In honor of Halloween, here are three of the most compelling haunted items sold on eBay. Take some inspiration from these sellers and get your spook on! Who knows...maybe you'll come across one of these items at the next storage auction! 

The eBay Haunted Painting

This painting, entitled “The Hands Resist Him”” was created in 1972 by artist Bill Stoneham, and is arguably one of the most publicized haunted items sold on eBay. Its story is undeniably creepy: originally making its debut in a California gallery after its creation, it was bought by actor John Marley (of Godfather fame). After Marley’s death (and the subsequent death of both the gallery owner and the art critic who reviewed the painting), this spooky artwork mysteriously ended up in a dumpster behind a brewery, where a young couple picked it up.

From there, things started getting creepy. The couple’s 4 year old daughter claimed that the children in the painting would wordlessly come out of the painting during night and fight with each other, so the father set up a camera to record the painting. He allegedly caught images of the children moving (though no video has ever been seen), and after that they decided to sell the painting on eBay.

From there, the eBay listing caught fire and thousands of people flocked to the page to catch a glimpse of the haunted painting. People who looked at the image supposedly fell ill or fainted, and just the mere sight of the image made children cry hysterically (but who can blame them, it’s CREEPY!). After 30 bids, with the initial bid at $199, the painting finally sold on eBay for $1,025.00. 

The Dibbuk Box         

This wine box was bought by an unknowing patron of an estate sale held by the family of a 103 year old Jewish woman who had passed away. The granddaughter called the wine box a “dibbuk box” (dibbuk is the Hebrew word for “a ghost or disturbed soul that possesses the body of a living person”) and warned the new owner not to open it. The box seemed to bring misfortune to everyone who owned it: one owner’s mother had a stroke after holding the box, another owner lost all of her hair, and what might be most remarkable is the similar nightmare many owners have had.

Several owners of the dibbuk box claimed to have had the same reoccurring, violent nightmare in which a family member or close friend transforms into a disturbing, gruesome “old hag” that violently attacks them. Some have even claimed to have woken up with bruises and cuts.

The box has had many owners over the years and has been sold on eBay several times. It was sold for $280 the first time it went up for auction. Since then, it has been researched by paranormal investigators and Jewish Rabbis alike. In fact, the dibbuk box is even the subject of a few books and a major motion picture, The Possession, which was released in August of this year. 

The Haunted Rubber Ducky

You didn’t think you could get away without a good laugh, did you?

This story comes from 2004 when a man listed an allegedly haunted rubber ducky on eBay. According to his story, his toddler son received the duck as a gift and the two became inseparable at bath time. The whole thing seemed strange to his parents, however: he never showed any affection towards the toy yet he insisted on it being around at all times or he would start crying hysterically.

Eventually the boy began to claim that the duck was fighting with him, but no matter what his parents tried, the boy refused to give up the duck. Then one fateful night, things took a turn for the worse when the rubber ducky started melting all of the other toys in the bathtub. When the son tried to knock the duck away, it bit his hand, leaving a cut.

So naturally, the best thing to do in this situation is to sell your child’s tormentor on eBay. Don’t call a priest, don’t throw the thing away—put it up on eBay and make a couple of bucks off of it. Amusingly enough, the duck quickly sold for $107.50….but the buyer never paid. Who knows…maybe the buyer was really the angry ghost of the rubber ducky.

So do you think any of these items are actually haunted? Who knows....but it's certainly true: there's a market for everything out there, even the spooky, haunted, and downright bizarre. 

Many people have opposing opinions on whether or not you should make nice with your fellow storage hunters. After all, it’s a business; these people are your competition, so you should harden your heart and take no prisoners. And you know what, that makes perfect sense—but I’m the type of person who likes to kill ‘em with kindness, so to speak. I’m of the belief that being nice can get you a lot further down the road than being a nasty old grouch.

Now, I’m not saying you have to be best buddies with every single person you attend storage auctions with and invite them over on Super Bowl Sunday. But chances are, you’ll find yourself at the storage facility early with a couple of the same regulars waiting for the auction to begin. Sure, you can stand there silently scowling like the mysterious lone wolf that you are, or you can drop the tough guy/gal act strike up a simple conversation. After all, every one of you has something in common or else you all wouldn’t be standing there at 6AM on a subzero winter morning.

So here’s a radical idea for the next time you’re in this situation: why don’t you try being nice? Maybe you’ll find out through simple small talk before the auction that Joe’s passion is collecting Pez dispensers and he’s really hoping to find more to add to his collection. Lucky for you, you end up buying a unit that has a whole box of them. So then Joe offers to buy them all from you, on the spot. And he tells you to call him any time you find more. Done deal. You just made your first connection. That’s a lot easier than trying to sell them one by one at the flea market, isn’t it?

