Speaker 1: In March two thousand seven, the much celebrated writer and
Speaker 1: film director JJ Abrams gave a ted talk entitled The
Speaker 1: Mystery Box. In it, he outlined the notion of unseen
Speaker 1: mystery as one of his fundamental principles of storytelling. In
Speaker 1: order to demonstrate the point, Abrams brought along a gift
Speaker 1: he received from a relative back when he was fourteen
Speaker 1: years old, Tannon's Magic Mystery Box. The box was rather plain,
Speaker 1: looking like a regular brown cardboard box with a large
Speaker 1: black question mark printed on the front of it. The
Speaker 1: idea was that although you couldn't see what was inside it,
Speaker 1: the makers of the box promised to anyone who might
Speaker 1: buy it that it contained the equivalent of fifty dollars
Speaker 1: worth of magic for the price of only fifteen dollars.
Speaker 1: To a fourteen year old kid like Abrams, it was
Speaker 1: an exhilarating gift. Just what incredible things might it contain
Speaker 1: that could possibly equate to fifty dollars worth of magic?
Speaker 1: Only in all that time Abrams had never opened it,
Speaker 1: as he astutely realized, the real magic had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with what was actually inside the box, but rather
Speaker 1: in the wandering of what might be in the thirty
Speaker 1: six years since the box had been gifted to him,
Speaker 1: it had come to symbolize something far more valuable than
Speaker 1: anything that could be inside. To Abrams, whose show Lost
Speaker 1: has been described as one of the greatest mystery dramas
Speaker 1: of all time, the box was a powerful reminder of
Speaker 1: the infinite potential of story and how mystery is the
Speaker 1: key to imagination. With that in mind, before we go
Speaker 1: any further, let's try a little experiment. A stranger approaches
Speaker 1: you in the street brandishing a suitcase. They say to you,
Speaker 1: what I have in this suitcase will change your life.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know what it is? You want
Speaker 1: to know what's in the case, don't you? Would you
Speaker 1: ask them to open it? Or not? Now hold on
Speaker 1: to that thought. We'll come back to it later. The
Speaker 1: best mysteries are the boxes with lids that remain closed
Speaker 1: the longest, or, like a Chinese box, the ones that
Speaker 1: open only to reveal another deeper mystery inside. In the
Speaker 1: context of story, at least, as the huge success of
Speaker 1: Abrams's Enigmatic Lost demonstrates, perhaps it's better not to open
Speaker 1: the box at all, since the revelation of what's inside
Speaker 1: rarely up to expectation. What I find most fascinating about
Speaker 1: Abrams's notion of unseen mystery is not so much the
Speaker 1: tease of needing to know what's inside the box, but
Speaker 1: how by withholding the truth of what it is, like
Speaker 1: some sort of infinity loop, it enables us to continually
Speaker 1: reimagine the possibilities. The infinite possibility of story is not
Speaker 1: limited to the world of fiction. Some interpretations of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanical theories, such as superposition and wavefunction collapse, first introduced
Speaker 1: by pioneering physicist Werner Heisenberg, suggests that subatomic particles and
Speaker 1: by extension, all matter, effectively exist as a set of
Speaker 1: infinite possibilities, becoming fixed or collapsing into a singular state
Speaker 1: only once they are observed or measured. For a truly
Speaker 1: mind bending introduction to this phenomena, seek out Professor Jim
Speaker 1: Alkalilly's explanation of the double slit experiment, presented as part
Speaker 1: of a lecture for the Royal Institution in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: Another famous depiction of this strange phenomena is Irwin Schrodinger's
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five thought experiment. Schrodinger's Cat, perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous mystery box of the mall. The experiment invites you
Speaker 1: to imagine a box or steel chamber, as Schrodinger has it,
Speaker 1: that contains a flask of poison and a hammer linked
Speaker 1: to a Geiger counter tracking the potential decay of a
Speaker 1: radioactive substance. A cat is placed inside the box, which
Speaker 1: is then sealed, with no way for the observer to
Speaker 1: see what is occurring inside. If the counter records a
Speaker 1: single atom of decay from the radioactive substance, the hammer
Speaker 1: will fall and release a poison, killing the cat. However,
Speaker 1: because we can't actually see inside the box, it could
Speaker 1: be said that, regardless of what has happened, the cat
Speaker 1: exists in a state of superposition, being simultaneously alive and
Speaker 1: dead at the same time. Only when we look inside
Speaker 1: the box, in other words, empirically measure what has occurred,
Speaker 1: does the cat's actual state become known. It's an idea
