It just got caught in.

The smells good. Went down there got boiled. And then the moonshine police or whatever they're called came in and blew up the entire place. Whoa. Depends a body. That's fun. Yeah, that's the idea. They were like, well, you know,

well, you would have seen one. You would have seen one if it wasn't for that explosion. I can't believe what happened. Moonshineshan's a great preservative. We'd have a body and everything. What a way to go for the snally gaster. I remember they have those things. You ever see those at bars where they have like the toe in the thing of liquor?

And then you have to take the shot and you have to let the toe hit your lips. Yes. But this actually maybe brings me to like you. So you write articles for Atlas Obscura, which I do love. and there was one recently that you wrote like I feel like that fits perfectly into this this idea of like could be materially real

because they thought it was one thing but then it became a cryptid the Shunko Wurakken right the Rocky Mountain hyena so the Shunko Roakins is interesting because it's based on a real event actually all cryptids this is the beauty of cryptids even if you don't believe in a stalagaster

or Puck Wudji or some of the more random ones yeah the event happened whatever they saw kicked off a giant mania that's sometimes a summer, sometimes a year, sometimes years, and the newspapers followed the local newspapers followed the story the entire time. So something happened. It's documented its history.

Even if you don't believe the source of history, it's a real thing. We just saw this happen with the new wave of the mothman sightings in Chicago and outside of that area. Exactly. And that's in the newspapers now. Like, somebody saw something, whatever it was, saw it. And now, somewhat of a hysteria happened, not the old kind of hysteria in the 50s and 70s and 60s where you jump in. I call it hunting parties and parties where either you jump together and go chase it. Or you just party.

the party around it. Yeah, exactly. Shotguns and moonshine in the back of the car. So, yeah, so the Shigong Rock is a great example. It was a real creature that a farmer had a problem with, ended up shooting it, and couldn't really, didn't really fit any creatures he'd seen. It was vaguely canine, maybe hyena, kind of dog-ish. It was one of those really vague canine creatures. Yeah. Yes. And then the story, the story got passed out. He got connected to the Native American lore, as they always do. They always connected to the Native American lore. And then eventually there's a body. They had a body somewhere in museum, I think somewhere in Montana these. days. Well, if you look at you, I got the picture, I could show Kisle, right? So they have

because they ended up calling it the ring docus, right? It's another word for it. Yeah, it says seven different names, I think. Gaius is another one. It's a lot of names. But they, so they, it wasn't a museum for a hot minute, right? And they said, I guess they got rid of it. And there was this one picture of it. And so you look at it and like what we, because we cover on the, you know, we talk about the chuba cobra kind of often. But it would most of the time when we talk about cheaper copper. We're talking about a dog with manch. Sad ass dog. Yeah, the dog's all fucked up. And it does just kind of look like

if I'm, and I'm not a scientist. But I look at it. No. No, no, and the first time I look at it, the first thing I say, that's a jacked up wolf. Like he's, yeah, oh, he's jacked up. That's all I got. No, that's the other thing. If we do a body, it's usually taxidermy and often taxidermy, not very well. Because you could definitely make any animal

pelt look like a mutated creature and whatever. Just not knowing base level of skill, you Yeah, just being bad at it. Exactly. You can create home realms of mystery. Do you think that, like, that's why, this is my question, because I get, I love cryptids. And, like, you must be passing because, like, on one level, do you make judgment calls about whether things are real or you're just like, I just collect stories?

No, I don't usually make, well, I'm a skeptic at heart, a sad skeptic. I'm a sad skeptic in heart. Like, I'm really sad that I've never had a ghost experience, even though I spent a big period of my life and abandoned asylums and abandoned prisons and graveyards and ghost. I feel like I'm like my six sense blind or not something like that. So I'm really sad about it. I've been told that I'm too horny for the phenomena. Yeah, he's too horny.

Ali has aliens, ghosts. I want to see it. And I can never, same thing. I can never see it. I saw an orb. He says he saw an orb, but we've seen the picture. And that's up for debate. It was, no, it was.

I saw it besides the picture. I saw a ghost train. I saw a ghost train. I saw an orb. I'll describe it to you. I was driving outside of it. It was in Atlanta and there was a train. It was literal train tracks.

And I saw a thing that looked like a wobbling beach ball that went up and down sort of a weird like hovering pattern down the railroad track. And when I brought it up in the show, I had several people being like, that's called a ghost train. It's a ghost train. So as we just heard, it makes people sound insane, right? When they talk about cryptids or orbs, how do you maintain sanity in this world of madness? goodness. Because the, two, two reasons. I'll get a little sentimental at first, then I'll get back to what we should be. But one is when somebody tells me they believe in Bigfoot, I don't hear like, you know, tinfoil hat. What I hear is somebody saying, I want cooler stuff in the world.

