Hell is Real and the Entrance is in Ohio

"If the Lord puts something on you and wants you to do it, you better do it. I fear the Lord." 

- Jimmy Harston (creator of the HELL IS REAL billboard)

Transcript

You were excited to move into the top floor. There would be no more stomping around above your head while you were trying to sleep, no more dogs jumping and barking above you at all hours of the day. For the first time since you moved out on your own, there would be no one upstairs, nothing but silence, and you loved it. That is, until about a week in, when scratching and breathing above your head woke you up in the middle of the night. You opened your eyes, expecting to find some horrible creature or spectre about to pounce on you, but your room was empty. When your eyes adjusted to the gray, dark light, you realized the sounds were coming from your ceiling vent. Over the next week, it wakes you up at least once a night, running around, pawing at the vents, and occasionally wandering into the walls looking for a way in. You feel like you could let it not bother you if it weren’t for one thing. The access panel to the attic was right above your bed. Anytime you heard it scuffling around, you worried that if you let yourself fall back asleep, you’d wake up to it on top of you. It made you miss the days when your upstairs neighbors were just people, and not, well, whatever the creature was. Sometimes, its footsteps sounded almost human, but the clawing and very rare chirping doused those fears. But you couldn’t pin its noises to any animal you recognized. 

One night during a particularly bad storm, you listen to the creature run, and thrash, and claw around for hours as you toss and turn. Every time the thunder hits, it gets more and more agitated, and you wait for it to finally break through your ceiling or your walls. When it starts really clawing right at the access panel, you mentally prepare yourself for rabies vaccines and tetanus shots, but you’re too sleepy to go get the baseball bat you keep by the door. Whatever it is, you know it’s not a real threat to your safety. But then the rain gets a little louder, your room gets a little colder, and a breeze ruffles your blankets. Turning around slowly, to the window on the other side of the room, you realize you’ve been so focused on threats from above that you didn’t consider those from below. You never thought to lock your window, living on the top floor. At the next lightning strike, you see it, crawling in through the crack in your window, impossibly high up, is: The Podcast Inside Your House. 

When I was nine years old, I saw my neighbor, Mr. McCoy, get abducted by aliens. Deep in the country, our houses were the only ones within eyesight of each other, so I was the lone witness. I ponder that sometimes, the astronomical odds of seeing what I saw, of looking out the window when I did.

I’d woken up because of a nightmare, though now I don’t remember what it was about, only that it terrified me. But when I saw the flashing lights outside my window, dancing in pale green and orange, I felt safe. Mr.McCoy’s granddaughter visited often, especially in the summers, and we always made a game of sending each other messages by shining flashlights at each other’s windows. I thought it was her at first, but when I woke up enough to drag myself to the window, I saw the lights were coming not from the window but from behind the house.

I watched Mr. McCoy open his front door and step out as if in a trance. He made his way straight through his treasured hydrangea bushes, stomping carelessly. As he stepped out of the shadows, towards whatever awaited him in the light, I felt a sense of dread. The lights shut off, and I saw something big rise above his house, before vanishing into the sky. 

On its own, this realization that the supernatural existed didn’t affect me too much. That night, I accepted that there were things out there that we didn’t understand, and that was that. Just like anyone who’s ever lived in a haunted house or seen an impossible creature lurking in the woods. What did affect me, though, was what happened to Mr. McCoy when the aliens brought him back the next day. 

Mr. McCoy told everyone about the aliens and what they’d done to him, and I told everyone about what I’d seen. But I was a child, and he was a grown man. While people entertained me, they got tired of his story quickly. 

He ended up selling the house that he’d lived in for the last forty years because he couldn’t bear to live where the abduction had happened. He bought a cheap mobile home on the edge of town. He spent all his time watching the night sky, and went on fringe talk shows in a desperate attempt to tell people the truth about what he knew. It destroyed his life. He died just a few short years later, all the stress and loneliness hastening his demise.

