In Kabbalah and European Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a malicious and possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person who committed a serious transgression while they were alive. The dybbuk attaches itself to the body of a living person who faces the same obstacles as they when they were alive.

According to belief, there are good as well as bad dybbuks. The good ones act as spirit guides to help the person through their life’s trials, while the bad ones inflict the same pain and suffering on their “host” as they experienced in life. In some cases, they attach themselves to objects.

During September of 2001, I attended an estate sale in Portland Oregon. The items liquidated at this sale were from the estate of a woman who had passed away at the age of 103. A grand-daughter of the woman told me that her grandmother had been born in Poland where she grew up, married, raised a family, and lived until she was sent to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. She was the only member of her family who survived the camp. Her parents, brothers, a sister, husband, and two sons and a daughter were all killed. She survived the camp by escaping with some other prisoners and somehow making her way to Spain where she lived until the end of the war. I was told that she acquired the small wine cabinet listed here in Spain and it was one of only three items that she brought with her when she immigrated to the United States. The other two items were a steamer trunk, and a sewing box.

I purchased the wine cabinet, along with the sewing box and some other furniture at the estate sale. After the sale, I was approached by the woman’s granddaughter who said, I see you got the dibbuk box. She was referring to the wine cabinet. I asked her what a dibbuk box was, and she told me that when she was growing up, her grandmother always kept the wine cabinet in her sewing room. It was always shut, and set in a place that was out of reach. The grandmother always called it the dibbuk box. When the girl asked her grandmother what was inside, her grandmother spit three times through her fingers said, a dibbuk, and keselim. The grandmother went on to tell the girl that the wine cabinet was never, ever, to be opened.

The above excerpt is from the story of The Dybbuk Box, a fascinating story about an old wine box that is allegedly haunted by an evil spirit and a priest. The second owner of this box was a man named Kevin, who experienced a string of nasty events after he bought it at the grandmother’s estate sale in 2001. The last straw came when he began experiencing nightmares of an old hag that would beat him up. He’d wake up and find bruises all over his body.

After his family and friends related the same nightmare he had, he decided to get rid of the box. This box was put up for sale on Ebay, where a college student bought it and experienced his own string of bad luck. He put it up for auction in 2004. The third owner delved into the box’s history, which took him back to the pre-WWII era, when seances were a hot fad in Europe.

I have no way of knowing if this story is true or clever storytelling, but I found myself fascinated nonetheless. One thing hasn’t set right with me, after reading these stories. If this box was so evil, why did Kevin and the second buyer put it up on Ebay so it can harm someone else? That leads me to believe that this is another one of those urban legends.