I want the world to not be like kind of ripped apart of all its wonder. Like, I want more mysteries to be uncovered. I don't want, I don't, everything is zoned for a McDonald's franchise. I want more stuff out there. So to me, like the pursuit of cryptids is like wonder, which is one of the most amazing parts of being a human. So I feel like kinship with them. Like, I, I, I don't know, also don't want there to be every single animal already cataloged. I don't want that to happen ever in my lifetime, right? So there's that part. Then the other part about it is whether the stories are true or not, the outcomes are real. Like, for instance, a big part of the book is, like you guys said, this is basically in some ways my book is a cryptid encyclopedia, which comes one, a crypticenticty

comes out every year, right? Every year somebody makes one. The difference with mine was, I only do if I could travel and see things. Their entire towns, entire groups of people that celebrate their cryptids so hard that they have statues dedicated to them and festivals every year and plaques and just it's a it's a real phenomenon so right now in indiana triubusco indiana every year they celebrate this giant turtle that was supposedly found in a pond outside of town in the 19th late 1950s so for the past 40 60 years they've been celebrating a gigantic turtle and you can go there any time of year uh to churbusco and there's like turtles everywhere because of this so that is real that that celebration is real the turtle statues outside the

then his office is real. And it kind of makes it real. It kind of like you. There's something about, because we talk about in Tulpa's, that comes up like in some way, it's almost like you are creating a living thought form, but that is real.

And then it's also, it's much needed tourism for a lot of these places. It really is. And that's why I got no problems with it. We talk about the Boggy Creek monster. That was like another kind of an example that it's like, they have a big foot economy. Yeah.

Yeah. I went on the, I went down the folk monster mart as part of this. And it was just fantastic. glad that thing exists. Live from your blade. Well, so I believe, here's like, maybe I'll throw this at you, all right?

Let's say, tantamount. Tantamount. I'm using the word in terms. Tantamount. Tantamount, right? In what foot, in what? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Bigfoot, let's say it's real. Let's say it is real. Or the idea of giant apes are real that are hidden. How do they stay hidden? Like, what is like, is there a thing where like, do you really sit in, like, Is that your goal to like hammer out like whether or not something's like real or not? Like would you want, I know you were saying you want to keep the mystery alive.

But is there that in the pursuit of making it real? How did this start with tantamount? I don't know. But it's like how did you like like where do you sit with that? Like because I think the Bigfoot's like like of all of the cryptids, it's like well that sounds most like you said it's plausible. Like it sounds like a thing it could be real. So the question is how they hide. How they hide it?

How they hide. I hope it's because the world is bigger. than I think it is. It's part of me thinking there's no way they're hiding, right? But I'm hoping that it's just a bigger world that I really think it is. Like a forest is massive. I don't really understand how big like whatever, the forest out in the Pacific Northwest is. But the weird thing about that is there's been a Bigfoot siding in all 50 states, right? At least one. That includes tiny Delaware and tiny Rhode Island and Hawaii on the Middle of the Ocean. So those kind of places, I'm like, I don't know if you can hide a Bigfoot in Delaware. Maybe you can. I don't know.

But like hopefully you can hide one in Appalachia, right? That's an undiscovered country. I hope. I hope we haven't explored all of that. But I assume the world's gigantic. I hope it is. It might not be. But that's how I would say it. It's just big. What do you think? What does the cryptid tell us about the region? Obviously, Pacific Northwest, you got a lot of trees. That's good for your big. That's good for your big foot. Definitely bigfoot country. And then maybe you got some, a lot of lakes. You got lake creatures. What does it tell you about the region and how do cryptids relate to it? Yeah, it's where you can hide them, right? Because like you said, how do you hide these cryptids? So generally most cryptids started at the golden age of cryptids is the 155.

50s to 1970s. That's what most everything was seen, right? And then where they were usually seen was rural towns, with some exception, but mostly it was rural towns. Almost every single story of a cryptic, no matter what it is, starts with some teenagers in the back of a car, on a back road, at night, you know, outside of town, every single one starts that way. And the reason is you need a few things. You need some kind of natural landscape, I think, to hide in, right? So rural towns have that. They have forests. They have mountains. They have fields. They have places to hide it. And then you need the boredom to make it a story, right? And rural towns have that as well. But right now, today I found out there's a cryptid running around my town. I'm in,

I'm in Nashville, New Hampshire, which is about 40 miles north of Boston. If I've heard there's a cryptid running around my town, I might get off my phone and go find it or jump in my car, or I might, but I probably won't. I'll probably just follow it on Twitter and see what happens, you know? But back then, you can all get in your car, it'll be a party. The town center will be filled with people talking about it and the local newspapers writing about it. It's like real life, It's like real-life Pokemon Go. No, it's exactly what it is. Exactly.

