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Dybbuk / Dibbuk Boxes: From Scroll Cabinet To Ghost-Hunting Fad

July 25, 2004

A jinx in a box?

Maybe mischievous spirits do haunt this Jewish scroll cabinet, or maybe it's just another Web-spawned legend run wild.



By Leslie Gornstein, Special to The Times


A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore.

The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

"We have definitely seen a tidal wave of 'bad luck,' " the seller wrote on EBay in the first week of February. "Most disturbingly, last Tuesday, my hair began to fall out. I'm in my early 20s and I just got a clean blood test back from the doctor's…."

Within days, the box's opening bid of
July 25, 2004

A jinx in a box?

Maybe mischievous spirits do haunt this Jewish scroll cabinet, or maybe it's just another Web-spawned legend run wild.



By Leslie Gornstein, Special to The Times


A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore.

The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

"We have definitely seen a tidal wave of 'bad luck,' " the seller wrote on EBay in the first week of February. "Most disturbingly, last Tuesday, my hair began to fall out. I'm in my early 20s and I just got a clean blood test back from the doctor's…."

Within days, the box's opening bid of $1 jumped to $50; that value soon quadrupled. On Feb. 9, the box sold for $280 to a university museum curator named Jason Haxton.

In the months after, the hype surrounding the wooden box has mushroomed. The Forward, a 107-year-old Jewish newspaper on the East Coast, ran a story about the box's sale and supposed otherworldly powers. Since then, the EBay auction page has logged more than 140,000 hits.

At least five authors, one screenwriter and a documentary crew have sought up-close access, says Haxton, a 46-year-old father of two who also lives in Missouri. Rabbis, Orthodox Jews and Hebrew intellectuals have contacted Haxton, offering to crack the box's mysteries.

Haxton says he's had to unlist his home number, change his e-mail address and erect a website, http://www.dibbukbox.com , just to field inquiries. He agreed to be interviewed only if he could add this request: Please, please, box fans, leave him alone.

The strange case of the bogey in a box is threatening to become an urban legend as big as any ghostly hitchhiker, fried rat or stolen body part. In Chicago, Bull basketball fans have paused their online arguments over salary caps to post theories on what's in the box. Ditto with newsgroups usually dedicated to Subaru ownership or NASCAR tickets. In Long Island, a group of particularly dedicated ghost hunters has founded a Yahoo chat group dedicated solely to the box.

All the while, dozens of Web surfers have e-mailed Haxton through his website, complaining of strange headaches, nightmares and other plagues.

"One person pleaded with me to get all images of the box off the Internet because they would provide an electronic portal for the spirit into every computer that visited the site," he says.

Most often, discussions of dybbuks (as it is more commonly spelled) are accompanied by plenty of snorting skepticism — "I think I'm going to put my haunted Game Cube on EBay," one Texan recently posted — but the number of those fascinated with the little wooden box continues to climb.

The reason, experts say, is tied to a witch's brew of trends and developments unique to the new millennium: A booming blog culture; a growing interest in Jewish mysticism, particularly cabala; and high-speed Internet connections that allow photos to be downloaded onto countless home computers.

Dybbuks have haunted Yiddish folk tales since the dawn of Judaism's mystical movement in the latter half of the 16th century. "Dybbuk" literally means "an attachment, a cleaving to something"; a dybbuk is thought to be the spirit of a person who, instead of drifting into the next realm, sticks around and enters the bodies of living people.

"It's essentially a kook subject," muses Rabbi Eli Schochet, a professor of rabbinic thought at L.A.'s Academy for Jewish Religion, which trains rabbis and cantors. "But I could never say that it's impossible because, obviously, there's precedent for these things that are recorded in different religious traditions, including my own."

The EBay auction page (still viewable on Haxton's website) claims to document experiences from two previous owners, told in the first person and pasted back to back in the item's description space.

The tale, according to the site, began in fall 2001, when Oregon antiques collector and small-business owner Kevin Mannis discovered the box — smaller than a case of beer, decorated with two metal plates in the shape of grape clusters — at a neighborhood estate sale. (Mannis later told The Times he bought the box in 2000, but so much bad fortune befell him in that first year that he didn't want to tell potential buyers about it.)

Mannis said the estate sale's host told him that the box had belonged to her 103-year-old grandmother, who had dubbed the cabinet a "dybbuk box" and warned her kids … never to open it.

Heedless of this spooky back story, Mannis bought the box and put it in the basement of his antiques business. A half-hour after the box arrived, the creepiness, as he describes it, began: While Mannis ran a few errands, a mysterious force apparently went berserk in his shop, cursing and smashing light bulbs and scaring a store clerk.

