What happened
In 2003 Kevin Mannis, who ran a furniture refinishing business in Portland, Oregon, listed a small wooden wine cabinet on eBay. The listing read like a horror story: the cabinet had supposedly belonged to a Holocaust survivor from Poland who warned that it must never be opened because a dybbuk – an evil spirit from Jewish belief – was sealed inside. Inside were two locks of hair, a stone engraved with a Hebrew word, a goblet and a dried rosebud. Mannis described nightmares, smells of cat urine and jasmine, and misfortunes befalling his family. Later owners added experiences of their own. Jason Haxton, a museum director in Kirksville, Missouri, set up a website about the box that drew hundreds of thousands of readers and sold the rights to the story – it inspired the 2012 horror film “The Possession,” produced by Sam Raimi. Today the box is on display in Zak Bagans' museum in Las Vegas.
Witnesses
Kevin Mannis and later owners of the box, including Jason Haxton and Zak Bagans; the case was investigated by sceptic Kenny Biddle.
Explanations and hypotheses
In 2019 investigator Kenny Biddle established in Skeptical Inquirer that the “Jewish wine cabinet from Spain” was actually an ordinary minibar from New York. Folklorists pointed out that in Jewish tradition a dybbuk possesses people, not objects – and nobody had described a dybbuk box before 2003. Finally, in 2021, Kevin Mannis openly admitted that he is a writer and that the box was a horror story he had invented and developed for years.
Hoax A proven or admitted hoax.
Sources
- Kenny Biddle, The Dibbuk Box (Skeptical Inquirer, 2019)
- Max Gross, A Box Full of Bad Luck: Haunted Wine Cabinet Goes to Highest Bidder (The Forward, 2004)
- Charles Moss, Finally, the truth behind the 'haunted' Dybbuk Box can be revealed (Input, 2021)
More: Wikipedia (en)