Speaker 1: with quite extraordinary implications, even horrifying, perhaps, the notion of
Speaker 1: the material world as something unfixed and indeterminate, only settling
Speaker 1: into place once it has been observed. After all, is
Speaker 1: there any knowing who or what might constitute the observer? Indeed,
Speaker 1: if we allow ourselves to stretch the analogy further, wouldn't
Speaker 1: the true horror be in discovering that, having opened the box,
Speaker 1: it isn't us who are observing the cat, but the
Speaker 1: cat who's observing us. So we're back with the stranger
Speaker 1: in the street brandishing their mysterious suitcase. Did you decide
Speaker 1: to open it to see the thing inside that will
Speaker 1: change your life? You did? Notice that I never said
Speaker 1: anything about it changing your life for the better. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. All of
Speaker 1: the events that I'm about to set forth in this
Speaker 1: listing are accurate and may be verified with the copies
Speaker 1: of hospital records and sworn AffA davits that I'm including
Speaker 1: as part of the sale posted in June two thousand
Speaker 1: and three by a then thirty eight year old Kevin
Speaker 1: Manis a furniture and antique seller from Portland, Oregon. This
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't your average eBay listing. Then again, the article
Speaker 1: for sale was not your typical eBay item. This was
Speaker 1: something else entirely. The story, according to Kevin, begins back
Speaker 1: in September two thousand and one. Kevin is the owner
Speaker 1: of ADDIE's Market, a small, used and restored furniture business
Speaker 1: he set up earlier in the year. His main area
Speaker 1: of expertise is furniture recovery and restoration, but what he
Speaker 1: enjoys more than anything is hunting for new and interesting
Speaker 1: pieces to work with. On weekends, it's common to find
Speaker 1: Kevin cruising around the Portland suburbs visiting yard sales and
Speaker 1: personal property auctions, much like the one he is approaching
Speaker 1: now that's September. One weekend, Kevin parks his pick up
Speaker 1: in front of a modest sixties low rise house. There
Speaker 1: he finds the usual group of curious onlookers and amateur
Speaker 1: collectors poking around the bits and pieces that are stacked
Speaker 1: up on the lawn. A cursory glance reveals most of
Speaker 1: the items to be old and dated, suggesting to Kevin
Speaker 1: that their owner has recently passed away. Although a little morbid,
Speaker 1: it's this kind of sale that Kevin relishes, since it's
Speaker 1: often when people die that the most interesting items become available.
Speaker 1: Peculiar objects kept and treasured for years, once loaded with
Speaker 1: personal meaning, now stripped of all but their original purpose.
Speaker 1: After purchasing Lock twenty nine, a good mix of household furniture.
Speaker 1: It's only when Kevin is loading the items onto his
Speaker 1: truck that he notices one particular piece for the first time,
Speaker 1: A peculiar little cabinet unlike anything else in the sale.
Speaker 1: Roughly a foot wide and just over sixteen inches tall,
Speaker 1: it's made from a richly colored, if slightly scuffed, mahogany
Speaker 1: and adorned on the front with two bunches of grapes
Speaker 1: shaped from brass. Kevin recognizes it as a wine cabinet
Speaker 1: common in Jewish households, often used as a ceremonial piece
Speaker 1: for a number of Jewish rituals. I see you bought
Speaker 1: the dibbook box. Kevin turns to find a young woman
Speaker 1: standing behind him. Dibbock box, he asks. The box, the
Speaker 1: woman explains, was one of only three items that her grandmother, Havela,
Speaker 1: brought to America when she arrived from Europe after the
Speaker 1: Second World War. According to Kevin, Avela was born in Poland,
Speaker 1: where she'd lived before the German army invaded in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, after which she was sent to a concentration camp,
Speaker 1: where she lost contact with her entire family. After managing
Speaker 1: to escape, she made her way to Spain, where it's
Speaker 1: thought she purchased the strange box. Aveala would never see
Speaker 1: her family again, but thanks to the sanctuary offered by
Speaker 1: the United States, she was able to build a new life,
Speaker 1: a new home, and a new family before passing away
Speaker 1: at the age of one hundred and three. Moved by
Speaker 1: her story, Kevin no longer sees the item as just
Speaker 1: a piece for him to sell, but as something with
Speaker 1: great history and weight. Without hesitating, he offers it back
Speaker 1: to the woman. Her response is unexpected, No, I don't
Speaker 1: want anything to do with it. Please, it's yours now.
Speaker 1: Kevin is a little alarmed, but agrees to take it.
Speaker 1: Why is it called a dibbook box? He asks. The
Speaker 1: woman tells him that ever since she was young, her
Speaker 1: grandmother kept the box in her sewing room, closed and
Speaker 1: out at the reach of the small, prying hands of children.