"When I got back to the shop, I went to investigate," Mannis says from his Oregon home. "I remember heading toward the back and walking into what I can only describe as a wall of scent. It smelled like jasmine flowers. You could take one more step and not smell a thing, and take a step backward and be surrounded by it again."

Later, he says, when he gave the box to his mother as a gift, she suffered a stroke that temporarily left her unable to speak. She penned the tersely scrawled admonishment "hate gift" and Mannis has not discussed the object with her since, he says. The FBI then raided Mannis' shop, he says, hauling out loads of electronic equipment. He got his stuff back but says he never got an explanation for the raid. Add to his list of woes that he lost his shop lease and was a victim of identity theft.

"All of this stuff has an explanation that doesn't necessarily point to this box," Mannis muses. "But when you take everything together, it becomes such a weird coincidence."



The 'curse' changes hands

BY June 2003, Mannis had had enough and posted the box on EBay. The high bidder was Nietzke, who, for $140, got the box, contents and — presumably — its ectoplasmic squatter. (Repeated attempts to reach Nietzke have been unsuccessful.)

Nietzke's alleged experiences, which are also posted on EBay — included strange odors in his house, a bug infestation, malfunctioning electronic devices and "sort of like large, vertical, dark blurs in my peripheral vision."

Haxton, the college museum director who collects religious paraphernalia, says by phone that he first heard about the box last year through a student employee at his museum — who is also Nietzke's roommate.

When Nietzke posted the box for sale, Haxton went for it. The day after it arrived in his office, Haxton says, "I woke up with my right eye looking like it had been poked." Other afflictions arrived, including fatigue, a metallic taste in his mouth and constant nasal congestion and a cough. Around the house, Haxton says he occasionally smells the signature odors of cat urine and flowers.

Haxton has been aided by Rebecca Edery, an Orthodox Jewish bookkeeper who lives in Brooklyn and whose father studied cabala. It was Edery who helped uncover the purpose of the box. "The two doors on the outside open up just like the Holy Closet," or Aron HaKodesh, a receptacle for Torah scrolls, Edery says. "And I saw round, metal hoops on the inside of the doors that would hold scrolls. This particular size is used when going to comfort the family of the deceased."

Edery says she is convinced the box was sacred and had been intentionally stuffed with some sort of spirit. "This was done deliberately, for a specific purpose." She believes that to put an end to the misfortunes, the box needs a formal Jewish burial involving a 10-man minyan, or prayer group.

For his part, Haxton says he wants to follow the box back to its origins. Then, he says, he might create a replica and bury the original. "To me this is a historical puzzle," he says. "It came from somewhere. It was made for a reason. What is it and why is it?"



Room for doubt on either side

Researchers and religious scholars say that, sure, the box contains items that could have served as fetishes or tokens to a family, Jewish or otherwise. Pennies and locks of hair fall under the common fetish territory, says Bill Ellis, a fetish researcher and American studies professor at Penn State University.

"It was not uncommon for people to hunt through their change and, when they found the birth date of a child, to put that aside as a life token of the child," Ellis says. "You also have two locks of hair. That is a very common tradition, especially for preserving a keepsake of a dead family member. These things would incorporate a memory or some part of a life spirit."

But the tale also contains a parade of red flags that point to a possible hoax.

For one thing, Schochet points out that most dybbuk tales have the ghost coming back to convey some sort of message, but "there is nothing to explain why this particular box is inhabited."

Elliott Oring, an anthropology professor and folklore specialist at Cal State L.A., also has his doubts. "Go through [the story and] you will see areas that seem to require suspending critical functions. There is too much piling on of incidents…. Why wasn't it simply disposed of?"

So if there's no proof a dybbuk exists, why is the box so fascinating?

"We embrace such stories because they tap into our own fears and prejudices," says Allan S. Mott, author of "Urban Legends: Strange Stories Behind Modern Myths."

"The dybbuk story taps into our belief that out in the world there is a supernatural evil that will attack anyone regardless of how good they are. They allow people to make some sense of a chaotic world."

The story also benefits from the credibility lent to it by a mainstream site such as EBay, says Jan Harold Brunvand, author of the coming "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends."

But Brunvand sees a difference in the tale. "The length and detail of the story is unlike most urban legends," he says, "as is the supernatural angle and the first-person narrative. So I would not classify it as a 'normal' urban legend."