As I grew up, I carried both of those experiences with me; seeing the supernatural, but also seeing what it could do to let that knowledge consume you. The supernatural became something I looked into quietly and strictly leisurely because of that. When I was bored at home, with nothing to do on rainy or snowy afternoons, I’d turn to the internet or to my books, and I’d look for answers. 

I’d never been good enough at school to want to go into academia for a job, but the note-taking, the research, and the study, were all things I enjoyed. As I became an adult and picked one of those boring, but stable jobs, I pursued my faux academic studies more and more in my spare time.  We’re supposed to have hobbies we enjoy, after all, aren’t we?

Over the years, all my reading and clicking and notes led me to the same conclusion over and over again: that there were far more similarities than differences when people experienced the unknown. I started to come up with a theory that maybe the things we described using so many different words; aliens, ghosts, fairies, demons, well, maybe those were all the same thing. Maybe they were just looked at through different lenses depending on the time and the place they tormented us. 

I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea, far from it. But on slow days at work, and on dark nights venturing to haunted and strange places, I often fantasized that I alone would be the person to prove this idea. That I had some great destiny waiting for me. 

The pursuit of the unknown is far from a lonely thing, and I had many different companions on my quest for knowledge. The first was a group of ghost hunters that lived about an hour south of me, in a town smaller than my home city but with its local history better preserved. 

I spent many nights with them in old buildings, and it was nothing like the shows you see on TV. They were a group of people who all shared a sense of calm and patience that I never quite achieved. They could sit in the dark for hours, and catalog every sound methodically and carefully. There was no yelling at every small creak of a floorboard, no taunting the ghosts. They were searching for something real. Although I often found myself feeling uneasy on those adventures, I never saw or heard anything that felt otherworldly with them, and I was left to look elsewhere. 

I occasionally went on trips with urban explorers, a group who were especially cavalier about meeting strangers on the internet. But they were looking for something different than me, they wanted thrills and danger based very much on this world. 

The people who were the most enthusiastic in their pursuit of the paranormal were usually those who believed in aliens. With them, I’d often find the same conspiratorial obsession that I’d seen in Mr. McCoy. I think maybe that was because so many of them had personally seen and experienced things themselves. 

Having so many hobbies where you hang out with strangers from the internet can desensitize you to the danger, and I often found myself going on adventures on a whim. 

I’d given away the city I lived in in some niche forum about alien abductions coinciding with celestial events, and someone messaged me to tell me that something wondrous was going to be happening near me. The stranger wanted to know if I wanted to check it out. By pure chance, the event was at a place I’d been to before. It was an old abandoned observatory, one of the more beginner-friendly urbex places in my part of the state.

We chatted only briefly. The stranger told me his real name was Micah, and I gave him mine; Sam. With that, I felt more at ease, and we solidified our plans to meet up.  He said that we were going to see a star cluster that was going to be more visible than normal that night. Apparently it was one of, if not the oldest, cluster we’d discovered. 

The old observatory was in a city, so I asked him about light pollution, and Micah said that the city lights wouldn’t totally block out the cluster. Even though it would be better to stargaze outside the city, the stars were not the main point of our adventure. He wanted to test out some theories he had about memory and intention affecting the likelihood of seeing something strange. Micah said that he thought if we went somewhere to admire the stars where countless people had been before, doing the same thing, he hoped it might increase our chances of having some kind of otherworldly experience.

We both got there an hour or so before sunset so we could see the place during the day, and chat a bit to see if either of us was secretly a murderer. The observatory was the kind of abandoned building where you could just park outside and stroll on in. As we walked up, an old woman yelled at us to “be careful and get some good pictures.” And we told her we would. 

The front door had been boarded up on my first visit, and I’d had to sneak around back, but this time it was wide open, inviting us in. The front of the building was completely covered in vines, and as we walked through the entrance, some of them brushed across the tops of our heads. 

As we explored around, Micah told me all about stars and planets. The sciency stuff went over my head a bit, but I was eager to learn. We took the stairs up to one of the domes first, excited to scope out where we might be watching the stars. The first dome had lost about half its ceiling panels, giving us a dozen different hollow squares from which we could watch the night sky. 

