The Charlatan is a fifteen thousand word story based on actual events which took place in Jaffrey NH. during 1918. For some time, people in the area saw mysterious lights from Mount Monadnock which they feared were signal lights from German spies to boats in the Atlantic Ocean sixty miles away. The Department of Justice had agents in the area investigating the lights, when in August of 1918, Dr. Dean was found stuffed down a well on his farm after he asked to speak with a federal agent. His farm had a spectacular view of the mountain, and it was speculated he had information about the lights. At the same time Dr. Dean’s body was discovered, his good friend and prominent citizen in Jaffrey, Charles Rich, showed up with a black eye. He said he was kicked by his horse. The timing was certainly suspicious. Charles Rich was a Mason and the town of Jaffrey polarized Catholic and Protestant over his black eye. The Protestants believed Rich innocent and the Catholics believed him implicated with a Catholic night watchman seeing his horse at the time he said he was kicked. The murder is unsolved to this day, and recently, the family of a good friend of Charles Rich’s paid $20,000 dollars to the Jaffrey Historical Society to make sure that doesn’t change. This is a wonderful unknown story. I have the prose story I can send you & I need someone to put it into screenplay form to sell it to a studio. |