Welcome to hell! The 5 locations around the globe that scientists believe could be the gates to the underworld

If you’ve ever told someone to ‘go to hell’, you probably didn’t have a real location in mind.

While most people no longer believe that hell is a physical place, that has not always been the case.

Scattered across the world, there are five terrifying locations that are claimed to be entrances to the underworld.

And experts now say that there could be some surprising scientific truths to back them up.

From the nightmarish location that inspired Jesus’ account of hell to the cave that mysteriously kills anyone who enters, these locations are as close to hell on Earth as you can get.

In Iceland, you can find the ever-burning brimstone of Hekla Fell, a volcano believed by Christians to be the real location of hell.

While in Belize, archaeologists are now piecing together the mysteries of the crystalised skeletons hidden within an eerie portal to the Mayan underworld.

So, would you be brave enough to visit any of these real-life gates to hell?

Gehenna 

In his ‘Sermon on the Mount’ Jesus famously warned that anyone who allows their hand or eye to sin will be cast into ‘hell’.

However, biblical experts believe that isn’t really what Jesus said.

In the earliest version of the text, the word that Jesus uses is not ‘hell’ but ‘Gehenna’.

Rather than referring to a place of eternal torment, Gehenna is a real location just outside the walls of old Jerusalem.

A contraction of the name Valley of Hinnom, or ‘Ge-Hinnom’, Gehenna is one of the deep gorges which can be found to the southwest of the old city.

At the time Jesus was alive, many Jews believed that this was a particularly evil place.

According to the Bible, this was the place where ancient Israelites practised child sacrifice, making offerings of their own young to the god Baal.

For this reason, many believed that the location had been cursed by God and made unfit for worship.

Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote in Time: ‘In the ancient world (whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish), the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial.

‘Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario: corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet.’

As the bible was translated into other languages, the word Gehenna was gradually swapped for the English word ‘hell’.

This means that, according to Christianity, Gehenna is literally hell on Earth.

The Valley of Hinnom might also be the origin of the fires of hell which have filled the popular imagination.

According to some accounts, the Valley of Hinnom was used by the people of Jerusalem as a landfill site where rubbish fires perpetually burned.

Some biblical scholars believe this could have inspired the idea that sinners would be cast into a place of eternal fire.

However, while a Roman-era rubbish dump has been found in the North of the city, there is no archaeological evidence that Gehenna was ever really used to burn waste. 

Hierapolis

It might not come as a surprise that passing through the gates to the underworld can be hazardous to your health.

But at Hierapolis, in modern-day Turkey, attempting to pass in through this ancient portal really could cost you your life.

The ancient Roman city of Hierapolis was built during the reign of emperor Tiberius between 14 and 37 BC.

In the ruins of this once bustling city, archaeologists have found extensive baths, a gymnasium, an agora or meeting place, and even a Byzantine church.

But Hierapolis is also home to a dark secret – a passage leading directly to the underworld.

Discovered in 2011, the entrance to hell is a small door leading into a cave-like grotto built into one wall of an open arena.

According to the ancient philosopher Strabo, the castrated priests of the underworld would carry sacrificial animals down through the door, known as the Plutonium.

To the shock of the spectators lining the surrounding amphitheatre, the animals would die on the spot as if struck down by an invisible assailant while the priests would remain unharmed.

In his account written 2,000 years ago, Strabo says: ‘[The] space is filled with a cloudy and dark vapour, so dense that the bottom can scarcely be discerned … Animals which enter … die instantly.

‘Even bulls, when brought within it, fall down and are taken out dead. We have ourselves thrown in sparrows, which immediately fell down lifeless.’

Shockingly, modern scientists have found that Strabo was completely correct about the Plutonium’s deadly properties.

Rather than posing a supernatural threat, scientists have found that the door sits on top of an active volcanic fault line.

In addition to warming the springs which drew tourists to the town, this geological activity produced thick clouds of CO2 which would rise up out of the cave.

At night, the CO2 pools thickly in an enveloping cloud of mist which the ancient Romans attributed to the breath of Kerberos, the three-headed guard dog of hell.

In a study published in 2018, researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen found that CO2 outside the temple entrance reached concentrations of 40-50 per cent.

The authors write: ‘Astonishingly, these vapors are still emitted in concentrations that nowadays kill insects, birds, and mammals.

‘They reach concentrations during the night that would easily kill even a human being within a minute.’

While the priests were tall enough to keep their heads above the gases, the sacrificial animals were trapped inside the toxic cloud and killed.

Even today, these gases are so toxic that visiting this entrance to hell unprepared really could be a one-way ticket to the afterlife.

Hekla 

Even from afar, it is easy to see why Medieval Christians believed that Hekla might be the entrance to hell.

The snow-capped peak of this 1,491-metre volcano towers above Southern Iceland.

The Icelandic word ‘Hekla’ refers to a short, hooded cloak which could reflect the dramatic layer of clouds that gather about its peak.

The mountain’s demonic reputation first emerged around the year 1104 when Hekla burst out of dormancy with an enormous eruption.

Based on geological studies, it is believed that the eruption was a category VEI 5 – the same rating as the eruption of Mount St Helen in 1980.