Perhaps that leaves open a small window of credibility. After all, who doesn't like a good ghost story?

"Of course, we realize we could most probably be dealing here with a very elaborate hoax," notes the Rev. Jim Willis, an Arizona minister and author of "The Religion Book: Places, Prophets, Saints and Seers." "I have to say that because I do have my academic reputation to uphold." But, he adds, "if you leave it at that, it takes all the fun away."

As his words trail away, a huge picture in his office falls from the wall and crashes to the floor.

"This is weird," Willis says. "Have I just become a part of an urban legend?"
Click to expand...
jumped to ; that value soon quadrupled. On Feb. 9, the box sold for 0 to a university museum curator named Jason Haxton.

In the months after, the hype surrounding the wooden box has mushroomed. The Forward, a 107-year-old Jewish newspaper on the East Coast, ran a story about the box's sale and supposed otherworldly powers. Since then, the EBay auction page has logged more than 140,000 hits.

At least five authors, one screenwriter and a documentary crew have sought up-close access, says Haxton, a 46-year-old father of two who also lives in Missouri. Rabbis, Orthodox Jews and Hebrew intellectuals have contacted Haxton, offering to crack the box's mysteries.

Haxton says he's had to unlist his home number, change his e-mail address and erect a website, http://www.dibbukbox.com , just to field inquiries. He agreed to be interviewed only if he could add this request: Please, please, box fans, leave him alone.

The strange case of the bogey in a box is threatening to become an urban legend as big as any ghostly hitchhiker, fried rat or stolen body part. In Chicago, Bull basketball fans have paused their online arguments over salary caps to post theories on what's in the box. Ditto with newsgroups usually dedicated to Subaru ownership or NASCAR tickets. In Long Island, a group of particularly dedicated ghost hunters has founded a Yahoo chat group dedicated solely to the box.

All the while, dozens of Web surfers have e-mailed Haxton through his website, complaining of strange headaches, nightmares and other plagues.

"One person pleaded with me to get all images of the box off the Internet because they would provide an electronic portal for the spirit into every computer that visited the site," he says.

Most often, discussions of dybbuks (as it is more commonly spelled) are accompanied by plenty of snorting skepticism — "I think I'm going to put my haunted Game Cube on EBay," one Texan recently posted — but the number of those fascinated with the little wooden box continues to climb.

The reason, experts say, is tied to a witch's brew of trends and developments unique to the new millennium: A booming blog culture; a growing interest in Jewish mysticism, particularly cabala; and high-speed Internet connections that allow photos to be downloaded onto countless home computers.

Dybbuks have haunted Yiddish folk tales since the dawn of Judaism's mystical movement in the latter half of the 16th century. "Dybbuk" literally means "an attachment, a cleaving to something"; a dybbuk is thought to be the spirit of a person who, instead of drifting into the next realm, sticks around and enters the bodies of living people.

"It's essentially a kook subject," muses Rabbi Eli Schochet, a professor of rabbinic thought at L.A.'s Academy for Jewish Religion, which trains rabbis and cantors. "But I could never say that it's impossible because, obviously, there's precedent for these things that are recorded in different religious traditions, including my own."

The EBay auction page (still viewable on Haxton's website) claims to document experiences from two previous owners, told in the first person and pasted back to back in the item's description space.

The tale, according to the site, began in fall 2001, when Oregon antiques collector and small-business owner Kevin Mannis discovered the box — smaller than a case of beer, decorated with two metal plates in the shape of grape clusters — at a neighborhood estate sale. (Mannis later told The Times he bought the box in 2000, but so much bad fortune befell him in that first year that he didn't want to tell potential buyers about it.)

Mannis said the estate sale's host told him that the box had belonged to her 103-year-old grandmother, who had dubbed the cabinet a "dybbuk box" and warned her kids … never to open it.

Heedless of this spooky back story, Mannis bought the box and put it in the basement of his antiques business. A half-hour after the box arrived, the creepiness, as he describes it, began: While Mannis ran a few errands, a mysterious force apparently went berserk in his shop, cursing and smashing light bulbs and scaring a store clerk.

"When I got back to the shop, I went to investigate," Mannis says from his Oregon home. "I remember heading toward the back and walking into what I can only describe as a wall of scent. It smelled like jasmine flowers. You could take one more step and not smell a thing, and take a step backward and be surrounded by it again."

