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

Jonas and Aguirre arrive late in the day at the site of a camp in the mountain rain forest. They drive past litter, broken implements, and a collapsed tent. They park their ATVs and start walking toward a dirt-and-rubble mound at the foot of a mountain. Short, wicked-looking M4 tactical carbines are slung at their sides. Pale and panicked, a young man jumps up out of a trench as if it had been a foxhole, holding a shovel like a thrusting spear.


Aguirre swings his weapon over his back and opens his arms. "We're the cavalry. We're looking for Professor Gordon. You must be the intern."


The young man's relief is comical. "Thank God!" he says, dropping the shovel.


"Ned Aguirre," says Aguirre, stretching forth his hand. "This is Jason Jonas."


"I'm Fred Gardner," says the college kid. "I don't know what another night would have been like around here."


Chapter 87: The X-Sacrificer, Part 87