Hell at the Bottom of a Hole in Siberia

Everyone has their own personal idea of hell. For Simon, I imagine it would be something related to having to sit still with nothing to do, like waiting for a train that’s been delayed and he’s forgotten his phone and just has to sit there looking at a huge advert for a mortgage provider for an unknown number of minutes. For me, it happens every Halloween when I can’t help but to say through gritted teeth: “The monster is not called Frankenstein. The doctor was called Frankenstein!”

I admit to bringing this on myself by being such a pedant but come on, people, the book’s been out for over 200 years.

The concept of “hell” as an afterlife or place where bad people go when they die has been around for a very long time. It is usually pretty entwined with religion to serve as an opposite to the idea of a heaven or paradise for true believers in whatever religion who also managed to make it through life as decent humans. The God Hades presided over the Underworld of the Ancient Greeks and we still have the tales today of people like Tantalus whose punishment was to stand in a pool of water with some grapes hanging over his head but every time he tried to reach up or down, the water or the grapes were always just out of reach.

Or Sisyphus whose punishment was to shove a huge rock up a hill only for it to keep rolling back down as soon as he neared the top. Christianity and Islam have similar descriptions of their versions of hell, both involving pain, violence and lots of fire for the unworthy. What may seem hellish to some, is actually other peoples’ idea of a good night out so it might stand to reason that if hell actually exists, it might manifest differently for different people.

And as per the Ancient Greeks and their “underworld”, the location of hell seems generally agreed to be somewhere below us. Just as people look up to the sky when thinking of a heaven or paradise, so people tend to point downwards when indicating that someone might have gone to hell. But where, exactly, is the location of this place?

Is it a realm that’s outside of space and time, somewhere south of us in the universe? Or is it literally below us, somewhere inside the planet Earth? Do all the references to heat and fire mean that it’s located somewhere near the core of our world?

And if we dug deep enough, could we one day reach it? Did this, in fact, happen in 1989 during the drilling of the deepest hole in the world? Stop that skeptical interjection in its tracks, put that eyebrow down and let’s just see where this story goes, eh?

The Mystery

I called this section “The Mystery” but here’s some historical context first which is 100% true. At some point this will seamlessly flow into the mystery event but I’ll let you work out when that happens. Hint: it won’t be hard.

You may be familiar with the term “Space Race”. This was a USA versus Soviet Union race which started in the 1950s and pitted the two nations against each other to be the first to do various things in space like launching satellites, sending up manned flights, landing on the moon, etc. Well, running concurrently to this race to the stars was another race to plumb the depths of the earth.

For geological and technological reasons, the US and the Soviet Union also decided to drill as far down through the earth’s crust as they could, to a layer known as the “Mohorovičić Discontinuity” or, thankfully, “Moho”. The US got their project underway first, perhaps because after the surprise launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the science community was desperate to claim back some kudos for itself. The Soviet Union had also made public claims that it was also going to be investigating the Moho Discontinuity so the US probably thought “shiiiiiiiiiit, we’d better hurry up!”.

This led to quite a bizarre quest to drill down through the Earth’s crust to this region which is just above the Earth’s mantle. It’s known as the “discontinuity” as scientists worked out that seismic waves suddenly increase in speed in that area, meaning that there’s a big change in materials and density but nobody was sure how or why. In an almost exactly opposite project to the Space Race, the race to the Moho aimed to bring up samples of this region to further our understanding of the planet we live on.

The only problem was that to get to the Moho, the US would need to drill through a lot of crust first. If you want to try tackling it from where you’re standing, you’d probably need to go at least 35 kilometers or 22 miles down and that’s only at an average point. So the US decided to dispense with a lot of that mileage from the get-go and started drilling their hole at the bottom of the ocean where the crust was much thinner, just off the coast of Mexico.

Does this make sense? I suppose. Did they get very far?