Later, he says, when he gave the box to his mother as a gift, she suffered a stroke that temporarily left her unable to speak. She penned the tersely scrawled admonishment "hate gift" and Mannis has not discussed the object with her since, he says. The FBI then raided Mannis' shop, he says, hauling out loads of electronic equipment. He got his stuff back but says he never got an explanation for the raid. Add to his list of woes that he lost his shop lease and was a victim of identity theft.

"All of this stuff has an explanation that doesn't necessarily point to this box," Mannis muses. "But when you take everything together, it becomes such a weird coincidence."



The 'curse' changes hands

BY June 2003, Mannis had had enough and posted the box on EBay. The high bidder was Nietzke, who, for 0, got the box, contents and — presumably — its ectoplasmic squatter. (Repeated attempts to reach Nietzke have been unsuccessful.)

Nietzke's alleged experiences, which are also posted on EBay — included strange odors in his house, a bug infestation, malfunctioning electronic devices and "sort of like large, vertical, dark blurs in my peripheral vision."

Haxton, the college museum director who collects religious paraphernalia, says by phone that he first heard about the box last year through a student employee at his museum — who is also Nietzke's roommate.

When Nietzke posted the box for sale, Haxton went for it. The day after it arrived in his office, Haxton says, "I woke up with my right eye looking like it had been poked." Other afflictions arrived, including fatigue, a metallic taste in his mouth and constant nasal congestion and a cough. Around the house, Haxton says he occasionally smells the signature odors of cat urine and flowers.

Haxton has been aided by Rebecca Edery, an Orthodox Jewish bookkeeper who lives in Brooklyn and whose father studied cabala. It was Edery who helped uncover the purpose of the box. "The two doors on the outside open up just like the Holy Closet," or Aron HaKodesh, a receptacle for Torah scrolls, Edery says. "And I saw round, metal hoops on the inside of the doors that would hold scrolls. This particular size is used when going to comfort the family of the deceased."

Edery says she is convinced the box was sacred and had been intentionally stuffed with some sort of spirit. "This was done deliberately, for a specific purpose." She believes that to put an end to the misfortunes, the box needs a formal Jewish burial involving a 10-man minyan, or prayer group.

For his part, Haxton says he wants to follow the box back to its origins. Then, he says, he might create a replica and bury the original. "To me this is a historical puzzle," he says. "It came from somewhere. It was made for a reason. What is it and why is it?"



Room for doubt on either side

Researchers and religious scholars say that, sure, the box contains items that could have served as fetishes or tokens to a family, Jewish or otherwise. Pennies and locks of hair fall under the common fetish territory, says Bill Ellis, a fetish researcher and American studies professor at Penn State University.

"It was not uncommon for people to hunt through their change and, when they found the birth date of a child, to put that aside as a life token of the child," Ellis says. "You also have two locks of hair. That is a very common tradition, especially for preserving a keepsake of a dead family member. These things would incorporate a memory or some part of a life spirit."

But the tale also contains a parade of red flags that point to a possible hoax.

For one thing, Schochet points out that most dybbuk tales have the ghost coming back to convey some sort of message, but "there is nothing to explain why this particular box is inhabited."

Elliott Oring, an anthropology professor and folklore specialist at Cal State L.A., also has his doubts. "Go through [the story and] you will see areas that seem to require suspending critical functions. There is too much piling on of incidents…. Why wasn't it simply disposed of?"

So if there's no proof a dybbuk exists, why is the box so fascinating?

"We embrace such stories because they tap into our own fears and prejudices," says Allan S. Mott, author of "Urban Legends: Strange Stories Behind Modern Myths."

"The dybbuk story taps into our belief that out in the world there is a supernatural evil that will attack anyone regardless of how good they are. They allow people to make some sense of a chaotic world."

The story also benefits from the credibility lent to it by a mainstream site such as EBay, says Jan Harold Brunvand, author of the coming "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends."

But Brunvand sees a difference in the tale. "The length and detail of the story is unlike most urban legends," he says, "as is the supernatural angle and the first-person narrative. So I would not classify it as a 'normal' urban legend."

Perhaps that leaves open a small window of credibility. After all, who doesn't like a good ghost story?

"Of course, we realize we could most probably be dealing here with a very elaborate hoax," notes the Rev. Jim Willis, an Arizona minister and author of "The Religion Book: Places, Prophets, Saints and Seers." "I have to say that because I do have my academic reputation to uphold." But, he adds, "if you leave it at that, it takes all the fun away."

As his words trail away, a huge picture in his office falls from the wall and crashes to the floor.

"This is weird," Willis says. "Have I just become a part of an urban legend?"
Click to expand...

