THE deepest hole on Earth drops 40,000 feet below the surface and was part of an abandoned Soviet experiment. But the Kola Superdeep Borehole is just one of the world’s deepest darkest pits — many of which have a sinister history of swallowing people up. The Soviet borehole was dug by scientists in an attempt […]
THE deepest hole on Earth drops 40,000 feet below the surface and was part of an abandoned Soviet experiment.
But the Kola Superdeep Borehole is just one of the world’s deepest darkest pits — many of which have a sinister history of swallowing people up.
The Soviet borehole was dug by scientists in an attempt to find out what’s really beneath our feet.
Locals said the hole is so deep that you can hear the screams of people being tortured in hell — and that’s not the only example of satanic stories haunting some of the world’s deepest places.
From man-made mines to natural sinkholes and underwater pits, we reveal the deepest holes on the planet — and the horrific stories that go with them.
Name: Blue Hole (Red Sea)
Location: Dahab, Egypt
Depth: 328ft
Death toll: Between 130-200
While diving in the Blue Hole in the Red Sea might not be dangerous in and of itself, this underwater sinkhole has a unique feature which makes it incredibly lethal.
Around 181 feet down into the blue hole there’s a rock tunnel that connects the sinkhole to the sea known as The Arch.
The Arch is 85 feet long and is believed to have been the reason around 200 people have drowned at the blue hole between 1997 to 2012.
Several factors make it so deadly, including experienced divers attempting it thinking it will be easy because of its deceptive length and current.
Because of the water is so clear, light at the end of the tunnel makes The Arch look a lot shorter than it really is, and a current constantly flows into the blue hole from the sea, slowing progress down.
A famous death here was 22-year-old Yuri Lipski’s, who took a video camera with him and inadvertently filmed his own death in 2000.
The video shows him descending uncontrollably to the bottom, where he panics and tries to fill a buoyancy compensator.
But he’s too deep and the pressure stops him rising off the bottom.
His remains were collected the next day by Tarek Omar, a deep-water diving specialist who’s earned the nickname “the bone collector” from fishing human remains from the depths.
Name: Door to Hell
Location: Derweze, Turkmenistan
Depth: 98ft
Death toll: Thousands of animals
The Door to Hell is another Soviet experiment that had unintended consequences.
Scientists initially wanted to use the remote desert site in 1971 to drill for oil, but the ground beneath the rig collapsed.
Fearing the spread of poisonous gases into surrounding towns, geologists intentionally lit the natural methane gas on fire, thinking it’d burn off in a few weeks.
But it’s been burning continuously ever since, and is actively being encouraged as a tourist attraction by the Turkmen government.
At night, camel spiders attracted to its light and warmth fall to their deaths in the pit’s fiery bowels.
Earlier this month, Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov appeared at the Door to Hell to disprove a rumour that he was dead after he wasn’t seen in public for several months.
He did so by pulling doughnuts around the burning crater in a rally car.
Name: Devil’s Sinkhole
Location: Texas, USA
Depth: 400ft
Death toll: At least three deaths
The Devil’s Sinkhole is a huge vertical cavern that reaches 400 feet down from a 50-foot opening.
A sinkhole is a deep hole formed by some type of collapse in the surface layer of the earth, normally due to erosion underground.
Carved from water erosion over thousands of years, the Devil’s Sinkhole’s precise history is still unknown to scientists — but artefacts have been found inside the cave dating from 4000-2500 BC.
It’s believed to have been used as a Native American burial site as arrowheads and burned rocks have been found in the pit.
Three people are known to have died by falling into the sinkhole in modern times, with one in 1900, another in 1960 and the most recent in 1972.
The sinkhole is also home to more than three million bats throughout summer which, terrifyingly, emerge screeching from the depths at sundown.
Name: Kimberley Mine (The Big Hole)
Location: Kimberley, South Africa
Depth: 705ft
Death toll: Over 1,000
The Big Hole or Kimberley Diamond Mine is claimed to be the deepest hand-dug hole anywhere in the world.
Over 700 feet deep, the Big Hole was excavated by 50,000 miners with shovels and pickaxes between 1871 and 1914.
The operation didn’t come without tragedy, and between 1897 and 1899, 7,853 patients were admitted to Kimberley Hospital following accidents on site.
At least 1,144 died, mostly from tuberculosis and other sicknesses caused by the horrendous conditions the miners lived and worked in.
After mining finished, the hole became the most visited tourist attraction in the area and today it has a museum just next door.
Name: Great Blue Hole
Location: Belize
Depth: 407ft
Death toll: At least three divers disappeared in the hole – with the remains of two found recently
Sixty miles off the coast of Belize is the Great Blue Hole, one of the largest sea holes in the world.
Originally, the Blue Hole was a limestone cave that started to form about 150,000 years ago.
Gradually the water level rose and the caves were flooded and its roof collapsed, forming this unique hole.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the hole is a popular scuba diving spot made famous by Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s who named it one of the best dive spots on the planet..
The gigantic pit is almost 1,000 feet wide and over 400 feet deep, and is home to reef and bull sharks.
Last year, Virgin billionaire Richard Branson went with Cousteau’s grandson Fabien to the bottom of the chasm in a submarine.
At the bottom, they found the bodies of two of the three divers who were thought to have gone missing in the hole.
Name: Chuquicamata Copper Mine
Location: Calama, Chile
Depth: 2,790ft
Death toll: Countless murders among workers in shanty towns around the pit
The Chuquicamata copper mine, also known as just “Chuqui”, in the north of Chile goes 2,790 feet below ground.