Speaker 1: Whenever the woman asked what was in it, her grandmother
Speaker 1: would spit through her fingers three times and say it
Speaker 1: was a dibbuk, insisting the cabinet should never be opened
Speaker 1: under any circumstances. As for what a dibuok is exactly,
Speaker 1: the woman isn't able to say, do you want to
Speaker 1: open it with me, Kevin jokes. The woman's face darkens again. No,
Speaker 1: she says. Kevin looks back to the quaint little box.
Speaker 1: Are you sure you don't want to keep it? He asks?
Speaker 1: You bought it, We don't want it, says the woman,
Speaker 1: before turning away and walking back to the house, leaving
Speaker 1: a amused and stunned Kevin to finish loading up the
Speaker 1: rest of his goods. After arriving back at his furniture shop,
Speaker 1: Kevin takes his new purchases down to the basement for logging.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, with a few more errands to run,
Speaker 1: he heads out again, leaving his assistant Jane, in charge
Speaker 1: until his return. With business a little slow on the
Speaker 1: shop floor, Jane takes the opportunity to make a start
Speaker 1: on the new items. As she descends into the cold
Speaker 1: darkness of the basement, she feels a profound sense of unease.
Speaker 1: A moment later, almost without realizing, she finds herself staring
Speaker 1: at a funny looking cabinet with two bunches of metal
Speaker 1: grapes on its doors. That sense of unease now unmistakable
Speaker 1: as the feeling of being watched. A ringing phone snaps
Speaker 1: her out of it, running back up to the shop floor.
Speaker 1: Jane answers the call, but there is only silence at
Speaker 1: the other end. A loud crash comes from somewhere below. Hello,
Speaker 1: says Jane, stepping down into the basement. Moving further in,
Speaker 1: she sees with some relief the cause of the disturbance.
Speaker 1: A phosphorescent light bulb has blown, scattering shards of milky
Speaker 1: white glass across the floor. Jane finds a broom and
Speaker 1: cleans up the mess. As she brushes the broken glass,
Speaker 1: rattles and scuffs against the floor. The broom's bristles swish,
Speaker 1: but through the suscration, Jane is certain she can hear
Speaker 1: something else. She stops for a moment and strains to listen.
Speaker 1: It sounds like somebody is whispering to her. It's quiet
Speaker 1: at first, like tiny licks of wind whipping at her ears,
Speaker 1: getting louder and louder until she can almost pick out
Speaker 1: whole words and their dark, unmistakable tone of malice. Smash,
Speaker 1: another light ball blows, raining glass all over the floor
Speaker 1: and plunging the basement into complete darkness. Jane drops the
Speaker 1: broom and runs straight for the exit, but the basement
Speaker 1: gate has somehow swung shut and locked itself, trapping her underground.
Speaker 1: She pulls and rattles the bars, screaming for help. Kevin
Speaker 1: is a few blocks away when he picks up the
Speaker 1: phone to find a frantic Jane on the other end.
Speaker 1: Does someone hear? She keeps saying someone smashing the place up.
Speaker 1: Before Kevin can make any sense of it, the line
Speaker 1: goes dead. When he returns to the shop, Kevin finds
Speaker 1: it completely silent, with no light coming from the floor below,
Speaker 1: and when he calls out for Jane, he gets no response.
Speaker 1: Grabbing a torch from under the counter, he races down
Speaker 1: to the basement, only to find the gate locked shut.
Speaker 1: He fumbles for the key and hurriedly jams it into
Speaker 1: the lock. With one turn, the gate swings open. Kevin
Speaker 1: flicks the light switch, but the room remains dark. He
Speaker 1: switches on the torch, unleashing a bright beam of light
Speaker 1: into the space, then takes a step forward. Just then
Speaker 1: he's hit by an unexpected and pungent odor, sickly sweet
Speaker 1: like cat urine. He thinks glass cracks under his feet.
Speaker 1: Moving the torch about, is shocked to see that every
Speaker 1: light bulb in the room has blown out. The light
Speaker 1: catches something crouched on the floor at the far end
Speaker 1: of the room. Kevin freezes as it starts to move.
Speaker 1: It's Jane, stuff you, says Jane, pushing asked him a stunt.
Speaker 1: Kevin is still standing downstairs in the dark when he
Speaker 1: hears the shop's bell ring, followed by the slamming of
Speaker 1: the front door. Jane never returns to work at ADDIE's Market,
Speaker 1: believing that Kevin had played a hideous prank on her.
