Background on the Drilling to Hell story
By Rich Buhler
I first heard about this story from people who started
calling my radio program to ask about it in the early
1990s. There was such a flurry of calls that I finally
promised the listeners I'd look into it. Most of the
callers said they'd heard the story on Trinity
Broadcasting Network, a Christian television network
that originates from Southern California.
I called Trinity Broadcasting headquarters and asked
about the story. I was transferred to a woman who
said, 'Oh yes, it's true all right. We've got
documentation. It's in our latest newsletter.'
I was on the network's mailing list, so I looked
through a pile of recent mail and found the article.
The newsletter said the details had come from the
translation of an article in a Finnish newspaper named
'Ammennusatia'. It claimed:
A geological group who drilled a hole about 14.4
kilometers deep in the crust of the earth are saying
that they heard human screams. Screams have been heard
from the condemned souls from earth's deepest hole.
Terrified scientists are afraid they have let loose
the evil powers of hell up to the earth's surface.
'The information we are gathering is so
surprising, that we are sincerely afraid of what we
might find down there,' stated Dr Azzacov, the manager
of the project in remote Siberia.
According to the story, the geologists were
dumbfounded. After they had drilled several kilometers
through the earth's crust, the drill bit suddenly
began to rotate wildly. 'There is only one
explanation,' said Dr Azzacov. 'The deep center of the
earth is hollow!' The report continued:
The second surprise was the high temperature they
discovered in the earth's center. 'The calculations
indicate the given temperature was about 1,100 degrees
Celsius, or over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit,' Azzacov
pointed out. 'This is far more then we expected. It
seems almost like an inferno of fire is brutally going
on in the center of the earth.'
'The last discovery was nevertheless the most
shocking to our ears, so much so that the scientists
are afraid to continue the project. We tried to listen
to the earth's movements at certain intervals with
supersensitive microphones, which were let down
through the hole. What we heard turned those logically
thinking scientists into a trembling ruins. It was a
sometimes a weak, but high pitched sound which we
thought to be coming from our own equipment,'
explained Dr Azzacov.
'But after some adjustments we comprehended that
indeed the sound came from the earth's interior. 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,' Dr Azzacov
added.
According to the Trinity Broadcasting Network
newsletter, the Finnish article had been given to them
by a Texas evangelist, R.W. Schambach, who was a
frequent guest on their network.
We checked with Schambach's office and were assured
that the story was 'absolutely true' and had been
substantiated. They said they had an article from a
'respected scientific journal' in Finland, as well as
a letter from a Norwegian man, Age Rendalen, who had
confirmed it. Rendalen had sent his letter directly to
Trinity Broadcasting Network and the details he
revealed added a new dimension to the story.
Rendalen told the network that he had visited United
States a few weeks earlier and happened upon their
telecast about the Drilling to Hell story. He wrote:
I must confess that I laughed when I heard your
account... I did not believe one word of it, and
commented to my friend that Americans sure were
gullible to believe that hell could be physically
located to a hole in the ground. I cannot even begin
to tell you what a shock it was to me when I returned
to Norway and found the newspapers full of reports
about this incident. I knew immediately that if there
was a hell, I for sure would end up in it. A
tremendous fear took hold of me, and for two nights I
dreamed about fire and screams until I surrendered to
God and committed my life to his hands for
safe-keeping.
In the letter, Rendalen went on to encourage the
network not to let 'skeptics' interfere with their
telling of the story. He included a copy and
translation of what he claimed was an article from
Norway's largest and most reputable newspaper, with
more information about the drilling.
Rendalen's translation of the article told of
opposition to the drilling by Russian atheists, as
well as government intimidation to keep the scientists
from telling the rest of the world about their
discovery. The account, which drew on the eyewitness
testimony of a Mr Nummedal, also added a new detail:
What really unnerved the Soviets, apart from the
voice recordings, was the appearance that same night
of a fountainhead of luminous gas shooting up from the
drill site, and out of the midst of this incandescent
cloud pillar a brilliant being with bat wings revealed
itself with the words (in Russian): 'I have
conquered,' emblazoned against the dark Siberian sky.
'The incident was absolutely unreal; the Soviets
cried out in terror,' says Mr Nummedal. Later that
night, he saw ambulance crews circulating in the
community. A driver he knew told him that they had
been told to sedate everybody with a medication known
to erase short term memory. The Soviets use this drug
in the treatment of shock victims.
