The book, Dead and Buried in Southland, included 150 entries with stories ranging from cannibalism to Minnie Dean.
Esler had been collecting information about cemeteries and southern history for a while and always had a vested interest in those topics.
‘‘Late last year I thought I’d get some of those stories about people disappearing and dying and put them together in a book.’’
He said his favourite story from the book was about elephants buried across Southland.
‘‘These are circus elephants that have died at sea on the way to Australia . . . they’re thrown overboard and bob around like a cork for a while.’’
The first washed up at Oreti Beach in the 1930s and the second at Stewart Island in the 1950s.
He estimated there were at least three buried in Southland in Riversdale, Riverton and Invercargill.
‘‘Could be more but that’s the number I’ve got.’’
He found some of these stories by putting word out last year that he was looking for information and people phoned him.
‘‘I also read a lot of biographies on local histories. There’s things you just pick up, little snippets of information as you go.’’
Continued research meant ‘‘one story often led to another’’, Mr Esler said.
The project only started in November last year, which he admitted was a quick turnaround.
‘‘Normally a book takes a couple of years to write, but because I had most of the information available it wasn’t all that difficult to put together.’’
He found the responses to the book ‘‘really good’’, and had sold about 250 copies.
‘‘I’ve got the rest of the stock here and that’ll probably trickle out over the next year.’’
One of the most well-known stories covered in his book was that of Minnie Dean, the only woman to be hanged in New Zealand.
‘‘That’s probably the best known of all the stories.’’
Minnie Dean was infamous for committing infanticide during the 1880s before being hanged at the old Invercargill Gaol in 1895.
She went without a headstone for a while before receiving a permanent one. The circumstances of its installation were a mystery.
‘‘The irony that she gets a headstone but the children she killed were buried in the unmarked paupers’ section in the Eastern cemetery,’’ he said.
He found the Minnie Dean story to have a ‘‘certain injustice’’, because the children she killed did not get any recognition.
