The adventure seekers and treasure hunters amongst you already know about the HMS Hussar, the millions of dollars in gold that she was allegedly carrying and her doomed passage through New York’s Hell Gate. If you’re like me, though, and have a standing eye-drop prescription on file at the pharmacy because your doctor got tired of writing one every time you got ranch Dorito powder all rubbed in there, you need a little background:

The Hussar was a 28-gun frigate (a warship built for speed and maneuverability) used by the British fleet during the American Revolution. In 1779, as French troops joined forces with George Washington’s soldiers just north of NYC, the Brits moved their 20-ship fleet south, instructing Charles Pole, captain of the Hussar, to transfer the army’s payroll to Long Island’s Gardiners Bay, where the Brits would continue to store provisions through the War of 1812. Pole was apparently feeling extra saucy because he decided to steer the Hussar through Hell Gate, a tidal strait in the East River known for its wacky currents, narrow berth and retarded amount of giant rocks. The decision was a definitive strategical oops.

Hell Gate, which connects the East River to Long Island Sound, got its awesome name from Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, who, in 1614, bitch-slapped the treacherous waterway right across its goofy face with a 42-foot yacht called the Onrust (Dutch for “Restless”). (Block, being a ruddy Dutchman, actually named the strait “Hellegat,” which can mean either “bright gate” or “hell gate,” but after scads of seamen lost their boats to the channel’s turbulent wiles, the latter Anglicization stuck.) Another frequently traded story of Hell Gate’s ignominious reputation is that of the General Slocum, a big bastard paddle steamship that, on June 5, 1904, was carrying 1,342 Lutherans up the East River to a Long Island church picnic when it caught fire (due to crew incompetence… not, like, Hell Gate magic or anything) and burned away into soggy carbon, incinerating 1,021 hungry Protestants in the process.

More interesting, though, is the story of Execution Rocks, a rock wall in the Hell Gate basin that’s visible during low tide and then slowly swallowed as the currents pull the water back into the strait. Legend has it that during the American Revolution, British soldiers dragged captured American patriots down into Hell Gate, lashed them to the exposed rock wall and watched as the tidal flow silenced their desperate screams. The story goes that when the Hell Gate Lighthouse was finally erected, the lighthouse’s keepers were plagued by the constant ghostly shrieking of murdered American rebels. It’s also possible that Execution Rocks is named as such due to all the horrific nautical disasters and whatnot. Nobody knows for sure. (If I had to watch a cartoon of one of those explanations, I’d want it to be the first one, but I think that’s just because in my head the lighthouse keepers are alcoholics with stumbling walks and swirling google eyes.)

Anyway, Captain Pole steered the Hussar into Hell Gate, where the ship was pinballed from rock to rock, scoring two free games before ultimately surrendering, gold and all, to the river’s hungry depths. For years afterwards, adventurous divers and Scrooge McDuckesque millionaires have braved the East River in search of the sunken treasure. Could New York’s gate to Hell actually be a stairway to Heaven? Because, like… the gold? Get it?

Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter.

In 1876, the army Corp of Engineers began a decade-long dynamiting campaign during which thousands of pounds of explosives were used to clear the strait of its most dangerous obstacles. Later, nearby Randall’s Island and Ward’s Island were connected by a landfill and formed into a single, diaper-strewn mass. What I’m saying is, if there actually were heaps o’ gold on the Hussar, they’ve been blown up so many times, and had so much medical waste heaped on top of them, even Cash4Gold wouldn’t be interested – and they’ll accept gold teeth that are still set in a jawbone.

Frigate captains and Steamship sailors once feared the perilous corridor, referred to in hushed, reverential tones as “Hell Gate.” Today, canoeists flip U-eys all over its saggy ass. They might as well call it “Heck Gate.”

Or “Crap Alley.”

Let the kids have their evil sewer tunnels and drunken graveyard reveries. Adults have bigger things to worry about. Like giant Soviet drills. And how the giant Soviet drills are tunneling through the Earth and into hell, where the howling souls of the damned are torn apart, set on fire, sewn back together and covered in bees.

In 1989, as the decade stumbled to a close, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), America’s Christian television goliath, reported that, according to a Finnish science journal, a Soviet deep drilling experiment had accidentally tunneled all the way to Satan’s doorstep. More than that, the shocked scientists, who watched as the drill’s temperature sensors peaked out at an extra spicy 1,100 °C, tossed a microphone down the pit and recorded a nature sounds tape worthy of a sleepless Ozzy – the noises of hell. And nothing bunches evangelical panties like the desperate wailings of the damned. (Truthfully, the recording sounds more like the pipe-and-tile-echoed rumpus at a particularly rowdy rest stop glory hole.) Some viewers were terrified, declaring it the end of times. Others were outraged, declaring it a hoax. One viewer – a puckish Norwegian tourist named Guy Rendalan – was bemused to the point of action.

As Baby New Year 1990 filled his diaper with optimistic tidings, TBN continued their coverage of the 9-mile hole to Hades, claiming that over 2,000 individuals had converted to Christianity after hearing of the chasm’s existence. This seemingly random numerical figure, which was offered during a January 29 broadcast, came with another revelation – in addition to the Finnish coverage, the network had a fully translated hard copy of a Norwegian paper’s hell drill article, which contained even more shocking details. A giant bat creature flew out of the hole! The words “I Have Conquered” were burned into the Siberian sky! The Soviet government was administering amnesia pills to everyone who witnessed the incident! This article, along with the helpful translation, had been sent directly to TBN by our impish pal Guy Rendalan.

