OBJECT FILE
The Dybbuk Box
FOLLOWThe Haunted Museum, 600 E Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, NV, United States
THE OBJECT
A small wooden wine cabinet with two doors and a drawer. Kevin Mannis of Portland, Oregon listed it on eBay in June 2003 with a long account of buying it at the estate sale of a Holocaust survivor and of the misfortunes that followed; it sold for $140 to Iosif Neitzke, a student in Kirksville, Missouri, who sold it in February 2004 for $280 to Jason Haxton, director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine there. Haxton wrote The Dibbuk Box (2011) and in 2016 passed the box to Zak Bagans, who displays it in Las Vegas.
REPORTED ACTIVITY
The eBay story — nightmares, smells of cat urine and jasmine, hair loss, the phrase 'a dybbuk' — was picked up by the Los Angeles Times in 2004 and became the 2012 film The Possession. In 2021 Mannis told Input magazine: 'I am a creative writer. The Dybbuk Box is a story that I created', and that the Hebrew carving on its back is his own. The box is real; its history is a work of fiction, which is itself now part of its record.
WHERE IT IS NOW
On public display — kept by Zak Bagans' The Haunted Museum. The Haunted Museum, 600 E Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, NV, United States.
THE SITE IT SITS IN →PROVENANCE · 4 ENTRIES
TRACE ON THE MAP →2001 – 2003
Kevin Mannis
his furniture-refinishing business and home, Portland, OR, United States
Mannis said he bought it at a Portland estate sale in 2001; in 2021 he said the estate-sale story was invented. That he owned the box before the 2003 sale is not disputed.
Source: Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2004; Input, 2021
2003 – 2004
Iosif Neitzke (student, Truman State University)
student housing, Kirksville, MO, United States
Source: Input, 2021 (eBay sale June 2003, $140); Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2004
2004 – 2016
Jason Haxton
his home; Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, Kirksville, MO, United States
Source: Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2004; Haxton, The Dibbuk Box (2011); Input, 2021 (eBay sale Feb 2004, $280)
2016 — CURRENT LOCATION
Zak Bagans
The Haunted Museum, Las Vegas, NV, United States
Source: Input, 2021 (Haxton passed the box to Bagans in 2016)
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS · 0
REPORT AN EXPERIENCE →Nobody has filed an encounter with this object yet.
ADD TO THE CHAIN
Sign in to add a sourced step to this object’s history.