And that's actually why we have, I think we have so many different kinds of creatures. It's not just Bigfoot. There's like, in the book I found, like, more than 70, and most of them are very different because we want to collect them all, right? We don't want it just to be the United States of Bigfoot. We want Chuka Rockin and Snallygasters and puck wedgies and every kind of creature we can find. How do you think we get, like, I guess that's where it is in my mind.

Like I'm trying to kind of, I think about cryptids and how they are so different. And I wonder, like, where does that come from? Like, I guess is it really just a response to the natural environment? Is it something that people have inside that they project out? Because I do believe that the phenomena on some level is, quote, unquote, real. But I do, I think that it has something to do with kind of some interdimensionality, which is, if you listen to John Keel, like, we kind of participate in it, right? Like, we help bring it out.

Like, how do we get such variety encrypted? And then, like, what do we do about the really crazy ones? Like, you know, you said, but the sallywag, like, that's a, that's a crazy one. Like, but is that because, like, they do see something like that? Can something exist like that for a moment and time and then not exist ever again? Or is it a bunch of people just like, again, just trying to create some of that cryptid flow? That's tantamount. Tantamount.

I would say it's mostly Hollywood. That's good to design. There actually is a lot of theories of different kinds of creatures that, came out that looked remarkably like a movie creature that came out a year before. Chubicabra is actually that one, not the dog version, but the Puerto Rican tubiccapa. Yeah, Puerto Rican version one. The Wolf Woman of Alabama came out right when the commercials for Mephisto Waltz came out, which is this trippy 70s movie.

And one scene in the trailer had this dog with a human head on it walking around. But I think the variety just comes from, that's a good question. I've never been asked that question. Why do we have the variety of creatures we do have? that has to be in so obviously we have some some very similar carryover right hairy primates lake monsters almost always boiled down to pliosaurs and i think it comes from um fantasy for i don't know it's good question i want to say the evolution is fantasy until you find something in science to hang it on right so because they don't know because like when someone's in a rural town like

because those before the internet connected everybody i think it's interesting is that they it's not like they were looking for a gap like we haven't had a big turtle one yet all right just make it up like It seems that like they do kind of spontaneously come up with all of these different forms. Yeah, it could be. And I know there's a subsection of cryptids called from, called lumberjack tales, right? And these creatures came out of tales that lumberjackers would go into forest in the 19th century, right? Dark forest, middle of nowhere, no electricity, no internet, nothing, right?

They're just out there. It hears sounds, things would happen. And they would spend their time around the campfire making up personalities and creatures for what would make that sound or what would do this thing. And you get stuff like Hodags out of that. And you get stuff like Walthus cats out of that. And Hodag is like Rhinelander, Wisconsin, celebrates the Hodag. Like it's whatever, a military veteran.

They have statues of it and they have Christmas merchandise and they have festivals every year. So sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's just human imagination. And sometimes it's the ability, the human mind to make patterns. So if you see something Russell in the Bush is, you know, what does it look like? Like the infield horror looks like a beat-up kangaroo. And I came from one person's description of it, right? So the human lines is great at creating variety, I think.

Yeah, and of course, around the lumberjack, it's a great day to be a tree, if you know what I'm talking about. When it comes to, uh, I don't do this to the man. We don't do that. This man's work so hard on his book. I have a serious question. We're killing all of our animals.

We're killing all the bugs. The human race is destroying a lot of shit. Do you feel like because we have destruction of so much wildlife that cryptids are almost filling a void where it's like, no, we're not destroying everything. there's still these cryptids out there that they exist because I was just reading an article, 75% of all the shit that was in like 1800s

is dead. That's why. Cryptids are our apology to the planet. I think that they are because they're like, yeah, we're killed so much stuff, but we're making up new ones with our brain. We've got new ones with our mind. Yeah.

