Dybbuk

Familiar: No
Spirit Animal: No
Spirit Guide: No
Totem: No
Mythical: No
Supernatural: Yes
Cryptid: No
Urban Legend: No
Creepypasta: No

The dybbuk, also spelled dibbuk, (plural: dybbukim) is a disembodied spirit from Jewish folklore. This spirit, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person. It is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. Supposedly, the dybbuk will leave the host body once it has accomplished its goal or after being exorcised

Belief in such spirits was especially prevalent in 16th–17th-century eastern Europe. Isaac Luria (1534–72), a mystic, laid the grounds for Jewish belief in a dybbuk with his doctrine of transmigration of souls (gilgul), which he saw as a means whereby souls could continue their task of self-perfection. His disciples went one step further with the notion of possession by a dybbuk.

The word comes from the Hebrew word דִּיבּוּק (dibūq) meaning ‘a case of attachment’, which is a nominal form derived from the verb דָּבַק‎ dāḇaq ‘to adhere’ or ‘cling’.

The term first appears in a number of 16th-century writings, though it was ignored by mainstream scholarship until S. An-sky’s 1920 play The Dybbuk popularized the concept in literary circles. Earlier accounts of possession (such as that given by Josephus) were of demonic possession rather than that of ghosts.

Traditionally, dybbuks tended to be male spirits who possessed women on the eve of their weddings, typically in a sexual fashion by entering the women through their vaginas, which is seen in Ansky’s play.

Stories about dybbukim are common in the time of the Second Temple and the talmudic periods, particularly in the Gospels though they are not as prominent in medieval literature. In Jewish folklore and popular belief dybbukim were evil spirits of the dead who were not laid to rest and thus became demons which enter into a living person, cleaves his soul, causes mental illness, talks through his mouth, and represents a separate and alien personality is called a dybbuk. The term appears neither in talmudic literature nor in the Kabbalah, where this phenomenon is always called “evil spirit.” (In talmudic literature it is sometimes called ru’aḥ tezazit, and in the New Testament “unclean spirit.”)

This idea (also common in medieval Christianity) combined with the doctrine of *gilgul (“transmigration of the soul”) in the 16th century became widespread and accepted by large segments of the Jewish population. They were generally considered to be souls which, on account of the enormity of their sins, were not even allowed to transmigrate and as “denuded spirits” they sought refuge in the bodies of living persons. The entry of a dybbuk into a person was a sign of his having committed a secret sin which opened a door for the dybbuk. A combination of beliefs current in the non-Jewish environment and popular Jewish beliefs influenced by the Kabbalah form these conceptions.

The term was introduced into literature only in the 17th century from the spoken language of German and Polish Jews. It is an abbreviation of dybbuk me-ru’aḥ ra’ah (“a cleavage of an evil spirit”), or dybbuk min ḥa-hiẓonim (“dybbuk from the outside”), which is found in man. The act of attachment of the spirit to the body became the name of the spirit itself. However, the verb davok (“cleave”) is found throughout kabbalistic literature where it denotes the relations between the evil spirit and the body, mitdabbeket bo (“it cleaves itself to him”).

The power to exorcise dybbukim was given to ba’alei shem (Rabbi) or accomplished Ḥasidim. They exorcised the dybbuk from the body which was bound by it and simultaneously redeemed the soul by providing a tikkun (“restoration”) for him, either by transmigration or by causing the dybbuk to enter hell.

Special booklets on the exorcisms of famous spirits which took place in Korets have also been published (end of 17th century in Yiddish), in Nikolsburg (1696, 1743), in Detmold (1743), and in Stolowitz (1848). The last protocol of this kind, published in Jerusalem in 1904, concerns a dybbuk which entered the body of a woman and was exorcised by Ben-Zion Ḥazzan. The phenomena connected with the beliefs in and the stories about dybbukim usually have their factual background in cases of hysteria and sometimes even in manifestations of schizophrenia.

Often individuals suffering from nervous or mental disorders were taken to a miracle-working rabbi (baʿal shem), who alone, it was believed, could expel the harmful dybbuk through a religious rite of exorcism.

In psychological literature, the dybbuk has been described as a hysterical syndrome. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe (1887–1979), is reported to have supposedly advised an individual said to be possessed to consult a psychiatrist.

