While in some feeling systems , the hereafter can only be accessed by spiritual means , in others , the Hades could be accessed straight off from the Earth . Here are 13 real dapple that citizenry have thought ( and in a few cases , still do ) take straight to the state of the dead .
Photo of diorama from Fengdu byMatt Ryall .
Some of these involve the Christian concept of Hell , while others were supposed to lead to other ( sometimes not unpleasant ) afterlives . And there are plenty of other spot that have beastly names , including Hells Gate in British Columbia , the flaming Door to Hell in Derweze , Turkmenistan , and the southerly pit of Erta Ale in Ethiopia , which is squall the “ gateway to Hell . ”
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Just a quick note : This piece was inspire by an Atlas Obscura piece about the beautifulCenote Xkeken . In the course of instruction of research this piece , I realized that Atlas Obscura had recently posted their own piece,“Go to Hell : 11 way to Enter the Underworld . ”I avoided understand the piece so as to avoid overlap , and while there is some , Atlas Obscura has a few underworld hot spots that are n’t cite here — plus , they . I extremely recommend break out their list ( with some gorgeous photos ) and also following Atlas Obscura in oecumenical , because it ’s an incredible site .
Photo of sepulture website in Hierapolis byEsther Lee .
The Ploutonion at Hierapolis : The ancient city of Hierapolis , near modern - day Pamukkale in Turkey was once home to a website consider sacred to Pluto , the Supreme Being of the deadened . Although the land site was rediscovered in 1965 , it was just this year that archaeologists announce the otherworldly significance of this holy bit . The same gases that heat the famous red-hot springs of Pamukkale originate from a cave beneath the Ploutonion , and because the vapors are toxic , the people of Hierapolis believed that they had been sent from Pluto himself and the site was treated as a ritual entranceway to the infernal region . Pilgrims would travel from all over the classical world to make sacrifices to Pluto ; animals led into the cave would drop dead from the toxic fume , while acolyte of Pluto would prove their devotion to the god by entering the cave and emerge active ( perhaps thanks to their cognition of air pocket of breathable air within the cave ) .
Photo of Ming Shan byBritrob .
Fengdu , China : The 2,000 - year - old City of Ghosts , located in Chongqing municipality , has long been thought to be the berth the dead stopped on their way to the afterlife , though it seems to have gotten this repute in a circuitous style . A legend from the Han Dynasty tells of two imperial official , Wang Fangping and Yin Changsheng , who abandon the court living to practice Taoism in Fengdu and became immortal . Their name blend sounded like “ King of Hell , ” and so Ming Shan , the hill that overlook Fengdu , became eff as the abode of Tianzi , the King of Hell . The city is filled with Buddhistic and Taoist temples , said to be occupy with immortal spirits that judge and torment the dead . A impertinently dead soul , it was enunciate , must first cross the Bridges of Helplessness to have their virtuousness judged , then face the Mirror of Retribution at the Ghost Torturing Pass and either become forthwith reincarnate or face a serial of torments before reaching the Wheel of Rebirth . Living visitors can strain the urban center by boat ( the lower portion was flood after the construction of the Three Gorges dam along the Yangtze River ) and take the air the bridges , face up the daimon who guard the spirit world , view sometimes gruesome panorama of the afterlife , and gaze upon the 138 - m - high statue of the Ghost King , the largest sculptured cut up onto a rock . While Fengdu is centuries sometime , some its symbolic structures were created rather latterly . For example , the Last Glance at Home Tower , the final muckle ghosts will see of the living world , was constructed in 1985 .
Photo of Masaya crater byBrian Johnson & Dane Kantner .
Masaya Volcano : The Aboriginal hoi polloi of Masaya in modernistic - day Nicaragua did not trust that the sass of their caldera was a gateway to the hereafter , but there was a local tradition that the volcano was a god and that a sorceress lived inside its fiery pit . But it was the Spanish Internet Explorer who make it in the 16th C — and had little familiarity with volcano — who associated with volcano with diabolic activity . In 1529 , Mercedarian Fray Francisco de Bobadilla hauled a crossing up the volcano , hoping to exorcize what he believed was the Mouth of Hell . And he was n’t alone ; Friar Toribio Benavente wrote in 1541 that the volcano ’s persistent activity must have a supernatural cause and that it must be , “ the place from which the objurgate are thrown by the ogre . ” Various religious figures maneuver to the vent as grounds of the horror that would wait sinner in Hell . Not all Spanish mendicant matt-up the same way , however . Friar Blas del Castillo led the first Spanish expedition inside the volcanic volcanic crater in 1538 to seek for Au and silver . And , while debates as to the nature of the vent bait through the 16th and 17th centuries , Friar Juan de Torquemada issue a theological analysis of Masaya and other vent in 1615 , asserting that it was ridiculous to see any volcano as an entrance to Hell . Among his argument was that since souls are incorporeal , Hell has no need of physical back talk .
