(795)   Sat 3 Jan 98 19:20
By: Sue Armstrong
To: All
Re: Ken Young's Subterranean Voices
St:
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@EID:ea76 24239a80
@PID: BWQBBS 2.90e Beta [Reg]
@MSGID: 1:246/15.0 34aed62b
@TID: GE 1.11+
I found the source for Jelly's "voices from hell".  I might be a
little late in this, but what the hell.

The story is told in Jan Harold Brunvand's 1993 book, "The Baby
Train: & Other Lusty Urban Legends".  That right there should be
ringing alarm bells all over the place.

On pp 105-108, under the heading "The Well to Hell", Brunvand traces
the origins of the story to - surprise, surprise - a hoax that
eventually made its way into the ever so credulous Christian media.

Whoever the ultimate original teller of the story was (the hoaxter
wasn't the first source, but merely faked up a translation of a
Norwegian building inspector from a Norwegian newspaper and sent it
to a Christian newsletter), Brunvand thinks he might have been
inspired by an actual well drilled in the Siberian Kola peninsula
(where the Well to Hell story is said to take place).  It was the
deepest drilled at the time, but the scientists working there are
reported to have found only "rare rock formations, flows of gas and
water, and temperatures up to 180 degrees, but no hollow center and
certainly no screams of the damned."

Are we surprised?  I'm not.  Ken's been taken in by a
now-rather-aged urban legend.  So much for his "scholarship".

--Wolfie


From desert sands to lands frozen
Come the Garou - Gaia's chosen!
Children of the hurt hidden earth,
Bloody in both their death and birth,
Gaia's fighters, our scouts prowling,
The night hears our werewolf howling.
                    -Ryn Ap Bleidd
                     Fianna Galliard

... Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball.
--- GEcho 1.11+
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