Most horrific depictions of Hell

[Freudian_Slit]

@CalMeacham

I’ve always liked the Hells depicted by Hieronymous Bosch, myself. The most famous is the rightmost panel of the painting usually called The Garden of Earthly Delights*, but he did plenty of others, not so well known.
**

Didn’t they use that, or a style similar to that, for that M&M Dark Chocolate Halloween puzzle?

[MrDibble]

After Bosch, and in a similarly surreal way:
Barlowe’s Inferno. I quite like it (images at that second link may be NSFW, but are two clicks away)

[Phlosphr]

Being stuck in a tiny room with my mother-in-law. I can’t put it into words, but you would be horrified if I could.

[Ronald_C.Semone]

@Phlosphr

Being stuck in a tiny room with my mother-in-law. I can’t put it into words, but you would be horrified if I could.

Your talking about Sartre’s No Exit.

[BrotherCadfael]

@TV time

For me the most horrific example of Hell was the one in the Twilight Zone where everything was perfect for the petty crook. After I saw that, I realized how terrible that would be for eternity. The dice always hit seven, the wheel always hit his number, everyone agreed with him, tellers in banks always just handed him money. As I remember, Sabastin Cabot played Satan in that show. It was extremely well done, and very haunting.

I think Night Gallery had another example, where a hippie is condemned to spend eternity in a room with Muzak playing, kitch paintings on the wall, only milk and apple pie in the refrigerator, an old duffer in a rocking chair rambling interminably about farm life, etc.

The kicker is that the Devil tells the hippie that there is an identical room in Heaven.

[Freudian_Slit]

@TV time

For me the most horrific example of Hell was the one in the Twilight Zone where everything was perfect for the petty crook. After I saw that, I realized how terrible that would be for eternity. The dice always hit seven, the wheel always hit his number, everyone agreed with him, tellers in banks always just handed him money. As I remember, Sabastin Cabot played Satan in that show. It was extremely well done, and very haunting.

Yeah, I love Pip’s line at the end, where he says, “The other place? But this IS the other place!” All the more haunting because he can’t actually say “Hell.”

[pulykamell]

I’m not sure it’s so terrifying as it is over the top, but the Zoroastrian hell, as depicted in the Book of Arda Viraf is a fascinating, if not repetitive, read.

CHAPTER 22

I also saw the soul of a man, (2) into whose jaws they ever pour the impurity and menstrual discharge of women, (3) and he ever cooked and ate his own seemly child.
4.
And I asked thus: ‘What sin was committed by this body, whose soul suffers such a punishment?’
5.
Srosh the pious, and Adar the angel, said (6) thus: ‘This is the soul of that wicked man who, in the world, had intercourse with a menstruous woman; (7) and every single time, it is a sin of fifteen and a half Tanapuhrs.’

[…]

Chapter 70.

I also saw the souls of women whom they threw head downwards; (2) and something like a hedgehog, which had iron spikes grown from it, was introduced into the body and dropped back; (3) and from it, a finger dropping the semen of the demons and demonesses, which is stench and corruption, ever went into the inside of the jaws and nose.
4.
And I asked thus: ‘Who are those souls, who suffer such a punishment?’
5.
Srosh the pious, and Adar the angel, said (6) thus: ‘These are the souls of those wicked women who, in the world, broke promises to their husbands, (7) and they have stayed away from the husband, and been never contented, and granted no cohabitation [i.e. sex].’

[Yumblie]

@Freudian Slit

Yeah, I love Pip’s line at the end, where he says, “The other place? But this IS the other place!” All the more haunting because he can’t actually say “Hell.”

Reminds me of that one commercial where the snooty businessman gets hit by a bus, and wakes up in a land of fluffy clouds. He gloats to himself, “heaven!” He explores a bit and finds a bunch of gigantic chocolate chip cookies and begins feasting upon them. Oh how delicious they are. He walks over to a nearby fridge and sees it is of course fully stocked with milk. But he examines each carton of milk and finds that they’re all empty. With bits of cookie still in his mouth, and empty milk cartons at his feet, he looks around again and timidly asks “What is this place…?”

Cue got milk? logo in flames.

[ralph124c]

To quote Count dracula: “there are worse things than death awaiting man”

[Peter_Morris]

An Isaac Asimov story, I think it was called The Last Trump.

It’s the end of the world. The dead are resurrected.
All conflicts are ended. There’s no point in fighting, because nobody gets hurt. You can’t die or get injured.
There’s no hunger. Nobody needs to eat. And there’s nothing to eat anyway.
There’s no need for reproduction, hence there’s no sex.
It’s a comfortable temperature. No need for clothing, not that anyone cares about nakedness anymore.
Everyone faces an eternity of endless boredom.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Priceguy

In the Scariest Stephen King moment thread, King’s short story That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French was mentioned as a depiction of Hell.

Being the first to mention it in that thread, it’s probably no surprised that that’s my vote.

Endlessly repeating the same span of a few hours, which involve reliving your excruciatingly painful death, then having an unpleasant conversation with, and realizing you no longer love, or even like, the person you once chose to spend your life with…and will be spending these few hours with over and over for all eternity, which you may actually realize after an iteration or two? It’s hard to get much worse than that.

[Swallowed_My_Cellphone]

Come to think of it, the world/dimension/whatever of the Hellraiser Cenobytes looks like it would suck.

[Kamino_Neko]

Oh, and…The funniest Hell…at least that I’ve seen recently.

[Koxinga]

Back to the OP, I think Stephen King’s story must have drawn from inspiration from Beckett’s vision. Of Hell?

ETA: note link to video.

[Illuminatiprimus]

@Swallowed My Cellphone

Come to think of it, the world/dimension/whatever of the Hellraiser Cenobytes looks like it would suck.

I thought of that belatedly. Some of the images in the second one have stuck with me years later.

[Freudian_Slit]

Based on what I’ve read of Burning Man (nothing for sale, you bring everything you need for survival/comfort, no air conditioning, no Internet, no electronics, outdoors) I believe it is my own personal Hell.

[bubastis]

In one of Garth Ennis’s Ghost Rider stories (shit, his only Ghost Rider Story as far as aI know), hell is your typical fire and brimstone dump, but the riders torment is that each night, e gets a chance for freedom if he can ride his bike to the gates before the demons catch him. And each night, he juuuuuuuusssst makes it to the gate as they take him down, and tear him to strips. Then they rebuild him, and it happens over and over again.

[NDP]

@BrotherCadfael

I think Night Gallery had another example, where a hippie is condemned to spend eternity in a room with Muzak playing, kitch paintings on the wall, only milk and apple pie in the refrigerator, an old duffer in a rocking chair rambling interminably about farm life, etc.

The kicker is that the Devil tells the hippie that there is an identical room in Heaven.

Another twist is just before that, the hippie, anticipating a trippy scene straight out of Dante or a Bosch painting, was actually looking forward to Hell.

Which reminds me, so far no one’s mentioned The Damned section from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

[Gatopescado]

Branson, MO.

[Chez_Guevara]

@mudkicker

I used to love debating about god, heaven, hell and the rest of it as only a nerdy 17 year old could, but after reading that book that was it.

That priest gives heavy duty sermons.

I also read the book at a young age and this chapter especially left a marked impression. As you know, a later address features eternity as a theme and the way it is described leaves little doubt that eternity is a very long time indeed.

Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.

My brain reels dizzily.