In March two thousand seven, the much celebrated writer and film director JJ Abrams gave a ted talk entitled The Mystery Box. In it, he outlined the notion of unseen mystery as one of his fundamental principles of storytelling. In order to demonstrate the point, Abrams brought along a gift he received from a relative back when he was fourteen years old, Tannon's Magic Mystery Box. The box was rather plain, looking like a regular brown cardboard box with a large
black question mark printed on the front of it. The idea was that although you couldn't see what was inside it, the makers of the box promised to anyone who might buy it that it contained the equivalent of fifty dollars worth of magic for the price of only fifteen dollars. To a fourteen year old kid like Abrams, it was an exhilarating gift. Just what incredible things might it contain that could possibly equate to fifty dollars worth of magic?
Only in all that time Abrams had never opened it, as he astutely realized, the real magic had nothing to do with what was actually inside the box, but rather in the wandering of what might be in the thirty six years since the box had been gifted to him, it had come to symbolize something far more valuable than
anything that could be inside. To Abrams, whose show Lost has been described as one of the greatest mystery dramas of all time, the box was a powerful reminder of the infinite potential of story and how mystery is the key to imagination. With that in mind, before we go any further, let's try a little experiment. A stranger approaches you in the street brandishing a suitcase. They say to you, what I have in this suitcase will change your life. Do you want to know what it is? You want
to know what's in the case, don't you? Would you ask them to open it? Or not? Now hold on to that thought. We'll come back to it later. The best mysteries are the boxes with lids that remain closed the longest, or, like a Chinese box, the ones that open only to reveal another deeper mystery inside. In the context of story, at least, as the huge success of Abrams's Enigmatic Lost demonstrates, perhaps it's better not to open the box at all, since the revelation of what's inside
rarely up to expectation. What I find most fascinating about Abrams's notion of unseen mystery is not so much the tease of needing to know what's inside the box, but how by withholding the truth of what it is, like some sort of infinity loop, it enables us to continually reimagine the possibilities. The infinite possibility of story is not
limited to the world of fiction. Some interpretations of quantum mechanical theories, such as superposition and wavefunction collapse, first introduced by pioneering physicist Werner Heisenberg, suggests that subatomic particles and by extension, all matter, effectively exist as a set of infinite possibilities, becoming fixed or collapsing into a singular state
only once they are observed or measured. For a truly mind bending introduction to this phenomena, seek out Professor Jim Alkalilly's explanation of the double slit experiment, presented as part of a lecture for the Royal Institution in twenty thirteen. Another famous depiction of this strange phenomena is Irwin Schrodinger's nineteen thirty five thought experiment. Schrodinger's Cat, perhaps the most
famous mystery box of the mall. The experiment invites you to imagine a box or steel chamber, as Schrodinger has it, that contains a flask of poison and a hammer linked to a Geiger counter tracking the potential decay of a radioactive substance. A cat is placed inside the box, which is then sealed, with no way for the observer to see what is occurring inside. If the counter records a single atom of decay from the radioactive substance, the hammer
will fall and release a poison, killing the cat. However, because we can't actually see inside the box, it could be said that, regardless of what has happened, the cat exists in a state of superposition, being simultaneously alive and dead at the same time. Only when we look inside the box, in other words, empirically measure what has occurred,
does the cat's actual state become known. It's an idea with quite extraordinary implications, even horrifying, perhaps, the notion of the material world as something unfixed and indeterminate, only settling into place once it has been observed. After all, is there any knowing who or what might constitute the observer? Indeed, if we allow ourselves to stretch the analogy further, wouldn't the true horror be in discovering that, having opened the box, it isn't us who are observing the cat, but the
cat who's observing us. So we're back with the stranger in the street brandishing their mysterious suitcase. Did you decide to open it to see the thing inside that will change your life? You did? Notice that I never said anything about it changing your life for the better. You're
listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. All of the events that I'm about to set forth in this listing are accurate and may be verified with the copies of hospital records and sworn AffA davits that I'm including as part of the sale posted in June two thousand and three by a then thirty eight year old Kevin Manis a furniture and antique seller from Portland, Oregon. This certainly wasn't your average eBay listing. Then again, the article
for sale was not your typical eBay item. This was something else entirely. The story, according to Kevin, begins back in September two thousand and one. Kevin is the owner of ADDIE's Market, a small, used and restored furniture business he set up earlier in the year. His main area of expertise is furniture recovery and restoration, but what he enjoys more than anything is hunting for new and interesting
pieces to work with. On weekends, it's common to find Kevin cruising around the Portland suburbs visiting yard sales and personal property auctions, much like the one he is approaching now that's September. One weekend, Kevin parks his pick up in front of a modest sixties low rise house. There he finds the usual group of curious onlookers and amateur collectors poking around the bits and pieces that are stacked
up on the lawn. A cursory glance reveals most of the items to be old and dated, suggesting to Kevin that their owner has recently passed away. Although a little morbid, it's this kind of sale that Kevin relishes, since it's often when people die that the most interesting items become available. Peculiar objects kept and treasured for years, once loaded with personal meaning, now stripped of all but their original purpose. After purchasing Lock twenty nine, a good mix of household furniture.
