Show Notes:
In September of 2001, Kevin Manis made a purchase at an estate sale in Portland, Oregon from the home of a woman who died at the age of 103. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence since Kevin was an antiques dealer who owned a shop.
Part of that purchase was an antique wine cabinet. When Kevin opened the wine cabinet he found a pair of 1920s pennies, locks of hai bound with cord, a gold colored wine goblet, a dried rosebud, a candle holder, and a small granite statue with the Hebrew word “shalom” engraved on it.
Weird things started happening in the store, such as lightbulbs breaking, doors randomly locking, smells of ammonia, and disembodied screams.
He brought the wine cabinet to his shopped and placed it in the basement, with the intent to clean the wine cabinet to be gifted to his mother as a birthday present. He had a few errands to run first, and so he left the shop.
After about a half-hour, Kevin received a call from his salesperson who was hysterical and convinced someone had broken into the shop, was breaking glass, and swearing. After telling her to call the police Kevin’s phone died. When he arrived back at the shop, he found the gates locked.
After going into the shop, he found his employee in a corner of his office sobbing. Kevin then ran downstairs to discover the smell of cat urine and the lights not working. After investigating, Kevin discovered that all the lights in the basement had shattered. His employee didn’t come back.
Kevin, not connectin the dots, gifted the box to his mother for her birthday on October 31, 2001. When Kevin stepped out of the room to answer a phonecall, his mother suffered a stroke after opening the box.
One interview found said that his mother opened the box and felt a cold air rush from the box before starting to suffer from the effects of the stroke. Multiple employees and the mother (who lived, btw) felt like the box was looking at them or was a source of evil.
His mother was temporarily paralyzed (but is now doing much better). While visiting his mother in the hospital his mother was able to communicate she hated her birthday gift. No gift. Hate gift.
Kevin decided it was time to get rid of the box:
- Gifted to his sister who returned the box after a week, complaining the doors wouldn’t stay closed
- Brother and wife, who gave it back after 3 days. Brother reported smells of jasmine while his wife reported smells of cat urine
- Kevin gave it to his girlfriend who insisted it be sold after having it to two days
- The box was sold to a middle aged couple. AFter three days, the box showed up on the steps of the shop with a note that read “This has a bad darkness”
Kevin decided to take the wine box home while figuring out what to do with it. It was at this time he started having dreams where, while walking with a friend, he would turn to the friend and notice an evil about them before the friend turned into a demonic old hag who would then beat him. Kevin often woke up with bruises.
It took one night when Kevin had his sister, brother, and sister in law stay at his house. They reported having Kevin’s nightmare the night before… and while in possession of the wine cabinet. It was at this point Kevin finally made the connection.
For about a week after the conversation, this is when the dark figures in people’s peripheral started showing up. So he put the cabinet in storage. That night the fire alarm went off in the unit. When he went to investigate, Kevin found no signs of smoke and was struck with the smell of cat urine. He took the box inside and started deep diving into the internet to figure out WTF he had.
He ended up falling asleep and having the nightmare again. Upon waking up around 4 am he smelled Jasmine and saw a giant shadow figure walking away from him down the hallway.
So the box went onto ebay with the hopes that someone who knew how to deal with this stuff would take it off his hands. Everything listed so far Kevin explained in his original ebay listing, which has no minimum price or reserve. Unfortunately before selling the box his entire aquarium, consisting of 10 fish, died.
He listed the antique as a Dybbuk Box.
Straight from the original Ebay listing:
During September of 2001, I attended an estate sale in Portland Oregon. The items liquidated at this sale were from the estate of a woman who had passed away at the age of 103. A grand-daughter of the woman told me that her grandmother had been born in Poland where she grew up, married, raised a family, and lived until she was sent to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. She was the only member of her family who survived the camp. Her parents, brothers, a sister, husband, and two sons and a daughter were all killed. She survived the camp by escaping with some other prisoners and somehow making her way to Spain where she lived until the end of the war. I was told that she acquired the small wine cabinet listed here in Spain and it was one of only three items that she brought with her when she immigrated to the United States. The other two items were a steamer trunk, and a sewing box.
It was always shut, and set in a place that was out of reach. The grandmother always called it the dibbuk box. When the girl asked her grandmother what was inside, her grandmother spit three times through her fingers said, a dibbuk, and keselim. The grandmother went on to tell the girl that the wine cabinet was never, ever, to be opened.
Originally, the grandmother wanted the box buried with her, but that was against the rules of an orthodox jewish burial and, obviously since we have a story, that did not happen.