So we now had not only a story about drilling into
hell, but an additional version with a bat-like
creature making an appearance.
My staff and I decided to roll up our shirt sleeves
and trace the story as far as we could, especially
since we had the names of newspapers and at least one
individual who might know the facts.
The Finnish newspaper 'Ammennusastia,' which is quoted
in nearly every account of the story, is located in an
area called Levasjoki. We had a phone conversation
with a staff member who told us the publication is not
a 'respected newspaper' or a 'scientific journal', as
we had been told, but a monthly publication of a group
of Finnish Christians. The Drilling to Hell story, he
said, had been based on the word of mouth recollection
of another staff member, who had remembered reading it
as a 'major article' in a Finnish daily newspaper
called 'Etela Soumen'.
We contacted this newspaper and at first they couldn't
recall or find the story. However, we later received a
call saying they had discovered that the tale had
appeared in their paper. It was not in an article,
however, but in a feature section that included
letters from readers who could write about almost
anything they wished.
Through the newspaper, we tracked down the person who
wrote the letter with the Drilling to Hell story. He
was a kind, elderly man who, in spite of being
reluctant to talk with us initially, told us through
an interpreter that he couldn't vouch for the
credibility of the story. He got it, he said, from a
Christian newsletter called 'Vaeltajat', which was
published by a group of Finnish missionaries.
We next contacted 'Vaeltajat'. The editor said the
story had been printed in their July 1989 issue. Where
did he hear about it? He had received it from one of
their readers, who claimed it had appeared in a
newsletter called 'Jewels of Jericho', published by a
group of Jewish Christians in California. And that is
where the Finnish trail came to an end.
One thing was clear at this point: The Drilling to
Hell story was looking and smelling like a pretty
typical urban legend. It was sensational, impossible
to document, and only had life because of all the
small publications that were quoting one another's
unsubstantiated stories.
However, there was still the Norwegian man, Age
Rendalen, who had told the story of the ominous,
bat-like creature emerging from the drill-hole. The
article in the Trinity Broadcasting Network newsletter
said he lived near Oslo, so we called directory
assistance and found him in about 45 seconds. I talked
with him on the phone myself:
'Are you the one who sent information to a
Christian television network in the United States
about scientists drilling into hell?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said without hesitation.
'Well,' I continued, 'Do you have any way of
knowing whether it is true?'
'Yes I do,' he replied.
'Tell me about it,' I asked.
'None of it is true,' he said. 'I fabricated every
word of it!'
Rendalen went on to explain that he had visited the US
a few weeks earlier and had seen the host of a
Christian television program enthusiastically relating
the Drilling to Hell story. He told me: 'I couldn't
believe that the hosts really thought the story was
true and that they would broadcast it without
apparently having checked it out.'
When he returned to Norway, Rendalen sat down and
fabricated the graphic story of the bat-like creature
and sent his letter to the television network. His
prediction was that they would use the story without
investigating it. To make an investigation easy for
them, he included his name, address and telephone
number on his letter. He also included what he claimed
was an article on the story from 'Norway's largest and
most reputable newspaper'. In fact, the article, which
he falsely translated, was a piece in his local
community paper about a building inspector.
Rendalen also included the name and telephone number
of a pastor friend based in Southern California. This
pastor knew about the hoax and was prepared to reveal
the truth if someone called to research it further
with him.
However, as predicted, Trinity Broadcasting Network
ran the story without contacting Renalden or the
Californian pastor, and it appeared on television,
radio and in a large number of publications. None of
those who used the story attempted to research it
before going public.
'2000 PEOPLE HAVE FOUND CHRIST!'
On 6th February 1990, a listener of mine sent me a
letter. She had videotaped and documented all three
occasions when this story was discussed on the
Christian TV show put out by the network. On 29th
January 1990, the show host is documented as saying:
Let me just say, all of you that have written me
all those nasty letters about the 'hole in hell', let
me tell you I finally got the newspaper article which
is from 'The World Weekly'. This is an international
newspaper that has been translated into English from
Finnish. 'Scientists fear they've opened gates of
hell! Geologists drilling nine-mile hole hear human
shrieks.'
I got a letter today from a geologist in Oklahoma
and he's really giving me a rough time. He says that
there isn't anything that could drill that deep.
Folks, I'm just reporting what people have been
sending to me and I don't know if this is true or not.