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ca-gornstein25jul25,1,7264537.story?coll=la-home-style
 
OK, this is different from the "haunted" bayonet sold on E-Bay how, exactly? Sounds like a hoax/scam to me.
 
Alright, having just read through the entire site there, though I know it's probably a hoax, am pretty freaked out.
 
Yes I guess it probably is a hoax, but I would prefer not to get too close, a bit like tossing salt over your shoulder, you know it's silly but you do it just in case.
 
yeah, I agree, it's silly, but just in case...


I actually did a search after reading that on ebay, there's loads of "haunted" items for sale on there.
 
Consider this...a dibbuk is an evil spirit that possesses a person. Obviously, that's NOT what's supposedly happening with this box. Do you think maybe the person selling the box is well-read enough to know that a dibbuk is a demon of some kind, and then gathered up some odds and ends (especially the Hebrew engraved figurine) and threw it all together. Like the haunted bayonet mentioned in another thread, this wine cabinet is going to sell for a heck of a lot more with the story than without it.
 
I pretty much assumed that from the get go, but even so, there's stil the ever present "what if...?"
 
Looks to me almost like someone had taken a small portable shrine or scroll cupboard, and was using it as a nonjewish ritual piece, or some sort of jewish version of 'devil worshiping' in the sense that many 'black magic' practitioners are inverting christian ceremonies for their purposes [the black mass being conducted with corrupted wafer and wine, an inverted cross and whatnot, think of the 18th century Hellfire clubmembers.] Never heard of any 'inverted' jews though ... I do suppose that if the kabalah was practiced towards the darker influences that might count...
 
"One person pleaded with me to get all images of the box off the Internet because they would provide an electronic portal for the spirit into every computer that visited the site," he says.
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Ah, great. Now that I've looked at the pics online, am I going to have headaches and smell cat urine at home? - Oh, wait, I have a history of migraines, and four cats (I thing it's a different box that's to blame for the smell!)...
 
For sure, there are odd, unexplained occurrences and some odd people. But despite all, we're more similar than we may wish to believe. Keeping locks of hair is relatively common. The Box contained two. Plus various bits and pieces, none remarkable. I remember reading a little about the Box last year and someone claiming knowledge of the contents stated the octupus candle-stick was a mass-produced item of no great age. The Box itself looked to me to be very ordinary; I've seen numerous like it.

The story grows more fantastic as it proceeds, but it's the claimed reason for its original sale/purchase which is suspect, to my mind. The original owner is claimed as a grandmother, aged 103, who arrived in the US with virtually nothing to her name after WW2. It's claimed the grand-daughter sold the Box after the old lady's death and became almost hysterical, refusing vehemently when the purchaser offered to return the box to the family.

From the details provided, we may deduce that the grandmother was aged approx. 49 upon her arrival in the US. Her family were reportedly all killed in WW2. So how did she become a grandmother?

The Box story claims the grandmother warned the Box must not be opened; that it contained a dibbuk (spirit). In the version I read last year, the grand-daughter allegedly told the original purchasor that her grandmother had claimed the box must be buried with her (with the grandmother), but for some reason, this had not occured.

It doesn't seem to make much sense. The locks of hair and other little items may have held important sentimental value to the grandmother and we may understand why she wished for these to be interred with her. But how many of us, or those we know, would (1) keep sentimental momentos in the same container as a dangerous spirit and (2) state a wish that our mortal remains and sentimental objects be buried for eternity in the company of a hostile spirit? How many of us, for that matter, would sell to another a keepsake containing what we believed to be a hostile spirit?

Even if the locks of hair held no sentimental value to the old lady -- even if these were considered as evil as the spirit -- why would the old lady wish to be buried with them? Why not dispose of them while she was able; why not burn them or bury them, or deposit them with a rabbi to do with as he saw fit? Surely the old lady did not believe that burial in her grave would restrain the 'dibbuk/spirit' ? If the old lady was sufficiently versed in esoteric lore to 'contain' the spirit in the Box while she was alive, then she was aware that no Rabbi would agree to inter the Box and its contents in her own grave. Knowing this, is it likely (considering her warnings about opening the Box) that she would just leave the Box/dibbuk to its fate after her death? Such is not consistent with her guarding others from the contents of the Box while she was alive.

Would the family sell the Box (knowing as they did that their grand-mother had considered it dangerous) to a complete stranger for a few dollars? Wouldn't it be more logical that they would place the Box with their Rabbi, or bury it somewhere out of harm's way?

