Creative History

Still called the Old Stone Mill by many locals to this day, the Newport Tower--a famed landmark in Newport, Rhode Island--sits just off the coast of Narragansett Bay in Touro Park.  It rises to a height of twenty-eight feet and is roughly circular in nature, though contrary to popular belief, it is not a true circle.  Located on a hilltop, it was once clearly visible to passing ships far out in Narragansett Bay, though construction in Newport during the twentieth century has since obscured most views of the Tower from out at sea.  It is built on land that was once owned by the family of the first Governor of Rhode Island and his eponymously named great grandson, the famous Revolutionary War traitor, Benedict Arnold. Traditionally, it has been believed that construction of the Tower occurred sometime during the 1660’s and that it was used as some sort of windmill, examples of which are common in England to this day--hence the name that many locals still use of the Old St...

  “You must dig up their bodies,” they implore.  “All must be exhumed.” Warily, George Brown stares at them.  He refuses their requests.  “I cannot desecrate the bodies of my wife and daughters.” “But you must,” the local villagers beg.  Even a local doctor, Harold Metcalf of nearby Wickford, Rhode Island, is among them.  “We must find out who among your wife and daughters is one of the undead.” For weeks the pressure on George Brown has been building.  Not only is he forced to watch his son Edwin, aged twenty years old, wasting away from the pain and suffering of tuberculosis each day right before his very own eyes, but he also faces the fear and suspicion of every person in town. Everyday his neighbors from Exeter, Rhode Island, stop by the home of local farmer Geroge Brown and they reiterate their demand.  They must dig up the bodies of his dead relatives and create an elixir from the ashes of their organs to stop the spread of the di...