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ABC News: All About Hell

ABC News: All About Hell	757 Views
posted on Sunday, July 22, 2007

THE FASCINATION WITH HELL'S FURY
By Rob Wallace and Farnaz Javid
ABC News
July 11, 2007

Original Link

Do you believe in hell? If you do, you're not the only one.

This afterlife for so-called sinners has fascinated society since the dawn of time. The very thought of the place inspired Dante to write his "Inferno," giving us history's most detailed description of the underworld.

Since then, artists from Michelangelo to Marilyn Manson have shaped our opinion of the infernal abyss. Most religious teachings describe hell as the netherworld anyone might end up in who strays from the straight and narrow. That view seems to be changing in this age of logic and political correctness.

A decade ago, 56 percent of Americans polled said they believed in hell. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the number shot up to 71 percent (polls conducted by Harris and Gallup), then fell in recent years, but this pattern is not a new phenomenon. Man's definition of the abyss has shifted since the dawn of humanity. And through it all, it seems the more sinister hell is made out to be, the more it is mocked and embraced. It is a surefire punch line on television and in movies, and it's used to market everything from comic books to chewing gum.

Hell's Lure

Hell can also be a seductive muse for all those fans of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. One of them, a kid from an Ohio Christian school named Brian Warner is today better known as Marilyn Manson. For more than a decade, he has made millions with his dark music and artwork, thrilling fans and provoking conservatives.

Manson said he's confident he'll end up in hell when he dies. Laughing, he said, "I am gonna say that it would probably be a more comfortable place for me, because everyone I know would be there, and I wouldn't really be allowed to do anything in heaven that would be any fun."

The possibility of going to hell may be attractive to Manson, but in the past, many held on to hopes that their enemies would spend eternity in its fiery grip.

Satan's realm grew more vivid through the harsh Middle Ages. Miriam Van Scott, who wrote "The Encyclopedia of Hell," said that is because peasant masses embraced the idea of heavenly relief and divine payback.

Hell, she continued, "was especially popular in the time when the lord or the king or the emperor could steal your daughter. He could sell your family away. So they really liked the idea of, 'OK, at some point you're gonna pay."

The Road to Hell ...

In modern times, who exactly is destined for damnation? Singer and songwriter Kurt Cobain asked that question in his song "Lake of Fire," and later committed suicide. A new ad for Orbit gum imagines the rock star in heaven, but most religions would send someone who took his own life to hell.

But in this age of science, Van Scott said people are moving away from that idea. "Hell is a little too medieval. It's a little too extreme," she said. "There have been so many horrible humanitarian disasters on sort of massive scales that it's very hard to imagine something worse."

That shift in thinking could one day end fear of eternal torture. Columbia University religion professor Alan Segal said, "Americans have been doing away with hell on a regular basis. We pretty much all think we're going to heaven."

Even the Vatican is modifying its position on where you could end up after death. For centuries, Catholics believed in a benign form of hell called limbo, a place reserved for unbaptized babies. But recently the pope let go of that idea altogether, leaving some wondering if the church, or all of humanity, could ever let go of hell entirely.

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TOUCHING HEAVEN AND HELL
ONE MAN'S BRUSH WITH THE BEYOND CHANGES HIS LIFE
By Sylvia Johnson and Rob Wallace
ABC News
July 10, 2007

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Matthew Dovel says he calls himself "a hostile witness to heaven and hell."

Dovel is one of the thousands of Americans who have reported what are called near-death experiences. Although science can find no facts to support the notion that people have actually glimpsed the afterlife, many people brought back from the brink of death swear they've been to heaven.

Far fewer report visiting hell, but Dovel believes he's seen both. And he's had a few brushes with death.

Dovel's first near-death experience happened when he was 12 years old and was trying to swim the entire length of a pool underwater. As he surfaced, his friends playfully pushed him back under.

"I was completely out of breath," he said. "The instant that I took the breath of water in, a white light engulfed me. And I flashed back over my life. It was just all these good moments in my life. I was completely happy to be at this place."