The story gathers speed and creepiness after the Box was originally purchased, but the foundations are crumbly.
 
again said:
From the details provided, we may deduce that the grandmother was aged approx. 49 upon her arrival in the US. Her family were reportedly all killed in WW2. So how did she become a grandmother?
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For the sake of argument: Remarriage.
 
'For the sake of argument: remarriage?'

As in becoming a step-mother/grandmother through marriage?

Of course. Didn't occur to me. And if she did (through remarriage) become a step-mother and later a grandmother, it might explain the readiness of the family to sell her belongings.
 
again said:
'For the sake of argument: remarriage?'

As in becoming a step-mother/grandmother through marriage?

Of course. Didn't occur to me. And if she did (through remarriage) become a step-mother and later a grandmother, it might explain the readiness of the family to sell her belongings.
Click to expand...
Could very well be.
Now I know very little about Jewish burial beliefs, but perhaps the grandmother thought that if the box was interred with her, no one else would suffer it's effects. Short sighted to be sure but maybe it was the best thing she could come up with. Maybe the spirit within, although evil, was someone she felt responsible for, a family member? That might explain the locks of hair, or they may have been used to tie the spirit to the box. Most forms of magic involve having physical 'bits' of the individual who the spell is cast upon, hair, fingernails and such.
I don't necessarily believe this story, but I find it fascinating and would like to believe it.
 
Information from the current owner below:

"All information to date leads me to believe that this item has come from a family with a very, strong Jewish background, but not necessarily Cabbalist influences. The wooden box itself with its grape appliqué seems to be circa 1960's. The work looks similar to the Swiss cabinetmaker's style (mistakenly called "Black Forest"). It has been suggested that the box could not function as a wine cabinet (wine bottles are too tall and wine glasses don't fit in the small racks on the doors). It has been mentioned by several Jewish people that the box has a very odd resemblance to the Aaron HaKodesh shrines found in synagogues that hold Jewish scrolls - or Torahs. The choice of a box with a magical opening design as this one may have been purposely selected to mimic the religious arks that hold spiritual materials. Such portable arks do exist in synagogues and typically are for use with Shiva (seven days of mourning). If someone wanted to create a very powerful spiritual piece a sacred box in this style would make sense. I have found another box from a later time period and it was originally created as a liquor cabinet with small square liquor decanters, shot glasses and tumblers for making drinks. In all ways it matches the Dibbuk Box. I believe that was the original use of the wooden cabinet that is the Dibbuk box.

The wine cup is a Leonard Company silver-plate double jigger - an item I have found only in Oregon. The cup shows great amounts of wear and damage from use with wine (the lip of the cup is stressed with cracks from acid in the wine). I have worked with a Rabbi and a monument company and the marble piece could possible be made from broken headstones. Put together in this fashion it becomes a Matzevah or religious pillar - an item that those in the Jewish faith are told not use for worship. The candleholder is Victorian circa 1890 -1910 made by the Peking Glass company I have seen several of these at antique shops. These candleholders can be bought on eBay or found in antique malls. The candleholder has the natural wear in the black paint of being handled often using a thumb and pointing finger - and appears to have survived a very hot fire. The octopus legs seem to be bent backwards from extreme heat. Using a black light, melted wax was found dribbled on the outside door of the box. The naked eye does not see this. No biological material was found using the black light in or on the box.

A Rabbi from the UK told me that the prayer on the back has the name God written with a hyphen so as to remove sacredness to a degree that the box could be destroyed without committing a sacrilegious act - something known to the Jewish sect. Jewish Museums and other Rabbis have contacted me, none seem to doubt that this is a piece of Jewish origin; however, its purpose is not known and use of something like this is not typical with the Jewish faith. I have been told this was not for Shabbat.

Working with the first buyer of the Dibbuk Box, Kevin, I have recently been able to learn more about the family that created the box. The story of the Dibbuk Box goes back to the 1930's. The Dibbuk Box owner's nick name was Havela (she was the 103 year old woman that wanted to be buried with the box). Havela and other family members in Poland resorted to holding séances hoping to talk to the dead… nobody in particular, it was a carryover from the Victorian parlor fads but very popular in Poland at this time. It was a game of sorts to do for fun in the evening hours. Havela, friends and family members thought they had reached a true spirit and as time went on ...it was easier and easier to talk with this spirit through their séance group. Soon they were having regular meetings with this spirit. However, if they were not punctual in calling upon the spirit - at the next séance, the spirit would do psychological harm to them by revealing personal secrets held by the members or some such thing.

