Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

854 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

Stories (854)

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Dead, My Queen
One of the most formative memories of my life is the pilot episode of Ripley's Believe it or Not!, which featured a scary-as-hell old television actor named Jack Palance, who had a weird, craggy, ominous air about him. The show itself began with some amusing animations and a weird, jazzy, yet undeniably creepy theme, wherein a melody blown on trumpet seemed to be most prominent, (it still puts me in the mind of snake-charming), and the images held the promise that frogs could lift barbells. I probably watched it in the run down, slightly smelly upstairs apartment of an aunt I no longer speak with.
By Tom Baker5 years ago in Horror
Pig Mask
I sat in the empty hall, stone white corridor running down-- drawing a limitless face (why limitless? Am I having you on?)
By Tom Baker5 years ago in Poets
To the Reader
Shadows danced across the wall. Miriam followed the hunched old woman down the hall, to a cramped, dark, smelly little chamber. A fire was crackling in the grate. From the ceiling, strange roots and weird bundles of nostrums hung rfrom the wall. A round table sat in the center of the darkness. The old woman sat herself at the table. Her great, weird, yellowish gaze looked out from above her hooked, warty nose. In this lighting, thought Miriam, her flesh seems to be the color of old, green cheese.
By Tom Baker5 years ago in Longevity
Arthur Rimbaud: "After the Flood" and "Flowers" (1886)
After the Flood After the idea of the flood had receded, a rabbit paused in the clock flowers and the holy clover, and said his prayers through the rainbow of the Spider's web.
By Tom Baker5 years ago in Poets
"An Incomprehensible Adventure, Attested to by an Entire Province"
It is hard to believe that it was less than a century ago that, in many parts of France, we poor, weak fools still held fast to the superstitious belief that it was only a matter of giving our souls over to the devil, enacted in rituals both cruel and fanatic, for us to get everything we wanted from this diabolical personage; and it is not more than a century ago that the adventure that we are going to tell about occured in one of our southern provinces, where it is still attested to today on the official histories of two cities and furthermore, covered with the most heartfelt personal testimonies to convince the skeptical. The reader may believe it, or may not; we speak only after having verified it; certainly we cannot guarantee it as fact, but we certify to him that more than one hundred thousand souls did believe it, and that more than fifty thousand can still attest today the authenticity with which it is recorded.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Horror
The Woman and the Windswept Plain
I was carrying a clay pot across the plain. Behind me, a prairie wife from 1902 was walking briskly along, her voice lost in the moaning gale.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Poets
Beachfront Amusements
The rooming house smelled of bug spray and trapped air. "Get a window open in here. That's the ticket." He threw open the large bay window overlooking the surf. Outside, he could hear the rumble of the water against the rocks. It felt the way his heart felt right now, hammering in his chest with maleficent energy.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Horror
Hell's Bells
My favorite mental escape has been, as of late, coming home after the gym, and popping on my audio book of The Hellbound Heart, the quintessential horror novella of the mid-1980's that inspired the long-running Hellraiser horror franchise, making macabre wunderkind Clive Barker into an international celebrity and a bestselling author, as well as a much-applauded director. (He's also a graphic artist, and began his career as such.)
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Horror
Justine (Chapter 7)
The poor, bedraggled Justine made her way to Marcel, a town situated just outside of Paris, a suburb for the affluent. It was here that, broken, bent and bleeding, she made her inquiries as to where, "In the name of sweetest mercy, kindness and charity, I might find a doctor!" She was directed by the servants at an inn to the home of one Rodin, a neighborhood surgeon known for the astonshig efficacy of his ministrations.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Filthy
Watch This Mother Burn
George Floyd was tried, convicted and sentenced to death on a street in Minneapolis. Allegedly for an act of forgery. He was executed not by electric chair or rope, although you might argue his death at the hands of a homicidal cop was a modern day act of lynching; instead, he was put to death by literally being sat on by a fine, upstanding representative of the American Establishment; one sworn, ironically, to "serve and protect."
By Tom Baker6 years ago in The Swamp
Fireworks (1947)
Fireworks is a short avant garde film by legendary cinematic auteur cum black magician Kenneth Anger, whose notoriety was secured by the two-volume history of Tinseltown sleaze and tragedy he published in the mid-Seventies, the classic volumes Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon 2.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Filthy
"Always Catch Me the Same Way," and "The Complacent Spouse"
ALWAYS CATCH ME THE SAME WAY There are few beings in the world as libertine as the Cardinal of ... whose name you will allow me to conceal, while he still lives, healthy and vigorous. His Eminence has made arrangements in Rome with one of those women whose unofficial trade is to supply the debauched with the necessities to feed their passions: every morning she brings him a new, comely wench to defile; but, like many of his fellow countrymen, he indulges only in bumstuffery; all the better that the prostitute may ply her trade, still daisy-fresh as as a vestal virgin, with a new, more decent, yet still thoroughly debauched old rake hell.
By Tom Baker6 years ago in Filthy

Tom Baker

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Dead, My Queen

Pig Mask

To the Reader

Arthur Rimbaud: "After the Flood" and "Flowers" (1886)

"An Incomprehensible Adventure, Attested to by an Entire Province"

The Woman and the Windswept Plain

Beachfront Amusements

Hell's Bells

Justine (Chapter 7)

Watch This Mother Burn

Fireworks (1947)

"Always Catch Me the Same Way," and "The Complacent Spouse"

Stories (854)