Dybbuk Box The Haunted Jewish Wine Box

The dybbuk box, or dibbuk box is a wine cabinet which is said to be haunted by Dybbuk and many stories circulate about the paranormal happenings involving the box. The most detailed account of the effects of the wine box has been given by the original seller, an antique store owner, Kevin Mannis when he bought a vintage wine box from a 103-year-old Holocaust survivor via eBay, an online auction marketplace. According to Mannis' story, he bought the box at an estate sale in 2003. It had belonged to a survivor of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland named Havela, who had escaped to Spain and purchased it there before her immigration to the United States. Havela's granddaughter told Mannis that the box had been bought in Spain after the Holocaust. Upon hearing that the box was a family heirloom, Mannis offered to give the box back to the family but the granddaughter insisted that he take it. "We don't want it," she said. She told him the box had been kept in her grandmother's sewing room and was never opened because a dybbuk was said to live inside it.

Dybbuk is a malicious mythological demon from Jewish folklore said to hold the power to invade and possess a body of human being. Upon opening the box, Mannis wrote that he found that it contained two 1920s pennies, a lock of blonde hair bound with cord, a lock of black/brown hair bound with cord, a small statue engraved with the Hebrew word "Shalom", a small golden wine goblet, one dried rose bud, and a single candle holder with four octopus-shaped legs.

Numerous owners of the box have reported that strange phenomena accompany it. In his story, Mannis wrote that he experienced a series of horrific nightmares shared with other people while they were in possession of the box or when they stayed at his home while he had it. His mother suffered a stroke on the same day he gave her the box as a birthday present—October 28. Every owner of the box has reported that smells of cat urine or jasmine flowers and nightmares involving an old hag accompany the box. Iosif Neitzke, a Missouri student at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri and the last person to auction the box on eBay, claimed that the box caused lights to burn out in his house and his hair to fall out.

After a string of unexplained hauntings, including recurring nightmares, unexplained bruises, and the incessant stench of ammonia, the box soon found its way back onto eBay and, after a few ownership swaps, landed in the hands of its current foster parent, Jason Haxton, the Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri, who paid $280 for the artifact in 2004 from eBay user “spasmolytic.” (Haxton was the winning bidder, out of 51.). A victim of the box’s wrath, Haxton sealed and buried the box somewhere in Missouri, but he recently dug it back up for a television cameo in a new show by paranormal hot shot Zac Bagans of Ghost Adventures fame.

Sources:

https://exemplore.com/paranormal/The-Dibbuk-Box-Where-is-it-Now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk_box

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/194625/haunted-dybbuk-boxes-for-sale

Pic Source:

https://exemplore.com/paranormal/The-Dibbuk-Box-Where-is-it-Now