Man Claims He ‘Went To Hell’ For 23 Minutes And Describes Meeting ‘Demons’ That ‘Ripped His Flesh’

A man claimed he literally went to hell for 23 minutes in 1988 and described his experience there. Speaking to Christian broadcaster TCT Network, Bill Weise revealed he got up one night at about 3 a.m. to get a drink from his kitchen when suddenly, he was sucked down to the underworld where he met demons, heard people screaming, and was subjected to some pretty terrible smells. Sure, sounds legit!

  1. He describes it as an out-of-body experience. According to Weise, he was pulled from his own body and down a long tunnel to hell, where he was thrown into a holding cell. “It was getting hotter and hotter and I landed on a stone floor in a prison cell in hell,” he recalled. “There were stone walls, bars it was more like a dungeon – a filthy, stinking, smoke filled dungeon.”
  2. Hell was… well, pretty hellish. One of the most memorable parts of Weise’s trip had to have been the heat. You know those eternal flames all Christians are indoctrinated to fear? Yep, they’re real, according to him. “The heat was so unbearable, I wondered how could I be alive. Why am I here, how did I get here?”
  3. The demons were blaspheming the entire time. If you’re in hell, you’re considered to be pretty ungodly, which would make sense since Weise said all the demons around him really hated God. “They directed this hatred they had towards God towards me. One demon picked me up and threw me into the wall of this prison cell. I felt as if bones had broken. Now I know a spirit doesn’t have bones, but it felt that way,” he said. He added that one of the demons “dug its claws into my chest and just tore the flesh open. This is actually happening.”
  4. God appeared… then abandoned him again. Weise said that at one point, God’s presence lit up his hell cell before he was plunged into darkness again. He was then transferred to a cell near a “real fire.” No real reason for this, but he insists it happened. By the fire is where he saw “thousands of people in this pit, screaming and burning.”
  5. It was pretty stinky down there. Weise was lucky enough to survive his expedition to hell (though he never says how he got out) and says he was kept in isolation throughout his trip. However, he says that “the stench in hell is the most foul, putrid, disgusting odor.” He said it’s something like sulfur and overflowing sewers, if that gives you an idea.
  6. Unsurprisingly, he wrote a book about it. Weise’s book, called 23 Minutes in Hell, makes for great fictional reading, and it’s sold over a million copies. This was obviously just a drunken bad dream, but hey, whatever you’d like to believe!
Jennifer Still is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience. The managing editor of Bolde, she has bylines in Vanity Fair, Business Insider, The New York Times, Glamour, Bon Appetit, and many more. You can follow her on Twitter @jenniferlstill
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