I like it. We're all going virtual reality, right? We're all metaverse. So like all of our creatures should be metaverse too. Oh my goodness. But I do sort of believe that that's kind of that is a kind of explanation for some of this stuff. Like, can we talk about the Sandin' Clown? There's a couple of these,

like, super weird shit, right? Like, when it's super weird and you have, like, several people say, like, the Flatwoods monster, you know, like something like that, where you're like, what in the living fuck did these people see? Because it's like they're all freaked out and weird. And yeah, they can make it up. But it's also like, I also sort of believe in the idea of screen memories. I know that's true. Like, people say they experience something because it's to cover up something traumatic. So they'll make, they, they, they project something else onto it. But, but, but, but, but, but, But it's so crazy just like how easy it is for people to project stuff onto like their reality and have it show up. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good example too because the skeptics always, I think Joe Neckle mostly. The skeptics called a flywood monster, an owl and a tree, right? Whatever. To go from an owl and a tree to a red domed alien in a skirt, robot alien in a skirt. That's a big jump. So either like there's a totally wrong explanation or the human mind like you said can build whatever it needs to out of the. materials at hand.

I wonder. Yeah, some are super weird though, for sure. You did write a book. You wrote a book called The Twelve Knights of Rotterhouse where you stayed in a place, right? Like, you decided to be like, hey, I'm going to see a ghost, right? Is that the kind of, was that the idea? That was a novel, actually. So that was a, so I'm also a novelist.

But in that case, it started out as a nonfiction project where I was like, you know what? I'm going to stay 12 nights, or it was actually 13 nights inside of a haunted place and just document my experiences. I'm a nonfiction writer mostly. I'm going to do this. And I sat down and found a place. I wanted to do it and sort of planning. And then I realized, this is going to be the most boring book that anybody's ever read

written in the entire, it'd be me just walking around dark hallways, like, just jumping at sounds. So then I just turned into a novel. But have you tried the investigation? Like, so when you were there, though, like, I'm saying the same thing. Like, kind of like, it's weird how you'd think that you're an expert on all this phenomena, your brain would provide something for you. Yeah. And really give it to me.

I don't know. I think I just broke into the belief factor. And not just with like paranormal, with like belief in like the goodness of humans and like whatever positive. But I don't believe in anything really. So like I'm like a universal cynic. But yeah, I feel like I should have even one story that I could exaggerate into like this amazing paranormal experience. And I don't even have that level of a magic. Henry is, Henry's requesting you to lie is what that request is.

I'm hoping. Which is just fine. But don't you think. Show business. Show business. That's right. You and every producer making a reality show, right. Well, what if it was real, J.W?

You don't mean? How would you react? How would you react? It's been recorded, by the way. Live. What if we did? So the thing is, we do live in a world of mystery. And these animals, like you were just discussing,

are freaking trippy, dude. I watch a lot of my Instagram. I watch a lot of bug footage and animal footage. Do you think if we, isn't that something? But do you think if we actually saw the moth man, how long would it take before we're like, yeah, that's the moth man? Let's move on.

It's boring. Oh, seconds. I call that the curse of cryptosology. or the curse of the cryptos zoologists where you study this in your entire life indirectly, right? Through footprints and first and tails and eyewitnesses and those kinds of things. Never getting your hands on a body. You finally find it.

Look, I found the moth man. And then zoologists and anthropologists come and say, thank you. That's ours now. And suddenly it exists and it's not yours anymore. It's not a cryptid. Once you discovered, it's not a cryptid. So like it just stinks. So you really can't.

You can't discover it. You can't get a cryptid. You can't literally. And I mean, here's, okay. Here's a policy question. You know what I see a lot? Here's a tantamount. There's a policy question, right?

What what policy? What institution does he have policy on? B-FRO. Okay. You might need to talk to my lawyers on this one. This is policy, J-W. Do you know B-Fro? Like all those groups?

It's like another. It's a Bigfoot hunting organization. Oh, oh, oh. So I never spoke it. I've never spoken it. It's a B-F-R-O-D. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're not cool like I am in the circles I run. You know, the lads out of B-Pro.

So, so sad. Beefro just sounds like a place in Wisconsin where a bunch of fat dudes hang out. Yes, it is. It is. But so they talked about, they had a reaction to Oklahoma, came out and they said that it's okay to hunt Bigfoot. Right? There was like, they think. They get this set up this big foot.

Like, this is my thing. If we're seeing it, I really mean this. Like, how do you feel about shooting Bigfoot? That's not nice. It's not nice, but I do want a body. I want a body really bad. Yeah. So I might, if I had morals, I might bend them a little bit for this one because I want to see.

You're going to end up like that doctor in Minneapolis. You shot that fucking lion, dude. And then everyone's going to protest you. And they're all going to like, why did you shoot Bigfoot? That's the only one left. That's the thing. I'm okay with shooting the first Bigfoot. We can't shoot the second Bigfoot, though.

Just the first. The second Bigfoot needs to be on television. Well, this is why it's hiding. This is why they don't want to be found. They're horrified of them. No, I want to ask. him what they think about the Ukraine conflict. And then I want to get him canceled.

