Twelve Nights at Rotter House

It's easy to recognize Ocker as a future master of madness after this thrilling haunted house trip.--Fangoria Magazine

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he's carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country's most haunted places, after haunting them himself.

When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for 13 nights, he believes he's finally found the location that will bring him a bestseller. As with his other gigs, he sets rules for himself: no leaving the house for any reason, refrain from outside contact, and sleep during the day.

When Thomas Ruth, Felix's oldest friend and fellow horror film obsessive, joins him on the project, the two dance around a recent and unspeakably painful rough-patch in their friendship, but eventually fall into their old rhythms of dark humor and movie trivia. That's when things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement. Felix realizes the book he's writing, and his very state of mind, is tilting from nonfiction into all out horror, and the shocking climax answers a question that's been staring these men in the face all along: In Rotter House, who's haunting who?

J.W. Ocker is the Edgar Award-winning author of spooky travelogues, kid's books, and novels, including Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe, A Season with the Witch, and Death and Douglas. Ocker's work has appeared in The Boston Globe, CNN, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Rue Morgue, and other places people stick writing. He's from Maryland but has lived in New Hampshire for a decade.