Unexplained
Had a demonic spirit been released from an old cabinet?
Antique-shop owner Kevin Mannis went to an estate sale in Oregon, USA, in September 2003. family were selling off the belongings of a Polish Holocaust survivor named Havela, who’d died aged 103.
An old wooden wine cabinet caught Kevin’s eye.
Havela’s granddaughter told him the box had spent the last few decades locked away in her grandma’s closet – with strict instructions never to open it.
The reason? It contained a dybbuk – a malicious, demonic spirit in Jewish folklore.
Havela had acquired the box after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two and settling in Spain.
She’d asked for it to be buried with her. But the rules of orthodox Jewish burial wouldn’t allow it. Her wish remained unfulfilled.
Intrigued, Kevin bought the dybbuk wine cabinet.
He believed warnings of demons and spirits to be no more than fairy stories. So, back home, he opened it. Inside were two 1920s pennies, a wine goblet, a dried rosebud, a candle holder, two locks of human hair bound by a cord, and a statuette engraved with the word Shalom, meaning peace. No demonic spirit. Leaving it in his workshop, Kevin went out to run errands.
Only, 30 minutes later, he received a frantic phone call from an employee.
Terrified, she told him someone had broken into the warehouse and they were destroying everything.
All the exits had been sealed, trapping the saleswoman inside. She could hear loud, disembodied swearing, too.
But she never actually saw the intruder. When Kevin returned, he found no sign of a break-in.
Yet, the warehouse had been violently ransacked and there was a foul stench of cat urine.
The employee was so frightened, she quit her job.
The mysterious cabinet remained untouched, but Kevin didn’t make the connection. In fact, he gave it to his mother for her birthday!
Only, five minutes after handing it over, his mum suffered a stroke.
In hospital, unable to speak, she used a spelling board. Hate gift, she wrote. Kevin gave the cabinet to his sister. But she returned it a week later, claiming the doors kept opening by themselves.
So he gave it to his brother, who handed it back after three days.
He could smell jasmine near the box, while his wife could only smell cat urine.
Next, Kevin sold it to a middle-aged couple – but found it on his doorstep days later with a note reading,
This has a bad darkness.
Eventually, he took the box home himself.
But once it was in his house, Kevin was plagued by horrific recurring nightmares.
In each, somebody he knew would morph into a hideous, demonic hag that viciously attacked him. He’d wake up covered in bruises.
Enough is enough, he thought. It was time to get rid of this demon box.
He posted it on ebay, with an honest account of what had happened to him while in possession of the cursed artefact. Amazingly, he sold it.
But the buyer, too, soon sold it on after paranormal activity plagued his home.
The next owner was museum director Jason Haxton, who suffered sudden, unexplained health problems. Hives, rashes, coughing up blood.
He also began seeing shadowy figures stalking the walls of his home – and he, too, could smell cat urine. To get rid of the demon, Jason sought help from rabbis and religious experts. Specialist in Jewish religious artefacts, Rebecca Edery,
Shadowy figures stalked the walls of his home
confirmed the box was a sacred relic designed to imprison a dangerous spirit.
She thought someone had trapped the dybbuk inside for a reason. But who and why?
Havela’s cousin claimed she and Havela used to play with Ouija boards. In 1938, something had broken through.
Havela was finally able to contain the spirit when she found the odd cabinet in Spain.
Countless mystic rituals were performed on it, hoping to trap the demon back inside for good. Jason then sealed the box inside an acacia-wood ark, lined with gold – similar to the Ark of the Covenant, said to contain the original 10 Commandments.
He then hid the box in a secret location.
But what was the spirit inside the strange box..? And what did it want..?
And has it been trapped for ever this time..?