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The "Well to Hell" is a popular urban legend that has been circulating on the Internet for over ten years. Its provenance is older than that, however, with the tale first appearing in English through a 1989 dispatch created by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. This source had picked up the story from Finnish newspaper reports that claimed scientists drilling at the Kola Peninsula, USSR, had broken through to hell. An urban legend or urban myth is similar to a modern folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ...
The Trinity Broadcasting Network, or TBN, is the largest Christian religious television network in the world and is headquartered near Los Angeles in Costa Mesa, California with studios near Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in Irving, Texas and near Nashville in Hendersonville, Tennessee. ...
Location of Kola south of the Barents Sea. ...
This article is about the theological or philosophical afterlife. ...
The legend
| | This article does not cite any references or sources. (June 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. | The legend held that, after having drilled a hole nine miles deep, the Soviets hit a pocket of air. 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 a 2000 degrees Fahrenheit - heat from a chamber of fire from which screams of the damned could be heard. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...
Soviet redirects here. ...
Microphones redirects here. ...
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 story eventually made its way to TBN, which broadcasted it on the network, claiming it to be "proof" of the literal existence of Hell as taught in the Bible. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Åge Rendalen, a Norwegian teacher, disgusted with what he perceived to be mass gullibility, decided to augment the tale at TBN's expense. Having heard the original story on TBN during a visit to the US, he 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. 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. “Chiroptera†redirects here. ...
Rendalen deliberately mistranslated a Norweigan article - an insignificant piece 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.
However, TBN never bothered to verify Rendalen's claims (which would have immediately led to the hoax being exposed) and aired the story as "proof" of the validity of the original story.
Basis in fact As it turns out, part of the legend is true: Soviet scientists had, in fact, drilled a hole almost eight miles deep in Kola (the Kola Superdeep Borehole), and found some interesting geological anomalies. Neither the Devil nor his minions made an appearance, however.[1] Temperatures reached 180 degrees Celsius (356 °F), making deeper drilling prohibitively expensive. Kola Superdeep Borehole, commemorated on the 1987 USSR stamp The Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earths crust. ...
This is an overview of the Devil. ...
See also Mels Hole is the name given to a geographic anomaly that is said to have been discovered near Ellensburg, Washington, on land belonging to local resident Mel Waters. ...
Kola Superdeep Borehole, commemorated on the 1987 USSR stamp The Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earths crust. ...
References - ^ Snopes.com debunks
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