Zak Bagans Finally Opened His Dybbuk Box In Quarantine 'Ghost Adventures' Special
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After teasing television audiences about opening his haunted demon box for the last few years, Zak Bagans finally opened his dybbuk box in a four-part spin-off series.
'Ghost Adventures: Quarantine' was filmed over 12 days from the end of March while self-isolating at Zak's own Haunted Museum during the global coronavirus lockdown.
Zak was joined at the spooky Las Vegas attraction by his regular team of investigators comprising of Aaron Goodwin, Jay Wasley and Billy Tolley. Each were following strict social distancing guidelines and were isolating within the museum's grounds in their own RV motorhome amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like just about everything else, the museum was temporarily shut to visitors. With no visitors to the museum in weeks, the GAC are the first people in weeks to return to the collection of haunted exhibits. In fact, not even the team's normal production team was allowed inside, leaving the cast responsible for shooting the entire mini-series themselves.
In the first hour-long episode, Zak said "just before it shut down there was a flurry of activity affecting guests and staff. And right now with all this fear going across the world, all this panic and anxiety from everybody, the air is thick, it's heavy and I wonder what this is going to do to affect the spirits at the Haunted Museum."
Once filming of the series was complete, Zak took to social media to say "this investigation has been very different. It's been a lockdown within a lockdown. Just the four of us in the Haunted Museum property for the last twelve days now and it's all been building up to a big moment."
The "big moment" Zak is referring to revolves around his notorious dybbuk box, his most terrifyingly haunted object that is believed to curse those who come in contact with it.
During a previous 'Ghost Adventures' special that was broadcast live from the museum on the night of Halloween 2018, the celebrity ghost hunter was all set to open the box, but after a great deal of build up, Zak lost his nerve and decided not to open the box due to fears for his health.
The dybbuk box was originally nothing more than a family heirloom. It had belonged to a woman who made and sealed the box after World War II, but in 2001 her granddaughter sold it on. She warned that the box was supposed to contain a dybbuk, which in Jewish folklore is a restless, usually malicious, spirit believed to be able to haunt and even possess the living.
Zak paid tens of thousands of dollars to obtain the haunted artefact from its previous owner, who had been so terrified of the box that he kept it inside of a military grade box buried in the ground. Once in Zak's possession, the box was placed on display in his museum, where it's been blamed for a black cloaked figure seen moving through closed doors in the room it's displayed in.
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For more from Zak Bagans and the GAC, check out our 'Ghost Adventures' hub, where you will find the latest news on the show, and a complete 'Ghost Adventures' episode guide.
What Happened When Zak Open The Dybbuk Box?
In the fourth and final episode in the mini-series, 'Dybbuk Box: The Opening' fans finally got to see the long-awaited opening of the cursed antique box, which has been described as "the most haunted object in the world."
Zak introduces the experiment by telling viewers, "there is a full moon tonight, the fear of this pandemic is at its peak right now and with all of the energy surrounding the world, I believe that this is the time to study what will happen when this box gets opened."
Early in the episode, which was one of the show's most intense ever, we then learn in a video call with the box's previous owner, Kevin Mannis, that Zak's dybbuk box is actually one of ten created by the same woman. Zak then surprised viewers with the revelation that he has not one, but two of these boxes. He shows a second box given to him by Kevin for the first time.
Kevin then tells us that eight of the 10 boxes are accounted for, two of which are safely housed in Zak's haunted museum, but the whereabouts of the two remaining boxes is unknown. Sounds like the plot of a future spin-off series.
Despite warnings from Kevin that the experiment could have fatal consequences, the GAC headed to the dybbuk "antechamber" armed with an array of ghost hunting gadgets. Aaron's TriField meter registered a large and unexplained EMF spike around the box. Jay later said, "the dybbuk box has so much energy in it, so cool to be able to measure it."
From the moment Zak and Aaron removed the box's protective plexiglass covering, things started to heat up. First Aaron reported experiencing an unexplained pain in his back. Zak then seemed to become much more affected by the box than he had been in previous encounters with it. He became very aggressive, at one point seemingly barely unable to stop himself from putting his hands around Aaron's neck.
Billy later said, "I've never seen Zak act like this. Not ever. Some of the strangest behaviors I have ever seen from him. It came in waves."
Viewers then got a glimpse of what could have been the dybbuk itself in a "monumental" piece of evidence for the crew. Zak and the team review a video clip captured overnight that shows a strange mist-like anomaly that appears to be coming out of the box. In a still taken from the footage, a demonic-looking face was visible in the misty shape.
