Synopsis:
In Don’t Go There, embark on a guided tour of 30 of the most dangerous and mysterious locations that we simply cannot stay away from.
Have you ever visited a forest or an abandoned building and gotten a bad vibe? There are places that are rife with rumors of hauntings, monsters, and sinister phenomena that can’t be explained. And there are just as many sites that are the confirmed home of disasters, murders, and man-made mistakes. Everyone’s heard about the Bermuda Triangle, but do you know these chilling sites?
There’s a lake tucked high in the frozen Himalayan Mountains . . . and it’s full of skeletons.Mount This mysterious mountain in California inspired the I AM cult and is said to host UFOs, bigfoots, and lizard people.Nahanni National Called the “Valley of the Headless Men,” this national park in northern Canada is famous for legends of a hidden gold mine . . . and a series of decapitated miners.Pine Best known as the home of the Jersey Devil, this desolate pine forest has also hosted pirates, the mafia, and moonshiners.Ciudad This fabled pre-Columbian “Lost City of the Monkey God” in Honduras doesn’t want to be found, and explorers seeking it have met violent ends.
Award-winning travel writer and dark history expert J. W. Ocker explores these and many more locales around the world in this fascinating compendium that will ignite curiosity . . . and perhaps inspire some dubious travel plans.
*Check out other J.W. Ocker titles I’ve reviewed here*
My Edition:
Paperback ARC provided by the publisher (Thanks, Quirk!)
My Thoughts:
I enjoy reading Ocker’s travelogues (clearly). Don’t Go There is no exception. It covers 30 different spooky places around the world (although, for what it’s worth, and probably based solely on proximity, a lot of the locations are in the US – fully half of them, in fact). There are places you’d expect on a list like this, such as Skinwalker Ranch, the Bermuda Triangle, the Salton Sea, and Centralia (see, my American is showing). There were also a few places/things I had never heard of. For example, I had no idea the number of triangles of weirdness have been identified over the years.
I appreciate the way that Ocker broke down the ‘don’t visit sites’ more or less by biome. That was a fun touch. So there are Fearsome Forests, Wretched Waters, Insane Islands, Deadly Deserts, Risky Ruins (not a biome, I know), and Spooky Snowscapes. I think that was a clever way of divvying these places up into a format that makes them really easily digestible. I think my favorite entry was on Ciudad Blanca in Honduras. Not because I hadn’t heard of it – I have. But because I learned some stuff about Douglas Preston that I didn’t know. And I’m a sucker for the Pendergast novels, so I’m always on board for reading about the authors (on that note, I’d suggest checking out The Monster of Florence by Preston and journalist Mario Spezi about their investigation of and subsequent arrests/release for the serial murders committed by the aptly-named Monster of Florence around the turn of the century – truly fascinating stuff).
I like that although Don’t Go There deals with spooky/haunted/cursed locales, I do appreciate that it doesn’t devolve into the slippery slope of dark or tragedy tourism. Because I think that stuff can get pretty heinous pretty quickly. At least this tells you ‘hey, some dark stuff happened here – maybe you want to avoid it.’ Even if the given reason is something like a curse or whatever. Like, stay the hell away from places like Aokigahara you psychos. Stop trying to catch tragedies on film. It’s gross. You’re gross.
It is worth noting that Don’t Go There is written with Ocker’s trademark humourous style still, so if that feels weird to you when dealing with curses/hauntings/etc. maybe skip this one, but I think he made it work here. He made the writing feel engaging, but not disrespectful. It was just sort of written the way someone you know might tell it to you. He skirted the line well, in my opinion.
Rating:
I just realized I use some variation on “he can be flippant at times, so if you want to be offended on account of whatever subject, probably skip this one” in basically every review of Ocker’s travelogues that I’ve done. That’s funny – clearly his occasional flippancy doesn’t bother me at all. If you want to pick this one up while helping me out, you can do so here using my affiliate link (it also helps support your local bookstores!).
Don't Go There: A Tour of the World's Most Sinister Spots
By: J.W. Ocker
Quirk Books
Published: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-68369-502-8
Hardcover, E-book, Audio
288 Pages