I know one thing, if this is a trick of the Devil, he
sure has blown it, because I know of about 2,000
people that have found Christ because of it!
True or false, I'll tell you what I'm doing,
though. We're now going to do some investigative
reporting of our own and we're going to check with the
Finnish government and the Department of the Interior
and we're really going to follow this up and see if
they really did drill a hole nine miles down there, if
they really did have a microphone down there, if they
really did hear human shrieks of agony and pain as
this newspaper article and as did many letters I have
received from over there have indicated to us. If I'm
wrong and they're right, I've got nothing to lose. But
if I'm right and you're wrong, you've got everything
to lose.
Unfortunately, the investigation by the show took
place too late to prevent the damage of a widely
spread rumor in the Christian community.
Rendalen has now issued an official statement about
his actions and the whole incident, which says: 'The
story is nothing more than a Christian "urban legend"
without basis in reality.'
There are a couple of postscripts to this incident.
One is that the respected magazine, 'Biblical
Archaeology Review', printed a story about the
Drilling to Hell story, thinking it was so outrageous
that readers would get a kick out of it. Many of the
readers took the article seriously, however, and
either started passing it around as substantiation of
the story, or wrote to the magazine to complain that
it shouldn't have given it respectability.
Secondly, in August of 1990, I was contacted by the
pastor of a small church in Flagstaff, Arizona, who
informed me that he had proof that this story was
true. Apparently, a man from his church, who was
believed to be a PhD in Physics from MIT, came forward
in private to claim that he was a scientist who had
been on a secret mission in Russia for the past year
and had met with Mikhail Gorbachev several times. He
verified that the Drilling to Hell story was indeed
true. He claimed:
A hole was drilled deep into the crust of the
earth in Siberia and a large cavity was found.
Unfortunately, news of this was leaked to the press
and was distorted. It is true that a recording was
made of the sounds from deep in the hole, but the
intense heat destroyed the microphone in spite of
special cooling material around it, so that only
seventeen seconds of sounds could be captured. At the
present time, scientists are drilling a second hole to
confirm what was found the first time. And a better
system is being developed for cooling the microphone.
The scientist went on to claim that he was helping to
design this microphone and was returning to Siberia
shortly to further document the phenomenon. He planned
to return in about a year with more confirming
information on this amazing phenomenon.
Six months later, I got a letter from another member
of the church saying that this man had turned out to
be neither a graduate of MIT nor a scientist. In fact,
he had skipped town with over $20,000 collected from
church members who wanted to help finance his
expedition.
How did this story originate? Again, we will never
really know. It is possible that somewhere in the
world there has been a spooky experience during deep
drilling operations. I don't know. According to an
August 1989 article in 'Science' magazine, there is a
Russian deep hole drilling project in Kola, near
Murmansk, about 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Another German deep drilling experiment in north-east
Bavaria has discovered warmer temperatures than were
expected at certain drilling levels, although nothing
even close to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Characteristic of many urban legends, this story was
alleged to have occurred in an obscure part of the
world where it would be virtually impossible to track
down the facts. And once the story got started, people
began quoting one another's newsletters to validate
their own. This is the stuff of which tabloid
newspapers are made.
--- Ciputra Sanjaya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
---------------------------------
Hallo teman2x,
Aku dapat kiriman dari milis bersumber dari
erabaru.or.id. Bagaimana menurut teman2x? Apa benar
dugaan dari para ilmuwan ini?
salam,
Ciputra
------------------------------------------
> Kontroversi "Jeritan" dari Perut Bumi
> (Erabaru.or.id) Surat kabar berbahasa Finnish
> yang berjudul
> 'Ammennusatia' pernah lama ini mengungkap kejadian
> yang misterius.
> Disebutkan satu tim geologi yang menangani
> penggalian lubang dengan
> kedalaman 14,4 Km pada kerak bumi di Siberia (negara
> pecahan Uni Soviet)
> mengaku telah mendengar jeritan manusia dari perut
> bumi. Para ilmuwan
> khawatir bahwa mereka telah meloloskan suatu
> 'kekuatan jahat' ke atas
> permukaan bumi.
> "Informasi yang kami kumpulkan sangat
> mengejutkan. Kami benar-benar
> khawatir apa yang mungkin kami dapatkan di bawah"
> jelas Dr. Dmitri
> Azzacov, manajer proyek di pinggiran kota Siberia.