The last time Zak attempt to open the dybbuk box, the build up to the promised opening was drawn out and eventually aborted just before the end of the episode, but this time around there was a resolution just halfway through the hour-long show.
Zak first opened the much smaller, second dybbuk box and straight away the activity seemed to escalate with unexplained sounds coming from around them. At one point Zak thought he saw a dark figure lurking in the shadows, and became annoyed by Aaron talking to him - even though Aaron has said nothing.
Then a little while later the moment fans of Ghost Adventures had been waiting for for years arrives, when Zak tentatively opened the box. The moment that Zak described as "profound" was tense, although perhaps a little anticlimactic. Zak simply swung the two doors open with no obvious consequence initially.
Zak felt the same way. In his voiceover he said, "when I open the doors I'm expecting something to attack me right away." He likens his expectations to the famous face melting scene in the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', but he says "instead I'm feeling a strong psychological shift. Something is putting images and thoughts in my head that aren't my own."
Later Zak and Aaron were using a spirit box, a ghost hunting gadget that rapidly scans through radio frequencies, it's believed that spirits can manipulate the static and white noise in these frequency ranges to form words and sentences.
They heard a few sounds that could have been voices, one sounded like it was saying "Kevin," which could be in reference to the box's previous owner. They then heard the creepy sound of a little girl singing. Could this have been the dybbuk mimicking the voice of a child?
Zak then grabbed his SLS camera, a device that uses a laser grid to try to find human-like shapes in the darkness. With this device the team capture another piece of chilling evidence. Just as Zak called out asking the dybbuk to "appear", the SLS camera showed a stick figure on its screen, suggesting there could be an entity present with them in the antechamber.
Using another gadget, Zak was then able to detect a static electricity field around the box, something that he says wasn't present before. He says, "this now proves that something has been released from the dybbuk box." This discovery was followed moments later by a loud unexplained bang.
Zak then seemed to become braver than ever and actually picked up the larger of the two dybbuk boxes and walked around the museum with it to see if its dark energy could elicit activity in any of his other exhibits, but what Zak didn't notice was that while the box was holding his attention it had taken its toll on another member of the team.
It seemed to have gone unnoticed that Aaron had fainted and was out cold on the floor. Zak eventually noticed him on the floor and brings him around. This wasn't the only unfortunate incident to happen to the team after opening the box.
At the end of the episode Zak revealed to viewers that Billy's family dog tragically died three days after they filmed the experiment. Zak said, "we do not think this was connected to or caused by the dybbuk box, but because of the coincidental timing, we thought it was very important to inform our viewers of this disturbing information."
The episode ended with Zak returning the antique box to its display case and demanding that the dybbuk returns to the box, but fears it might now be beyond their control.
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During their investigation, the team also investigated other exhibits in the museum including the eerie reconstruction of the office of mass killer Dr. Jack Kevorkian. He carried out over 130 assisted suicides of his terminally ill patients and was eventually convicted of 2nd degree murder. Zak's museum also contains Kevorkian's 1968 Volkswagen van nicknamed 'the death mobile', which the warped doctor used to carry out the killings.
Also in the first episode, entitled 'Perimeter of Fear', the GAC experimented with Zak's collection of haunted dolls, putting all four of the infamous toys - Gretchen, Cynthia, Lilly and Peggy - together in one room for the first time.
In the second episode, 'Extension Of Darkness' Zak and the team decamp to the house next door to the museum that Zak has recently purchased as an extension to the museum due to its reported grim past.
The third episode, 'The Summoning Experiments', was perhaps the most interesting in the series and saw Zak opening up his "spirit communication room" to television cameras for the first time.
The room houses an impressive array of instrumental transcommunication equipment, including an anapathic purifier which is a fixed signal scalar wave generator, and several sample wells. Zak tells use that the equipment once belonged to a former owner of the museum building and she used the set up to try to unlock gateways to spiritual dimensions.
Throughout the episode Billy attempted to get to grips with the technology, with the help of paranormal inventor Bill Chappell via a video link. Meanwhile, Zak had another close encounter with the notorious "Devil's Rocking Chair," a haunted artefact connected to famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren's "Devil in Connecticut" case.
Each episode saw the team bring in via video calls previous museum visitors who've experience supernatural occurrences there, as well as video chats with tour guides and other special guests who have had horrifying experiences in the museum.
The episode airs on Really here in the UK at 9pm on Saturday 11th July as part of the channel's #Freakend event, bringing viewers three nights of paranormal entertainment every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
You can watch in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the Discovery family of channels on Freeview (17), Sky (142), Virgin Media (129) and Freesat (160), plus YouView, BT TV and TalkTalk TV. Or watch the whole series back on demand on dplay.
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