The Well to Hell hoax

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.

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.

United States tabloids soon ran the story, and sound files - recordings of those alleged supplications from the damned - began appearing on various sites around the web. 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.

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.

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. Temperatures reached 180 degrees Celsius, making deeper drilling prohibitively expensive.