Well to Hell
The "Well to Hell" is a putative borehole in Russia which was purportedly drilled so deep that it broke through to hell. This urban legend has been circulating on the Internet since at least 1997. It is first attested in English as a 1989 broadcast by Trinity Broadcasting Network, which had picked up the story from Finnish newspaper reports.
The legend and its basis
The legend holds that in 1989, some Russian scientists of Siberia (Russia) had drilled a hole that was nine miles (14.5 km) deep before breaking through to a cavity. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, they lowered an extremely heat tolerant microphone, along with other sensory equipment, into the well. The temperature deep within was 2,000 °F (1,100 °C) — heat from a chamber of fire from which (purportedly) the tormented screams of the damned could be heard. The recording, however, was later revealed to have been a cleverly remixed portion of the soundtrack of the 1972 movie 'Baron Blood', with various effects added.
The Soviet Union had, in fact, drilled a hole nearly eight miles deep, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, located not in Siberia but on the Kola Peninsula, which shares borders with Norway and Finland. Upon completing the borehole in 1989, the Soviets found some interesting geological anomalies, although they reported no supernatural encounters.[1] Temperatures reached 180 °C (360 °F), making deeper drilling prohibitively expensive.
Propagation
United States tabloids soon ran the story, and sound files — recordings of those alleged supplications from the damned — began appearing on various sites across the Internet. The supermarket tabloid Weekly World News may have made the first American report on the so-called Well to Hell.
TBN involvement
The story eventually made its way to the American Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which broadcast it on the network, claiming it to be "proof" of the literal existence of Hell as taught in the Bible.
Åge Rendalen, a Norwegian teacher, heard the story on TBN while visiting the United States. Disgusted with what he perceived to be mass gullibility, Rendalen decided to augment the tale at TBN's expense.[2]
Rendalen wrote to the network, originally claiming that he disbelieved the tale but, upon his return to Norway, supposedly read a "factual account" of the story.[1] According to Rendalen, the "story" claimed not only that the cursed well was real, but that a bat-like apparition had risen out of it before blazing a trail across the Russian sky.[2] Rendalen deliberately mistranslated a trivial Norwegian article about a local building inspector and submitted both the original story and the "translation" to TBN, along with a letter which included his real name, phone number, and address, as well as those of a pastor friend who knew about the hoax and had agreed to expose it to anyone who called seeking verification.[2]
However, TBN did nothing to verify Rendalen's claims and aired the story as "proof" of the validity of the original story.[1]
Alternate versions
Since its publicity, many alternate versions of the story of the Well to Hell have been published. In 1992, US Tabloids published an alternative version of the story, which was set in Alaska where 13 miners were killed after Satan came roaring out of Hell. Other alternative stories included an alleged story where Jacques Cousteau quit diving after hearing "screams of people in pain" underwater. Additionally, another story told of one of Cousteau's men fainting in terror after hearing screaming voices in a trench in the Bermuda Triangle.
See also
References
External links
- Marge Floori (October 2, 2008). "Oil Drill Opens Hole Into Hell". Weekly World News. Retrieved 2011-02-02.