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

NARRATIVE of WARD COURIER/CONFERENCE with TED BENNETT, Continued


This clearly wasn't what Bennett was expecting. I wished again that he would get to his point, or at least tell me what he knew and let me comment. It reminded me of how far we had come since our first interview three years before and yet how stuck we were in the same place in other senses. His approach was like drift-net fishing: You get what you want if it's available, but the real work is separating it from what you don't.


"Why did you connect Roycroft and the Masons in that story?"


"Because it all is connected, at least on the surface. It's connected by the imagery and symbolism you can see all over that Campus."


"That story is based on some of the wildest stories about the Western occult societies in general, plus some village rumors about Roycroft."


"You referred to a conspiracy that could have lines out all over."


Chapter 120: The Hound of Heaven, Part 120