It's only when Kevin is loading the items onto his truck that he notices one particular piece for the first time, A peculiar little cabinet unlike anything else in the sale. Roughly a foot wide and just over sixteen inches tall, it's made from a richly colored, if slightly scuffed, mahogany and adorned on the front with two bunches of grapes shaped from brass. Kevin recognizes it as a wine cabinet common in Jewish households, often used as a ceremonial piece
for a number of Jewish rituals. I see you bought the dibbook box. Kevin turns to find a young woman standing behind him. Dibbock box, he asks. The box, the woman explains, was one of only three items that her grandmother, Havela, brought to America when she arrived from Europe after the Second World War. According to Kevin, Avela was born in Poland, where she'd lived before the German army invaded in nineteen thirty nine, after which she was sent to a concentration camp,
where she lost contact with her entire family. After managing to escape, she made her way to Spain, where it's thought she purchased the strange box. Aveala would never see her family again, but thanks to the sanctuary offered by the United States, she was able to build a new life, a new home, and a new family before passing away at the age of one hundred and three. Moved by her story, Kevin no longer sees the item as just a piece for him to sell, but as something with
great history and weight. Without hesitating, he offers it back to the woman. Her response is unexpected, No, I don't want anything to do with it. Please, it's yours now. Kevin is a little alarmed, but agrees to take it. Why is it called a dibbook box? He asks. The woman tells him that ever since she was young, her grandmother kept the box in her sewing room, closed and out at the reach of the small, prying hands of children.
Whenever the woman asked what was in it, her grandmother would spit through her fingers three times and say it was a dibbuk, insisting the cabinet should never be opened under any circumstances. As for what a dibuok is exactly, the woman isn't able to say, do you want to open it with me, Kevin jokes. The woman's face darkens again. No, she says. Kevin looks back to the quaint little box. Are you sure you don't want to keep it? He asks?
You bought it, We don't want it, says the woman, before turning away and walking back to the house, leaving a amused and stunned Kevin to finish loading up the rest of his goods. After arriving back at his furniture shop, Kevin takes his new purchases down to the basement for logging. Later that afternoon, with a few more errands to run, he heads out again, leaving his assistant Jane, in charge
until his return. With business a little slow on the shop floor, Jane takes the opportunity to make a start on the new items. As she descends into the cold darkness of the basement, she feels a profound sense of unease. A moment later, almost without realizing, she finds herself staring at a funny looking cabinet with two bunches of metal grapes on its doors. That sense of unease now unmistakable
as the feeling of being watched. A ringing phone snaps her out of it, running back up to the shop floor. Jane answers the call, but there is only silence at the other end. A loud crash comes from somewhere below. Hello, says Jane, stepping down into the basement. Moving further in, she sees with some relief the cause of the disturbance. A phosphorescent light bulb has blown, scattering shards of milky white glass across the floor. Jane finds a broom and
cleans up the mess. As she brushes the broken glass, rattles and scuffs against the floor. The broom's bristles swish, but through the suscration, Jane is certain she can hear something else. She stops for a moment and strains to listen. It sounds like somebody is whispering to her. It's quiet at first, like tiny licks of wind whipping at her ears, getting louder and louder until she can almost pick out
whole words and their dark, unmistakable tone of malice. Smash, another light ball blows, raining glass all over the floor and plunging the basement into complete darkness. Jane drops the broom and runs straight for the exit, but the basement gate has somehow swung shut and locked itself, trapping her underground. She pulls and rattles the bars, screaming for help. Kevin is a few blocks away when he picks up the phone to find a frantic Jane on the other end.
