Zak Bagans conquered the Dybbuk Box during his quarantine
The Dybbuk Box may have won the battle, but Zak Bagans won the war.
His opening of the wine cabinet, which has the reputation as one of the world’s most haunted objects, was touted as the centerpiece of the four-hour live Halloween special broadcast from Bagans’ Haunted Museum in 2018.
Even before the event, Bagans admitted he wasn’t sure if he would open the box that inspired the 2012 horror movie “The Possession.” In the end, he didn’t, and plenty of viewers let him hear about it on social media.
“I believe that the Dybbuk was causing my production to fall apart during that moment,” he says of his reasons for keeping it closed that night.
The miniseries “Ghost Adventures: Quarantine” (9 p.m. Thursday, Travel Channel), though, with no one else around — “just me and these three guys that have been through literal spiritual war with me” — offered the perfect chance to try again.
“The Dybbuk Box knew that I was going to be opening it,” Bagans says, “so I wanted to see if there was going to be any kind of things going on before that.”
After removing the glass case surrounding it, he set up cameras that he says captured footage of mist manifesting out of it.
“I wasn’t attacked. I wasn’t harmed. I just felt something. I felt the power of it. To me, it felt good,” Bagans says of his encounter with the box. “I believe that it doesn’t affect me as bad as it affects others around it, because it knows that I am its owner.”
Weeks later, he struggles to put his experience into words.
“It was a rush. I just felt a warmth through my body. … I don’t know if it felt like I was crossing over or something. It was an influence that it had on me. It was a feeling kind of like I felt in the Demon House,” the home in Gary, Indiana, that was the subject of his 2018 documentary.
“Scary and terrifying, but there’s a sense of awkward enjoyment out of it,” he concludes. “I guess it’s hard to explain. I’m a weird guy.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence @reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.