> Hal lain yang
> mengejutkan adalah temperature tinggi yang ada di
> dalam putaran bumi.
> Perhitungan menunjukkan bahwa temperatur mencapai
> 1,100 derajat Celcius
> atau diatas 2,000 derajat Fahrenheit'. Dr. Azzacov
> juga menyatakan ini
> lebih jauh dari yang diperkirakan, kelihatan hampir
> mirip api neraka yang
> dahsyat di pusat bumi.
> Lebih lanjut, Dr. Azzacov menceritakan, saat itu
> mesin bor dalam
> proyek penggalian ini tiba-tiba berputar dengan
> cepat ketika telah
> mencapai ruang kosong yang besar di perut bumi.
> Sensor temperatur juga
> menunjukkan kenaikan yang sangat dramatis.
> Penemuan terakhir paling mengejutkan, sehingga
> para peneliti takut
> untuk meneruskan proyek tersebut. "Kami mencoba
> untuk mendengarkan
> pergerakan bumi pada jeda waktu tertentu dengan
> menggunakan microphone
> supersensitif yang dimasukan ke dalam lubang. Apa
> yang kami dengar telah
> menghancurkan pemikiran logis para ilmuwan. Suara
> itu kadang melemah, tapi
> bernada tinggi yang mana kami kira datangnya dari
> peralatan kami," tandas
> Dr.Azzacov.
> Setelah melalui penyetelan, mereka mengerti
> bahwa suara-suara tersebut
> dari dalam bumi. Mereka mendekatkan microphone yang
> dirancang untuk
> mendeteksi suara dari gerakan lempeng bumi ke dasar
> lubang, tapi bukannya
> gerak lempeng yang didengar, melainkan suara jeritan
> manusia. "Kami hampir
> tidak percaya dengan telinga kami sendiri. Kami
> mendengar suara jeritan
> manusia yang kesakitan. Meskipun satu suara bisa
> dibedakan, kami mendengar
> ribuan mungkin jutaan suara, sebagai latar belakang,
> jeritan jiwa yang
> menderita, setelah penemuan yang mengerikan ini,
> hampir separuh ilmuwan
> berhenti dikarenakan takut. Diharapkan, apa yang ada
> di bawah akan tetap
> disana," imbuhnya.
> Selain suara aneh, hal lain yang membingungkan
> adalah penampakkan pada
> malam yang sama, yakni ke luar gas bercahaya yang
> berbentuk kepala,
> pancaran yang menyembur keluar dari lubang galian
> dan kabut awan bercahaya
> yang berbentuk pilar, muncul satu makhluk bersayap
> yang mengatakan dalam
> bahasa Rusia "Aku telah menang", memuliakan langit
> Siberia yang gelap.
> "Kejadian tersebut sangatlah tidak masuk akal.
> Orang Soviet menjerit
> dalam ketakutan," tutur Mr. Bjarne Nummedal, geolog,
> salah seorang saksi
> mata. Sampai malam, ia melihat petugas ambulan
> mondar-mandir di lokasi.
> Seorang supir menceritakan bahwa orang yang melihat
> kejadian tersebut
> diperintahkan untuk menenangkan diri dengan obat
> penghapus ingatan jangka
> pendek. Obat tersebut biasanya digunakan untuk
> menangani korban trauma.
> "Sebagai seorang komunis, saya tidak percaya
> surga atau Bible, tapi
> sebagai ilmuwan saya sekarang percaya adanya
> neraka," demikian tutur Dr
> Azzacov. "Tak perlu dikatakan kami begitu terkejut
> atas penemuan ini. Tapi
> kami tahu apa yang kami lihat dan apa yang kami
> dengar, dan kami sangat
> yakin bahwa kami telah menembus gerbang neraka!,"
> lanjutnya.
> Dugaan Dr. Azzacov bahwa suara yang didengarnya
> adalah jeritan mahluk
> di neraka boleh jadi benar. Karena meskipun
> eksistensi neraka berada di
> dimensi lain, sekali-kali ia akan diperlihatkan
> kepada manusia sebagai
> tanda peringatan. Bisa juga suara itu hanyalah efek
> dari getaran ruang
> lubang yanng sangat dalam di bawah bumi. Semua
> terserah penilaian anda,
> tapi banyak ilmuwan meragukannya.
>
>
__________________________________________________
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