Speaker 1: For Kevin's part, he could be forgiven for thinking Jane
Speaker 1: herself might have had something to do with it. It
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't occur to either of them that perhaps the
Speaker 1: small mahogany cabinet was to blame. It's a month later
Speaker 1: and Kevin is finally getting round to fixing up the
Speaker 1: so called Dibbuk box. He thinks it'll make the perfect
Speaker 1: present for his mother Ida's upcoming birthday. He pulls it
Speaker 1: out from the back of the basement and places it
Speaker 1: on his worktop. He's just about to unlock the clasp
Speaker 1: when he remembers the warning of the seller's grandmother never
Speaker 1: open it. With a shrug, He flicks back the clip
Speaker 1: and pulls open the doors. As he does, something unexpected occurs.
Speaker 1: A small drawer at the bottom opens simultaneously. Inside it
Speaker 1: are two old pennies and two locks of hair. Kevin
Speaker 1: pulls the drawer open further, and the doors follow suit,
Speaker 1: as if the box itself were offering its contents to him.
Speaker 1: Looking inside the cabinet, Kevin is confused. On the inner
Speaker 1: side of the door, he finds a cup and brackets
Speaker 1: for holding wine bottles, as he'd anticipated, but he didn't
Speaker 1: expect to find the other bizarre objects inside. He stuck
Speaker 1: with the pieces in the drawer, he takes out the
Speaker 1: two pennies first, one is from nineteen twenty five and
Speaker 1: the other from nineteen twenty eight. Next, he takes out
Speaker 1: the wine cup that appears to be made of gold
Speaker 1: and places it on the side next to the pennies.
Speaker 1: In the main box, he finds a dried rosebud and
Speaker 1: a ghoulish looking cast iron candlestick with four octopus like
Speaker 1: tentacles curling around the base. Then he picks up the
Speaker 1: strands of hair and examines them closely. One lock is
Speaker 1: curly tangled and reddish blonde in color, the other much darker,
Speaker 1: almost black, and straight. Both are undoubtedly human Kevin also
Speaker 1: finds an oddly shaped granite statue with the Hebraic Shalom
Speaker 1: meaning peace, engraved in copper on its front. The entire
Speaker 1: thing is like nothing he's seen before. With all the
Speaker 1: pieces removed, Kevin gently starts rubbing lemon oil into the
Speaker 1: wood when he notices something else written in Hebrew across
Speaker 1: the back of the cabinet. Unable to read Hebrew, however,
Speaker 1: Kevin simply finishes the oiling, then returns the items to
Speaker 1: the box and carefully closes its doors. A few days later,
Speaker 1: Kevin's mother, Ida arrives at ADDIE's Market to find Kevin
Speaker 1: waiting for her with his newly restored gift. Happy Birthday, Mum,
Speaker 1: He says, what do you think? Ida smiles politely, not
Speaker 1: quite sure what to make of the peculiar item, as
Speaker 1: Kevin places it on a table, then heads downstairs to
Speaker 1: finish off a few jobs before they can go for lunch.
Speaker 1: Ida takes a seat and feels a small breeze rushed
Speaker 1: through the shop. When she looks up, she finds, to
Speaker 1: her astonishment that the doors of the box have opened.
Speaker 1: With the overwhelming urge to touch it, she rises from
Speaker 1: her chair and takes a step toward it. When she
Speaker 1: places her hand on it, she is gripped by an
Speaker 1: extraordinary feeling of power, as if she's just been plugged
Speaker 1: into the manes. In a panic, she tries to pull away,
Speaker 1: but she can't move. The left side of her mouth
Speaker 1: begins to sag. When Kevin returns, he finds his mother
Speaker 1: completely unresponsive, with tears streaming down her face. Ida was
Speaker 1: apparently found to have suffered a stroke, resulting in the
Speaker 1: partial para of her left sight and a loss of speech.
