Updated September 24, 2021 1.8k votes 699 voters 115.6k views
Voting Rules
Vote up the most terrifying devil's doorways.
You've all heard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Hellmouth. But did you know there are many real places on the planet reputed to be devil's doorways - portals that could either suck you down to the underworld, or unleash a taste of hell on earth?
We've gathered up a devil's roster of said locations for your perusal, and tried to assess how accurate the stories really are. But we won't research too hard - when you find a good gateway to hell on earth, part of the fun is to keep it slightly mysterious.
In a small cemetery in Stull, Kansas, once stood the ruin of a church that was abandoned in 1922. Or was it? Though it no longer had windows, a roof, or an active congregation, the four walls supposedly played host to Satanic rituals until it was knocked down in 2002, and somewhere behind the site is said to be a staircase that just goes...down.
Visitors have reported memory losses and weird lapses in time, as well as flashlights mysteriously losing battery power. Wilder stories tell of the devil having fathered a child with a witch who's buried there. Supernatural even did an episode about the church in Season 5.
Dorothy was actually pretty lucky to end up in Oz, all things considered.
Bobby Mackey's Music World in Wilder, Kentucky, has a sign warning patrons that the place is haunted, and a hole in the basement allegedly goes straight to Hell.
Built over a slaughterhouse that later became a place of devil worship, then a speakeasy, then the site of several murders, the place certainly has earned some bad vibes. But are there actually spirits of the non-alcoholic variety floating around?
Visit for yourself and see. Their motto is, "Come for the ghosts, stay for the music!"
The Ploutonion, a temple to Pluto, god of the underworld, was built near Heirapolis, Turkey, some time between 100 and 200 BC, over a cave filled with carbon dioxide and other toxic gases generated by geological activity. The Latin name for the place was "plutonium," and while not quite as deadly as what we use that word for these days, it was a real killer. The power of Hades was thought to be causing all who approached to keel over and die.
Entering the cave would, in fact, cause death, unless you could find an air pocket or hold your breath - which the religious eunuchs did, returning unscathed to proclaim themselves favored by Pluto. Meanwhile, vendors made money selling live birds to tourists for the sole purpose of letting people toss them into the cave and see them drop dead.
Christians destroyed most of the site sometime in the 6th century. We're not usually in favor of that kind of vandalism, but when you think a toxic gate to hell is right underneath...yeah, we kinda get it.
Guinee is the name given to the spirit realm in the voodoo religion, and it is believed that somewhere in New Orleans is a set of cemetery gates that lead there. If you find the gates, and they are rusted shut, you can speak to the dead through them. But if they are open, back away, lest you be sucked through the portal forever.
In Russia's Kola peninsula during the '80s, a well was drilled 12 kilometers deep, leading to discoveries of "rare rock formations, flows of gas and water, and temperatures up to 180°." While this was mildly unusual, accounts of the story became embellished to include the well breaking through to a hollow from which emanated the screams of the damned. A well to Hell had been created!
In 1989, the Trinity Broadcast Network ran with the biblically-enhanced version as proof that Hell (and by extension, Heaven) is for real. While that may yet be true, the actual Kola well was not, in fact, the proof people were looking for.
For more than 30 years, this 225-foot wide crater in the middle of nowhere, Turkmenistan, has been aflame. The official story is that the hole collapsed in a drilling accident in 1971, and Soviet scientists set it alight to burn off the natural gas that came out. But locals have many other accounts, and no official records exist, leaving imaginations to run wild.
As of 2013, however, we have been able to rule it out as a gate to hell, since an expedition went to the bottom... and found microbial life even inside the semi-eternal flames.
