One playlist that I neglected to mention during my most recent post on my playlists is one entitled “Tales of Hell“. As you know, I am working on a supernatural horror novel called The Man Who Escaped from Hell. In my research for the novel I have read a few books on hell, read several articles, and so forth (mostly though I will rely on my own concepts and imagination).
However, as I watch a lot of YouTube and I fond of horror and supernatural tales, I am collecting any videos on people who say that they have actually been to hell into a playlist called “Tales of Hell.” No surprises there. This will allow me to gain a few different perspectives, but it will also allow me to see the similarities between the stories. I feel certain that most people’s concept of hell will be the same because of cultural biases; hearing the same tales, myths, and legends; and because of certain archetypes in human psychology. If you have read Joseph Campbell or have seen any of his interviews with Bill Moyers from a few decades back, you will know that Professor Campbell that commonalities in religions and mythologies worldwide are due to commonalities in the human psyche.
I don’t believe that anyone has actually been to hell and returned to tell the story. I think these stories are hallucinations experienced during the changes in brain functioning and body chemistry while being influenced by a person’s guilty conscience while that person dies. On those rare occasions that someone returns to life after being clinically dead for a few minutes, they report the experience of having gone to hell, but which is probably more closely related to the ultimate “bad trip”.
But my novel is a work of fiction, not a documentary. In it, I try to make a few points about life and death and the spirit and conscientiousness and several other things. The best way to do that is by showing the protagonist actually going through hell.
It will be interesting to see how this playlist develops. It will probably make a great horror anthology in its own right.
By the way, I have written around 80,000 words for The Man Who Escaped from Hell. I hope to finish it soon after I have finished Shadows and Stars. I put it on hiatus until I can finish Shadows and Stars because I have been getting more and more ideas for Shadows and Stars than I have for The Man Who Escaped from Hell.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 