“None of it is true. I fabricated every word of it!” explained Rendalan during an interview with TruthorFiction.com’s Rich Buhler. Rendalan, who, during his trip to America, was gob-smacked by the serious coverage of the ridiculous story, sent the article (which was actually about a community building inspector) and fake translation to TBN just see whether the network’s fact checking practices were really as, well, non-existent as they seemed.

And… they were.

As for the original article from that anonymous Finnish “science journal” – debunkers eventually tracked it backed to a Christian magazine called “Ammennusastia,” which was merely summarizing a similar story from a different Finnish paper. That paper, “Etela Soumen,” had printed its hell hole piece in a grab bag letters-from-readers section. From there, the trail continues. Savvy debunkers have sweated this paper chase all the way to a dead end at another Christian newspaper, “Jewels of Jericho,” out of f***ing California, USA.

In the end, the drill to hell is a story of doubt. The imagined fires and staged screams of that non-existent abyss suggested proof of the dark side of an afterlife that even TBN bible thumpers occasionally questioned. Why go to such stunning lengths to ignore the truth unless the lie – unattractive as it is – offers something more satisfying than integrity or credibility? In other words, unless the lie offers confirmation of an even deeper, more bibley truth. Who would’ve thought that the gaps in people’s faith could be briefly filled in by a cavernous hole?

Or that that hole would simultaneously give everyone else a sound recording packed with metal album hidden track potential.

Friday: Shipwrecked in the East River – the Real Hell Gate

There’s a cemetery in Stull, Kansas where, once a year, the devil sashays out a gate to hell and MCs a homecoming dance for the damned. There’s a drainage pipe in Clifton, New Jersey that leads to a secret network of underground corridors – corridors that wend down through earth into the accursed depths of the netherworld. There are seven evil fence gates in the forests of York, Pennsylvania that, when entered consecutively, usher the adventurous onto the plains of Hades. Why would someone want to find a doorway to the pit (aside from the outside chance of a gift shop)?

I wish I could’ve asked the 150 or so revelers who gathered in Stull’s cemetery on March 20, 1978. Or the group of TV news reporters that was ejected from the privately owned graveyard on October, 31, 2002. These rowdy gatherings of Satan-hungry looky-loos began in 1974, when The University Daily Kansan, Kansas University’s student paper, published a piece detailing the local graveyard’s nefarious reputation as one of two places (the other being somewhere in buttfrack, India) where the devil has been known to appear in-person, either on Halloween (lame) or the vernal equinox (acceptable).

According to legend, Stull, Kansas was once called Skull, Kansas (Wrong. It was called “Deer Creek Community”), and the Skull, Kansas cemetery was the site of a grisly event – a stable hand stabbed the mayor to death (Wrong. Stull has never been incorporated and, as such, has never had a mayor). Other Stull-centric legends include the birth of a deformed demon baby, now, appropriately, buried in the dread graveyard, a cornucopia of witch executions and a rumor that, in the early ‘90s, Pope John Paul II ordered a cross-country flight redirected so that the aircraft wouldn’t pass over the Kansas town’s blighted soil. (Wrong. He had the flight re-routed so he could flush the toilet over the actual evil that is Oskaloosa, Iowa.)

Stull locals regard the legends as, alternately, hokum, bunkum and snorkum (a regional idiom), while Stull tourists are convinced that the locals are just, like, saying that to cover up the truth, man. The Satanic stalemate is only furthered by the town’s zero tolerance policy for cemetery trespassers, a fact that’s been used again and again as evidence that, at least in the graveyard, folks aren’t in Kansas anymore… and the townsfolk know it.

Alternately, the answer to my question, why oh why seek a gate to hell? Humba humba hum (that’s my new single. I’m multi-tasking) could be sought out in Clifton, where the local rainwater drainage system is rumored to hold a maze of catacombs chock full o’ human remains, lit candles, medieval weaponry and even demonic sentinels. Bonus: somewhere in the labyrinth is a bona fide passage to the Inferno. Over the years, the legend has proliferated thanks to coverage in Weird New Jersey magazine and whip-it-fogged teenagers, who cover the tunnels in messy pentagrams and spray-painted “Gate to Hell” signs, including helpful arrows pointing down into the darkness. Local kids use the lengths of tunnel as a ruler for courage measurement – a folklore-enhanced pissing contest designed to organize a social hierarchy based on pipe-distance-travelled. Likewise, York County, PA’s seven gates of hell dare scared kids to charge through the very real fence gate on Trot Run Road and freak out in the woods at night – the only time when the six subsequent gates become visible to man. Pass the seventh gate, and find yourself in Lucifer’s breakfast nook.

Suffice it to say, there’s something enticing about the idea of hell as a physical place, with skirtable borders, surveyable zip codes and, most importantly, a visible town center. As such, there are innumerable stories like the above – creepy tales traded by teens in the name of reshaping familiar geography into a mysterious (but navigable), deadly (but survivable) unknown. Other legends have taken this idea even deeper, mining mortal terror from the very core of the Earth.

Wednesday: Drilling to Hell