In that moment, Dovel says, a "beautiful creature" came out of the light. "It was Jesus Christ and he grabbed me by the wrist, and said you've got to go back," Dovel said. "I'm instantly on the side of the pool, on my back."

'Anger Towards God'

Dovel had been rescued by his friends, but that glimpse into the afterlife left him confused and profoundly depressed. "A rage came over me and an uncontrollable anger towards God that I had to come back."

The next decade became a constant cycle of booze and cocaine-fueled binges, even after he married and had a daughter. "I would drink till I blacked out, and found out that cocaine allowed me to drink more, and stay awake, and not black out," he said.

But the drugs and alcohol never came close to recreating that euphoric boyhood memory of heaven, so he came up with a most unlikely plan to return.

"I just said, 'I can't live like this another day.' And at that moment, I had chosen to commit suicide," Dovel said. "It was like a joy came over me. It would be the answer to all my problems. And the world would be better off without me. And I'd get to go back to heaven."

Dovel bought his favorite gin and three bottles of sleeping pills, and then drove to a remote bird sanctuary near his home in Anchorage, Alaska. He swallowed the pills and drank the gin sitting in the front seat of his car overlooking a marsh. In an instant, he says, he was no longer completely in this world.

"And I get a flash of light and I'm suddenly outside," he said. "And I'm thinking, 'How did I get out here?' And I notice there's no color. Everything's gray. And I put my head back and the moment I close my eyes, there's another flash and I'm in mid-free fall into a pit that's pitch-black."

Reliving the Past

Dovel's lifelong wish to return to heaven had ended in a personal vision of hell.

"It was extremely hot and very humid and dense," he said. "Just smoke coming out of the ground." The experience then became extremely painful -- not physically, but emotionally.

"I'm living in my past," he said. "And all the people that I had met throughout my life, they would come to me and get within my face and start pushing and screaming and I would relive a moment that I had caused them pain."

Then, he says, he saw the suffering his death would eventually cause. He still finds it painful to remember after almost 20 years.

"My mother and I was there when she collapsed, finding out I was dead from suicide," he said. Dovel says he experienced all the pain he would cause people in the future from his suicide -- like his daughter. Dovel describes the vision he saw of her: "She was 18, and she's sitting on the floor, contemplating suicide, 'cause I wasn't there for her."

But the experience of begging to be released from the pain was the most painful of all. "I was on my hands and face, weeping, weeping. Not just crying but weeping for Jesus to save me," he said.

And Dovel believes that he was eventually saved. "I was pretty much lifted up by the back of my neck, and slowly, very slowly, lifted out of this pit. I remember I was still weeping, and a voice told me, 'You have work to do, and if you continue to live the life you are, this is where you are going to spend eternity.'"

Understanding Near-Death Experiences

Dovel says he woke up a day later back in his apartment. How he got there remains a mystery. Did he actually visit hell? Or was his journey a drug-fueled hallucination? Or a trick played by neurons frantically firing in a dying brain?

Counselor and educator Jan Holden, who has interviewed hundreds of people who are convinced that they've been to the "other side" and back, thinks it's possible it's all a trick of the brain, but that the people who've had these experiences are convinced they have been to another reality.

Holden said, "They've remembered dreams. They've hallucinated, and they can say that their near-death experience was nothing like either of those. They say that it's absolutely real. And that their consciousness is functioning much like it does in the body, except for some sort of additional abilities."

This theory likens the brain to a cell phone or a radio receiving these hellish or heavenly images from some other place. Science can't say for sure, but regardless of the cause, the effect is startling.

Of all those who "die" and return, the vast majority are profoundly changed. Dovel says, "This is something so horrific that when I came out of that, I quit a $1,000-a-week drug habit cold turkey."

Dovel sobered up, moved to Las Vegas and devoted his life to suicide prevention through International Suicide Prevention, his nonprofit organization. He helps people deal with the aftermath of suicides.

Dovel said, "I see horrific things that we do to ourselves and people say, 'How can you handle that?' It's nothing to me. It doesn't even come close to what I experienced in hell."

