Wheeler Antabanez
| Wheeler Antabanez | |
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Wheeler Antabanez on the Passaic River
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| Born | January 31, 1977 |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Journalistic Non-Fiction |
| Notable works | gasstation thoughts, Nightshade on the Passaic |
| Website | |
| www |
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Wheeler Antabanez is the alter-ego and pen name for Montclair, New Jersey-based writer Matt Kent (born January 31, 1977). Antabanez is best known as the author of best selling special issue of Weird NJ, Nightshade on the Passaic and gasstationthoughts and The Daily Journal Of Wheeler Antabanez, published by Barricade Books.
Growing up in West Caldwell, New Jersey, Kent discovered the abandoned Essex Mountain Sanatorium near his parents’ house at a young age. He became obsessed with the decaying and damaged buildings and created a website in honor of the sanatorium. The site, ‘welcometohell.net’, later became the online home of Kent’s developing alter ego, Wheeler Antabanez.
On April 19, 2000 Kent was arrested in the lead up to the first anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre for his alter ego’s writings about the school shooting on welcometohell.
The charges were eventually dropped and Kent took welcometohell offline, transforming Antabanez’s daily journal into a book. “gasstationthoughts and the daily journal of wheeler antabanez” was published by Barricade Books, the controversial publisher of The Anarchist Cookbook and The Turner Diaries.
For two years, Antabanez traveled up and down the Passaic River, occasionally with his daughter, Star, as first mate, exploring abandoned buildings on its shores as well as the river itself. The Passaic is one of the most polluted waterways in the US and is home to the world’s largest collection of the deadly chemicals, dioxins.
Seeking out the worst possible places, Antabanez chronicles his exploration of abandoned buildings in Paterson, New Jersey, such as the old Colt Mill, which made approximately 5,000 firearms between 1836 and 1841. In addition to the river and the decaying structures that surround it, he also researched murders that involved the Passaic River, including the horrific case of Jonathan Zarate who attempted to dump the mutilated body of his 16-year-old neighbor in the river, but was thwarted by a police officer who happened to pass by at the time.
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Wikipedia