At this point in their dealings with the other world, it was the séance group's belief that more than one spirit was communicating with them. It seemed the spirits were more and more involved with the decision making of the séance group's daily lives. Then, the spirit then wanted to bargain with them to perform a
ritual that would bring it (and others) to this world/side permanently. The group decided the best way to end this spirit's influence was to bring it to this world and trap it. On November 10, 1938 they tried to capture the spirit(s) and they said it went very wrong. They believe that what they tried to do - actually had an affect on Kristallnacht - when Jews were first attacked by Germans destroying their shops and many being pushed into Poland from Germany. The family of the Dibbuk Box indicated that the method of madness and breaking glass was consistent with their spirit.
Oddly that is the exact kind of damage that this spirit did to Kevin's shop when released. Breaking all his light fixtures - causing terror to the worker and creating a mini Kristallnacht on basement floor of Kevin's shop. The ending of Kevin's lease mysteriously so Kevin (of Jewish descent) was without a business.

The Dibbuk Box that I now have was not originally used by the group to capture the spirit, but was created many years later to hold the spirit as they tried to pull them back together - and undo the evil they felt that they had released. All this information comes from a cousin of Havela who was the youngest in the group and now she regrets being involved in the whole thing. I didn't believe this story could be any stranger. I was wrong. The spirit came from séances held in 1938 just before WWII .

Who would have thought that the Dibbuk Box story would have led to the years prior to WWII and that those involved would feel that they somehow created/or at least played a role in a horror against people greater than most of us could imagine. The violence and destruction of Kristallnacht (when the evil spirits were released) that night … true horror was not really expected even by Hitler, but unstoppable evil seemed to be unleashed like a current through the German people that would not normally be so inhumane. It makes one wonder did something in the air so to speak make the attack on the Jews that night more intense. And once that barrier was passed the following acts and atrocities upon the Jewish people did not seem so bad. Were the evil spirits that are said to have been guiding Hitler - one and the same as those reached by Havela's group?

Do a goggle search and you can find many sites on the nature of Hitler his supposed demonic possession, séances and the occult.

Thule member Dietrich Eckart prophesied that the day had come; he began introducing him in Munich occult circles as "the long-awaited savior". To Alfred Rosenberg he said: "I believe in Hitler; above him there hovers a star." Eckart was following his own mission revealed to him in a séance: that when "Lord Maitreya" would soon make his appearance as a German messiah to "lead the Aryan race to final victory over the Jews", he, Eckart, was charged with the responsibility of "nurturing" him.

The Thule Society considered the Jew ("Juda") their cosmic enemy. As early as 1920, Sebottendorf advocated a "Final Goal" of "cleaning out the Jews once and for all", using "the most ruthless measures, including Sammellager [concentration camps] and sweeping out the Jewish vermin with an iron broom."

It is amazing that this little group of pretty typical Polish people messing around with séances should tap into something that they recognized as so evil and that on the eve of their trying to trap it, Adolf Hitler was on the eve of releasing it upon humanity. No wonder they were devastated to witness what followed ... the turning of their world to destruction in just hours after dealing with the spiritswho wanted to enter this world.

Here is a piece of history that I have never thought of and quite frankly would have laughed at just a few months ago. This Dibbuk Box has led back to opening a 75-year-old event that most people do not know about. It makes me wonder what forces were really in play at the beginning of WWII and did this little group truly stumbled into it. I do know that they have felt responsible ever since and tried to make amends to capture and hold the spirits because it is the right thing to do against all odds. Hence, this box was created later and possibly others like it. The biggest part of the Dibbuk Box story is out - the beginning and the end - more bizarre than anything you could try to make up.



Now I hope the cousin of Havela will be able to fill in the details of what happened in-between. I could be wrong, but this may explain why this box seems to have a mystical power that draws people to it. And many that write to me become almost addicted to what is happening with the box in ways they cannot understand, but they cannot seem to just let it go. It is a strange and amazing story. Putting all the pieces together and looking at it now feels right. The box had to come from someone, to account for some event, and then to fulfill some ultimate purpose. One must remember that with the Holocaust, much history and many of the Cabbalist rituals once performed have vanished with the many that died. Authors, screenwriters, religious leaders, and a host involved with the spiritual world, have contacted me and I have tried to answer questions as truthfully and objectively as possible. I have not made plans for the Dibbuk Box except to document its history, and the Dibbuk Box is not for sale. I will continue to keep this site posted with what I learn of its history and purpose, which is my main interest. Until more is known about this artifact, as a precaution, the box continues to be stored with its contents shut inside. Indeed, the box is being kept away from people as much as possible."