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EVIL: NATURE OR NURTURE?
CONVICTED KILLER REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR BRUTAL MURDERS; WAS HE BORN EVIL?
By Rob Wallace
ABC News
July 10, 2007

Original Link

Are evil people born or made?

Ulysses Handy was 24 when he walked into a friend's home in Tacoma, Wash., looking to steal money he knew was there.

He shot Darren Christian and Daniel Varo at point-blank range, and then turned his gun on a total stranger, unarmed and defenseless 21-year-old Lindy Cochran. When questioned about her reaction and asked whether she had begged for her life, Handy said, "She didn't say a damn word. She was shellshocked."

He explained that her terror didn't set him back at all.

He continued, "I feel there are two kinds of people in the world -- us and them. Predator and prey. Well, I'm damn sure not no prey."

No Remorse

Handy was arrested and pleaded guilty. At his sentencing, he spoke to the victims' families. "I know there's people here hurt. Yeah, well, pain is a part of life. Deal with it. Get over it."

According to Handy, he felt no compassion for the family members of his victims. "Man, there ain't nothing I could say could take away their pain or make it a little easier to deal with. They gone and they ain't coming back," he said.

Cochran's great-uncle Richard Frost expressed his feelings toward Handy in the courtroom at the sentencing. "The part that can keep me going the rest of my life is the hope that somebody on the inside will get their hands on him and choke the life out of him while he's whimpering like the coward he is."

For Frost, knowing that Handy would spend his life in prison was not enough it did not offer him any satisfaction.

By pleading guilty, Handy avoided death row. He is almost a year into three consecutive life sentences, and he has spent some of that time covering himself in jailhouse tattoos -- a pentagram, the word "sadistic" and the number 666 on his chest, with devil horns above his eyes.

Becoming a Killer

"I wonder what is it that drives him to feel that he needs to advertise that he's a sadist to everyone around him," said forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, the developer of the Depravity Scale:

https://depravityscale.org/depscale/

The defiance of the hardened persona could be one of three things. "You're dealing with illness, brute contempt for others or bravado," Welner said. "I would have every reason to believe that he's terrified, because when you take his gun away, how scary is he?"

Handy was not scary at all as a child. He was raised by a loving and devout single mother in New Orleans.

"I went to Catholic schools all my life. And I was an honor student, Boy Scouts, all that. The choir -- I went to catechism, first communion and after a while, that wasn't me. It didn't give me pleasure," he said.

Handy explained that he felt lonely and misunderstood as a child, feelings he says contributed to his violent behavior as he grew up.

"Something just never felt quite right to me -- this internal pain -- and I always felt that no one else feels my pain. But I can give you a small taste of it … a small taste. If I hurt you … that pain you feel … can't compare to mine. And I am not alone anymore."

Payback After Death?

So, what happens to Handy when he dies? The church he rejected believes that he is destined for hell, unless he calls out to God for forgiveness. And if he does, Catholics say he will do time in purgatory before he gets to heaven.

Monsignor Jim Lisante from the Roman Catholic Church in New York said of purgatory, "It's a place of atonement, and it means you are paying back in some way. I have to believe that means that it's not a pleasant experience. You are forgiven but you gotta pay."

Eastern religions also believe in a temporary hell where Handy would "burn off" bad karma before reincarnation.

Jews don't give much definition to the afterworld, but Muslims are quite specific. Someone like Handy will drink molten copper in the pits of Jehennem.

But, for evangelical Christians, justice in hell can be avoided altogether with one simple prayer.

The Rev. Tom Brown, an evangelical pastor from the Word of Life Church, says that for a person who has "lived a wicked life, but if he turns to God and says, 'Lord, I am sorry,' and he truly repents, God will not remember his past wickedness, but only his present righteousness."

For a grieving relative, this notion can be hard to accept. Regarding the pain Handy's act has added to his life, Frost said, "If there's a hell, he's going there. And you hear people talking about demons on Earth, guardian angels -- if there are demons, he's one of them."

And if he were to have a jailhouse conversion? Frost said, "It would matter somewhat. It would matter somewhat."

