Introducing: Ghost Bites - The Dybbuk Box

Ghost Bites is a weekly podcast from Mike and J.T. of Brew Crime, for quick, 5–10 minute dives into the haunted, spooky, and paranormal. Get your weekly dose of all things creepy, served with a side of laughs. It’s the perfect podcast for anyone looking for a fun and frightening experience that won’t take up their whole day.


This week on Ghost Bites, Mike and J.T. crack open the creepy tale of the Dybbuk Box. Allegedly a wine cabinet possessed by a restless, dislocated spirit, this little antique has a reputation for bringing misfortune, nightmares, and even physical harm to anyone who dares to own it. Join us as we explore this potentially furniture-based evil entity and ponder if buying haunted antiques on eBay is ever a good idea. Spoiler: it's not.


Sources used for this episode:

• The Dybbuk Box by Jason Haxton
• "A Nightmare on Elm Drive: The True Story of the Dybbuk Box" (documentary)
• "The Haunted Dybbuk Box: A True Story of Possession?" (All That's Interesting article)
• The Possession (2012 film, for entertainment purposes only, definitely not a documentary)

Intro Music by - Jayme McDonald (Chatterless) ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Linktree ⁠



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Intro & Outro by Jahred Gomes: https://www.instagram.com/jahredgomes_official 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ghost Bites. The podcast. It serves up the
history of hauntings one terrifying morsel at the time.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Mike and I'm your co ghost JT ready to
add a little seasoning to these spooky stories.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
The weirdest part of living in a haunted house is
it the shadowy figures or the disembodied voices. It's the
strange things that happened in the kitchen totally.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Just last night, my fridge it opened itself and the
milk was glowing.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
The milk was glowing. Mine was making a rumbling sound
like it was about to start a cult.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I guess ghosts have very particular tastes when it comes
to those late night snackt and on this show, we're
here to find out just what those tastes are.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
You are listening to Ghost Bites. The Demic Box is

(01:32):
an antique wine cabinet said to be haunted by a
Jewish folklore spirit. What makes the story so unique is
that its entire history is documented, starting with a single
eBay listing in two thousand and three.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
A Haunted Box on eBay. The auction description probably read
fasale lightly used wine cabinet contains one evil spirit from
Jewish mythology. Mild demonic possession may cause strange odors and
a string of unfortunate events. Buyer assumes all risk, final sale,
no returns. The listing, posted by antiques dealer Kevin Manis,

(02:13):
came with a chilling backstory. The box was owned by
a Jewish Holocaust survivor and was used to trap a
malicious spirit. It was passed down through the family with
a terrifying warning to never open it, and as the
story goes, the box brings a curse of misfortune to
its owners. Kevin Manus himself claimed to experience strange smells,

(02:34):
shared nightmares, and reported that his mother suffered a stroke
the very day he gave her the box as a
birthday gift. And it's a real, my big fat Greek
wedding nightmare. What kind of gift is a haunted box? Anyway?
Here Mom, Happy birthday. This box contains the screaming souls
of the damned. Please don't open it. It could kill you.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
I love you, remember me.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Subsequent owners also reported strange phenomena, including foul odors, electronic malfunctions,
vivid nightmares, and, in the case of Jason Haxton, a
bizarre skin condition in coughing up blood. You know, just
your typical Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
The legend reached a global audience when the box was
linked to rap star Post Malone. He believes that after
touching the box, he was plagued by a series of misfortunes,
including a near miss, plane crash, a car accident, and
an armed robbery, all of which he attributed to the
box's curse.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I love how the curse is so specific, like post
Malone's career is on fire, but he gets in a
car accident and he's probably thinking, you know what, I'll
take the car accidents better than getting stage fight.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
I guess there's so many other musicians that could use
this curse. And now for the big reveal. In a
twenty twenty one interview, the original owner, Kevin mannis confessed
to fabricating the entire story. He admitted to being a
creative writer who conceived the name, the term, and the
idea the Dipic Box, and simply wrote a creative story

(04:02):
for his eBay post. He called it an interactive horror
story in real time, and.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
You can't be surprised. This is the Internet. This is
how all modern folklore is born. Someone writes a story,
it gets a couple of likes, and the next thing
you know, there's a TV show about a box that
you can buy an ebit and the best part, the
legend of the dibik being trapped in a box is
completely inconsistent with traditional Jewish folklore. A dibik is a

(04:29):
spirit that possesses a living body. It cannot be contained
in an inanimate object like a wine cabinet. The entire
premise is a misrepresentation of a sacred tradition.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
The fact that a single creative writing piece could go
viral and create a modern horror myth speaks to the
Internet's power as a myth making machine. The true curse
of the depic box is not supernatural, it's psychological. The
phenomena experienced by its owners can be explained by the
so sebo effect and confirmation bias. When a person believes

(05:04):
an object is cursed, they are psychologically primed to attribute
any negative event to it, specifically remembering misfortunes while ignoring
periods of normalcy.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
So people buy this bus and then bad things happen
to them, but they just forget about all the good
stuff that happens to them. It's like buying a new
pair of shoes and then complaining that your feet hurt
after walking a mile. The only thing that box is
haunted by is your own self fulfilling prophecy. This whole
thing is an excellent lesson and how the human mind

(05:36):
can convince itself of a story, especially when it's a
good one. It's a perfect case study of how a
myth can be so powerful that people start to experience
things they've been told they will experience.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Well, that's all the time we have for this Ghost Bites,
and I have to say my kitchen feels a little
less magical now.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Maybe, but at least now you know why your food
tastes so good. It's got that little extra something, a
dash of hm the supernatural.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
I'm not eating my leftover tonight.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Thanks for tuning into Ghost Bites. We'll be back when
the candle is lit.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Ghost Bites is a production of brew crime podcast intra
music composed and produced by Jamie McDonald, also known as
MD Boomsday and found on Spotify as Chatterless Local designed
by JT. Sources can be found in the show notes.
Thanks for coming on the Spooky Journey with Me, Mike
and JT.