As always, it depends on who you ask.
I recently saw a trailer for a new Sam Raimi movie coming out this fall called "The Possession." It purports to be "based on a true story," that of the infamous Haunted eBay Dybbuk Box. But how real is it all?
Well, as always, it depends on who you ask. The Dybbuk Box itself is real, in that it is a literal object which you could (in theory) pick up and touch. It is a small wooden box which was put up for sale on eBay in 2004 with an amazing story behind it. How true is that story? It's hard to say for sure.
According to the lore of the box, it had belonged to a Holocaust survivor who purchased it before fleeing Europe for the United States. She kept the box in her sewing room, and strictly ordered everyone (including her granddaughter, who sold it upon her demise) never to touch it because it contained a dybbuk.
A dybbuk is an evil spirit from Jewish folklore. They are believed to be the malevolent spirits of people who died, but whose souls were refused entrance to the afterlife because of their Earthly misdeeds. The word "dybbuk" derives from the Hebrew word for "attachment," as the dybbuk is said to attach itself to a living person and possess them.
The granddaughter, in dealing with her grandmother's estate, sold the box to a Portland, Oregon antiques dealer named Kevin Mannis in 2001. Mannis found that the box contained numerous small items, like a pair of wheat ear pennies, and a small golden wine goblet.
He also found that he suddenly had a run of extremely bad luck, and a series of recurring nightmares which he supposedly shares with every other owner of the Dybbuk Box. The box has been blamed for an elderly woman's stroke, the sudden burning out of an entire household of light bulbs, the mysterious transient smell of cat urine and/or jasmine flowers, and more.
What I find most interesting about this object is that none of the reported phenomena are what you would expect to see from a dybbuk. The object seems to be behaving like any other run-of-the-mill cursed item, causing (in the words of one owner) "a tidal wave of bad luck." Even people who visit the box's official website have reported effects including "strange headaches, nightmares, and other plagues."
But where are the stories of possession? Isn't that what a dybbuk does, after all? Is this a dybbuk box without a dybbuk, or what?