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

"Why don't you go sleep in your own bed?" I said, rolling over.


She went over to her side of the same bed and lay there twenty seconds. Then she leaned up on an elbow and gave me a pinch on the left butt. She was mighty strong for her build, and she got enormous torque into a pinch. Martial arts had to be part of her training.


"You really better cut that out," I said.


She gave me a pinch in the ribs, then another on the right hamstring, and that one really hurt. I spun up furiously, grabbed her wrists, pushed her down on her back, and leaned over her. She was smiling. "This is gonna stop right now," I said. "Or I'm leaving."


She started struggling under me, breaking out of my half-serious grasps, giving me little pokes and prods and pinches. I pinned her effectively, spread out. "Will you cut that out? Will you let me sleep?"


"OK," I said. "Now let's cut this out."


Chapter 110: The Order of the Dragon, Part 110