The Dybbuk Box

The Dybbuk box, or Dibbuk box (Hebrew: קופסת דיבוק, romanized: Kufsat Dibbuk), is a paranormal antique wine-cabinet claimed to be haunted by a dybbuk. The box gained notoriety when it was auctioned off on eBay by owner Kevin Mannis, with paranormal claims as part of his eBay item description.

In 2003, writer and furniture refinishing business owner Kevin Mannis purchased the cabinet from the yard sale of a local attorney in Portland, Oregon, and began developing a backstory. According to Mannis’ auction description, the story went that it was the possession of a holocaust survivor who first bought it in Spain after she had finally escaped Nazi-occupied Poland but would never open it afterwards. She always warned her family not to open it. Upon her death, he picked it up in an estate sale and refinished it himself. Upon opening it, the box contained:

-Two 1920s pennies
– A lock of blond hair bound with a cord
– A lock of black/brown hair bound with a cord
– A small statue engraved with the Hebrew word “shalom”
– A small golden wine goblet
– One dried rose bud
– A single candle holder with octopus-shaped legs

it was said he tried to return it to the family after he fixed it but none of them wanted it. He then gave the restored box to a family member for their birthday and bad things began to happen. They gave it back to him and he passed it on once again to another member of the family. It lasted even less time with that family member before he decided to list it on Ebay. Upon its sale, it was returned multiple times as those who bought it began to have a series of supernatural events and tragedies. Here’s a list of things its previous owners experienced:

– A series of the horrific, recurring nightmares involving an old hag.
– A stroke
– Smells of cat urine
– Smells of jasmine flowers
– Hair falling out
– Light bulbs burning out
– Hives
– Coughing up blood
– Head-to-toe welts

One owner, Jason Haxton, Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri, launched a website that consolidated claims about the cabinet called dibbukbox.com. He had the box sealed by a Jewish Rabbi and in 2004, Haxton sold the rights to the story to a Hollywood production company. The subsequent film The Possession, produced by Sam Raimi, was released in 2012. Haxton later gave the cabinet to Ghost Adventures star Zak Bagans to display in his museum. In 2018, fans of rapper Post Malone claimed his spate of bad luck was caused by his contact with the cabinet.

He was at the museum when Bagans decided to take the plexiglass cover from around the box and touch it for the very first time. While Bagans was touching the box itself, Post grabbed his shoulder and this was enough, apparently, to transfer the curse. In the months that followed, he experienced quite a number of things including:

– His private plane was forced to make an emergency landing after its tires blew off
– Three armed robbers targeted a home in San Fernando Valley that they believed to be his
– His Rolls Royce was involved in a serious car accident

Mr. Mannis finally came out years and years later saying that he was a writer and had made up the entire story. The post, dated October 24, 2015, states:

I am the original creator of the story of The Dibbuk Box which appeared as one of my Ebay posts back in 2003. … How about this – if you or anyone else can find any reference to a Dibbuk Box anywhere in history prior to my Ebay post, I’ll pay you $100,000.00 and tattoo your name on my forehead.

However, it is hard to say that this many people experienced just bad luck immediately after purchasing the box. One theory is that the supernatural phenomena began to occur due to the sheer belief in it. It is said that if enough people believe in something hard enough, it can begin to become true. The theory goes that enough people began believing in the box or already had paranormal activities in their home from other sources and it actually brought about more paranormal phenomena.

Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths’ College, said the box’s owners were “already primed to be looking out for bad stuff. If you believe you have been cursed, then inevitably you explain the bad stuff that happens in terms of what you perceive to be the cause.”

In 2014, skeptical author Brian Dunning investigated the dybbuk box legend and determined that “The whole idea of the box being inhabited by a dybbuk is nonsensical, according to what a dybbuk is supposed to be. The Encyclopedia Mythica describes it as “a disembodied spirit possessing a living body that belongs to another soul” and usually talks from that person’s mouth. An important 1914 Yiddish play The Dybbuk was about the spirit of a dead man who possessed the living body of the woman he had loved, and had to be exorcised…. Nowhere in the folkloric literature is there precedent for a dybbuk inhabiting a box or other inanimate object.”

No matter what you believe about the box itself, it is a fantastic story that inspired many another fantastic story!

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