The Dybbuk box, or Dibbuk box, is a wine-cabinet claimed to be haunted by a dybbuk, a concept

The Dybbuk box, or Dibbuk box, is a wine-cabinet claimed to be haunted by a dybbuk, a concept from Jewish mythology. The box gained notoriety when it was auctioned off on eBay by owner Kevin Mannis, who created a story featuring Jewish Holocaust survivors and paranormal claims as part of his eBay item description. Mannis' story was the inspiration for the 2012 horror film The Possession.

In 2021, Mannis told Input magazine that the Dybbuk Box story was entirely fictional.

HISTORY
In 2003, writer and furniture refinishing business owner Kevin Mannis purchased the cabinet from the yard sale of a local attorney in Portland, Oregon and began developing a backstory. According to Mannis, "The carving in the back of it is my carving. The stone that was in the box is something that is a signature creation of mine also. Make no mistake, I conceived of the Dybbuk Box – the name, the term, the idea – and wrote this creative story around it to post on eBay." Mannis' auction description included a story claiming the cabinet was previously owned by a survivor of the Holocaust in Poland who said it contained the malicious spirit of a dybbuk, and that the box had paranormal powers and was responsible for his bad luck and nightmares. Subsequent owners retold Mannis' story when reselling the item and amplified it with their own claims of "strange phenomena".

One owner, Jason Haxton, Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri, launched a website that consolidated claims about the cabinet called dibbukbox.com that reportedly received hundreds of thousands of hits and created what has been described as an "internet legend". In 2004, Haxton sold the rights to the story to a Hollywood production company. The subsequent film The Possession, produced by Sam Raimi, was released in 2012. Haxton later gave the cabinet to Ghost Adventures star Zak Bagans to display in his museum. In 2018, fans of rapper Post Malone claimed his spate of bad luck was caused by his contact with the cabinet.

RESPONSE
According to author Allan S. Mott, "we embrace such stories because they tap into our own fears and prejudices". Mott said the 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.” Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand noted that the story features "a supernatural angle" and "first-person narrative"; a variation on typical urban legends. Cal State anthropology professor and folklore specialist Elliott Oring criticized claims about the cabinet, saying, “Go through [the story and] you will see areas that seem to require suspending critical functions". Arizona minister and author Rev. Jim Willis opined that the story was most likely "a very elaborate hoax,” but that his opinion "takes all the fun away” from the popular urban legend.

Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths' College, said the box's owners were "already primed to be looking out for bad stuff. If you believe you have been cursed, then inevitably you explain the bad stuff that happens in terms of what you perceive to be the cause. Put it like this: I would be happy to own this object."

In 2014, skeptical author Brian Dunning investigated the dybbuk box legend and determined that,

The whole idea of the box being inhabited by a dybbuk (דיבבוק) is nonsensical, according to what a dybbuk is supposed to be. The Encyclopedia Mythica describes it as "a disembodied spirit possessing a living body that belongs to another soul" and usually talks from that person's mouth. An important 1914 Yiddish play The Dybbuk was about the spirit of a dead man who possessed the living body of the woman he had loved,...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk_box

TAGS: Dybbuk box, Jewish folklore, Ghost stories

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