The explosion was so violent that 21,000 square miles (55,000 km squared) – more than half of Iceland – was bombarded by rock and ash.

According to accounts written at the time, people could see the blast of lava, searing ash, and toxic gases from the sea as lava bombs weighing up to 12 tonnes rained down on the country.

The eruption was so violent that news of Hekla’s diabolic force soon spread around the ancient world.

In 1180, a Cistercian monk called Herbert de Clairvaux boasted that Helka was even more deady than Mount Etna in Italy.

He wrote: ‘The renowned fiery cauldron of Sicily, which men call Hell’s chimney … that cauldron is affirmed to be like a small furnace compared to this enormous inferno.’ 

By 1120, a poem by the monk Benedeit called the mountain the eternal prison of Judas, referring to the lowest circles of hell.

In the early 14th century, one medieval author described seeing large birds flying into the volcano’s fires which were believed to be the souls of the damned entering inferno.

Most famously, the 16th-century German scholar Caspar Peucer wrote that the gates to hell could be found in ‘the bottomless abyss of Hekla Fell’.

Although the legends about Hekla’s connection to the underworld died off by the 19th century, the volcano has continued to earn its fiendish reputation.

Since its first eruption, Hekla has ignited around 20 times and accounts for 13 per cent of all Icelandic eruptions.

Over the 20th century alone, Hekla has produced 1.2 billion cubic metres of lava and 150 million cubic metres of rocky debris known as tephra.

The mountain has even erupted as recently as the year 2000 when it opened up a 4.3 mile (7km) fissure which sprayed ash and steam 9 miles (15km) into the air.

Actun Tunichil Muknal 

While legends about hell vary wildly from culture to culture, one common thread that ties these stories together is that hell is often believed to be deep beneath the Earth.

In Belize, you can find one of the best contenders for an entrance to the subterranean underworld within the caves of Actun Tunichil Muknal, meaning ‘Cave of the Stone Sepulcher’.

Actun Tunichil Muknal (the ATM Cave) lay undiscovered and undisturbed for more than 1,000 years after the collapse of the Mayan Empire.

The cave extends more than three miles (five kilometres) beneath the Earth and archaeologists have found artefacts dating back to around 800 AD.

Most shockingly of all, the cave is filled with the grisly remains of the victims of human sacrifice.

When the cave was first discovered in 1989, archaeologists were shocked to find the remains of individuals as young as four years old who had been bludgeoned to death.

The most famous of these remains is so old that the bones have crystalised into glittering calcite, earning it the name ‘The Crystal Maiden’.

Researchers now think that the cave was revered as an entrance to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld and the domain of the death gods.

Based on the arrangement of the bodies, researchers believe that this was the site of ritual murders designed to reenact the ‘Popol Vuh’ creation myth.

During the 10th century, the Mayan empire was being blighted by droughts and natural disasters which culminated in the civilisation’s rapid collapse.

Their sacrifices were intended to appease the Lords of Xibalba who were thought to be responsible for the droughts.

Professor Holley Moyes, an expert on the caves from the University of California told the BBC: ‘Amongst the Maya, we hardly see any – almost no – human sacrifice until the late classic period.

‘And I think they start doing it because they are in the middle of a drought, and they are trying to up the ante.’

St Patrick’s Purgatory  

On a little-known Irish island, you can find a supposed entrance to hell which has had an outsised impact on the Christian understanding of life after death.

St Patrick’s Purgatory, located on Station Island in northwestern Ireland, was considered by early medieval people to be the edge of the known world.

While St Patrick today might be better associated with shamrocks and green hats, he once had a much more terrifying reputation.

According to a 12th-century text written by a monk named H. of Saltrey, St Patrick prayed to God for a way to convert the Irish pagans.

His efforts were rewarded by a vision of a ‘pit of purgatory’.

This chasm filled the mind of anyone who entered with visions of hell fire and monsters, essentially providing a first-hand experience of the consequences of rebuking Christianity.

According to medieval texts, this pit is located on Station Island where a monastery founded by one of St Patrick’s disciples still stands today.

Early visitors reported finding a small cave where they would be bombarded with unearthly visions.

The 12-century historian Gerald of Wales of Wales wrote: ‘This part of the island contains nine pits, and should any one perchance venture to spend the night in one of them, … he is immediately seized by the malignant spirits.’

The cave was filled in and replaced with a more conventional chapel in the year 1790, but St Patrick’s vision of a temporary hell would go on to have a far wider influence.

After reports of the mystical powers of St Patrick’s caves were reported, the monastery became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Europe. 

The idea that sinners might briefly experience suffering before reaching salvation formed one of the essential cornerstones of the idea of purgatory, a sort of waiting room for heaven.

By popularising these ideas, St Patrick’s Purgatory became a critical point for the evolution of Christian ideas about what happens after you die.

Just 100 years after the first accounts were written, purgatory was made official church doctrine in 1274.

Even today, pilgrims from around the world undergo notoriously gruelling visits to the island to get a taste of hell first-hand. 

So, while you might no longer be able to take a day trip to the inferno in the cave beneath the island, you can still visit the place where our modern ideas of hell began.