Chapter Text
“The Curious Case of Michael Wheeler”
Unsolved Oddities Magazine, Jenny Harrington, September 21st 2015
If you remember the nineties with any sense of clarity, chances are that you remember the author Michael Wheeler. Every bookstore carried his latest novel, every literary magazine clamored for his short stories, and every news station tried to get an interview. Frankly, the guy was everywhere.
His career began during his time at Northwestern University, when he penned a middle grade novella about a young girl trapped in the memories of a monster, reportedly as a birthday gift for his younger sister. After finishing the story, his sister instantly angled with publishers, and a few months later, Michael Wheeler, age 20, signed a contract with Random House publishing.
Wheeler began to pour out stories, not minding genres or demographics. After his debut novella, Estelle’s Adventures in Nightmareland, gave all 90’s kids PTSD, he moved on to an epic sci-fi saga, Stranger Things.
A theorized exploration of Wheeler’s own childhood in the troubled town of Hawkins, Indiana, Stranger Things followed a rag-tag group of nerds— Maisie, Donny, Mark, Leo, and Liam— as they came face-to-face with great danger in Montauk, New York. This work, featuring a total of five books, was Wheeler’s best known, and has recently even been optioned for a Netflix show.
The books were everywhere— airports, shopping malls, high school English classrooms, you name it. If you didn’t read Stranger Things as an outcast teen in the 90’s, something was considered wrong with you.
Oddly, however, we can find the most eerie aspects of Wheeler’s story in his realistic fiction rather than his horror. His first realistic fiction story was published after Stranger Things 1: Danger in the Dungeons, in 1992. A heartfelt and raw depiction of childhood trauma, Papa was the tale of an abused young girl’s adoption and acclimation into society. Some find this to be the beginning of Michael Wheeler’s mystery, as the dedication read only: “To Jim and Joyce. You know why.” Conjectures were made, forgotten, and then remembered four years later.
Wheeler then began to carve out a more female audience with his one and only screenplay, The Buds of Roses (dir. Jonathan Byers), a tender romantic comedy where childhood sweethearts Alexis and Tom reconnect after a long and difficult separation.
Celebrated for its portrayal of the reality of growing with someone, the movie quickly became a cult classic. It holds up into the modern day, with the depiction of Tom’s gay friend Kevin being unexpectedly compassionate and opening Wheeler’s path for his later activism during the AIDS crisis.
Until 1995, Wheeler’s work was considered optimistic. No one can pin down the exact cause of the change, but between the release of The Buds of Roses in June 1994 and Stranger Things 4: Meeting of the Minds in January 1995, Wheeler switched his narrative ending style from Happily Ever After to something much more bittersweet.
In June 1995, Wheeler released a collection of poetry and short stories, titled Evangeline, and became known as a true romantic. They continued to play on the themes of childhood romance, but also loss, loneliness, and mourning. The depth of the words betrayed Wheeler’s age, with lines such as, “Now I attend my friends’ baby showers with a wedding ring of shadow” keeping all Sinead-O’-Connor-listening young women under the young writer’s thumb.
After the release of Evangeline, almost everyone was certain that Wheeler had indeed lost his childhood sweetheart. The intimacy of the text was strong enough to lead many to the conclusion, let alone interviews where he hinted that he was “off the dating market.” He was, in short, made to be the quintessential tragic figure of the 90’s.
After the culmination of Stranger Things, Wheeler made only one brief return to the world of mass appeal fiction, writing a novella in which two teens carefully work to bring down the United States government. Possibly one of Wheeler’s controversial pieces, most dismissed the book as being anti-patriotic, especially when it comes to the military.
It was all going good for Wheeler. His next two novels, lyrical magical realist Return from Afar and gutting coming-of-age romance Three Inches More, were both optioned for movies almost immediately after release. Critics liked his work. Audiences liked his work. Praise flooded in from all corners of the world, with most of his stories being translated into more than twenty languages each.
Then, his swan song. “Orpheus.”
“Orpheus” was a short story that thought it was a poem. Or maybe a poem that thought it was a short story. Regardless, reading it was like pricking your finger on Sleeping Beauty’s spinning wheel. It was a 10,000 word ramble of a young man who had lost the love of his life, and slowly began to devolve into madness, believing that she was still alive somewhere. It ended with a suicide and the unforgettable line, “I pulled spider-web fine silver across my wrists, watching crimson liquid spread across them, and smiled, knowing my eyes would be opened.” Critics raved over it, naming it the single best short story of the decade. It was published in October 1997.
By November 7, 1997, Michael Wheeler had declared a missing person, and the courts found the poem convincing enough to be a suicide note. The beautiful story the world had continued an exploration of the novelist’s favorite themes had been a cry for help, and no one had heard it.
That was what made most sense. It’s how any logical person would process the information.
But not everyone is logical.
The rumors circulated because of little things. The allusions in Wheeler’s writing— Evangeline, searching in vain for her lost lover; Orpheus, following her to the ends of the world; Sinead O’ Connor’s “Jackie”, becoming a ghost before letting her lover go; Edgar Allen Poe, drinking rather than accepting. Not a single character killed themself. Each kept trying to find some other way.
Those were the artistic, that suggested he keep trying to run away, become a wanderer.
Then there were the conspiracy theorists. Michael Wheeler was raised in Hawkins, Indiana, a city once called “The doorway to Hell” while Wheeler was in high school. He was in the same class with a boy who went missing himself and returned, good as new. He wrote about how much he hated the military, after living himself under military occupation. The town, combined with Wheeler’s style of morose and fantastical writing, led many to believe that something was afoot.
The conspiracy theorists believed Wheeler had crossed the military with his great love, and she had to go into hiding. They conjectured that, beaten down by his own loneliness, Wheeler penned “Orpheus” to consider his decision, and decided that a normal life wasn’t worth anything if he was without her.
The chances that Wheeler died any way other than death by suicide are rare. Even his own sister, Nancy Wheeler, wrote in his Boston Herald obituary that he was “troubled” and, if Michael Wheeler were still alive, he wouldn’t want anyone to know.
So really, we should remember Wheeler through his writing, not his mystery. We should remember the artist likened to a modern-day Poe, who changed, if only briefly, the landscape of contemporary literature. We should remember a writer who wrote with compassion and hope, even when he knew cynicism and dejection would be more accepted. We should remember that there was once a young writer who would follow his love across the Earth and heavens.