Mason Winfield

Author:
Author, teacher, storyteller, and supernatural historian Mason Winfield studied English and Classics at Denison University, earned a master’s degree in British literature at Boston College, and studied poetry and fiction at SUNY Buffalo with professor emeritus and MacArthur grant recipient Irving Feldman. He has written or edited fourteen books, including the regional sensation “Shadows of the Western Door” (1997) and “Iroquois Supernatural,” co-authored with Michael Bastine, on the traditions of the Six Longhouse Nations (Inner Traditions International/Bear & Company, 2011). Several of his surveys of upstate folklore and paranormal tradition may be found at the website of Western New York Wares: www.buffalobooks.com. He may be reached at www.masonwinfield.com.

An anatomically perfect human jaw fashioned of diamond-hard quartz crystal is uncovered at an Ohio burial mound and sold on the underground antiquities market. Shortly after, three pothunters are found dead.

A mysterious new drug suspected of South American origin surfaces in Buffalo, NY. Its unprecedented psycho-tropic effects include the momentary activation of ESP. 

Blind, speechless, emaciated street people start appearing in many parts of the world. An urban legend-cycle forms around them, and the name of a murderous old cult, “the Whistlers” attaches to them.

An archaeological team at a Mayan site reports finding a bizarre artifact and vanishes. 

An upstate schoolteacher’s book of New York legends and folklore foreshadows these developments and more. 

   These are the threads – plus his affair with a maddening woman – that draw narrator Ward Courier into the international adventure of occultism, terror, Native American tradition and onrushing prophecy that is Mason Winfield’s anticipated new novel THE WHISTLERS. By the time the picture of THE WHISTLERS becomes clear, we are ready to believe in a sinister conspiracy that could predate Atlantis and even hail from another world.

The Whistlers

I could hear it sizzle as it went over me: another errant, spinny forehand. I shook my head and smiled. I had asked for this. The woman was incorrigible.


It was three on a brilliant, still, warm afternoon, with just enough clouds in the sky to cut the glare. It was another win for spring in Erie County.


I had scheduled a hitting session with Lys at a two-court complex along Olean Road in the shadow of a railroad overpass. They were the town's best public courts, with new nets and a just-refinished surface. The atmosphere was also inspiring. The green eastern ridge of the Cazenovia Creek Valley was just visible from the southern end of either court. To our northwest was a grassy baseball diamond and, under some shade trees, the low bungalow-style buildings of the town pool, a month from opening for the season.


Chapter 28: Lys No Z, Part 28