Oh, that's what we'll do is we'll get. Bigfoot canceled and then he'll be on the show. Oh, that'll be great. Do you think the sea or the center of the earth holds more crypted life? Oh, the sea has to, right? For some reason, the sea won't stop making creatures

and won't stop making the most terrifying creatures in the planet. It just won't stop. Like, every time they find something new down the Marianas Trench, the thing looks like a nightmare, where it's a vampire squid or things you've never even heard of. It's terrifying down there. So I'm pretty sure they're making it down there in the ocean. All the elements of life are down there. The first person to see an octopus must have been scared. Absolutely. I would have been, unless you'd been like, there's a lot of arms to eat. That's right. He's the first person to eat one. That's for sure.

Yeah. I mean, I ate in a whole octopus once. I went and I went to this restaurant. You tell this story. I've heard this a thousand times. I hate this fucking. He ate an octopus brain and he got sick. He was really, yeah, really nauseous. He was very big. It was a big and floppy thing. I can see why people. It tastes good though? No. No. I like octopus arms, but that it turned me off an octopus all together. And then my wife said I can't eat octopus anymore because they're too smart. And I said if they were so smart, why are they in the fucking tank? Yeah, that documentary filled a lot of our hors d'oe. Yeah, a lot of pulpo went down because of that.

Now, you've searched for a lot of cryptids, but if you found the most elusive cryptid of all, it's called love. I, yeah, that's a good question. But I'm a cynic, so I don't know if that one exists. I'd probably find Bigfoot before I found love. Yeah, I agree. I say that's a joke because my wife is somewhere in this house. I heard her screen. I just heard her yell.

Just because you're married, it doesn't mean there's love there. Ooh, that's valid. Sad. Sad. It's true, though. Valid. I felt that right here. Yeah, yeah.

Look at the queen. Dead. That's also a crypted. Dead. Well, that plays into it when it comes to community. I was watching this documentary on Flat Earthers where, ironically, they proved the world is around. But one thing that stuck out to me was that these people are exceptionally lonely.

And they all got to get to get. gather in the back, but really it was more about like these hors d'oe good. Do you feel like the cryptid community, it's, I mean, that's like,

how big of a component is just that, the human connection. Yeah, when it comes to cryptode zoology. I look for a big foot, but the most important thing with the friends I found along the way. Exactly.

It's true, right? So like this, like most French things is full of outsiders and myths, right, looking for connection, including myself.

I include myself in that group. And it's so funny when you go to a cryptid festival or a cryptic convention, these people mostly aren't giving scientific paperos on whether Bigfoot exists or not. There's some of that there. But most people are there to party.

They're party. If you know the word Hodag, you're a friend of theirs. They'll party to you. They don't care if you believe it or not. They want to draw it. They want to wear a shirt with it. And they just want to, like,

party with people who aren't, you know, sitting on the sofa watching football on Sundays or going to the golf course on on Saturdays. They want something else. And that's why they're awesome people. Like, again, they're just different. I'm always looking for different people. And so that's why I try to like hide out in these circles.

Hodag is a great name for a football team. It really is. The Washington Hodex. That's what they should have done of this freaking commanders. When you hang out with a lot of these other cryptid hunters, so you're a journalist and a researcher, and like that's kind of what you are.

But when you meet the hunters, like what's the difference between you and them? Like, do you view them like, as you said, like they're doing the dirty work and you kind of like collect the data afterwards? Or like, do you were like, well, that's a step too far? Or do you see yourself in a couple of waiters at Loch Ness like anytime soon?

Have you ever? joining them on their journeys? I have not. I have an aversion to dirt under my fingernails. It just really bothers me. So I would do it. I didn't get a chance. So a lot of the book has written some of the pandemic, post-pandemic, when everybody was like, you never knew what you could do. Honestly, if you're allowed to do or not do. So I didn't get to go. A lot of the festivals are canceled. It was like a massive time. But I would do it. I would go out. It's just, it's just, I, so I compare cryptic hunting, like literal cryptic hunting, people that go out in the wilds to fishing. It's really boring.

You get some, it's peaceful, you get out in the woods, that's nice. But the end of the day, you're kind of standing in a spot and, you know, standing in the spot most of the time. So, which again, that's real research. You sit there for, that's why in the paranormal world, some of the shows are funny because they go for like six hours and then they find everything.

Really, real paranormal investigations would last years at one place, right? So it's just, they sound exciting. Let's go hunt Bigfoot. But in the end, you're just camping. It sounds fun. Honestly, I actually would rather do that than fishing. Yeah, absolutely. Because I will sit.

