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

NARRATIVE of WARD COURIER/CONFERENCE with TED BENNETT and EVAN DAVIS, Continued


"Plus, the Native societies in South America had huge, ancient drug cults. The drugs seemed more a part of their ceremonies than in most other parts of the world. The drugs were not just to get you high; they were to you closer to whatever you perceived as your gods or your ancestral spirits. I threw it into the story that the drug was way more than just something that would get you high."


"Did you believe in the existence of this substance when you heard about it?" asked Bennett.


"I thought something new was probably out there," I said, "but I thought it would be just a rework of something old. Some hallucinogen, some upper or downer. That's all. That stuff about the ESP-effect is just what the hippie told me."


"This is a speculative question," Bennett said. "One I want to ask a paranormal investigator."


Chapter 59: Who Is Those Two Guys?, Part 59