The Well to Hell

The Kola Experimental Reference Ultra-deep Well (SG-3) is the deepest mining in the world, which has great scientific significance. It is located 15 km east of the village of Nickel and 12 km west of the city of Zapolyarny and is part of a system of ultra-deep wells created in the USSR.

In 1997, this well was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest human intrusion into the Earth's crust, and remains so to this day. The well was drilled intermittently from 1970 to 1991, and as a result its depth was 12,262 meters; the diameter of the upper part was 92 cm, the lower part was 21.5 cm. After a series of accidents that occurred in 1994, the well was closed.

A curious urban legend about the "well to hell" and the terrifying sounds coming from it is connected with the Kola ultra-deep well. This story says that, having reached a depth of 14.5 km, the drillers suddenly came across voids. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, they lowered a microphone capable of operating at extremely high temperatures, and other sensors that showed that the temperature inside the well at this depth reached 1100 °C. The microphone also recorded sounds, among which human screams could be heard - later in tabloid newspapers they would be called "voices from the underworld." The sounds recorded on the microphone lowered into the well were even broadcast in the media.

For the first time in English, this story was announced in 1989 on the air of the American television company "Trinity Broadcasting Network", located in Southern California. It was told to the editorial staff of the TV channel by a certain preacher from Texas, referring to a publication in a "respected Finnish scientific journal", which turned out to be a marginal publication of the church parish of the village of Levasjoki, located in Western Finland. The publication, which has not existed for a long time, was called "Ammennusastia".

There are several versions of the origin of the legend of the "sounds from hell", described in different sources:

• According to one version, this "news" was published in one of the Russian publications as an April Fool's joke. After the message was rewritten by the American media, the story spread around the world and returned to Russia again in 1997.
• According to another version, the legend was published on April Fool's Day in a Finnish youth newspaper, and later this article was repeated by a newspaper from Syktyvkar.
• According to the results of an investigation by the American religious journalist Rich Buhler, the story migrated to Ammennusastia from the newspaper Etelä-Suomen Sanomat published in Lahti, where the story about the "well into the other world" was published in the letters from readers section. Buhler tracked down the person who sent the story to the newspaper. He said that he had read about the well in a Finnish Christian newsletter called "Vaeltajat" (which translates as "Wanderers" or "Wanderers"). According to the newsletter editor, this story was published in the July 1989 issue, and its source was one of the readers, who, in turn, took it from a newsletter called "The Jewels of Jericho", published by a group of Jewish Christians in California.
• According to Finnish researchers, for the first time this story appeared in a publication of the Christian community of California, which in July 1989 was quoted by the Finnish magazine Wanderers. After that, the story about the well was published in a reader's letter from Etelä-Suomen Sanomat in Lahti and reprinted by the religious magazine Ammennusastia. However, in these articles, the well is not called the Kola superdeep, they only talk about its location "somewhere in Siberia." These sources also do not associate this note with humorous articles published by April 1.

However, these were all reprints of the same story in small local media. The story became public knowledge in April 1990, when it was published in the United States in Weekly World News, a tabloid that published mostly fictional news from 1979 to 2007. In its article, the magazine called Ammennusastia a "respected Finnish newspaper" and even a "scientific journal", although it was only a monthly publication of a group of Finnish Christians.

But the real peak of the world popularity of the legend of the "well to hell" came in 2002, and it happened thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet. This story circulated in the press and Internet forums along with another legend related to the Kola ultra-deep well, in which it was about a demonic creature with webbed wings that got out of the ground through a drill pipe. This story was also not new at that time: according to Russian journalists, it was in circulation in the USSR back in the mid-1980s – at least, it appeared no later than May 1987, which was two years earlier than the first publication of the legend about the recording of "voices from hell".

According to another version, the story about the "creature from hell" legend was supplemented by Norwegian Age Rendalen, who saw the Trinity Broadcasting Network report about the "hellhole". It was he who sent a letter to the editorial office, in which he said that the Russians, having pulled out the drill, discovered a devilish creature – either the fallen angel himself, or one of his servants. When asked about the source, he admitted that he completely fabricated all the details for the sake of a joke. Rendalen explained that he had visited the United States a few weeks earlier and had seen the host of a Christian television program enthusiastically telling a story about "drilling into hell." He said:

"I couldn't believe that the host really believed this story to be true, as well as that they broadcast it, obviously without checking it."

Back in Norway, Rendalen invented a story about a demonic creature and sent a letter to the TV company. He assumed that this story would be published without even a minimal investigation. To make it easier for the editors in case they decide to check the information, he indicated his name, address and phone number in the letter. He also included in the letter a newspaper clipping with an article in Norwegian from "the largest and most authoritative newspaper in Norway", which allegedly served as a source of information. In fact, he attached to the letter an article from a local public newspaper, which told about a local construction inspector. Rendalen also provided the name and phone number of his friend, a pastor from Southern California, who knew about the prank and was ready to reveal the truth if anyone approached him with questions.

However, as the Norwegian suspected, Trinity Broadcasting Network published his story without contacting either Renalden himself or the California pastor, and it appeared on television, radio and in a large number of other media. None of those who used this story in the future tried to verify its authenticity before publication.

Around the same time, the media began broadcasting the "original recording of voices from hell", which was intended to illustrate the legend of the "well to hell" and add weight to it. Later, researchers found that the sounds allegedly recorded in the well and issued by reporters as the "voice of the underworld" were an excerpt from the 1972 Italian-German film "The Bloody Baron" (orig. "Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga", in another translation – "Torture Chamber").

We have not been able to find the original (April Fools') article yet. A large number of contradictions can confirm that this story is fiction, which manifest themselves at the slightest attempt to investigate. First of all, in acoustic methods of well research, seismic receivers are used that record not sound, but a wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations excited by an emitter device with frequencies of 10-20 kHz and 20 kHz - 2 MHz. In addition, in reality, the depth at which drilling stopped was 12,262 meters, and not 14.5 km at all. And the temperature recorded at this depth was only about 212 ° C, which is very far from the specified 1100 ° C (not to mention the fact that sound recording at such a high temperature is impossible).

The history of the spread of this legend also does not allow us to confirm its truth: people and various media quoted each other, trying to justify their own articles in this way. This makes it very difficult to find not only the original source, but also the correct sequence of reprints – as mentioned above, there are several versions of who and when lied first.