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

It was midnight. Lys was showing all the signs of having had too long a day. She looked so tired that she was crestfallen. It was as if she had started thinking the same thing I had: that it was a waste to be in that town on that night with somebody you didn't care about and weren't interested in making love with. We left for our lodge.


We passed fellow revelers, low and gritty snowbanks, and grey lawns that would be olive-hued in the day. The massive, spectral ridge loomed over us, and I thought about the contrasts of a ski town late in the season. The hill can be white and thriving; it's spring in the village at its foot.


I still had a bit of evening left in me and felt a pang for the passing winter as well as the lost night, but it seemed wretched not to go back with Lys or to go back out without her. I know she didn't deserve any favors. I am, though, a decent person. At least I try to be.


Chapter 109: The Order of the Dragon, Part 109