Handy's mother has said she wants, more than anything else, for him to have a change of heart and apologize to the families of the people he killed.

Handy's response was unapologetic. "Look, man, like I said before, if I was gonna be sorry for what I was gonna do, I wouldn't have did it in the first place."

He also has little concern for his soul. "If I go to hell, then so be it. Then so be it."

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SURVIVING HELL ON EARTH
THREE WHO EXPERIENCED UNIMAGINABLE HORRORS SHARE THEIR INSPIRING STORIES
By Joy Ciarcia-Levy
ABC News
July 9, 2007

Original Link

What is it like to journey to hell, to go through an experience so horrific that it stays with you forever?

An unfortunate few have experienced what could be called hell on earth, and are reminded of the torment daily.

Sister Dianna Ortiz, a missionary nun, was kidnapped and tortured in Guatemala.

"Every single day, I get a glimpse of hell," the teary-eyed Sister Ortiz told ABC News.

Author Elie Wiesel survived the Holocaust, though he lost his parents and younger sister during those terrible years. "Does hell exist?" Wiesel asked. "Of course. I believe it's here."

And Ishmael Beah was a child soldier forced into fighting the civil war in Sierra Leone.

"We were so deep into that hell it almost seemed that nothing else existed," he said.

"I do believe that you can lose your humanity and go to some place that is dark, and it could be hell," Beah said. "I would have never imagined that I could be capable of doing some of the things that I was pressed into doing."

'Kill or Be Killed'

Beah was born into a quiet, simple life in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. But in 1991, everything changed. A bloody civil war broke out and crept across the countryside. Beah was only 13 years old when rebels attacked his village and slaughtered his entire family.

"I went from knowing that my family existed to the next minute knowing all of them dying," he recalled. Beah fled from the violence for more than a year, eventually finding a haven in a village occupied by rebel soldiers. But soon, he was given a machine gun and pressed into service as a soldier. The rebels drugged and brainwashed the boys to fight.

"It was literally kill or be killed," he said.

Beah was one of 10,000 children, some as young as 9 years old, who fought in the decade-long civil war. For motivation, the boy soldiers watched films like "First Blood," cheering every gun battle and comparing the onscreen body count to their own.

"You went out and fought, shot people, and then came back and did drugs and watched war films. You're not allowed to sit alone and think," Beah said.

"The first time you kill somebody, it's very devastating. It does something to your spirit and you're traumatized," he said. "But then, as this goes on, it becomes normalized again. It becomes easier as time goes on. It becomes the world, you know, it becomes the only thing that you know how to do. "

They were also forced to snort a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine known as "brown-brown" that kept them in a violent fog and numbed their guilt and pain.

Beah said it gave him "a tremendous rush of energy and it just numbed you to everything around you. And it made looking at atrocities that were committed by you, you thought they were funny, you know. We thought they were funny at certain times."

Beah said he no longer knew the difference between right and wrong.

"We had lost our humanity, and we had crossed to the other side so far, you know."

'Losing Trust in Humanity'

Beah's descent into hell was gradual, but Sister Ortiz was plunged into hell in an instant.

"I never want to relive the moment of seeing the death of faith. The death of faith in humanity," she said. Sister Ortiz said she "lived hell."

In 1987, the Marynoll nun moved to the war-ravaged nation of Guatemala to teach children.

"I was very interested in working closely with the poor, the oppressed of the world. And I also had a deep interest in working with children. And I felt that was the calling that God was leading me to," she said.

But she was suspected of being involved with rebel fighters, and one day armed men grabbed her off the street.

Sister Ortiz was taken to a military installation where she said she was raped and tortured.

"At one time, during the torture, they asked me questions," she said. "And for every question they asked, they burned my back with a cigarette. I had more than 111 cigarette burns on my body. And that was just my back. That did not include my chest. So I know that more than 111 questions were asked of me. That was just the beginning."

Sister Ortiz said she was lowered into a pit filled with decapitated bodies and rats, and that her captors gave her a machete and forced her to plunge it into the body of her cell mate, a woman she had befriended in the darkness.