The Seven Gates of Hell : A local legend claims that in the woods off Trout Run Road in Hellam Township , Pennsylvania , baby-sit the Seven Gates of Hell . concord to popular fiction , the William Henry Gates seem near the website of a tragical asylum fire , and if you ill-treat through all seven gates , you land direct in Hell . ( Of course , that same fiction claims that no one has ever made it past the 5th gate , so how would anyone know ? ) There are a couple of problems with this story , even away from the whole exit - to - hell on earth thing . One is that , allot to theHellam Township website , there never was such an asylum on that blot . Also , there ’s only one logic gate , a rather average - front matter a local physician set up to keep the great unwashed off his prop . ( Weird USexplains that the other six William Henry Gates are say to be inconspicuous during the sidereal day . ) That has n’t go along funny trespassers from abstract onto the attribute , however , in search of a direct route to Hell . Hellam Township is n’t the only place in the US rumored to host a gateway to Hell ; urban legends claim that the devil can be found in the Gates of Hell , a collection of waste pipe in Clifton , New Jersey , and in the Stull Cemetery in Stull , Kansas . And some juju practitioners claim that the Seven Gates of Guinee , which lead to the hereafter of the voodoo tradition , can be found in various parts of New Orleans . ( Read about the Gates of Guinee onAtlas Obscura . )
Photo of Lacus Curtius byMM , Wikimedia Commons .
Lacus Curtius : Today , this Hell in the Roman Forum does n’t look like much , but in a legend enjoin by the Roman historian Livy , it was once a spacious chasm . Livy tells the story of Marcus Curtius , who may have given the pit its name . According to Livy ’s account , the chasm look in the centre of Rome , and nothing could fill it . An oracle prophesied that the chasm would not close and the Roman Republic would be destroy unless the metropolis sacrifice that which had made it strong . Marcus Curtius realized that Rome ’s lastingness lied in the artillery and braveness of its citizen and so , full armed and armored , he rode his horse into the chasm and straight into the underworld . The chasm closed and the metropolis was saved . It may well be this legend that classed Lacus Curtius as a mundus , a place where one could well communicate with the underworld . It was also a conduit for buy off the god of last ; during the reign of Augustus , Roman citizens would toss coins into the lacus to beg for the Emperor ’s safety .
Photo of Station Island byEgardiner0 , Wikimedia Commons .
St. Patrick ’s Purgatory : One fable about the Irish Saint Patrick involves Station Island , a speck in Ireland ’s Lough Derg . According to the caption , after Patrick had become frustrated with his doubting following , the Christ seem to him and pass him to a cave on Station Island . Inside the cave was a pit , which was the gateway to Purgatory , where the souls of the dead must die hard punishment for their sin before entering Heaven . While there , Patrick also received visions of the badgering of Hell . From the 12th 100 on , Station Island has draw Catholic Pilgrim Father looking to sit closely to Purgatory . In 1632 , the lords DoJ of Ireland rank the cave conclude and most of the records of pilgrim’s journey prior to that class were destroy , but we do know that the pilgrims would fast and implore for days before spending a full solar day exclude inside the cave . Despite the cave being keep out , the pilgrim’s journey remain unbroken ; forward-looking pilgrimscan still visit Station Islandfor three - twenty-four hours pilgrimages , during which they must keep a 24 - hour vigil while fasting on the island .
contingent of map of Iceland by Abraham Ortelius , viaWikimedia Commons .
Mount Hekla : Iceland ’s especially active volcano develop a reputation as a gateway to Hell in the twelfth one C , after its 1104 eruption . Benedeit ’s 1120 Anglo - Norman poem Voyage of St. Brendan mentions the volcano as the prison house of Judas , the apostle who betrayed Jesus . That reputation continued with further eruptions ; after the 1341 eructation , there was a paper that citizenry saw birds flying amidst the fire — bird , some thought , that must really be pullulate souls . Even in more recent times , Hekla has maintained its diabolic status , as some superstitious folk have claimed that it ’s a spot where witches meet with the deuce .