I'll sit and watch him go past. It's just some guy who went, yeah, we show him a blur. 1979, we're going right over that bridge. And it's like, I'll listen to him talk. I won't ask him about COVID, but like I'll ask, but the rest of it's up for games. You know what I mean? We'll talk about everything, I think cryptid-wise, it'll be really safe. Well, you don't want, you're adverse to the truth.

What do you think is the most likely to be real? UFOs. Alien. Well, UFOs are aliens, UFOs or ghosts or cryptids? I'm going to go with aliens. I'm going to go to aliens. Have you ever done any of the research about them all being connected? Like aliens and UFOs and cryptids being sort of together like in the same basket?

What do they call that? The ultra terrestrial. Yes. Oh, look at the same time. That's great. Yeah. What that is, is so Occam's Razor is something like

if you kind of rule out everything that doesn't make sense until all you have left is the only thing that makes sense. What a lot of people in the fringe, these French communities do, they go the opposite way. If something makes sense, something doesn't make sense, they start adding stuff to it. So once you can't find Bigfoot, it's because he's a ghost or because he's an individual being.

And then once you can't find the Roswell crash pieces, you're like, oh, maybe UFOs are part of that phenomenon too. And you're just like, everything is hard to understand because everything is part of this weird phenomenon. and you kind of live there because there's no proof there. It's a fun place though. I like that place a lot.

It's very fun. Yeah. You just see some weed tincture really helps. I'll tell you that. It does. So that's kind of that connection that I think is a last gasp at asserting everything exists that exists. Well,

so because they want an empirical version of the story. Like they want it to be like solved, which I think is very difficult because I think what you're saying is true is that the problem is that if you do solve, you've just solved yourself out of a job. Yeah, it just sucks. Yeah, because that was gone. Like, what else are you going to do?

You can't go on. You're no longer allowed on ancient aliens. It has been founded. You now have to go on the news. Oh, gee, yeah, we lose all that programming. That's a tragedy. Yeah, you get to miss all that. You don't get to let Georgia O'Suckelis sleep on your couch.

Oh, I love that, man. Great hair, great bed head. Have you heard those stories? Yeah, totally. He sleeps. That's a good point. success in those industries means not to, using a promotion when you're successful in your field,

but like that's, you get demoted right away. How much do you think that's true with the ancient alien theory? How it's sort of like replaced religion for some people? Do you feel like cryptids kind of fill that void also as, I don't know, we're in a strange religion kind of kickback now too. I don't know. This next generation is bizarre.

Losing religion for some reason we have a giant, and I'm not, why I used to be, but I'm not religious, but anymore, but like it's a giant void in people's souls. You have to fill it with something. and if that's aliens, if that's hairy hominid. If it's something beyond the norm, we need it, you know? Yeah.

And isn't Jesus a cryptid in his own right? I believe that he was, if he was around, he was agripted. He's right here in my heart, guys. Yes, he is. He lives right there. He's knocking on your door. Live from your blade. So you also wrote a book about cursed objects.

There's a question, right? Because we have friends that are, I'm friends with, like, people that are attached, Zach Baggins, right? And my friends, the new kirk's also sort of kind of, like, yeah, they're great, right? And they're kind of in the world now. They talk a lot about cursed objects. When you were working with cursed objects, like, did you bring any into your home? Did you bring anything around or, like, how do you feel like about, like, because like the hell that you're like, the new kerkers are firmly against any sort of transportation or purchasing of cursed objects?

Sure. It sounds scary to do. Fuck shit up. But did you have any? They also would make a competitor to them. So that's a problem as well. Nice. Yes.

So what do you do with it? Yeah, we're like, how did you go about those processes? Did you just listen to people's stories or did you handle any objects? So I did. So as part of it, there's a whole section I book called The Business of Cursed Object. The New Kirk's are in there and Zaffis is, Begans is in there. I went to his amazing haunted museum, by the way, which I went in there not thinking you guys don't like it at all and coming out, just completely disturbed and loving it.

Oh, awesome. And then I bought one. So also the eBay trade. If you go on eBay and type in cursed object right now, there's going to be scores of things for sale and they're going to be for sale, pretty high prices. So I went in there and finally, it was funny, I went in there to buy one and didn't buy one right away.

And I got retargeted, retargeted ads all over my internet experience saying, eBay, we have cursed objects. Yeah, come get our cursed objects. Yeah. So I ended up buying one. I bought one and brought to my house. Didn't tell my family. What was it?

Huh? What was it? It was. It was somewhere. Yeah, because I have a little haunted box. I had people brought me nail. from Boleskin house. Like I have all that type of shit,

but I kind of waved shade. We got a little cursed object here. It's a little pug. It's a little brass bulldog. And the person who sold it to me was so good. They were like, my father bought this from Asia somewhere, brought us all,

nothing but missed fortune, harm, whatever. If you want this, be careful what you wish for and really played it up, right? I bought it. I won the auction.