No, they didn’t. This was 1961 and the team behind the project had to make up solutions as they went on how to keep the boat still so far off the ocean floor, how to lower the pipes down, how to actually drill through the crust and then how to bring the samples back up. As a test run, “Project Mohole” as it was known, did manage to drill almost 2 kilometers or 1.2 miles down but after this initial drill, funding dried up and the project was shelved in 1966.

While contributing valuable things to science like how to keep boats steady without an anchor and useful information from the ocean floor, Project Mohole did not appear to breach the limits of a fiery hellscape. Enter: the Soviet Union.

In May 1970, the USSR started its attempt to drill through the Earth’s crust. It went pretty well, with the borehole, located in a remote part of Siberia, officially becoming the world’s deepest artificial hole in 1979, as it crashed through the previous record set by the US of 9,583 meters (31,440 feet). After this initial hole reached over 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) in 1982, various other holes stemming off this main one were started and by 1989, one of the boreholes had reached over 12,200 meters or over 7 and a half miles in depth.

It was at this point that something happened. The drill seemed to break through into some sort of underground pocket and started spinning out of control. Strange noises could be heard emanating from what seemed like a large cavern so the scientists on the surface sent down microphones and more tools to take readings and samples.

What they found was that the temperatures in the cavern exceeded 1000 degrees Centigrade or 2000 degrees fahrenheit and the microphones captured wailing and screaming with a more ominous male voice audible over the top. Yes, I know, we’ll get on to all that later. Also, on the same night that the cavern was breached, a huge gas pillar shot out of the borehole, revealing a bat-like demonic figure against the night sky and also the words “I have conquered” in Russian.

So why didn’t this make headline news at the time? Well, it’s simple. All the scientists either quit immediately and kept their peace or those that remained were given a sedative that erased their short-term memory and therefore all knowledge of the event.

So how do we know about this so-called “Well to Hell”? Later in 1989, the American Christian broadcasting company, Trinity Broadcasting Network, ran a piece on tv and also in print under the title “Scientists Discover Hell”. It was picked up by a few other Christian newsletters here and there but the amazing story of how a geological expedition actually cracked through into the home of Satan himself did not make it past the pages of a few fringe publications.

Why is that, we wonder? Well, let’s find out.

Unpicking the Story

It turns out that this is more a story of how an urban legend is formed than anything else because - spoiler alert - this is not actually a true story. I know, shocking, right? I usually try to drag these things out a little further but the story you just heard is about all the information there is on the event so I may as well just put the cards on the table and admit that this never happened.

But how can we be so sure? Well, for starters, let’s take a look at this borehole into the underworld. As you probably know, urban legends are notoriously tricky to pin down because details change from telling to telling with some aspects based in truth to give them the sheen of plausibility.

In this story, the most common versions floating about usually refer to “Siberia” as the location for the discovery. If you look up how big Siberia is, it’s over 5 million square miles so you might have thought it useful to the human race that the entrance to hell itself might be a little bit more accurately plotted. Don’t be stupid, some listeners might be thinking, it’s where the world’s deepest man-made hole is, duh!

OK, fair point. However, the world’s deepest borehole is not in a remote area of Siberia, it’s on the Kola Peninsula, still part of Russia but way over near the border of Norway and a significant distance from Siberia. The facts and figures mentioned earlier about the borehole were actually from the Kola Superdeep Borehole, as it’s known.

This Russian effort is still the deepest man-made hole in the world with the depth of 12,262 meters (40,230 ft or a whopping 7.6 miles) that it hit in 1989. The drilling project ended in 1994 and the hole is still only about one third of the way through the Earth’s crust. So did anything come flying out of this hole that could be regarded in any way as supernatural?

If it did, no-one ever mentioned it and it seems like the sort of thing at least one person might mention. Interestingly, one of the reasons the Kola drilling project was canned was that the deeper they got, the hotter it became until it reached a point where the rock was becoming more porous and less solid so drilling became too difficult. It became hotter, you say?