Photo of the Acheron byale3andro .
Acheron : The Acheron is a veridical river that flows through northwestern Greece , but it also fancy conspicuously in classical mythology . In Homer ’s Odyssey , Circe directs Odysseus to the underworld , severalize him that he must find the point where the Acheron meets the Pyriphlegethon and of a branch of Styx . The poet Vergil citation also Acheron in the Aeneid , distinguish it as the river from which the Styx and Cocytus rivers menstruate . The ferryman Charon was supposed to transport newly deadened someone across the river into the hereafter , something he even does in the Page of Dante ’s Inferno . In Dante ’s poem , the psyche of the Uncommitted , who chose neither good nor evil , find their eternal home base on the savings bank of the Acheron , not condemn in Hell , but still always penalise for their indecision .
Entrance to the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae byCarole Raddato .
Lake Avernus : While the Acheron is in Greece , in the Aeneid Aeneas enters the underworld through the Avernus crater near Cumae in Italy . The crater lake was sacred to the Cumaean Sibyl , and harmonize to myth , she could run a living traveler into the Hades . It name offers some hints as to why it might have been deem such a deadly portal . Avernus comes from the Greek give-and-take αϝορνος , mean “ birdless , ” which connect to the belief that birds fly over the lake would die due to the toxic exhaust fumes the lake breathe . It ’s unreadable how much accuracy there is to this belief ; in modernistic times , birds are quite happy to wing about the lake .
Cape Matapan : If you do n’t want to deal with Charon the ferryman , you could enter the classical Hades of Tartarus through the back door . In Book Ten of Ovid ’s Metamorphoses , Orpheus enters the underworld not via Acheron , but strive the Styx through the logic gate of Taenarus , situate in Cape Tainaron ( also known as Cape Tenaro or Cape Matapan ) on the southernmost tip of Greece on the Peloponnese .
Photo of Cenote Xkeken , Yucatán , byRazi Marysol Machay .
The Mayan Cenotes : The Maya certainly had some of the most picturesque entrances to the underworld . These instinctive underground waterways , locate in Mexico and Central America , were think to be the household of the rain god Chaak and portals to Xibalba , the afterlife . Caves were often seen as gateways to the hereafter in the Mayan worldview , actual passageways between the living world above and the realm below . Archaeologists have found Mayan temple and human remains in the cenotes of the Yucatan peninsula , a possible legendary site of Xibalba , while other traditions put entrances in Cobán , Guatemala , or Actun Tunichil Muknal in Belize . These day , the cenotes are seen more as tourist destinations than the entrances to the mythological “ situation of fear . ”
Photo of Osore - zan , Honshu , byshirokazan .
Mount Osore : The Europeans were hardly the only folk to conceive that vent marked the entryway to the underworld . Mount Osore , region fill with volcanic cauldrons turn up on the removed Shimokita Peninsula of Japan ’s Honshu island , is literally named “ Fear Mountain . ” And with its barren , gray landscape , bubbling waters , and persistent olfactory perception of sulfur , it ’s gentle to see how it get its macabre repute . Like Acheron and the River Styx , the Sanzu River , which run through the region is said to be a smear individual must cross to slip away into the afterlife .
Photo of Hrad Houska byJanos Korom Dr.
Houska Castle : accord to folklore , Houska Castle , located in Blatce , north of Prague in the Czech Republic , is build up over a “ bottomless ” hole that leads to Hell . One legend claim that in the 13th century , King Ottokar II of Bohemia ( or else a nobleman of the Dubá clan ) offered a free pardon to any objurgate prisoner who consent to be lowered into the pit and cover what he saw . The first captive lasted only a few seconds before he began shout out . When he was pulled back up , the story goes , his hair had turned white and it seemed he ’d aged 30 years — and he guggle incoherently about half - human creature who flapped through the darkness of grotesque wings . The castle was built , likely on Ottokar II ’s orders , over this imagine hell - hole , without right fortifications , a water source , or kitchen . The myth asserts that this was because the castle was mean not for human habitation , but to capture demons . ( The chapel service was supposed to be genuine part of the fortress erected directly over the Gate of Hell . ) The fort was , however , used as an administrative building , has been used as an blue-blooded residence at various points in its chronicle , and was renovated and expanded during the Renaissance . The palace ’s current owners trade on the building ’s hellish reputation , fix it up as a spooky tourist attraction .
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