I guess I think it was the only bidding. And when she sent it to me, she sent me with like warnings all over the box, say be careful what you wish for, be careful with this thing. And when I realized, And I got a little trepidations, honestly. Again, I'm a skeptic, but there's some scientific proof that cursed objects can work.

But even then, I was like, what if I'm wrong? It doesn't matter what I believe if I'm wrong. So if I bring this cursed object to my house and it could hurt my family. And I also took it with us on vacation. But there's all this kind of stuff. She wrote stuff in the boxes, be careful what you wish for. Here it is. And when I realized what I was doing was not buying a cursed object,

but buying the experience of buying a cursed object, right? So usually cursed objects are you go to Chinatown, you find that one shop with everything's piled around. You try to buy something and the owner says, I'm not selling you that. It's the beginning of Gremlin's basically. I won't sell you that. I know it has a price tag, but I'm not selling you that. It's not for sale.

It's not for sale. And then you finally convince them to let you have it and you take it home and then whatever, all hell breaks loose. And you can't get that anymore these days, right? The world's too connected. It's difficult. Yeah. And just applying by now at eBay is a very sad experience, very convenient, very sad experience.

So she did this entire thing with her emails to me and her box crawls to make me think, or maybe it was a legit sincere warning, but the very least gave me the ambience that I was bringing something forbidden into my house. So it was a lot of fun. And then nothing bad happened that year, unfortunately. But I just sat there right in there, I wrote the entire book that thing looking at me. What makes a cursed object cursed? Is it like an experience that happened around it or did someone cough on it all weird?

Yeah, there's multiple ways. There's purposeful. So somebody with the power can imbue it with the ability to hurt people, right? That can just be somebody like a shaman or it could be even a person just using their mental will to say, this is going to bring cursed. It could be like it was around the scene of a tragedy, so it kind of sucked up all that negative energy like a battery. Or, you know, like Shirley Jackson's Hillhouse, right?

It could have just been born bad, right? All the way down to what's made in China sticker. It was just born bad. So those are kind of the three ways I've found, discovered that a cursed object is cursed. So then, of course, there's like the scientific version of a cursed object. The nocebo is basically if you think something's going to harm you, it'll harm you. We're able to trick our bodies and being harmed. Just like a placebo, we can trick our bodies into being healed.

The exact opposite is also possibly true. That's very interesting. But so did you find in your searches, they were like, well, this sounds cursed as hell. Like this was like, was there's one of them or any of them that you were like, well, there's something here. They obviously believe it.

Well, my favorite example, and this is also going to be a very boring example, because I know you guys probably know it, is the Hope Diamond. I grew up in the D.C. area, and that was like my local museum, and I was always, like, going there. But this thing has an actual provenance of hundreds of years old.

We know exactly where it was. a given time, and it was surrounded by tragedy the entire time, like documented tragedies, not just like kind of legends that nobody has documents for, documented tragedies. And it's the perfect cursed object, right? It's small, you could lose it, you can actually slip it in somebody's pocket. It's expensive, so it's only pretty. It's beautiful, too. It's got like an allure to it.

Yeah. And it's across the world. It's been the hands of monarchs. That one has the most legit story in the world. And now that it's in the Spasonian or it has been for decades, you know, you can blame all the, all the ills of the country. on it for sure. Excellent. You know what I'm really catching a

theme that I really appreciate which is you're trying to examine and live in a world that like as you said before with your crypted kind of like your theme. It's like you let mystery in. Let's look for the mystery

and not necessarily like dig it up but kind of like be in it. Experience it. Does it make the world better at the end of the day? And honestly a lot of this stuff does. makes the world more interesting. It gets people stuff to do. It's like, it's, again, very few of us are happy with just making our lawn nice every single day.

You know, there's something more interesting out there. Absolutely. And that's another, the lawn gnome. The lawn. The more famous cryptids out there. Yes. There's an entire town dedicated gnomes in Minnesota. They had just all over there, like the park in the little town.

