By Jessica Miller
Mason Winfield, like most boys and girls tend to be, was fascinated with the mysterious and unknown as a child. He simply maintained this interest in the supernatural well into adulthood. “I always tell people that all American kids love spooks and monsters. The real question is why I never grew out of it,” he joked.
Winfield’s matured perspective includes an appreciation for the broadness and significance of the subject of the supernatural. He recognizes that depictions of experiences in popular media can be embellished or fabricated for the sake of entertainment. But he feels that even these examples have value as a cultural snapshot of a certain time and place. “Paranormal and psychic experiences are illustrative of the human imagination if nothing else. Heck with documenting the objective validity of events. You’ll never prove almost any of the reports. Reports are human experiences and perceptions. What we’re looking at is cultural, emotional, psychological, and even spiritual. If those subjects don’t count, I don’t know what does. Paranormal and particularly psychic experiences and stories preserve our human social history, too.”
Ellicottville’s contribution to UFO and ghost lore can show that there are nearby interactions beyond the earthly and understood. He brings up the Allegany-Ellicottville UFO flaps (a flap is a common term for a cycle of perceived experiences and gossip) that circulated in the area during the late 1990’s—early 2000’s that he has written about in one of his books. Winfield says the volume of spirit encounters noted in Ellicottville is different from what could reasonably be anticipated.
“So many of the haunted villages and cities I research have a correlation to the First Nations cultures of New York. Ellicottville does not seem to have been a site of ancient significance or even inhabited before the whites moved in in the middle 1800’s, At least I can’t find any evidence that it was,” he explained. “Neither does Ellicottville seem to be situated on any major ancient trails. That doesn’t stop a good number of ghost stories developing in the village.
“I seldom think of ghostly reports as related to “spirits” since there’s no proof that much of the psychic phenomena people experience is any more intentional than a leaf falling off a tree. (It’s a manifestation.) Ellicottville is the one place I’ve ever studied that seemed to have a lot of ghost stories and yet fall far out of the patterns of the other haunted villages in the upstate. It actually made me begin to fancy that the “spirits” or whatever causes the manifestations simply loved the place so much that they never wanted to leave.”
Buffalo tourists and locals on either side of the ether can find Winfield in action during a ghost walk in East Aurora at The Roycroft Inn (40 South Grove St, East Aurora) on October 28 at 7:00 PM. Admission is $20 for adults; $10 for children ages 7-11; free for children under 7 (https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/events/the-supernatural-roycroft-ghost-walk-with-mason-winfield-east-aurora). Also on October 28 for Winfield is The Psychic Lounge at The Witches Ball (107 Delaware Ave, Buffalo) from 7:00 PM—1:00 AM. Tickets are $50 in advance; $60 at the door; $185 for VIP (https://witchesballbuffalo.com/). He also has written 15 fiction and nonfiction books with another in progress, and is starting a research organization called Spirit Way Project with Michael Bastine. Spirit Way Project will include a podcast and YouTube channel.