It’s been in use since 1910 and is the largest open pit copper mine anywhere in the world.
When it first opened, many of its miners lived in lawless shanty towns surrounding the pit, where murder was an almost daily occurrence.
The remote villages were awash with booze, gambling and prostitution which led to escalating crime.
In 1918, the Chilean army had to be sent in to the makeshift settlements to keep order.
Today, the open pit operation is deemed unsustainable.
Name: Dean’s Blue Hole
Location: Long Island, Bahamas
Depth: 663ft
Death toll: Four
Dean’s Blue Hole is one of the deepest underwater sinkholes on earth at 663 feet deep, taking its name from a local Bahamian landowning family.
Formed over 15,000 years ago, Dean’s Blue Hole is thought to be the result of a sinkhole formed by rainwater soaking through cracks in limestone bedrock when sea levels were lower.
The hole is visible above water because of the deep blue hue of its water compared to the light blue around it.
It’s home to all sorts of marine life including tropical fish, seahorses and turtles.
And it’s now the site of the Vertical Blue free diving competition, considered the Wimbledon of the free diving world.
In 2013, Nicholas Mevoli from Brooklyn died shortly after surfacing from diving into Dean’s Blue Hole from a pulmonary edema – excess fluid in the lungs — the first death in an international free diving competition.
And in 2017, Irishman Stephan Keenan became the first safety diver (who assisted struggling competitors) to die doing the job.
Even casual swimmers are advised to treat the hole with caution.
In 2008, three women drowned when one fell into the hole and the other two tried to save her.
The youngest victim, Diedre Major, was just 14.
Cops arrived at the scene to find the three women’s bodies floating by the shoreline after the horrific accident.
Name: Chand Baori
Location: Abhaneri, India
Depth: 100ft
Death toll: Uncertain
Built between 800-900 AD, Chand Baori is one of the biggest stepwells in India.
It was made to keep rainwater from the monsoon season for use at drier times of the year.
Three sides of the well have 3,500 steps that drop 100 feet down, while the fourth side houses a temple to the Hindu god Harshat Mata, the goddess of happiness.
Because of deadly accidents in the past, you now need special permission to go down into the bottom of the monster well.
Local legend even claims the well was dug in a single night — by ghosts.
But film buffs will better recognise it as Batman’s prison in the Dark Knight Rises and the setting of The Fall.
Name: Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine
Location: Utah, USA
Depth: 3,182ft
Death toll: Uncertain
The Bingham Canyon Mine is a gigantic 2.5 mile-wide, 0.6 mile-deep pit in the Oquirrh Mountains outside Salt Lake City.
It is the deepest copper mine in the world and has been a massive operation since 1906 and is now visible from space.
It’s also produced more copper than any other mine in history — over 19million tons.
The most recent death at the site was in 2017, when Albert Lozano was exposed to toxic sulphur dioxide while removing debris from a boiler.
Name: Diavik Diamond Mine
Location: Northwest Territories, Canada
Depth: 600ft
Death toll: At least two
Accessible only by a local airport and treacherous ice road, the Diavik Diamond Mine sits in the Canadian subarctic.
Since 2003, the mine has been producing around 3,100 pounds of diamonds every year at the site, where more than 1,100 people work.
If the average diamond ring has one full carat, that’s equivalent to 7,030,682 rings every 12 months.
But in October 2018, a yellow diamond of 552 carat was found at the mine — the largest ever found in North America.
The hole reaches a depth of over 600 feet and is located about 190 miles northeast of Yellowknife, the only city in the Northwest Territories.
In 2001, two workers were killed at the site when a man-lift they were on toppled, causing the young men to fall to their deaths.
Name: Berkeley Pit
Location: Montana, USA
Depth: 1,780ft
Death toll: Thousands of birds drinking its poisonous water
The Berkeley Pit is a 1,700-f00t deep abandoned copper mine.
It was closed in 1982 and has slowly been filling with water ever since.
And because the rocks in the mine contain heavy metals and chemicals like arsenic and sulphuric acid, the site is now a mile-wide pool of highly acidic water.
In 2016, a large flock of several thousand snow geese landed in the pool pit to avoid a snow storm.
Worried officials tried to scare the birds out of the water and stop more landing — but eventually, around 4,000 of the geese were killed by being exposed to chemicals in the water.
Name: Crveno Jezero (Red Lake)
Location: Imotski, Croatia
Depth: 1,700ft
Death toll: Daredevils recently risked their lives crossing the canyon on inch-wide slacklines
Crveno Jazero is a lake which sits in one of the deepest sinkholes anywhere on earth at 1,700 feet.
The enormous cliffs surrounding the water reach 241 metres up and continue well below the water’s surface.
It takes its name from the reddish colour of its cliffs which have been tinted by iron oxide.
In 2017, Austrian daredevils crossed the cliffs above the lake on inch-wide slacklines, 791 feet up in the air.
Location: Monticello Dam, USA
Depth: 200ft
Death toll: One swimmer
The spillway of the Monticello Dam is designed to keep people safe by making sure water levels in Lake Berryessa don’t overwhelm the dam.
But for Emily Schwalek, the 72-foot-wide drain was a deadly trap.
The 41-year-old was swimming in the lake in 1997 when she found herself being pulled towards the spillway after she’d crossed a buoy-line designed to keep bathers out of harm’s way.
Witnesses described seeing Schwalek desperately clinging on to the lip of the glory hole for 20 minutes.
But before help could arrive, she lost her grip and was swept down into the watery pit.
Her body was found several hours later in a creek where the dam’s overflowing water is redirected to.
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