[WorldUrbanLegend] Well to Hell
The urban legend known as "Well to Hell" or "Siberian hell sounds" pertains to a hole located in the Siberian region of Russia, which is said to be so deep that it reaches hell. This legend was first introduced in English in 1989 by the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
According to the legend, a team of Soviet engineers led by a figure named "Mr. Azakov" drilled a hole 14.4 km deep in Siberia and unexpectedly reached an empty space. Intrigued, they sent microphones and other detection equipment capable of withstanding extreme temperatures down the hole, where the temperature was recorded at 1,000 °C, and screams were captured from what was described as a chamber of fire.
In reality, the Soviet Union developed the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which drilled deeper than 12 km, but it is located on the Kola Peninsula, not Siberia, and reached a depth of 12,262 m in 1989 without any reports of supernatural phenomena. The recording of "suffering screams" is known to be a combination of various sound effects, including those from the soundtrack of the 1972 film "Baron Blood."
This story is believed to have first been published in the Finnish newspaper Ammennusastia, which was issued by a Protestant group in Leväsjoki, western Finland. Rich Buhler learned through interviews with the editors that the story originated from a letter published in a Finnish newspaper. When Buhler contacted the author of the letter, the author stated that the story originated from a newsletter called "Jewels of Jericho," published by a Messianic Jewish group in California. Buhler stopped tracing it further.
The story soon appeared in American tabloid newspapers, and various sites featured sound files. The sensational reconstruction of the legend is often found on YouTube, where sound effects from "Baron Blood" are also used.
Eventually, this story was transmitted to the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian broadcasting network in the United States, where it was aired as proof of the literal existence of hell.
A Norwegian teacher named Age Rendalen, while visiting the U.S., heard this story on TBN and, disgusted by the public's blind belief, decided to expand on it. Rendalen claimed he did not originally believe the story and wrote a letter to TBN, but after returning to Norway, he claimed to have read that the story was true. According to Rendalen, the cursed hole actually exists, and a winged ghost rises from it, leaving a burning trail across the Russian sky. To perpetuate this story, he mistranslated a trivial Norwegian article about local building inspections and submitted both the original Norwegian article and an English "translation" to TBN. Rendalen included his real name, phone number, address, and information about a pastor friend who was aware of the hoax.
However, TBN did not verify Rendalen's claims and aired it as proof of the original story's validity.
Since then, many alternative versions of the Well to Hell story have been published. In 1992, the American tabloid Weekly World News published a variation of the story, claiming that 13 miners in Alaska died when Satan appeared from hell.