You see, you don’t have to be best friends forever. You just have to be nice. You might be thinking “but Dave Hester’s a jerk and he’s a millionaire!” Point taken. But being a jerk works for Dave Hester because he has been in this business for a long time, and is now in a unique position where he doesn’t have to answer to anyone. He’s a TV star. People watching at home eat it up when he raises the bid and then drops the unit on Jarrod and Brandi. But since we all don’t have the benefit of cameras following us at the auctions, being a bitter, spiteful fuddy-duddy like Dave Hester loses its charm.  

Think of it this way: say you’re looking online for reviews of this new restaurant in town.  Each review you read says the same thing: the food is great, but the service is terrible. You can hear the owner in the kitchen screaming at his waiters. Thus, the waiters are miserable and hate their jobs, and in turn, hate you. What’s more, you’ve heard rumors that the owner sabotaged his competition’s food when the fancy New York City food critic came to town. But the food is great, trust me.

Does this really sound like some place you want to eat? Sure, the food is good, but at what cost? This relates to you as a storage hunter. Okay, you’ve got some great products you’re looking to sell, but if you’re a conniving, ruthless son of a gun, people will take notice. People will talk. Other sellers won’t want to network you, they’ll purposely bid against you, and potential buyers will be too afraid to approach you. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, especially in such small crowds.

Contrary to popular belief, backstabbing and being a jerk isn’t always the best life strategy. I know many will disagree, but I don’t think it works for businesses, either. You can still be assertive, you can still show the newbies who’s boss, but you don’t have to be a jerk. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Give it a shot and see for yourself the difference it can make. 

As a storage hunter, you know that the resale industry is very important. Why even attend a storage auction if you can't resell the goods you find, right?

Well, thanks to a case currently being reviewed by The Supreme Court, reselling goods that you bought might soon be considered illegal. That sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? How is that even possible when you already paid for it fair and square? Well, according to this absurd and alarming article , it's entirely possible. Take a quick look at it.

 The basic gist of this story is about a young man named Supap Kirtsaeng who came from Thailand in 1997 to attend college in the good old U.S. of A. When he discovered that his text books, made by a company named John Wiley & Sons, were significantly cheaper to buy in his home country, he asked his family to buy copies for him and send them over here. After he was done with them, he resold them on eBay and somehow managed to make roughly 1.2 million dollars. John Wiley & Sons, after hearing about this and probably pretty burned that a college kid had managed to outsmart them, subsequently sued him for copyright infringement. This is the money-grubbing, legal-action-happy kind of thing that would happen only in America.

Kirtsaeng countered the case with the first-sale doctrine, which up until this point, protected and allowed buyers to resell goods that they had legally purchased without the permission of the original copyright holder. This included all goods, ranging from DVDs to books to artwork and anything in between.  However, in 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale doctrine, meaning, by their skewed logic, that it only applies to goods physically made in the U.S.

Kirtsaeng’s case does not end here, however; The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case on Oct. 29.

In the meantime, let’s talk about how this affects you as a storage hunter, and the country as a whole. John Wiley & Sons miraculously win this case; this could mean some serious changes are in store for the resale business. Changing this law would mean you could not even simply sell your car, even if it was manufactured by an American company. Do you know how many foreign made parts are in that thing?

Hey, are you trying to sell at a flea market? Be careful, I heard the police are confiscating non-American made goods. Hey storage hunter, did you find a Nintendo DS in a storage locker? Sorry, you can’t sell that unless you get permission from Nintendo…they’re a Japanese company, after all.  In fact, using this logic, the auctioneer probably can’t hold a storage auction without getting permission from every single foreign copyright holder for every single item in this locker!

Does that not sound like the most ridiculous joke you’ve ever heard? We might as well be living in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie where the entire world has fallen into poverty except for Big Brother, who laughs and watches us starving and killing each other just to survive. And if that happens, I expect to Arnold Schwarzenegger to come in, guns blazing, and save us all from our imminent doom. Give me a break!  

Imagine: companies like Goodwill would probably go out of business. Half of the stuff you donate couldn't be sold or purchased without permission from the copyright holders. Nobody would care enough to donate their goods or even hold a tag sale…getting a copyright to sell a Furby sounds like too much work. So instead, we start throwing everything out; perfectly good items that we no longer need go in the trash, piling up on street corners, landfills, sewers, backyards—everywhere. Resale, as well as the concept of recycling, becomes obsolete, and sooner than later we’ll be living in mountains of garbage that we can’t resell and won’t bother to reuse.

Now obviously, this is an extreme worst case scenario, but what I’m trying to illustrate is just how ridiculous this is, and the fact that we need resale. So many Americans depend on secondhand goods, whether they make a living off of selling them, or they’re able to live more comfortably by buying them at reduced prices. And this is exactly why I think this case doesn't stand a chance.

So storage hunters, get out there and exercise your rights to resell goods! Help your fellow Americans live better lives by saving them some money. Help the environment and the world we all share by keeping junk out of landfills. And help yourself by knowing your rights and standing up for them!