Like fires of hell hotter? Erm, no. It did become significantly hotter than scientists had predicted for the depth they reached but we’re talking 180 °C (356 °F) not the 1000 degrees C of the urban legend.

And in case you had picked up on one of the major sticking points for the story, it mentions that the team lowered scientific instruments and recording devices down into the fiery hole. How on earth would any equipment survive at a thousand degrees? There is an audio clip you can find online that most sources have as lasting at least 17 seconds.

That would be an impressive microphone in the 80s to manage to last that long in the fires of hell. And what of this audio clip? Yes it does exist and it sounds like a large group of people shouting and screaming but to be honest, it could have been recorded outside any Wetherspoons after 10pm on a Friday night.

As we now live in the days of ultimate skepticism and have access to many digital toys, these “sounds of hell” have been roundly picked apart with the conclusion being that they are actually a continually looped and layered section from a movie called “Baron Blood”. While not everyone is convinced that this was the source material, it’s not exactly difficult to get a sample from any tv show, movie or radio broadcast that has some sort of scared crowd scene in it. Heck, you could just create something yourself or yeah, go and stand outside the aforementioned Wetherspoons with a tape recorder.

But how did this story get going in the first place? There is a named source in some of the versions called Mr. Dmitri Azzacov or alternatively spelled Azakov.

Apparently he was the project manager for the drilling programme and it was his account of the events that made it into the public domain. It wasn’t until the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) picked up the story, though, that it really gained any traction at all. And how did they get hold of it?

Publishing the story under the headline “Scientists Discover Hell”, you may have thought that the story would have some wider reach or there would be some photos to go with it. None were forthcoming, not surprising really, and TBN quoted their source as a Finnish newspaper, “Ammennusastia”. Finland was also quite close to the location of the Kola Superdeep Borehole so it seems pretty legit that a Finnish paper might have the scoop on these hellish goings-on.

Except that “Ammennusastia”, sorry to make you say it again, was not a prestigious Finnish newspaper but rather a niche Lutheran magazine that ceased publication that same year of 1989. So how did they get hold of it? Did someone who worked for the publication actually witness the event with their own eyes?

Er, no. This was yet another wonky link in a very fragile chain unearthed by radio host Rich Buhler. He hosted a Christian radio show and after word of the TBN story reached him via his listeners, he set out to find out more.

While never believing that this story was true, Buhler nevertheless wanted to find out how it had started and he and his staff undertook a very thorough investigation, uncovering another mischief-maker along the way.

Rich Buhler’s Day Off

According to his blog post - “Drilling to Hell - Facts”, Buhler started off by contacting TBN to ask about its sources for the hell hole piece. He was assured that it was true by someone who had done no fact checking or tried to find any other source of information. They’d just taken the word of the Finnish magazine which had been sent on to them by a listener from Texas.

In the translated piece, the mysterious Dr. Azzacov is quoted as saying “We could hardly believe our own ears. We heard a human voice, screaming in pain.

Even though one voice was discernible, we could hear thousands, perhaps millions, in the background, of suffering souls screaming. After this ghastly discovery, about half of the scientists quit because of fear. Hopefully, that which is down there will stay there.”

It just beggars belief that anyone would actually broadcast this as fact, let alone a Christian network. They’re basically saying “yes, we know Hell is real and here it is!” without giving it a second thought.

What did TBN hope to achieve by doing this? That people would be scared into believing in God? To give the science community a smug “told you so”?

Yes, probably both of these things but the fact that the story was just made up makes them look like gullible fools. That was the exact reaction of one Mr. Åge (pronounced Or-gheh) Rendalen, a Norwegian man who had caught the original TBN broadcast while he was in the States in 1989.

Astounded at how stupid the story was, he decided to see if he could push it further. Returning to Norway, he sent some Norwegian newspaper articles with his own translations to TBN, claiming that he had initially been skeptical of the story but that these confirmed it was true. He also added in the bit about the cloud shooting up and the bat-winged demon appearing in the sky.

