Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1901 — An Eccentric Man [ARTICLE]

An Eccentric Man

His Beliefs Uncanny, His Life Weird

Columbus, Ind., claims to possess the most eccentric man in the world. This individual is John F. Zuriseller, and his particular oddity is that he believes he exists in a world inhabited by spirits. With the more commonplace workaday world he has little to do, except to draw a pension of sl3 a month from the government, besides buying coffee and meat from the Columbus grocerymen. Mr. Zuriseller talks with spirits, writes the story of their lives, revises their accounts, debates grave questions of state with them, and entertains them at his home. He is now engaged in writing a spirit bible, the first authentic volume of the kind that the spirits have yet had. In Mr. Zuriseller’s spirit world there are many different nations and tribes of spirits. There are the Deutsche, Niggerheads, French Satans, Klippery Flips, Kippery Klips, Mars Spirits, Vigerloos, and many others. These different tribes are frequently at war with each other, and sometimes their battles are fought out in Mr. Zuriseller’s yard, and he is frequently called upon by the spirit generals for advice. Mr. Zuriseller has to be careful about his well. Spirits delight to bury their dead in wells, and unless Mr. Zuriseller was prudent he would have his well full in a short time of a lot of dead spooks. But he has his well covered with tin and sheet-iron, as spirits cannot get through these coverings. Mr. Zuriseller dislikes bad spirits as much as anybody, and he kills a great many of them. All these bad spirits try to climb down in the well and die, but the tin and sheetiron is too much for them, and they Just pile on top of it until some of their friends come and take them away. Mr. Zuriseller believes that in 1896 he was ordained to write a bible for the spirits, and it is thjs work that has been engaging his mind for the past few years. His writing table is covered with partially written pages of manuscript of the book, which is headed, “Greatest Event During the Last Few Years of the Nineteenth Century—New Discovery of Talking to the Spirits, Without Aid of Visions or Dreams, as it Used to Be in Ancient Times Among the Prophets and Seers of Israel. This Discovery Had Led to the Writing of a New Book Entitled the Bible of the Spirits, and Their History.” The book explains all about spirits. It claims that there were 18 original nations of spirits, and it gives

their names and descriptions in alphabetical order. His descriptions of spirits are varying. He says that he has solved the problem as to the inhabitants of Mars, and often communicated with that planet, in which respect he is ahead of Tesla, who only talks of communicating with them. It is inhabited only by spirits, he says, and they are shaped like and about the same size as a buzzard. Although his house Is only eight feet in width and twelve feet in length, its owner manages to store away a really fine library, three gasoline stoves, cooking utensils, clothing, and other paraphernalia. In its construction alone the room is a curiosity. The entire wall is composed of two thicknesses of oak lumber, with corrugated iron between. On the side of the wall where he sleeps there are several metal tanks, three by four feet, filled with water. The roof has no tanks, but has several thicknesses of corrugated iron between the boards. His bed is perhaps the most novel piece of furniture in the house, and is simply a box two and one-half by eight feet, and is fastened to the wall about eighteen inches above the floor. It is also made of one-inch oak boards, with the corrugated iron between, and is entered through a sheet-iron door at the front end. There is a space open in the bottom to admit air. On the interior roof of the cage or cell there is a sine tank extending the entire length filled with water. On the top of the cage there are a number of tanks of water of different sizes. When he retires he places his head in a semi-circular tank. The opening which admits his head is about nine by eleven inches. Before retiring he is careful to fill it with fresh water. During the hot summer months he takes this tank to his cellar, which is fitted in exactly the same manner as the room just described. Mr. Zuriseller was born in Switzerland and was brought to this country by his father when he was 6 years old. He attended Notre Dame university for two years and was selected for his precocity as one of the candidates to go to Rome to be educated by the church for the priesthood. His father objected and he did not go. He served three years in the union army during the war and since then worked on newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere up to ten or fifteen years ago, when he settled down in his little hut in Columbus and began his career in the spirit world.—Chicago Journal.