What do you think about this?
In 2003, a man named Kevin Mannis listed an old wine cabinet for sale on eBay, and included with it one of the strangest stories ever attached to a piece of furniture. He said he had bought it at an estate sale from the family of a woman who had survived the Holocaust, and that they had begged him to take it away. Inside, he said, was a dybbuk, a restless and malicious spirit out of Jewish folklore.
From the moment he owned it, Mannis claimed, his life turned. Lights burned out, a smell of cat urine and jasmine came and went, and he and later owners reported nightmares of a terrible old woman, along with bruises, illness, and a feeling of dread whenever the box was near. Each owner, the story goes, tried to pass it on.
Skeptics point out the obvious. It was an eBay listing, written to sell, and the legend grew with every retelling and eventually a Hollywood film. There is little to verify beyond the words of the people profiting from the tale.
Could it be that an ordinary cabinet became a lightning rod for every bad night and stroke of bad luck its owners already had, its power coming entirely from the story we agreed to believe?
A truly cursed object, or the most successful piece of storytelling eBay ever hosted? What do you think is really inside the Dybbuk Box?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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