When Rich Buhler caught up with him, he immediately confirmed that the whole thing was just a prank and the newspaper articles were about something completely different. He had banked on nobody bothering to check his translation and he was correct so now his bat-demon had entered the mythos of the “well to hell” story. Picking up the original story thread, Buhler contacted the Finnish mag and they said they had run the story thanks to a member remembering having seen it in another Finnish paper called “Etela Soumen”.

Buhler contacted this paper and they eventually found the reference he was looking for. It wasn’t a front-page story like you might expect, it was buried deep in a correspondence from readers section where people can submit whatever they want. In a research mission that went almost as deep as the borehole itself, Buhler and his team managed to track down the man who wrote this letter in and he confirmed that he had seen the story in yet another Finnish Christian newsletter, this one called “Vaeltajat”.

Buhler kept digging. Did he get in touch with “Vaeltajat”? You bet your bottom dollar he did.

They confirmed that the Well to Hell story appeared in their July 1989 newsletter and had been sent in by a reader after he had apparently read about it in a Jewish Christian newsletter called “Jewels of Jericho” which was based in California. No solid trace of this publication was ever found, though, so Buhler’s backtracking ended here, seemingly with the original source for the story not being in Finland at all, but rather the US all along.

As we’ve pretty much definitively established that this whole thing was made up from the start, where did the audio recording come into it? While it had always been part of the original story that special heat-resistant microphones managed to capture the noises of the damned, it wasn’t until 1998 that this purported recording actually surfaced. After the story had done the rounds again on local tv and radio shows, someone contacted the Coast to Coast AM radio show with the audio recording and a letter which said that the writer’s uncle, who had recently died, was a collector of all things paranormal and had a recording of the hell sounds in his collection.

The letter also said “The story about the digging, the hearing of the sounds from hell, is very real. It did occur in Siberia.” and “He let me listen to one of the audio tapes that he had on the sounds from hell in Siberia, and I copied it. He received his copy from a friend who worked at the BBC.”

Ooh, worked at the BBC. So it must be real! The audio recording attached was about 17 seconds of the spooky wailing and shouting which then became synonymous with the official sounds of hell.

Again there was no real backstory or checking for this audio clip, it just managed to attach itself to the story and that was that.

Aftermath

That wasn’t quite it for the tale of when some scientists accidentally drilled through into the portal of hell. Later in 1990, our friend Rich Buhler heard from a pastor from a small church in Arizona that this story was true. Why did this man think he had the inside scoop?

One of his parishioners was on a covert drilling mission in Russia and had witnessed the event with his own eyes! Finally, an eyewitness! Also, this man had a PhD in Physics from MIT so presumably knew what he was talking about and also had a reasonable head on his shoulders.

He was due to continue his work on heat-resistant recording devices and was going to go back to Russia the next year. And did he? Buhler heard back from the church a few months later with the update that far from being a scientist, the man was actually just a con artist and had left town with over 20 thousand dollars that the church had raised to fund his new trip.

Oops.

In 1992, the Weekly World News did a piece on the Well to Hell, but as the headlines they run today consist of such articles as “Werewolf Escapes from Alabama Prison!” and “Robot Overlords Abort USA Invasion!” you may want to take their stories with a liberal pinch of salt. Also, in the way urban legends do, the story got changed again, this time with the borehole being located in Alaska and 13 workers dying when the incandescent bat demon exploded from out of the well.

The story did continue to pop up from time to time with a mix of details and locations but it gradually faded back down in the public consciousness.

So, what have we learned from this tale? Was there a drilling expedition that managed to find hell at the bottom of a hole in Siberia? No. There never was a deep drilling project in Siberia in the 80s.

Was the Kola Superdeep Borehole the way we reached the gates of Satan and rudely barged in? Again, no. While a real hole, nothing came out of it apart from things useful to geological study. Did a demon come shooting out of any borehole anywhere in the world?

