The Dybbuk Box

Welcome back, fellow humans 🙂

In this world, some objects attract negative energy and dark entities.

Have you heard about dybbuk box?

Kufsat Dibbuk is a wine cabinet that is believed to be haunted by restless, malicious spirits that can possess the living to fulfil incomplete business, known as dybbuk, comes from a Hebrew word meaning “cling.” 

Kufsat Dibbuk

Kevin Mannis had a small antique and furniture refinishing business in Portland, Oregon. In 2003, he bought the cabinet which belonged to a 103-year-old survivor of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland named Havaleh. She survived the camp by escaping with other prisoners, making her way to Spain where she lived until the end of the war and bought the box with her when she moved to the United States. Havaleh’s parents, brothers, a sister, husband and two sons and a daughter were all killed. Havaleh and her cousin Sophie used a spirit board to contact the unexplainable forces. They tried to trap the spirits they summoned but failed on the night of Kristallnacht, November 10th, 1938. After the war, they successfully trapped the spirits inside the box. Mannis was willing to offer the box back to her after knowing that it was a family heirloom but she insisted that he take it and mentioned to never open the dybbuk.

Contents of Dybbuk Box

Despite the warnings, Mannis opened the cabinet to find:

1. Two 1920s pennies
2. Lock of blonde and black/brown bound separately with a cord
3. A small golden wine goblet
4. A small statue carved with the Hebrew word “Shalom“
5. Dried rosebud
6. Candle holder with four octopus-shaped legs.

On the same day, he experienced strange things. His shop was ransacked but nothing was stolen. A salesperson working at the shop said that she heard ghostly voices cursing and seen lightbulbs cracking by itself. She was locked inside the shop by an unseen intruder. When he arrived, there were no signs of an intruder, however, the doors were still locked and certain parts of the shop had a scent of jasmine. The terrified salesperson quit that day. 

He did not connect the strange occurrences with the box, he offered the box to his mother as a birthday present on October 28 and she suffered a stroke and survived but partially blinded and she gave the box back to him saying that it was discharging maliciousness. Then, he handed the box to his sister, she complained of the vicious nightmares of a scary old lady and the box would open by itself, she soon gave the box back. He passed the box to his brother and his wife, they too complained about the evil surrounding it, smelled either ammonia or jasmine. Also, his girlfriend refused to keep it because of the evil presence. A customer purchased this box from his shop and returned it instantly, saying it was evil. Finally, he left it in his basement. He saw shadowy figures following him around his home and scratches, bite marks, and bruises were present on his body after waking up from nightmares. After being so unnerved, he decided to sell it on eBay and mentioned the full backstory and all the strange incidents linked to it.

Iosif Nietzke bought the cabinet experienced many ominous events in his house where electronics would malfunction, the infestation of insects, turning on and off lights by itself and misplaced objects and abrupt appearance and disappearance of ghostly figures and strange smells. His hair began to fall out and all the medical tests came back negative, so he attributed the hair loss to stress. One night, he decided to leave the box in a storage unit and brought the dibbuk box home after investigating a false smoke alarm where he could not identify the source of the smoke. He woke up from a nap to see a shadow vanishing, prompting him to sell the box on eBay which was purchased by Jason Haxton.

Haxton noticed the scents of jasmine and ammonia and the multitude of health issues such as welts, rashes, hives, constant coughing up of blood, fatigue, a metallic taste, nasal problems after purchasing the box. He discussed with a psychic medium, who explained the death and fear surrounding the box was associated with the original owner, the spirit wanted to reveal the truth about the Holocaust. Jewish Rabbis conducted a ritual to seal the spirit in an arc composed of acacia wood and gold and afterwards Haxton hid it somewhere in California. Recently, he presented the box for a television cameo in Ghost Adventures.

Do you think the Dybbuk box is truly haunted?