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

The streets of the beachside village are packed with vehicles bearing kayaks, sailboards and surfboards. A one-story, brick-and-wood frame pub teems with activity. Its core could have been an old fishing shack, but it is flanked with additions and open decks and porches.


There is not an open seat at bar or table. An energetic waitress with an empty tray dodges the gesticulations of a sunburned young man with blond dreadlocks who stands by a full booth. Another carries plates of high-end bar food past a red-brick fireplace bearing the smoky portrait of an unusually chipper-looking Edgar Allan Poe. Every available bit of wall space here seems to be adorned with either stylized portraits of the American master himself or lurid old movie posters and illustrations depicting themes from his tales and verses: ravens, gold-bugs, sad-eyed jesters, and razor-bearing Rue Morgue primates.


Chapter 66: Who Is Those Two Guys?, Part 66