So wtf is a dybbuk:
In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk (Yiddish: דיבוק, from the Hebrew verb דָּבַק dāḇaq meaning ‘adhere’ or ‘cling’) is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being helped.[1][2][3]
So where the f did this come from:
So, Kevin managed to sell this box to, as far as i can tell, a college student in June of 2003. It was sold again, on Ebay, in February of 2004 with the following story (new buyer also noted that the box had the following in Hebrew inscribed on the back: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of his honored kingdom forever):
First, the new owner didn’t want to dive into the details of what occurred between June of 2003 and February of 2004. (LAME)
Sunday, 31 August 2003 Over the last week some interesting, though possibly coincidental, items of note have come up. Firstly, I share a house with six other people; we have been taking turns sleeping with the box in each of our rooms.
Two people are now complaining of burning eyes, one is listless and depleted of energy, and another became spontaneously sick. [In retrospect I would say it was alergies.]
A few days after these ongoing annoyances started, the air outside our house was filled with small bugs for several hours (a Friday). [Weird summer stuff?]
Last night (Saturday) we discovered that the box, now located in the back corner of the house, had come mostly open, though it had been shut and it seems unlikely that anyone could or would have touched it.
Wednesday, 10 September 2003 Though it seems impossible to prove that the box is a direct cause of misfortune, we have definitely seen a tidal wave of “bad luck.”
Strange odors now permeate the house, the dumpster out back overflows with trash and decay, one roomate suddenly got bronchitis, and I broke a finger.
Several mice have died in the engine of one car, and more electronic devices seem to be dying everyday: xbox, toaster, t.v., and watches.
——
I don’t really want to talk about anything between September and January, so I’ll just say that I’m selling the box now for a couple reasons:
- Around October 6th, I started feeling bad, with trouble sleeping. This problem has persisted through today.
- I live alone now, and as of late I have noticed replacing a lot of burnt out lightbulbs, and getting many unusual car repairs (transmission fluid was burned out of the reservoir.)
- I’ve started seeing things, sort of like large vertical dark blurs in my periphreal vision.
- I smell something like juniper bushes or stingy ammonia in my garage often, and I have no idea what from.
- Most disturbingly, last Tuesday (1-27-2004), my hair began to fall out. Today (Friday) it’s about half gone. I’m in my early twenties, and I just got a clean blood test back from the doctor’s. Maybe it’s stress related, I don’t know.
Anyhow, for personal reasons I very strongly do not want this box anymore. I hope there’s someone on Ebay that will take this thing off of my hands. [I would just throw it away in the woods or something, but I know there has been some interest in it in the past.]
The box was purchased by Jason Haxton, who was a professor and museum director, and was familiar with the box’s notoriety.
After purchasing, he experienced shadows, hives, head to toe welts, and coughing up blood. He put it in storage and also had the fire alarm go off.
It’s at this point Huxton contacted Kevin to figure out the history of the box.
Kevin went back to the house where he’d bought the box. There, he met Sophie, the cousin of the old woman who’d passed away. Sophie told him the story of the box. Prior to World War II, séances were something of a rage. Sophie’s cousin had made a makeshift Ouija board with embroidery on a handkercheif. During one of the séances, the group contacted what they thought was a dybbuk. It haunted them as it tried to get them to bring it across. The girls used the box to trap the dybbuk once it had come across to our world.
So he wrote a book! Called, creatively, The Dibbuk Box, in 2011 and is available on kindle. (did not read). This movie was eventually used as the inspiration for the 2012 film “The Possession”.
Finally, sealing this box in mortality forever, the box was sold in 2016 to none other than Zac Bagins. The box is (as far as i understand) available for viewing at his Haunted Museum after things like waivers are signed. (it will be closed of course)
There’s reports of Post Malone falling to bad luck (such as airplane tires exploding) after being present during an attempt by Zac to open the box, but who’s to say.
“Ghost Adventures star and paranormal investigator Zak Bagans acquired the box for his Las Vegas Haunted Museum; shortly after its arrival, mysterious protruding holes began to appear in the walls around the artifact as if something was trying to break out from within the exhibit. Since it has been on display, Bagans, the museum staff and visitors have experienced black shadows, fainting, feelings of sickness, anger, anxiety and more.”
I did find an article saying that this specific dybbuk box is one of 10 in the world, each one aligning with the Tree of Life from the concept of Kabbalah (the ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible)
Reportedly, 8/10 of the boxes have known locations, with Zac Bagins owning two of them. It is unclear what these 10 boxes purpose are or what happens if you open them cause i literally saw one source stating this.
Sources:
https://www.syfy.com/paranormal-witness/episodes/season/2/episode/4/the-dybbuk-box
https://www.tmz.com/2017/03/04/zak-bagans-the-possession-haunted-box/
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/haunted-dybbuk-boxes-for-sale
http://www.dibbukbox.com/index.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20051105000557/www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rubyc/eBay_dibbuk.htm