We decided to scope out the rest of the building before it got dark. As we explored the auditorium, a huge room with obscene graffiti covering the seats and stairs, Micah told me about planetary conjunctions. Which is when other planets eclipse each other relative to us, and what that might mean for our destinies. As we ventured into the basement, full of broken wood, and a surprising amount of graffiti about the flat earth, Micah talked about the moon and the ways it changes us. 

When we walked the lower levels, a series of small rooms and hallways, it was my turn to speculate. I told Micah about my theory that some of the entities that plague us, the things that have abducted or tormented people throughout human history, maybe those were all the same things. 

As we wound back through the hallways and rooms looking for the stairs to get us to the second dome, we both talked about the strange feeling you get when you feel like you’re about to uncover something. Like the universe is telling you that you’re right where you need to be. We both felt it that night. 

When we reached the second dome, we decided right away that it would be the better place to watch the star cluster. More of the dome panels were intact, which made the original slice cut out for viewing feel more intentional. It also had more of an eerie feeling to it, and when we walked in, we both noticed the temperature drop. It was important to look for signs like that when chasing supernatural things.

There was also a literal sign that we both laughed at. In the middle of the floor, there was a rectangular hole, perhaps where there used to be another staircase. And at the lip of the hole, someone had spray-painted HELL in all capital letters. 

With the Hell Hole at our feet and the heavens above us, we settled in for the night. We cracked open a few beers and watched the sun slip below the horizon. We talked of the importance of keeping an open mind, of being ready to witness something spectacular. 

Once it was dark enough, Micah pulled out a handheld telescope he’d brought. He rambled on and on about the specs compared to the one he had at home. This was essentially a toy, but really, there was no good way to bring a good telescope to a place like this. He showed me how to use it, and gave me a quick tour of the constellations we could see.

Then, as it got darker, he showed me the star cluster we’d come for. I forgot the name as soon as he said it. A lot of them were just a string of random letters or numbers, but just like any group of stars, it was beautiful. Micah told me that it was nearly 13 billion years old, one of the star clusters theorized to be almost as old as the universe itself. 

Watching the twinkling blue lights, I felt nervous, like I was watching something that I shouldn’t be. Or perhaps it was just the anxiety that comes with thinking about just how vast and how ancient the things around us are. 

“In about ten minutes, we’ll be the closest to it that our planet gets,” Micah said.

“I’m trying to manifest for something to happen.” I said, “I don't know what, though.” 

“Don’t plan it,” he said. “Just keep an open mind.”

We sat in silence for a bit, trying to open up our minds, our souls, if there was such a thing, to the unknown. And as we half meditated, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that so many people come back from the unknown traumatized. So many supernatural beings and entities are only ever described as being malevolent. I thought of Mr. McCoy, how his life got destroyed. I thought of the things the aliens did to him that I didn’t understand until I was older. 

But as the minutes ticked by, I tried to push those thoughts from my head. 

“It’s time,” Micah said, and as he said it, I realized I knew what we needed to do. The Hell Hole was calling to us. 

Micah stood up before me and started walking, feeling that same wordless pull. I knew then that it had to be something real. 

I followed close behind him, and he said, “You feel it too?” 

I nodded, and we both stopped just at the edge. We’d brought red lights so as not to spoil our night vision, and we both shone them down into the hole. It was just the debris on the floor below us, but in the red light, it looked otherworldly, hellish. 

I wanted to step off the ledge, but barely managed to stop myself. It was like I’d been gifted with the revelation that there were wonders below us, that the answers we were seeking would welcome us with open arms if we’d only just jump in. It was like the hole was reaching into my mind and telling me that the sense of importance,  the mission I’d been seeking my whole life, it was all waiting for me just below my feet. 

“Sam, we shouldn’t go in there,” Micah said, grabbing my arm. I only just realized how sharply I was leaning when he righted me. 

“I want to know,” I said, shaking him off. I’d made up my mind, I’d come this far looking for answers, and I was going to at least take a look. 