Whether true or not it makes interesting reading!
 
do i understand that correctly? is he blaming the box for Kristallnacht?
:shock:
 
:sceptic:

below is further deails from current owner

From: "dibbukbox" <dibbukbox@h...>
Date: Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:09 am
Subject: Re: Problems in Portland





Hi Guys,
I just heard from Kevin and in his note to me there continues to be
problems with strange energies at his home in Portland. His mother
(who was given the box)and others continually hear speaking and
voices just above levels of whispers, but low enough to make
understanding the content difficult - if it is even English. The
oppressive shadows are less and these voices seem to have taken the
place.

The worker who could most shed light on what happened the day the
box was opened was silenced when she tried to help explain that
strange day. It was sudden and seems to have been complete. Kevin
is still deeply saddened by this and worries for others who have
been involved by association with him when he was keeping the box.

I too have seen that those who interfer and try to assist often get
very odd and definite messages to stay clear - distance doesn't seem
to matter. Those most harmed are exactly 1/2 way around the world
from Missouri in a line north and south.

For those trying to help on this mystery - please be careful - take
full precautions.
Jason
 
Dibbuk Box now has an OFFICIAL SITE

And I think it's fame has led to a company using the idea to sell their own product:

St. Augustine Ghost In A bottle

Each Ghost is captured from a reported haunted establishment, (house, hotel, ship, cemetery, etc), by our Ghost Hunters.

We seal the ghost in it's own bottle. The bottle is sealed for your protection.

No maintenance required; except occasional dusting.

You may release the Ghost at your own discretion and at your own risk.

The Ghost in the Bottle is contained mysteriously and is therefore sealed with wax shortly after the Ghost is caught. The bottle is sealed for your protection. It comes with very important information . We supply the Ghost, you supply the name. Individual Ghost experiences may vary as "Each Ghost is Unique"!

Each Ghost also comes with a "Ghost Certificate" which is signed by the Ghost Hunter that captures each Ghost and is engraved with a Ghost Hunters seal.

"The Ghost Bottle is 10.5 X 2.5 inches"
Click to expand...
 
MrRING said:
Dibbuk Box now has an OFFICIAL SITE

And I think it's fame has led to a company using the idea to sell their own product:

St. Augustine Ghost In A bottle

Each Ghost is captured from a reported haunted establishment, (house, hotel, ship, cemetery, etc), by our Ghost Hunters.

We seal the ghost in it's own bottle. The bottle is sealed for your protection.

No maintenance required; except occasional dusting.

You may release the Ghost at your own discretion and at your own risk.

The Ghost in the Bottle is contained mysteriously and is therefore sealed with wax shortly after the Ghost is caught. The bottle is sealed for your protection. It comes with very important information . We supply the Ghost, you supply the name. Individual Ghost experiences may vary as "Each Ghost is Unique"!

Each Ghost also comes with a "Ghost Certificate" which is signed by the Ghost Hunter that captures each Ghost and is engraved with a Ghost Hunters seal.

"The Ghost Bottle is 10.5 X 2.5 inches"
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

LOL! So remember kids, after you die, don't let anyone lure you into a bottle, especially if they have a little ball of wax in the other hand!
 
Looks like the "fictional" movie is back on...

Directed by Ole Bornedal and produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Dibbuk Box is a fictional retelling of Los Angeles Times writer Leslie Gornstein's article "Jinx in a Box" about an antique wooden box purchased on eBay which reportedly had been brought to America by a Holocaust survivor after World War II. The box, supposedly containing an evil spirit, brought devastating effects to a series of buyers. Inspired by these real events, the film centers around a cursed relic containing mysterious familial tokens that is mistakenly purchased and its new owner must solve its mystery to save her own family. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star.
Click to expand...

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=76993

And here's the original Ebay Listing
 
From Wikpedia:
The dybbuk box, or dibbuk box (in the Hebrew language known as קופסת דיבוק‬, or Kufsat Dibbuk), is a winecabinet which is said to be haunted by a dybbuk. A dybbuk is a restless, usually malicious, spirit believed to be able to haunt and even possess the living. The box gained notoriety when it was auctioned on eBay with an accompanying horror story written by Kevin Mannis, and is the original inspiration for the 2012 film The Possession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk_box
Click to expand...


 
Interesting to see that what, in 2004, was a single, supposedly haunted, artefact (the dybbuk box), has in 2018 become 'dybbuk boxes', some sort of wider species of general ghostly 'thing'. Guff from start to finish, then.
 
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