The rare spirits that went under the gavel at a recent online auction in New Zealand weren't venerable single malts, brandies or hard-to-find liqueurs.
Instead, two glass vials purportedly containing the ghosts of two dead people sold for $2,830 New Zealand dollars ($1,983) at an auction that ended one stormy Monday night.
The "ghosts" were put up for bidding by Avie Woodbury from Christchurch, New Zealand. She said they were captured in her house, stored in glass vials with stoppers and dipped in holy water, which she claims "dulls the spirits' (rambunctious) energy."
She said they were the spirits of an old man who lived in the house during the 1920s, and a powerful, disruptive little girl who turned up after a session with a spirit-calling Ouija board. Since an exorcism at the property last July led to their capture, there has been no further spooky activity in the house, she said.
The auction attracted more than 214,000 page views and dozens of questions before the winning bid, Trademe auction site spokesman Paul Ford said that following day. The name of the winning bidder was not released.
Woodbury said that once an "exorcist's fee" has been deducted, the proceeds of the spirit sale will go to the animal welfare group the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Ghosts and spirits have been a staple of folklore for most of recorded history, and undoubtably will continue to be a much-debated subject. Even with shows like Ghost Hunter offering"proof" of spirit activity, it still comes down to how much (or little) you're willing to believe infrared and shaky video footage.
We've all heard of people having "encounters" with loved ones who have passed on, or those who have received messages from the dearly departed. Stories abound of rooms suddenly turning cold and objects zooming and crashing around a haunted location. But still without experiencing these phenomena ourselves, most of us tend to stand on the side of the skeptics.
Trapping spirits in a bottle and auctioning them off-no matter how worthy the charity-sounds like opening Pandora's Box, to me. Whether it's foolish or sacrilege, all I know for sure is that the occult is not something to casually dabble in or laugh about.
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