Does someone hear? She keeps saying someone smashing the place up. Before Kevin can make any sense of it, the line goes dead. When he returns to the shop, Kevin finds it completely silent, with no light coming from the floor below, and when he calls out for Jane, he gets no response. Grabbing a torch from under the counter, he races down to the basement, only to find the gate locked shut. He fumbles for the key and hurriedly jams it into the lock. With one turn, the gate swings open. Kevin
flicks the light switch, but the room remains dark. He switches on the torch, unleashing a bright beam of light into the space, then takes a step forward. Just then he's hit by an unexpected and pungent odor, sickly sweet like cat urine. He thinks glass cracks under his feet. Moving the torch about, is shocked to see that every light bulb in the room has blown out. The light catches something crouched on the floor at the far end of the room. Kevin freezes as it starts to move.
It's Jane, stuff you, says Jane, pushing asked him a stunt. Kevin is still standing downstairs in the dark when he hears the shop's bell ring, followed by the slamming of the front door. Jane never returns to work at ADDIE's Market, believing that Kevin had played a hideous prank on her. For Kevin's part, he could be forgiven for thinking Jane herself might have had something to do with it. It certainly doesn't occur to either of them that perhaps the
small mahogany cabinet was to blame. It's a month later and Kevin is finally getting round to fixing up the so called Dibbuk box. He thinks it'll make the perfect present for his mother Ida's upcoming birthday. He pulls it out from the back of the basement and places it on his worktop. He's just about to unlock the clasp when he remembers the warning of the seller's grandmother never open it. With a shrug, He flicks back the clip and pulls open the doors. As he does, something unexpected occurs.
A small drawer at the bottom opens simultaneously. Inside it are two old pennies and two locks of hair. Kevin pulls the drawer open further, and the doors follow suit, as if the box itself were offering its contents to him. Looking inside the cabinet, Kevin is confused. On the inner side of the door, he finds a cup and brackets for holding wine bottles, as he'd anticipated, but he didn't
expect to find the other bizarre objects inside. He stuck with the pieces in the drawer, he takes out the two pennies first, one is from nineteen twenty five and the other from nineteen twenty eight. Next, he takes out the wine cup that appears to be made of gold and places it on the side next to the pennies. In the main box, he finds a dried rosebud and a ghoulish looking cast iron candlestick with four octopus like tentacles curling around the base. Then he picks up the
strands of hair and examines them closely. One lock is curly tangled and reddish blonde in color, the other much darker, almost black, and straight. Both are undoubtedly human Kevin also finds an oddly shaped granite statue with the Hebraic Shalom meaning peace, engraved in copper on its front. The entire thing is like nothing he's seen before. With all the pieces removed, Kevin gently starts rubbing lemon oil into the wood when he notices something else written in Hebrew across
the back of the cabinet. Unable to read Hebrew, however, Kevin simply finishes the oiling, then returns the items to the box and carefully closes its doors. A few days later, Kevin's mother, Ida arrives at ADDIE's Market to find Kevin waiting for her with his newly restored gift. Happy Birthday, Mum,
He says, what do you think? Ida smiles politely, not quite sure what to make of the peculiar item, as Kevin places it on a table, then heads downstairs to finish off a few jobs before they can go for lunch. Ida takes a seat and feels a small breeze rushed through the shop. When she looks up, she finds, to her astonishment that the doors of the box have opened. With the overwhelming urge to touch it, she rises from
her chair and takes a step toward it. When she places her hand on it, she is gripped by an extraordinary feeling of power, as if she's just been plugged into the manes. In a panic, she tries to pull away, but she can't move. The left side of her mouth begins to sag. When Kevin returns, he finds his mother completely unresponsive, with tears streaming down her face. Ida was apparently found to have suffered a stroke, resulting in the partial para of her left sight and a loss of speech.
