Quite a Trip

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Our imaginations are drawn to the unknown.

Whether that's the open expanse of the night sky or the deepest depths of the ocean, we're primed to wonder what secret realms lie just beyond our comfort zone.

Those realms are the source of some of our most potent myths and stories.

And few places have the same enduring mystery as a cave or a well.

It's like a portal into the innards of the planet.

Will refreshing water bubble up from a fissure in the earth, or will it be hot lava?

Anything seems possible.

In the 1980s, a curious story emerged from the frozen reaches of Siberia.

People claimed that a Russian research expedition had made a terrifying discovery.

They had drilled a hole nine miles deep, discovering a strange hollow pocket of air.

Intrigued, the diggers lowered a heat-resistant microphone down into the depths, and that microphone picked up sounds of agonized screaming, a chorus of voices wailing in pain.

Basically, the reports claimed that Soviet Russia had discovered a portal to hell.

This was, of course, inaccurate.

It was an urban legend spread by evangelical Christians to credulous tabloid newspapers.

The actual story was far more ordinary.

There was a hole that deep in the Kola Peninsula, but not Siberia, and it produced no such screams.

The inner layers of the Earth are strange and unsettling, but not satanic, as suggested by the tabloids.

The urban legend labeled this story as the Well to Hell, and even without the supernatural element, it's an impressive achievement.

It took the Soviet Union 20 years to dig that deep, a mission inspired by the global competition of the Cold War, a sort of inverse space race.

Now, the borehole can be used to sample the Earth's mantle and inspire real geological study.

Not a bad end result for an urban legend.

But this is not the only well to hell on planet Earth.

In fact, it wasn't even the first.

The other is much older and not man-made.

Viewed from a bird's eye view, it's a big black hole in the Middle East, 98 feet across.

The Well of Barut lies in the eastern corner of Yemen, and for millennia, it was a fixation of the local imagination.

No tabloid have ever claimed that they heard screaming from within its depths, but it still earned the nickname the Well of Hell, and locals were wary of venturing near it for a very long time.

The stories were first written down sometime around the 7th century, although they're likely much older than that.

They tell various accounts of the well's origin and purpose.

Some ancient king, perhaps, carved it out of the earth to hide his treasure.

However, the most enduring theory is that it's a prison to contain scores of evil jinn, known as Ifrit.

And Ifrit is many things in Islamic tradition, a shapeshifter, a demon, a trickster spirit.

They're the jinn who have chosen to pursue evil and mischief.

So, naturally, local imagination filled the well of Barut with them.

The Prophet Muhammad even supposedly proclaimed that the water in the well of Barhut is the worst water on the face of the earth.

It would be poisonous to drink.

Eventually, people tested this theory.

Many amateur cavers entered Barhut over the years, but it wasn't until 2021 that an expedition actually reached the bottom.

As villagers gathered around to watch, a team of professional cavers secured ropes and rappelled into the well of hell.

They descended almost 400 feet into the earth.

Reaching the bottom, what they found wasn't gin, but waterfalls, cave pearls, and a unique ecosystem that included birds, toads, lizards, and strange translucent snakes.

The water isn't poisonous, but quite fresh.

When the team came back to the surface, they showed pictures to the locals and brought up the infamous cave water to sample.

After all those stories and folk myths, I can only imagine what this must have been like to witness.

It's tempting to see science as a force that eradicates mystery from the world, but the Well of Barhut is a good example of how one mystery can be replaced with another.

The formation of a strange and miraculous biome underground, a pocket-sized world just beneath the surface of our own.

And it's fair to say, that is certainly a more inspiring discovery than a gateway to hell.

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William Watts huddled in his four-post bed, trembling as the wind howled outside.

At 74 years old, the Laird of Scale House had seen his share of storms.

Bad weather was a fact of life on the Orkney Islands, where his family had lived for generations.

The archipelago lay 10 miles off the coast of mainland Scotland, exposed to the relentless fury of the North Atlantic.

Over centuries, wind and waves have shaped the islands, carving cliffs and shifting sand dunes, constantly remaking the landscape.

