Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

858 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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Rapt in Plastic
1993 was the year we discovered not who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)—we had already learned that a year or two previously, if memory serves. After her killer was revealed, her homicidally incestuous entanglement with demon-possessed father Leland (Ray Wise) came to an end, leaving the series, which had hinged on this particular salient plot point, feeling adrift, and soon to be given the unceremonious axe. What was left over, the remains, though not as their mysterious, tragic, all-American, blue-tinged beauty Laura might suggest, were not washed up on a riverbank, wrapped in plastic, but would go on to become one of the cult hit television oddities of all time.
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Horror
Rock 'n' Roll Highschool
Riff Randell (actress P.J. Soles) likes to rock ’n’ roll — that much is safe to say. And in this cult hit from 1979, she does her rocking with the help of those lovable lunkheads The Ramones (who, according to singer — the late frog-legged crooner Joey Ramone — once collectively pissed in a beer before handing it to John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon). She’s ensconced at Vince Lombardi High, a school where even Mötley Crüe might feel at home, thanks to all the “smokin’ in the boys room.”
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Beat
Superman Volume 4: Psi-War
Superman has saved the world so many times that it’s practically de rigueur for the Red and Blue Son of Krypton to come to our defense when, say, Brainiac comes flying down with his tentacled horrors to try and shrink Metropolis the same way he did Kandor — which, apparently, Superman keeps under a bell jar in the Fortress of Solitude. (Which, by the way, the U.S. government wants to send inspectors into, just to make sure Supes isn’t secretly stockpiling weapons. Superman pleads the Fifth, but maybe he is stockpiling something. Although, beyond Martha Kent’s Dutch apple pie, I can’t imagine what.)
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Geeks
Spider Baby
Mantan Moreland, who was cast in Hollywood flicks in the Thirties as a "Step ’n Fetchit" stereotype in films that would simply not cut it in today’s era of Woke (to put it mildly), looks in at a window after driving his motorbike (if I remember correctly) out to the godforsaken, dust-choked, hardscrabble back hills of sunny L.A. Suddenly, the window—like a giant glass jaw—clamps down on the luckless Moreland. A mysterious and quite clearly insane and very bad actress–cum–Sixties teenybopper comes forward, twin butcher knives in each hand. She crosses her arms in a gesture calculated to call to mind the mandibles of a giant spider. She says:
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Horror
Demonoid: Messenger of Death
Behold! The poster art promised pure, molten heavy-metal hell—a horned warrior, sword raised to the void, a shrieking cosmic face frozen in eternal terror. It looked like a lost Manowar album, or the forbidden sketch on the back of a high school notebook, drawn by a kid who carved pentagrams into his desk with a compass.
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Horror
The Fortunate Feint ("L’Heureuse Feinte")
"Pick your death! Bullet or poison?" The maniacal husband held out a glass of squeezed lemon in one hand, a pistola in the other. Before him, Madame de Guissac recoiled in horror on her couch.
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Fiction
The Gascon's Dinner Bill
Okay, there’s this Gascon, see—I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s something big in Louis the Fourteenth’s time. He gets a check for a hundred and fifty pistoles, see? And that’s a fair chunk of cabbage. So he goes to the minister and says, he says, “I need cashed out, doc. You dig me?”
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Fiction
Daddy's Deadly Darling (a.k.a. Pigs)
🐖 Part One: A Pig’s Appetite and a Lady’s Touch One of the most inhospitable things I can think of is inviting someone over to dinner simply to bash in their skull and, when they fall over into the gravy, drag them outdoors to the hog shed, strip them, gut them like a fish, hang their bloody carcass up by a meat hook, and then feed their innards—eventually the whole carcass (what can't be put to other purposes)—to pigs.
By Tom Baker5 months ago in Horror
The Book
He came to the city in the evening. The streets were narrow and led always upward. At the top, there was the library. The librarian waited for him at the door. He was very old and thin. Without a word, he turned and walked inside.
By Tom Baker6 months ago in Fiction
Cradle of Death
What wouldn’t a mother do? If she was truly committed to saving the life of her sick baby, apparently, next to nothing. In this Season One episode of the always excellent "Friday the Thirteenth: The Series," a woman named Leslie Kent (Lynn Cormack, in a role with a sort of suburban evil queen aspect to it) with a coffin-like cradle and her weak, easily dominated husband seek to preserve the life of a sick infant (read: changeling child) by hunting down and murdering folks. Near a body of water.
By Tom Baker6 months ago in Horror
Star Trek TOS: The Galileo Seven
"The Galileo Seven" is classic Star Trek, a nail-biter featuring a crash-landing by the away team on a hostile alien world—a nightmarish place where huge, shambling bear-creatures, seen only from behind, attack the stranded shuttle crew under the command of Spock. The heart of the episode lies in the interplay between Spock's will to command, his unshakable devotion to logic (here revealed not as innate, but as something he must consciously practice and struggle to maintain), and his need to “humanize” his leadership. Boma, the only Black man aboard the shuttle, takes exception to Spock’s seemingly callous, machine-like demeanor (he even uses that word as an insult). Inside, though, Spock shows insecurity: a constant battle between fear and logic, duty and compassion.
By Tom Baker6 months ago in Futurism
LE SERPENT "The Snake"
At the dawn of the last century, everyone in Dijon knew Madame la Présidente de C—. She was the belle of the town: all dimples, lace, and painted smiles, with that same little serpent slithering across her lap like a favored lapdog. She would pet it in public, let it curl against her breasts as though it were her child—or her lover.
By Tom Baker6 months ago in Fiction

Tom Baker

Bio

Stories .css-1svwz57-Text{display:inline-block;color:var(--text-default-mute);}(858)

Filter by community

Rapt in Plastic

Rock 'n' Roll Highschool

Superman Volume 4: Psi-War

Spider Baby

Demonoid: Messenger of Death

The Fortunate Feint ("L’Heureuse Feinte")

The Gascon's Dinner Bill

Daddy's Deadly Darling (a.k.a. Pigs)

The Book

Cradle of Death

Star Trek TOS: The Galileo Seven

LE SERPENT "The Snake"

Stories (858)