Speaker 1: After being treated at the local hospital, she is settled
Speaker 1: onto a ward with Kevin by her side. Unable to talk,
Speaker 1: she picks up a pad of paper and a pen
Speaker 1: from the bedside table. She scribbles something down, then rips
Speaker 1: off the top sheet and hands it to him. It
Speaker 1: says no gift. Kevin is confused. Does she mean he
Speaker 1: didn't get her a birthday present? He rubs her hand
Speaker 1: and reassures her that he did. He gave her the
Speaker 1: wine box. Ida becomes agitated and shakes her head. She
Speaker 1: scribbles furiously on the pad again, then turns it round
Speaker 1: to reveal the words hate gift. With Ida not wanting
Speaker 1: the box, Kevin offers it first to his sister. She
Speaker 1: returns it a week later, complaining that the doors won't
Speaker 1: stay shut, so he gives it to his brother and
Speaker 1: sister in law, who also return it days later. Upset
Speaker 1: by the strange cat urine like odor it seems to exude,
Speaker 1: Kevin takes it back to the shop, where a middle
Speaker 1: aged couple take a shine to it and duly take
Speaker 1: it off his hands, only to return it. The following day,
Speaker 1: Kevin finds it waiting for him on the doorstep of
Speaker 1: the shop, with an odd note taped to it that
Speaker 1: reads this box as an old darkness about it. In
Speaker 1: the end, he decides to take it home and keep
Speaker 1: it for himself. Kevin is walking through an enchanted autumnal
Speaker 1: scene alongside an old friend, but as they walk through
Speaker 1: the burnt orange and browns of a forest path way,
Speaker 1: something begins to shift out of place. He turns to
Speaker 1: his friend, whose face is now morphing and twisting into
Speaker 1: a grotesque mask, until it is replaced entirely by the
Speaker 1: gruesome features of an almost inhuman looking elderly lady, her dark,
Speaker 1: sunken eyes exuding what he takes to be a deep,
Speaker 1: primordial and unfathomable evil. Then suddenly she sets upon him
Speaker 1: with startling ferocity, beating and tearing at his skin. Kevin
Speaker 1: wakes with a scream. Sweat drips from his forehead as
Speaker 1: its heart thumps audibly in his chest. He hurriedly switches
Speaker 1: on his bedside light. When he looks down, he finds
Speaker 1: that its body is covered in welts and bruises. That
Speaker 1: was only the first night. Soon, Kevin becomes convinced that
Speaker 1: something is stalking him in his house. Sometimes, when he
Speaker 1: senses movement in the corner of his eye, he looks
Speaker 1: up to see black, wispy shapes seemingly retreating into the shadows.
Speaker 1: Afraid of what others might think, As he explained in
Speaker 1: his eBay listing, Kevin keeps his nightmares and visions to
Speaker 1: himself for the next eighteen months. At some point, Kevin's
Speaker 1: sister and brother come to stay with him, along with
Speaker 1: his brother's wife. One morning, over breakfast, Kevin's sister complains
Speaker 1: of a hellish nightmare she had the previous night, involving
Speaker 1: a fearsome elderly lady. Kevin's sister in law stops eating
Speaker 1: and looks nervously at the others, as she explains, she
Speaker 1: had the exact same dream too. In fact, according to Kevin,
Speaker 1: all four of them apparently had it, and that wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time together. They realized the nightmares occurred whenever
Speaker 1: they'd each been looking after the Dibbuk box. Although Kevin
Speaker 1: is unwilling to believe the old wine cabinet has anything
Speaker 1: to do with it, he puts it away in a
Speaker 1: storage space behind the house for some peace of mind.
Speaker 1: Later that night, through the fogginess of sleep, Kevin hears
Speaker 1: a distant siren. It's the smoke alarm in the storage unit.
Speaker 1: Fearing the place is burning down, Kevin races to the unit,
Speaker 1: only to find there is no fire, just the potent
Speaker 1: stench of cat urine. After going back to bed, Kevin
Speaker 1: wakes again at four point thirty with the sensation that
Speaker 1: someone is breathing on his neck. Looking up suddenly, he
Speaker 1: claimed that he then saw a large humanoid shadow disappearing
Speaker 1: into the hallway. Kevin had had enough. As Kevin explained
Speaker 1: in his eBay listing, he wasn't religious or superstitious in
Speaker 1: the slightest so to think this harmless box might have
Speaker 1: some kind of spiritual power was a nonsense to him.
Speaker 1: Yet how many of us, despite inner certainty and our
Speaker 1: better judgment, will still avoid walking under a ladder, or
Speaker 1: will feel a little tightening of the chest when a
Speaker 1: black cat walks across our path. The easiest solution for
Speaker 1: Kevin was to throw the box away or burn it,
Speaker 1: but he just can't shake the thought what if? What
Speaker 1: if the box was cur What if destroying it would
Speaker 1: unleash the curse indefinitely upon himself and all his loved ones?
Speaker 1: Would he want to carry that burden for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life? And so instead of destroying it, he
Speaker 1: listed it on eBay so someone else could take it
Speaker 1: off his hands. You've been listening to Unexplained Season seven,
Speaker 1: episode twenty three. The Box, Part one of three, Part
Speaker 1: two will be released next Friday, June seventh. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by Richard McClain smith. Unexplained as an Avy
Speaker 1: Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other
Speaker 1: elements of the podcast, including the music, were also produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClean smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook
Speaker 1: with stories never before featured on the show. Show is
Speaker 1: now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to
Speaker 1: and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Podcast, uh oh,