By Kate Bartlett
At 7pm on Saturday, June 21, Griffis Sculpture Park hosts “The Shapeshifters Are Out!” – a strolling/storytelling event led by author-researcher Mason Winfield. Join in the glow of the Summer Solstice for an unforgettable evening of supernatural tales and accounts from the colorful and unique traditions of the First Nations people of Western New York.
Door” (1997), was a regional sensation. Its title
tributes the Seneca Nation of Western New York
whose historic nickname was “Keepers of the
Western Door.”
“The Shapeshifters Are Out!” is no recital from classic folklore. It is a short nature-walk with storytelling stops based on the often hair-raising accounts of living witnesses. It is paranormal reports in which the figures of Native supernatural traditions are alive: witches, ghosts, curses, shamans, and those intriguing “Little People.”
“A lot of people think a ghost story is a ghost story,” says Winfield. “They don’t consider that there could be a cultural component. First Nations folklore and paranormal reports are quite distinctive.”
The telling of stories is surely humanity’s oldest art, and Mason Winfield, upstate New York’s “supernatural historian”, has had a lot of practice. His company Haunted History Ghost Walks (incorporated 2003) designs tours and events based around the upstate supernatural and paranormal legacy. (“‘Paranormal’ does not mean ‘supernatural,’” Winfield insists. “It includes it.”) He has written 20 books to date and led countless tours over the past three decades. He also hears a lot of stories. He interviews thousands of people a year.
East Aurora resident Mason Winfield studied Classics and English at Denison University in Granville, Ohio and earned his Master’s degree in English from Boston College. Saying he has an artist’s “spacey” temperament, Winfield calls himself “more a lit-man than a ghost-guy.” (“But a good lit Master’s teaches you how to do research on basically anything,” he confides.) He goes on occasional bouts of what he calls “deep-dives” into specific paranormal topics. “Every once in a while, I catch up on whatever I missed in the last five years. Right now, I’m on an ‘earth mysteries’ kick.”
Winfield taught tennis and skiing for a few years after college, then taught English at The Gow School in South Wales. “It was an incredible 13 years,” he says. But he had another interest: the paranormal and supernatural. A hobby turned into a career.
His first book “Shadows of the Western Door” (1997) was a regional sensation. Its title tributes the Seneca Nation of Western New York whose historic nickname was “Keepers of the Western Door.” He kept to his direction and to date has published 20 books and formed a walking tour company that, 22 years later, employs six “enthusiastic and knowledgeable” storytellers to help him lead ghost walks in several locations around our region, including East Aurora, Buffalo, and Allentown.
Mason Winfield lectures throughout the year and finds it invigorating to take people along on his “paranormal deep-dives.” At noon on June 21, a busy day for him, he addresses a conference at Graestone Manor in Gasport on “Crop Circles, UFOs, and Ancient Sacred Sites.”
Winfield has been a guest on countless TV, radio, and podcast programs. He designed and hosted “The Phantom Tour” (2003), a two-hour TV program/DVD on upstate New York’s haunted history and has appeared on a number of major network programs.
By far his favorite aspect of a tour or talk is what Winfield calls, “the light ‘em up moment”. “It’s the same for any teacher of anything,” he says. “By that I mean that point when everybody just goes quiet at learning something that blows their minds–that ‘Oh wow!’ moment. I never forget how lucky I am to have this second spin to my work. Most authors never get to reach people other than through their books. I get to see the effect live.”
Winfield’s first appearance at Griffis Sculpture Park has been in the works for a while. “Their event promoter Doug Sitler is an old friend,” says Winfield. “He’s long thought one of my tours might go well at the Park. What’s incredible is that the day our schedules lined up fell in the aura of the Summer Solstice. Sharing stories on sacred land at a sacred time is a real privilege.” No wonder the Shapeshifters would be out!
Visit griffissculpturepark.org and masonwinfield.com. Follow on FB and Twitter. Admission to the event is $20 for adults, $10 for children 7-11. Tickets are available on site the night of, or on Eventbrite. Griffis Sculpture Park is located N. of Ellicotville at 6902 Mill Valley Rd, East Otto, NY 14729.