After being treated at the local hospital, she is settled onto a ward with Kevin by her side. Unable to talk, she picks up a pad of paper and a pen from the bedside table. She scribbles something down, then rips off the top sheet and hands it to him. It says no gift. Kevin is confused. Does she mean he didn't get her a birthday present? He rubs her hand and reassures her that he did. He gave her the
wine box. Ida becomes agitated and shakes her head. She scribbles furiously on the pad again, then turns it round to reveal the words hate gift. With Ida not wanting the box, Kevin offers it first to his sister. She returns it a week later, complaining that the doors won't stay shut, so he gives it to his brother and
sister in law, who also return it days later. Upset by the strange cat urine like odor it seems to exude, Kevin takes it back to the shop, where a middle aged couple take a shine to it and duly take it off his hands, only to return it. The following day, Kevin finds it waiting for him on the doorstep of the shop, with an odd note taped to it that reads this box as an old darkness about it. In the end, he decides to take it home and keep
it for himself. Kevin is walking through an enchanted autumnal scene alongside an old friend, but as they walk through the burnt orange and browns of a forest path way, something begins to shift out of place. He turns to his friend, whose face is now morphing and twisting into a grotesque mask, until it is replaced entirely by the gruesome features of an almost inhuman looking elderly lady, her dark, sunken eyes exuding what he takes to be a deep,
primordial and unfathomable evil. Then suddenly she sets upon him with startling ferocity, beating and tearing at his skin. Kevin wakes with a scream. Sweat drips from his forehead as its heart thumps audibly in his chest. He hurriedly switches on his bedside light. When he looks down, he finds that its body is covered in welts and bruises. That was only the first night. Soon, Kevin becomes convinced that
something is stalking him in his house. Sometimes, when he senses movement in the corner of his eye, he looks up to see black, wispy shapes seemingly retreating into the shadows. Afraid of what others might think, As he explained in his eBay listing, Kevin keeps his nightmares and visions to himself for the next eighteen months. At some point, Kevin's sister and brother come to stay with him, along with
his brother's wife. One morning, over breakfast, Kevin's sister complains of a hellish nightmare she had the previous night, involving a fearsome elderly lady. Kevin's sister in law stops eating and looks nervously at the others, as she explains, she had the exact same dream too. In fact, according to Kevin, all four of them apparently had it, and that wasn't the first time together. They realized the nightmares occurred whenever
they'd each been looking after the Dibbuk box. Although Kevin is unwilling to believe the old wine cabinet has anything to do with it, he puts it away in a storage space behind the house for some peace of mind. Later that night, through the fogginess of sleep, Kevin hears a distant siren. It's the smoke alarm in the storage unit. Fearing the place is burning down, Kevin races to the unit, only to find there is no fire, just the potent
stench of cat urine. After going back to bed, Kevin wakes again at four point thirty with the sensation that someone is breathing on his neck. Looking up suddenly, he claimed that he then saw a large humanoid shadow disappearing into the hallway. Kevin had had enough. As Kevin explained in his eBay listing, he wasn't religious or superstitious in the slightest so to think this harmless box might have some kind of spiritual power was a nonsense to him.
Yet how many of us, despite inner certainty and our better judgment, will still avoid walking under a ladder, or will feel a little tightening of the chest when a black cat walks across our path. The easiest solution for Kevin was to throw the box away or burn it, but he just can't shake the thought what if? What if the box was cur What if destroying it would unleash the curse indefinitely upon himself and all his loved ones? Would he want to carry that burden for the rest
of his life? And so instead of destroying it, he listed it on eBay so someone else could take it off his hands. You've been listening to Unexplained Season seven, episode twenty three. The Box, Part one of three, Part two will be released next Friday, June seventh. This episode was written by Richard McClain smith. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, were also produced
by me Richard McClean smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook with stories never before featured on the show. Show is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
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