VIDEO: Real Life Gates to Hell!

The idea of an afterlife has always fascinated people. Though its name may differ from one set of teaching to another, almost every religion that we know of believed that there is a special and horrific place for the souls of those who have been banished for purposes of either penance or perpetual punishment.

Anyone can write on Evonews. Start writing!

Cultures around the world have stories of fire and torture that speak of doorways, caves and rivers on Earth leading to Hell.

This video presents seven such places – places people believed were entrances to Hell.

Here is some further information on a couple of those places, provided by Wikipedia.

Cape Matapan

Cape Matapan has been an important place for thousands of years. The tip of Cape Matapan was the site of the ancient town Tenarus, near which there was (and still is) a cave that Greek legends claim was the home of Hades, the god of the dead. The ancient Spartans built several temples there, dedicated to various gods.

On the hill situated above the cave, lie the remnants of an ancient temple dedicated to the sea god Poseidon. Under the Byzantine Empire, the temple was converted into a Christian church, and Christian rites are conducted there to this day. Cape Matapan was once the place where mercenaries waited to be employed.

At Cape Matapan, the Titanic’s would-be rescue ship, the SS Californian, was torpedoed and sunk by German forces on 9 November 1915. In March 1941, a major naval battle, the Battle of Cape Matapan, occurred off the coast of Cape Matapan, between the Royal Navy and the Italian Regia Marina, in which the British emerged victorious in a one-sided encounter.

The encounter’s main result was to drastically reduce future Italian naval activity in the Eastern Mediterranean. More recently a lighthouse was constructed, but it is now in disuse. As the southernmost point of mainland Greece, the cape is on the migration route of birds headed to Africa.

Lacus Curtius

Despite its precise origins being lost to time, Lacus Curtius was regarded with some veneration by ancient Romans, and the story most often repeated is that told by Livy: Rome was facing a peril which an oracle had stated would be overcome only when the City threw into the chasm what she held to be most dear.

A young horseman named Marcus Curtius (a member of the Curtia Gens), saved the city: He understood that it was the life of a brave Roman youth that the City held most dear. He therefore plunged into it, in full armour on his horse, whereupon the earth closed over him and Rome was saved.

Alternatively, Titus Livius tells that the Lacus Curtius was named after Mettius Curtius, a Sabine horseman who rode into or fell into it while fighting against Romulus, during the war begun after the Rape of the Sabine Women.

Still another version, told by historian Marcus Terentius Varro had it that Gaius Curtius Philon, a consul of 445 BC, consecrated the site after a lightning strike opened it.