A group of daring people took the opportunity to be part of a ‘Hell Tour’ in Penang. The trip was organised by Master Kek Eng Seng of the Tze Bei Guan Yin Dhamma Centre, who claims that he can travel through the realms of Earth, Heaven and Hell. For the first time in Malaysia, he offered people the opportunity to visit the ‘Afterworld’.

The number of Hell travelers was brought down to slightly more than 50, including a dozen reporters from the Chinese dailies and yours truly.

As night fell, the group, all clad in white shirts symbolising purity and sincerity, gathered at Padang Brown in Georgetown for the “tour”.

After some prayers and rituals, we were all set to start our journey at around 10.15pm. My eyes were covered with a paper talisman wrapped in a yellow cloth. Then, the lights were switched off.

As I listened to the chants by Master Kek, my head became very hot, as though there was a stream of warm air trying to get out of my body through the top. (Master Kek later explained this by saying that my soul was trying to get out of my body.) The feeling came three to four times but was gone within minutes.

I tried hard to concentrate but my mind was distracted by the sounds from a Chinese opera show nearby and noises from the watching crowd.

About 45 minutes after the “tour” began, I saw lights and followed their direction but I soon fell into darkness again with some circles flying towards me.

It was like watching a science fiction movie with a spacecraft traveling through a stream of meteoroids. (Master Kek later explained that I was passing through a whirlpool while on my way to “Hell”.) But, I was again distracted by the noises and failed to enter “Hell”.

Unfortunately, only about a dozen people in the group claimed to have managed to break the barrier and enter the realm.

Chiang Kee Chuan from China Press was the only ‘lucky’ one from among the media participants. “I saw a rainbow hanging on a beautiful sky, and a monk advised me to become a vegetarian,” he said.

Another woman, who declined to be named, said she saw many ‘people’ at a pasar malam (night market). Before she could tell more, Master Kek asked if the street’s name is Ba Jiao Jie (Octogon Street) and she gave him a Yes.

Another female participant said she saw her departed mother from a distance, but she could not go near and speak to her.
On seeing the disappointed faces of the reporters later, the master promised to take us on a second trip on Monday.

In the opening lines of his 1978 publication, Diableries: La Vie Quotidienne Chez Satan, Jac Remise relates how a crew of demolition workers in Paris discovered a mysterious wooden box hidden in the ruins of a condemned building. The box, which had been wrapped with old military belts, was found to contain a collection of photographs depicting a hedonistic world filled with drunken devils, sinister skeletons and scantily clad women. An anonymous note found buried among the glass images added:

“This is the work of my life, it is thus that I dreamed of Hell. If my visions are true, then the wicked may rest assured, the afterlife will be sweet for them to bear.”

What the demolition workers discovered that day was a series of photographs known as Les Diableries, The Diabolical. Each scene in the series was composed of an elaborate diorama sculpted out of plaster and clay and embellished with miniature props. Created in Paris during the 1860s, the series was printed in the form of stereoscopic transparencies which, when viewed with special lenses, produced a mesmerizing 3D effect.

Little is known about the establishment, which appears to have operated into the mid-20th century. National Geographic has this to say:

“A hot spot called Hell’s Café lured 19th-century Parisians to the city’s Montmartre neighborhood—like the Marais—on the Right Bank of the Seine. With plaster lost souls writhing on its walls and a bug-eyed devil’s head for a front door, le Café de l’Enfer may have been one of the world’s first theme restaurants. According to one 1899 visitor, the café’s doorman—in a Satan suit—welcomed diners with the greeting, “Enter and be damned!” Hell’s waiters also dressed as devils. An order for three black coffees spiked with cognac was shrieked back to the kitchen as: “Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!”

Next door was a less interesting café called Le Ciel (Heaven). See more at Cool Stuff in Paris.

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.

[Read more at the Boston Globe]