"I carry a lot of guilt with me, to this day, for my inability to help others in need, my inability to help the woman who was in the prison cell with me. Sometimes I can be really hard on myself," Sister Ortiz admitted.

After 24 hours, she was inexplicably released, but she is reminded of her ordeal every day.

"I carried so much anger. And it paralyzed me. And it made me feel like I could not trust in others," she said. "And losing trust in humanity is death. It's hell."

The Hell of the Holocaust

We've all seen the horrifying images of the Holocaust. The National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University provided some of those images from the documentary film "Death Mills" for our story. They are images of prisoners who have lived in hell at the hands of man, and Elie Wiesel was one of them. He was a teenager when his family was taken by the Nazis and loaded into a train car.

"We had no idea where we were going. The word 'Auschwitz' never meant anything to us," Wiesel recalled. "The long barbed wire was infinite. The lines going somewhere, but we still didn't know where."

Wiesel said he is still haunted by the image he saw upon arrival -- flames from the chimneys and the bodies of children being thrown into the fire.

When asked how he kept from losing his mind, Wiesel replied, "That's a question that I ask myself to this day. But perhaps I did without knowing it."

Wiesel said he never knew what happened to the concentration camp guards who murdered his parents.

"I hope that if there is an afterlife, that they are before the celestial tribunal having to answer for their deeds every day of eternity."

'You Can Escape Hell'

Ishmael Beah, Sister Dianna Ortiz and Elie Wiesel still wrestle with their traumatic experiences, yet they all believe that something meaningful and pure and good can come of their ordeals.

Beah was ultimately rescued by United Nations workers, rehabilitated and adopted by an American woman. He earned a degree in political science, wrote a gripping account of his life titled "A Long Way Gone," and now crusades against the exploitation of children in war.

"I celebrate every moment. Waking up in the morning, not having to run, not waking up to gunshots -- it's enough for me," Beah said.

"You can truly escape hell," he said. "The way I think you escape that word is to transform that experience into something positive so that you can use it for the benefit of others."

He said he's finally found peace in "just being alive." "I'm not saying that I don't feel sad or I don't feel certain things, but I just appreciate my life, for whatever it is."

Twenty years after her ordeal, Ortiz' pain is still on the surface, but she has founded Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, TAASC, in Washington, D.C., and works to help others. She's also written an account of her experience called "The Blindfold's Eye: My Journey From Torture to Truth."

"All I can think of is my experience of torture and what it did to me," she said. "No one heals from torture. We learn how to live with our experience. We learn not to let our experience of torture define who we are, or the path that we will walk."

'Hope Rather Than Despair'

Wiesel could not speak of his experience for 10 years, but the need to justify his own survival moved him to put his emotions on paper.

"I know that there are no words to describe what I went through," he said. "And yet I use words to bring hope rather than despair."

Those words became the haunting classic "Night," which has sold more than 6 million copies in the United States alone, and is available in 30 languages.

Wiesel's years in hell compelled him to a life of activism: He has devoted his life to the fight against genocide around the world. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is still an icon in the campaign for tolerance.

Wiesel said that the ultimate reward for the life he has lived is that people will be able to understand that "man is capable of inflicting the worst humiliation on the other," and "it is possible to humiliate a person to the point that that person would rather be dead."

But he also believes that evil can be fought and defeated. "Of course it can," he said. "It can be fought, because it must be fought."

And like Beah and Ortiz, Wiesel firmly believes that "life is to be celebrated."

The remarkable thing about Beah, Sister Ortiz and Wiesel is that their healing came from investing more faith in humanity. When asked if there was a way to keep out of hell, Wiesel made reference to Jean Paul Sartre's play "No Exit."

"It's by seeing in the other not the source of evil, but a companion, a possible friend. Surely an ally, and not a stranger," he said.

Beah admitted there could be some people who are inherently evil, but said, "I do believe in the basic goodness of every human being."

And despite Sister Ortiz' suffering, she knows "goodness will conquer evil. That's what keeps me alive. If I don't have that belief, I'm dead."

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