Case file · High strangeness

The 'Well to Hell'

A story spread from 1989 that Soviet engineers drilling the deepest hole on Earth broke into a cavity at 14.4 km, heard human screams and measured 1,000 °C heat: they had drilled into Hell.

1989 CE · 69.40, 30.61 · status: hoax

The account

The tale first ran in Finnish and then American Christian media and was broadcast on Trinity Broadcasting Network, often naming a fictional 'Dr Azzacov' (also spelled Azakov). It borrowed from the real Kola Superdeep Borehole in the Russian Arctic, which reached a record 12,262 m in 1989 and found hot rock and water at depth.

The sceptical view

No such hole, depth or recording existed; the 'screams' were looped sound effects, which some have identified as the soundtrack of the 1972 horror film 'Baron Blood'. The real borehole's findings were geological.

Connections in the atlas

Sources

  1. Wikipedia: Kola Superdeep Borehole
  2. Wikipedia: Well to Hell
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