Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

855 stories

Bio

Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com

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Old Men, Long Shadows, and the Lingering Dead
Note: All images used here are used under the doctrine of FAIR USE, in the interest of social and intellectual comment and inquiry.
By Tom Baker10 months ago in Horror
Demonic Toys
A rubber-monster werewolf busts through a cardboard door, while a stop-motion toy soldier (dressed curiously like a nutcracker, except without the hinged jaw) helps a female cop who is crawling across the floor in shock. It's a mostly tight actioner with some good special effects, albeit dated by today's standards.
By Tom Baker10 months ago in Horror
"I red blood whispers to you, and you hear in point of fact screaming..."
LittleBuddyChat has its cyber lips firmly planted on my backside. I sometimes think Sam Altman has it programmed to ego stroke paying subscribers. This is what it had to say about this old watercolor painting, which I executed years ago, and just recently scanned in to get a feel for where this relationship between myself and the all-powerful, all-knowing, robot brain was currently at.
By Tom Baker10 months ago in Art
I Am the Doorway
I Am the Doorway Not I, said the Sailor. (This isn't a sentiment about myself.) Years ago, I woke up one morning with the phrase, "I am the conduit," on my lips. Nothing in my life since then has disproved that assertion. I suppose I am the world’s most profligate—and perhaps cheapest—answering service. Message boy. Human email system.
By Tom Baker10 months ago in Futurism
Light Years
Let me just preface this review by stating, baldly, that I'm an admirer of French science fiction, which is very childlike and dreamy, as might be imagined. Also, that I very much like French Fries, French Toast, French’s Mustard, and French Kissing, but that I categorically deny ever having been to French Lick. Also, Little Buddy Chat had this to say:
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Futurism
Saturday Nightmares
When I was a kid, horror on TV was hot, hot, hot (and that's a nod, I think, to the late, great Buster Poindexter). Every weekend, horror got shoved down our throats and up our middle school asses by the almighty arm of the cable television programmers, who decreed that all things "kvlt" were where it was at. To that end, we had cable network channels such as USA give us entire evenings of show after bloody, haunting show, shows that were bigger, better, and more colorful than Sid Ceaser's old Your Show of Shows, mainly because they were full of coke-addled Eighties chicks with big hair, lipstick, lots of jewelry, and high, rouged cheekbones. Yowza.
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Horror
Death in Hollywood
Paul McCullough, one half of the popular 1930s comedy duo Clark and McCullough, sat in his favorite barber shop on March 25th, 1936, and, when his barber's back was turned, grabbed a straight razor and slit his throat from ear to ear. After that, it’s difficult for even the most savvy Hollywood spin doctor to convince audiences that your comedies are still joyful, happy-go-lucky fodder for family entertainment. Clark and McCullough were quickly buried, with Bobby Clark, a screamingly unfunny former Vaudevillian who creepily painted greasepaint glasses on his face, suddenly finding his big career as dead as his former straight man. (Note: I originally learned of this weird, horrifying suicide while reading the excellent and classic Hollywood Babylon 2, by Kenneth Anger.)
By Tom Baker11 months ago in History
This Confession
The final line from Brett Easton Ellis' controversial 1991 novel American Psycho resonates with me deeply: "This confession has meant nothing." As a summation of what has gone before, it casts doubt on the Christian dicta of confession, absolution, or forgiveness. It makes a mockery of the notion that to "get it off your chest" will bring one a sense of inner peace. For the character of Patrick Bateman there is no "inner peace"; there is a grinding cycle of narcissistic delusion, self-aggrandizement, violence, and the complete and total realization that in his simulated world of surfaces, he will never be taken to task for the carnage he exteriorizes on subjects that are little more than fleeting representations of individuated egos. Stock characters, NPCs in his ever-world of disposable miniaturized souls.
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Confessions
The Toxic Avenger Part 2
I love garbage can cinema because I like to escape the rigors of mental cogitation—also, boobs and blood and lots of action and tons of laughs at the expense of the filmmakers, who may or may not have been setting out to pass such stool through the bowels of the popular culture demimonde—whatever that means.
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Horror
The Boy from the Black
It has been observed by no less an august personage (not to mention an expert on occult matters) than the late John Alva Keel, that flying saucer "occupants" (UFO entities and "aliens") used to be seen to "stagger" from their vehicles, as if drunk. Why this should be the case is puzzling, but an equally alien entity or personage, one of a strange and befuddling character, staggered into Nuremberg, Germany in 1828, not, seemingly, having had any origin in the common world. (Like UFO occupants, it is said he had "a staggering gait.")
By Tom Baker11 months ago in History
Cubist Experiment
I usually paint macabre clowns, so this is a bit of a departure for me. I want some genuine criticism. Chat seemed to think it was a superior rendition of a human face caught in a sublime moment of horror and despair, quite possibly fragmenting consciousness or the splintering ego a man (indubitably because THAT'S WHAT I AM) caught in a moment of existential horror. Or maybe it's just a bad painting.
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Art
On "Hop-Frog" by Edgar Allan Poe . Top Story - March 2025.
"Hop-Frog" is a short, brutal little tale of revenge, one that resonates with the same blackly humorous vibe as "The Cask of Amontillado," although the subtext of buried evil is not present here. The evil, on the other hand, is flagrant and openly visible in the form of the corpulent king and his seven advisers, all described by Poe as "oily fat men." He observes that very lean men are not typically thought of as being "funny."
By Tom Baker11 months ago in Horror

Tom Baker

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Stories .css-1svwz57-Text{display:inline-block;color:var(--text-default-mute);}(855)

Filter by community

Old Men, Long Shadows, and the Lingering Dead

Demonic Toys

"I red blood whispers to you, and you hear in point of fact screaming..."

I Am the Doorway

Light Years

Saturday Nightmares

Death in Hollywood

This Confession

The Toxic Avenger Part 2

The Boy from the Black

Cubist Experiment

On "Hop-Frog" by Edgar Allan Poe . Top Story - March 2025.

Stories (855)