Again, no. This was confirmed as being made up by Åge Rendalen. Were the sounds of hell ever actually recorded? Er, no.

As well as no equipment being able to survive the purported thousand degree heat, the clip that did the rounds as being the sounds of hell has been definitively proved to be a short audio clip, repeated and layered upon itself.

While many players in this story absolutely believe in the concept of hell, they were also prepared to completely bash this tale for the made-up rubbish it is. I mean, think about it. If hell really had been found literally under the ground, wouldn’t the news have made a bigger splash?

Wouldn’t it have become some sort of huge tourist destination where you could go and chuck a coin in and wish to be saved or something? At the very least it would become a place for teenage goths to hang out and pledge their allegiance to the dark lord. Some churches did apparently record an increase in their congregations after the news started filtering out but if it was all a publicity stunt to increase bums on pews, it certainly chose an odd and winding path to reach any amount of audience at all.

It seems that someone, somewhere maybe had a nightmare and wrote it down or just made this whole thing up and submitted it to a local publication and other people then slowly disseminated it, culminating in a few mentions on US Christian broadcast networks. But then, here we are dredging it up over 30 years later and playing our own part in spreading the urban legend of that one time in Russia when some people drilled down into hell itself.

Regarding the drilling to the Moho projects that we talked about at the start, it seems that the scientific community is still very interested in making it down to the Earth’s mantle. While there were several projects touted in the twenty-teens, I couldn’t find any updates in more recent years of any significance and the Kola Superdeep Borehole is still the deepest artificial hole on the planet. One of the reasons it stopped when it did was because of the increase in heat and pressure the drills started to encounter, making it impossible to go much further.

Who knows, maybe it really was a warning barrier that future drilling operations will penetrate at their peril. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Katy Watson

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the concept of ‘hell’ as described in the article?

The concept of ‘hell’ is described as an afterlife or place where bad people go when they die, often entwined with religion to serve as an opposite to the idea of a heaven or paradise for true believers.

What was the ‘Space Race’ and how does it relate to the drilling projects mentioned?

The ‘Space Race’ was a competition between the USA and the Soviet Union to achieve various space milestones. Concurrently, both nations also engaged in a ‘race to the Moho,’ aiming to drill as far down through the Earth’s crust as possible to reach the Mohorovičić Discontinuity.

What was ‘Project Mohole’ and what were its outcomes?

Project Mohole was the US’s attempt to drill through the Earth’s crust to the Moho. It managed to drill almost 2 kilometers down but faced numerous technical challenges and funding issues, leading to its shelving in 1966.

What is the Kola Superdeep Borehole and where is it located?

The Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest man-made hole in the world, located on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, near the border of Norway.

What happened during the drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole in 1989?

In 1989, the Kola Superdeep Borehole reached a depth of over 12,200 meters. The drilling project encountered increasing heat and pressure, making further drilling impossible, but no supernatural events occurred.

What is the ‘Well to Hell’ story and is it true?

The ‘Well to Hell’ story claims that scientists drilling in Siberia in 1989 broke through into a cavern with extreme temperatures and heard screams and a male voice. This story is an urban legend and is not true.

Who is Rich Buhler and what role did he play in the ‘Well to Hell’ story?

Rich Buhler is a radio host who investigated the ‘Well to Hell’ story after it was broadcast by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. He uncovered that the story was a hoax and traced its origins through various Finnish and American publications.

What is the origin of the audio clip purported to be the ‘sounds of hell’?

The audio clip purported to be the ‘sounds of hell’ was actually a looped and layered section from a movie called ‘Baron Blood.’ It was not recorded during any drilling project.

What are the current scientific interests regarding drilling to the Earth’s mantle?

The scientific community remains interested in drilling to the Earth’s mantle, but recent projects have faced challenges due to increasing heat and pressure, making further drilling difficult.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Hell at the Bottom of a Hole in Siberia
• Hero image source by CapLiber / openverse, by.