The Manitous

From the rich oral culture of his own Ojibway Indian heritage, Basil Johnston presents a collection of legends and tales depicting manitous, mystical beings who are divine and essential forces in the spiritual life of his people.

Rarely accessible beyond the limits of its people, Ojibway mythology is as rich in meaning and mystery, as broad, as deep, and as innately appealing as the mythologies of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and other civilizations. In Ojibway Heritage, Basil Johnston sets forth the broad spectrum of his people’s life, legends, and beliefs. Stories to be read, enjoyed, dwelt on, and freely interpreted, their authorship is perhaps most properly attributed to the tribal storytellers who have carried on the oral tradition which Basil Johnston records and preserves in this book.

The Ojibway Indians were first encountered by the French early in the seventeenth century along the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior. By the time Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized them in The Song of Hiawatha, theyøhad dispersed over large areas of Canada and the United States, becoming known as the Chippewas in the latter. A rare and fascinating glimpse of Ojibway culture before its disruption by the Europeans is provided in Ojibway Ceremonies by Basil Johnston, himself an Ojibway who was born on the Parry Island Indian Reserve. Johnston focuses on a young member of the tribe and his development through participation in the many rituals so important to the Ojibway way of life, from the Naming Ceremony and the Vision Quest to the War Path, and from the Marriage Ceremony to the Ritual of the Dead. In the style of a tribal storyteller, Johnston preserves the attitudes and beliefs of forest dwellers and hunters whose lives were vitalized by a sense of the supernatural and of mystery.

In the summer of 1974 Byron Dix discovered in Vermont the first of many areas in New England believed to be ancient Native American ritual sites. Dix and coauthor James Mavor tell the fascinating story of the discovery and exploration of these many stone structures and standing stones, whose placement in the surrounding landscape suggests that they played an important role in celestial observation and shamanic ritual.

For those who are looking to get-away-from-it-all camping & hiking summer vacation on four uninhabited Lake Michigan Islands, this book describes a delightful mixture of hikes along secluded beaches, through semi-wilderness forest, & sites of abandoned farms & ghost towns. North Manitou & South Manitou are part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore while High & Garden Islands are administered by Michigan's Department of Natural Resources. Histories of the islands are included. Three of the four islands once had small towns & were farmed by nineteenth-century German & Scandanavian immigrants. One was the site of an early twentieth-century communal religious colony where the sexes lived separately. Another is rich in Indian lore with over 2,000 Indians buried there. Today, except for a few historic buildings & ranger residences, the islands are rapidly returning to wilderness.Included are detailed trail maps for each island & 230 photographs divided between historical prints & contemporary pictures. Trail information includes trail length, hiking time, points of interest along or near the trails. Also included are suggestions on what to bring, the best times to visit, how to get to each island & suggested hiking itineraries.

The acclaimed author of The Orenda gives us a powerful and poignant look into the last moments of Charlie Wenjack, a residential school runaway trying to find his way home. An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School. Too late, he realizes just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and ultimately offering him a type of comfort on his difficult journey back to the place he was so brutally removed from.

An ancient vengeful spirit attempts to return through the body of a terrified young woman in this horror classic by an award-winning “master of the genre” (Rocky Mountain News). Phony psychic and conman Harry Erskine never really believed in the occult until Karen Tandy approached him with a rapidly growing tumor on her neck, complaining of dark and disturbing dreams. When the mass is revealed by doctors to contain something living, the stakes skyrocket—not only for Karen and Harry but for all humanity. Something terrible is returning from the shadows to which it has been confined for centuries—a Native American monstrosity determined to destroy every vestige of the white race that oppressed and preyed upon America’s Indians. And unless a motley group of ill-prepared defenders can harness an ancient native magic, there will be no stopping the malevolent shaman’s terrible rebirth—and no escaping the wholesale carnage it will engender. The Manitou introduced the great Graham Masterton to the canon of horror, instantly placing him among the genre’s elite. A longtime favorite for its bold originality, unrelenting creepiness, supernatural shocks, and otherworldly surprises that would have made H. P. Lovecraft proud, Masterton’s classic continues to stand tall alongside Stephen King’s Carrie, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, and other unforgettable literary horror debuts.

A self-proclaimed psychic investigates a deadly plague that creates talking corpses in this chilling horror novel by the author of Blind Panic. Virus expert Anna Grey is disturbed when a dying patient is wheeled past her lab vomiting fountains of blood and screaming like a banshee. To make matters worse, when she examines the man’s corpse, she could swear she hears him whisper: “Get it out of me.” John Patrick Bridges is dead. He’s definitely dead. But if he’s dead—how is he talking? Anna wonders if she’s going mad. But then a second man hemorrhages and dies; yet Anna hears him whisper, “Please help me.” There is no such thing as demons, Anna tells herself. But cynical fortune-teller Harry Erskine knows otherwise, and a series of extremely disturbing events are forcing him from his Miami home towards the bereaved Anna, who does not yet know the evil she is facing . . . Praise for Graham Masterton “God, he’s good.” —Stephen King “One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.” —Peter James “Suspenseful and tension-filled. . . . All the finesse of a master storyteller.” —Guardian (UK) “One of Britain’s finest horror writers.” —Daily Mail (UK) “You are in for a hell of a ride.” —Grimdark Magazine