Father Lankester Merrin thinks that he has glimpsed the face of Evil. In the years following World War II, Merrin is relentlessly haunted by memories of the unspeakable brutality perpetrated against the innocent people of his parish during the War. In the wake of all the horror he has seen, both his faith in his fellow man and his faith in the Almighty have deserted him, and he can no longer honestly call himself a man of God. Merrin has traveled far from his native Holland in a desperate attempt to try to forget and escape all the evil that he had witnessed there. While currently in Cairo, Egypt, he is approached by a collector of rare antiquities and asked to participate in a British archeological excavation in the remote Turkana region of Kenya. They have unearthed something extraordinary and unusual…a Christian Byzantine church dating from the 5th century, long before Christianity arrived in East Africa, and in inexplicably perfect condition–like it had been buried immediately after it was completed. The collector wants Merrin, an Oxford-educated archeologist, to find an ancient relic hidden within the church before the British do. Interested, Merrin agrees to take the job. But beneath the church, something much older and malevolent sleeps, waiting to be awoken. When the archeologists start excavating, strange things begin occuring, and the local Turkana tribesmen who were hired to work refuse to enter the site. Things only get worse and worse, ultimately resulting in madness and death. Merrin watches helplessly as the atrocities of war are repeated against another innocent village–atrocities he had hoped and prayed never to see again. The blood of innocents flows freely on the East African plain, but the horror has only just begun. In the place where Evil was born, Merrin will finally see its true face.

Exorcist, The Beginning is an exceptional movie. It begins with a powerful scene of a battered 4th century priest walking through, and then finally viewing the massacre of a Christian army. Jump forward to 1949, the plot slows down for Merrin’s backstory and Sarah’s frustration with treating the mysterious illnesses that plague the village. These elements wove themselves into a great plot as history repeated itself in a gory and brutal fashion.

As the battle between the tribesmen and the British began, the ultimate battle between good and evil began in the bowels of the old church. While Sarah’s head didn’t spin around, her demon counterpart was just as terrifying and obscene as the 1973 classic. The cinematography was very good, as was the acting. Highly recommended.

The Keddie Resort, founded in 1910, was a thriving vacation town 140 miles north of Sacramento, California. People drove hundreds of miles to stay in one of the 33 rustic cabins, hike the pristine wilderness, and dine on wild game and fine wine. All this changed on April 11, 1981, when Glenna Sharp, two of her children, and a teenage friend were found brutally murdered inside Cabin 28. When law enforcement failed to catch the killers, Keddie resort turned into a ghost town within a year after the slayings.

Dubbed “The Murder House,” Cabin 28 was a grim reminder of that awful slaying. It was a place of such evil that seasoned detectives did not like to step inside during their investigations. The curious and the homeless are reported to have fled the house in terror after seeing floating figures and objects materialize from out of nowhere.

Local residents are skeptical of the hauntings and are hopeful of rebuilding the once thriving community. If anything, they are resentful of the unwanted intrusions of ghost seekers.

“That house has been such a negative point for so long that I intend to tear it down and put a park there,” long time owner, Gary Mollath said. “Then I’m going to open this place back up and cater to groups — with people traveling closer to home now, I think the timing will be just right. I want people to come and say, ‘Wow!’ when we start up again. Not be scared.”

Cabin 28 was razed on August 26, 2006. Let’s just hope that whatever lurked inside has vanished, along with the rubble.

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.

I was looking for a spooky story to post for Halloween and found an article about an abandoned village with an alleged curse. The article talked about how state troupers in residents of the Dark Entry Forest in upstate Connecticut closed all access of Dudleytown when it became besieged with trespassers. You can read about that here.

“The story has all the makings of a really great horror story: historical figures, mysterious happenings, ghosts, a curse,” wrote author Gary P. Dudley in his 2001 book “The Legend of Dudleytown.”

Yes, it does. After reading the first article, I decided to do a little more research and found the following sites that may interest you.

Quoted from GhostVillage.com

All Dudleys can trace their heritage back to a Saxon named Dudd, who was titled Duke of Mercia and died in 725 A.D. It was Dudd’s land that would eventually become the site of the Dudley castle.

An old English word for land was “leigh,” so the area was called Dudd’s leigh. Many centuries later, when the taking of a surname became necessary, some people took a name based on their occupation (such as Smith or Baker) and others took their surname based on the land they came from, i.e., Dudley.

The story and curse of Dudleytown actually begins in England in the year 1510. Edmund Dudley was beheaded for plotting to overthrow King Henry VIII. At the time of the beheading, a curse was allegedly placed on the Dudleys for their treason.

The curse states all Dudleys from Edmund Dudley’s lineage would find themselves surrounded by horrors. Edmund Dudley’s son, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, followed in his father’s footsteps and also tried to overthrow the crown by marrying his son, Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey (the original “queen for a day”).

Behind the Legends: The Curse of Dudleytown
Dudleytown Front Page: This site presents compelling evidence that contradicts the infamous legends.