They add to it every year. It's like, it's like, it's scary. That's kind of fun, though. I like that. Nones is a little tiny, porousful and dolls. do you think that Edgar Allen and then you wrote that whole thing about Edgar Allan Poe what was the mystery there? Was there anything

that or was it kind of just a sad truth of what it takes to be a lonely weird author? No, the mystery there for me was how does a random, not random, but like a poor, busted poet become an international phenomenon even today, right? We have a football team named after. We have shows about him every single second. There's a Christian Bale movie coming out here

any second about football. Oh, no kid. Everybody recognizes, yeah, Jillian Hanson's it too. But every single person recognizes Poe, why? He was a broke poet who wrote spooky stuff and also comedy. He wrote mostly comedy, honestly. But there's no reason why he should be as famous as he is. And for some reason he is or something about him, he's more famous than most things. And like, I don't know, he's been on The Simpsons. He's been everywhere. And that was the big, that was the big mystery for me. How does this guy go from random 19th century broke poet who was

unknown in his day, mostly, to one of the most biggest phenomenon in culture, continually, continually big phenomenon in culture. He's probably kind of upset that. like he was treated like dog shit in real life and then he died and everyone's like we loved this guy. We liked him. He was a supreme weirdo, right? And then he did die a mysterious death. That always kind of helps. And then he looks the part. I think there's something too, especially

in a, like, we really like somebody who fits the idea of what it is that they do. Like, we like that. I think like, you know, what Stephen King does, like he helps like, he made a big scary house. You know, and he lives somebody there's something to it like you know he's getting he's walking the walk and we we love that well not anymore i did follow stephen king on twitter and he said about uh about the about the world cup in katar he said if you if you need alcohol to enjoy a game you have a problem and i said

you're a steven king you're a drug addict you're an alcoholic please like do you feel that you're mystery now do you think that like how has mystery affected your life like is i want to thing that now like you as a person like do you like i don't know like do you feel like it makes you like experiencing all of these things like you like you're like experiencing all of these things Well, it sounds like you're a good guy to hang out of the bar with. That's for sure. Oh, yeah, until I get too much drink for sure. But yeah, no, I love it. It makes me go places. Like, that's a big part of all my books, even though they're research topics, they're all also travelogs at the end of day. So if I'm writing a book about a girl, I'm in every state he's been to. I'm in London visiting his stuff.

Cryptids, I'm going across the country looking at towns. It was my book about Salem Mass. I lived in Salem for a month. Like, I just go places. It literally adds to my life to go, like, I make friends as or all these book projects. So it's made my life better. And I assume it makes a lot of other people's life better. Absolutely. Well, it's definitely better to do cryptid zoology than Storm the Capitol. I'm really proud.

That's what I always say. That's what I always say. J.W. Walker, thank you so much. And also, you didn't answer sex, which cryptid? Oh, man. Hold on. I've got my, hold on. This is your wife will let you get out of jail free with this one. Yeah, because it doesn't exist, honey.

I'm going to have to say I'm going to go back to I'll take the Wolfel Minutemobile. I'll take a female werewolf. Yeah, because I don't see because it's got the good parts and you have to worry about the barbed penises. You don't got to be, you're going to worry about like a snapping weird like cloaca or anything.

Absolutely. Never bothered me. You know, it's fine. Excellent. The United States of Cryptids, a tour of American myths and monsters. J.W. Walker, check out this book. If it's just around the holiday,

season, is it not? Maybe it's a gift. Perhaps. Maybe. Honestly, that would be. I was a good idea. J.W., thank you so much for being on the show, man. You're wonderful. Thanks, man. I appreciate it everything. Yes, it was fun, for sure. Live from North Korea. All right, everyone, there it was. Our conversation with J.W. Ocker. He was very funny. Again, handsome. A lovely man. Very handsome for a cryptid attached person. He had a wife. He's married. I mean, a lot of them have wives. do that. Well, it's because it allows them to go have more free liberal fun with their buddies when they're out on the trail.

Right? I see. We're not gay. We're just out here. We're just seeking warmth. Absolutely. We're trying to be like, I'm married. I'm married to a full-blooded woman, very big woman. There's no rules when you're hunting cryptids. Nope. The United States of cryptids. A tour of American myths and monsters. Check out that book, y'all. And if you're in the Los Angeles area, come and check out me. And old big old hammy ham's Ed Larson himself. We're going to be hosting. a classy night out. Pre-New Year's Eve celebration. It's December 30th at the pack

8 p.m. It's December 30th, 8 p.m. at the pack. Tickets are still available on the website. It's all going to be cavalcade of a bunch of hoobbed, us, yelling at you, and just don't wear anything you're afraid

to get wet. That's not true. That's not true. Honestly, I hate to be wet. Why would I do that to you? Ham, Ham. you all so much for support. And I'm G. Wocker. Thank you for being on the show. And yeah, we'll just be back with you a little bit later on.

Thanks for supporting our Patreon. Thanks for you. We'll talk to you soon. Hail yourself. Hello, Nathan. Let me in your home. Good. Solations, everybody.

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