Before Micah could stop me, I laid on my stomach and I poked my head through the Hell Hole. But as soon as I did, the trance broke. I was just looking at the old observatory. Micah reached down and yanked me up, dipping his right arm below the border of the Hell Hole. 

“Jesus, Sam, snap out of it!” He yelled. And I did, but I couldn’t help but feel that something had changed inside of me. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. 

The night was spoiled after that, and we left.

We stayed in contact over the forum we’d met on, and discussed what we thought we’d experienced, but the conversation fizzled. That is, until about a month later. Micah had messaged me about a meteor shower, and though I declined meeting up for it, I told him I’d try to step outside that night and take a look.

When the day came, though, it was cloudy and I was exhausted from a project at work, so I decided to just get some sleep. 

But, instead of sleep, something else found me that night. 

I had strange dreams of a desolate rocky place. The air smelled of sulphur, and above my head, a violent storm raged in the purple and orange clouds. I was alone there, and I felt the heat vividly as I watched the clouds flash. The thunder was different than ours, as if it was a hundred times louder but also infinitely higher in the endless sky. 

I woke up with the worst headache I’d ever had in my life, as well as several missed messages from Micah. 

The first complained of pain in his right arm, which eventually devolved into jokes about how we must have gotten cursed at the Observatory. Which then turned into actual scared pleas that something might be wrong. The last message read simply “I’m going to the hospital.” 

I called him when I got off work, but by then he was home. The pain had passed, and he was feeling silly for dumping several hundred dollars for an ER visit when they couldn't even find out what was wrong. We laughed about it, and I didn’t tell him about my dream. We made vague plans to meet up again soon, but he lived three states over, so the plans might have stayed indefinitely vague if not for what happened next. 

Two days later, the full moon brought me another strange dream. In it, I was breathing sulfurous air, and pleasantly warm. But this time, the storm above had calmed a bit, and I could hear sounds in the distance. The air was foggy, so I followed the noise, keeping close track of my feet on the porous black rocks below. I walked for what felt like an eternity following the noise. Only as I felt myself on the verge of waking did I finally make out what the sound was. 

It was the sound of an untold number of people all screaming in unison.

When I woke up this time, Micah's messages were worse. All throughout the night, he’d messaged me things like “it feels like someone is slicing my arm open.” Or “I think I’m fucking dying.” The last one just read “help.”

I called him as soon as I woke up, and he sounded incredibly tired. “I went to the ER again, but they said there’s nothing wrong with me.” 

“It’s the same arm?” I asked him.

“Yes it’s the same fucking arm!” He yelled. “I’m telling you, something fucked up is happening. We need to go back to the observatory, and we need to make it right.”

I talked him down, and I agreed. I didn’t want to get closer to whatever it was I was about to find in my dreams. 

The next big celestial event was the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars, two weeks out. We both requested time off work for the trip. But the arbitrary criteria we’d picked for celestial events didn’t cover all of them, and after three days, whatever was happening to us, whatever we’d reached out to, well, it reached out once again. 

This time, I fell asleep and woke up on the other side in a cave. The screams were louder than the storms outside had ever been. 

This time, I was not alone. 

This time, there was a creature studying me as my head came to in that strange, strange place. I tried to move my arms, to walk away, but everything below my neck felt completely dead. I looked around me, and it was like I’d been buried in rock from the neck down. 

The creature before me was tall, maybe twice as much as me, and though it was vaguely humanoid, the anatomy was all wrong. The knees had two joints, and as it approached me, its legs bent freely at both. Its skin was red and mottled, and it wore clothes that looked black and rotting. As it stepped closer, too close, I made out a drooping human face on the leg of its pants. 

It spoke to me then, with a deep and distorted alien voice, “Now, this is interesting.”

Its face was the worst part. It had huge black eyes that blinked with a single translucent membrane. Its nose was upturned, its ears pointed and high. It was more like a monstrous bat than a person. 