Watt had lived through more storms than he could count.

but this tempest put them all to shame.

It struck in the winter of 1850 and it battered the island for days.

Rain lashed the stone walls of Scale House, rattling its windows with such ferocity that Watt feared they would shatter.

He lay awake, listening to the roof groan, praying that his home would still be standing when the storm passed.

By morning, it was over.

Watt stepped blinking out into the sunshine, bracing himself for what he might find.

The destruction was worse than he feared.

Roofs torn from cottages, Farmland flattened, boats scattered and strewn across the shore.

The storm had claimed the lives of some 200 people.

Many of them were fishermen, their bodies lost to the waves.

And yet, as Watt trudged toward the Bay of Scale, something else caught his eye.

A low stone wall jutted up from the sand, its precise stacked formation too deliberate to be natural.

This wasn't more damage from the storm, but something the storm had uncovered.

Curious, Watt and a few of his farmhands began to dig.

What they discovered astounded them.

Beneath the sand lay a series of interconnected dwellings, built with large, flat stones.

Inside each one, Watt found evidence of a sophisticated society.

There was stone furniture, tools and jewelry, even artwork.

The more he unearthed, the more he realized these structures weren't medieval or even Roman.

They weren't hundreds of years old, but thousands.

Archaeologists believe that the site, known today as Skara Brae, was a thriving pastoral village around 3,200 BC.

That means it was built centuries before Stonehenge or the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements in Western Europe.

Neolithic meaning that it dates back to the Late Stone Age.

And yet, thanks to the fact that it was buried in sand for 5,000 years, it's remarkably well preserved.

The village consisted of at least eight houses constructed of flagstone sourced from the nearby area.

They were connected by a labyrinth of stone tunnels so that the inhabitants didn't have to brave the elements to visit one another.

There were no windows, which meant that the interiors were dark and smoky, lit by large central hearths.

The dwellings were covered in a protective insulating mixture of dung, ash, animal bone, and other debris.

Grass probably grew over this top layer, camouflaging the village from prying eyes.

Any seafarers who happened to pass by would have only seen a cluster of hills.

And considering how long ago they lived, the people of Scarabrae possessed remarkable inventions.

Many of the homes contained a waterproof stone box that might have been used to store store live seafood.

They even had a primitive sewer drain and the world's earliest known indoor toilets, 3,000 years before the Roman latrines would be built.

But for all the site can tell us about the past, it still holds countless mysteries.

The people who lived at Scarabrae didn't keep written records, so much of what we know about them is cobbled together from inferences and just best guesses.

And one of those mysteries is House 7.

Separated from the other structures, it's the only building at Scarabrae where where the door is barred from the outside.

Anthropologists theorize that it might have been used as a jail or possibly for some kind of ritual ceremony.

But the real mystery, the one that's puzzled experts since Watt discovered the site, is where everyone went.

It seems that Scarabrae was abruptly abandoned around 2500 BC.

To this day, no one knows why.

There's no evidence of weapons or unburied human remains at the site, so it doesn't seem like the inhabitants were driven off by invaders.

It's possible they fled to escape a storm, just like the one that uncovered the village, or they simply might have relocated somewhere with better weather.

Today, Scarabrae is a World Heritage Site, visited by thousands of tourists each year.

You can go yourself, weather permitting, and get a rare glimpse into the lives of Stone Age humans.

But you better hurry.

It might not be there much longer.

Experts worry that due to climate change, the site is at risk of being lost forever.

As the sea levels rise, chances increase that a powerful storm like the one experienced by William Watt could wipe Scarabray off the face of the earth.

And to lose it like that would be both ironic and deeply tragic.

Scarabray was preserved and hidden by nature for over 5,000 years.

And if we're not careful, it could all be gone in an instant.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

This show is sponsored by American Public University, American Public University where where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, APU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Their preferred military rates keep tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

And with 24-7 mental health support, plus career coaching, and other services, APU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Learn more at apu.apus.edu slash military.

That's apu.apus.edu slash military.

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