It was only when it got close enough to me that I could smell its breath that I saw what had been producing the screams. Chained to the wall behind it was the upper half of a man, the rest had been cut away. Though he certainly should have been dead, he screamed as if his lungs weren’t hanging out the bottom of his ribcage. 

The creature saw me looking and said, “You’re here a bit early, aren’t you?”

I woke up in my bed then, but I knew it was only a temporary reprieve. My phone had just one message from Micah this time. It said, “It’s happening again, but this time I have a solution.” 

When he woke up hours later, I prodded him to tell me what it was. He finally confessed to shooting up heroin to numb the pain.  

The stars, or the gods, or the devil, I don’t know who to blame, blessed us with another meteor shower the day before our planned trip. This time, I woke up in the cave with the beast again, and it was waiting for me. Once again, it was like I was trapped in the rock, with only my head truly in the other place. 

“Welcome back!” It smiled, showing tiny needlepoint teeth. This time, there was no one else in the cave. “You’ve managed to surprise me. That’s a rare thing down here.” It sat on a nearby rock and said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a good story, tell me yours.” 

And so I did, and it got me through that night without anything heinous happening to me. 

Micah was radio silent the next day. I didn’t bother with the trip. 

I knew I’d be back the next night for the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars, and so I tried to mentally prepare for whatever the thing in my dreams would do to me. I read up on Hell, and I tried to find a way to bargain, to please the devils down there. Or I guess if they live somewhere out in the stars, I guess I should say ‘up there’. 

But when I came back, the beast simply wanted to show me all the fun it could have with a fresh soul. It did promise me that someday I would get to experience everything I was seeing, though. 

When I woke up, I tried for a long time to get a hold of Micah. I don’t know if it was the heroin or the trips to Hell that got him, but I never heard from him again. 

I had two weeks after that before I was called back with a full moon. Two weeks to think about what I was going to do. 

I tossed and turned the night of the full moon, but I couldn't fight off sleep forever. When it was time to face my demon again, I had a plan. When I materialized in the cave, or my head did anyway, the creature was already torturing someone. This time, it had them on a stone slab. I hate to say it, but I was relieved. Maybe that meant it was going to leave my severed head alone. 

When it saw me, I spoke before it could. “I need you to tell me something. How do I make sure that I don’t end up on that table?” I paused. “I’ll do anything.”

It smiled once again. “It’s easy.” The thing said, “If you impress the big man downstairs, show him something new during your time on earth, he’ll let you be one of us.” He pointed to the person on the table, who was missing most of their skin, “And not one of them.” It laughed, “I was going to tell you anyway. I can tell you’ve got the makings of greatness in you.”

And though I should have been disgusted, I found that I didn’t mind the compliment coming from this thing. I had a way out, and that soothed me. 

“Anyway,” The creature continued, “I want to show you some things that I bet you’ve never seen before.” 

And show me he did. 

When I woke up, I felt strangely calm. I’d gone looking for answers, and I’d found them. I had a purpose now. 

I cracked open a fresh notebook. I liked to start new ones anytime I broached a new topic, a new method of studying the unknown. Only now it wasn’t the unknown anymore, was it? I’d seen it. Hell is real. It’s somewhere out there, in the oldest galaxy in the universe, and it’s waiting for us all. Maybe there’s a heaven too, but even if it exists, I know I won’t go there. My new topic of study would certainly keep me from getting in, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. 

I’ve got my quest now, my purpose. Hell lives in my head now, it’s taken over, and I’ve let it. But I won’t let it make me miserable. No, if this is my chosen path, my destiny, I think I can find a way to enjoy it. I already know where to find my test subjects after all, people who are quick to venture to secluded places with people they’ve never met. People looking for something new, something scary, and they’ll find it. 

I’ll see to that. 

On the first page of my new notebook, I start brainstorming ideas for new types of misery. I start penciling in what types of suffering I could inflict on others that not even the Devil himself has seen before. 

Until next time, remember that the road to Hell can be paved with different things: Good intentions, adverbs, or sometimes even college football and cornfields.