Part 2

In 2018, my husband Dexter nearly lost his life to sepsis, an infection that ravaged his body after he contracted Salmonella poisoning. The nightmare began with what seemed like a simple illness, but soon escalated into something far darker. As Dexter slipped further from this world, something extraordinary happened—he entered Hell.

For hours, his body fought against the infection, but his soul wandered through a realm of despair. When he finally emerged from this hellish ordeal, Dexter described a place of chaos and anguish. “Hell isn’t a place of fire and brimstone alone,” he said, “it’s a land where nothing is stable. You’re trapped in a loop of suffering, a prisoner of your worst fears.” He spoke of dark creatures, monstrous beings who tormented souls, demons dragging people below the surface of the earth, a fiery lake, and dragons circling above, spewing agony upon the accursed.

Dante’s Inferno parallels this experience. In Canto III, Dante describes the torment of souls condemned to Hell. “Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation echoed throughout the starless air of Hell; at first these sounds resounding made me weep: tongues confused, a language strained in anguish with cadences of anger, shrills, outcries and raging groans that joined with sounds of hands, raising a whirling storm that turns itself forever through that air of endless black, like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows.” Dexter’s visions echoed Dante’s—an endless punishment, an eternal spiral into madness. Souls screaming for relief but finding none. There was no peace, no escape, just the screams as the enemy would reach up through the surface and drag people under.

Dexter’s encounter also took him to a boat anchored on a fiery lake. This vision of the lake aligns with Dante’s third cantos, the river Acheron and ferry or boat that was used to transport Dante across into the circles of Hell and its great pit. Dexter, too, saw torrents of magma and fiery water, imprisoning the souls below.

While Dexter suffered in his vision, my own journey to Hell had begun. That night as his body lay on the hospital bed, barely clinging to life, while I, too, found myself in Hell. As I prayed over him, begging for God to spare his life, my own spirit became overwhelmed with fear and exhaustion. I fell asleep, and in my sleep, I awoke to find myself in a dark, slimy cave. The walls were alive, writhing with demonic figures that snarled and clawed, trying to pull me deeper into the pit all of the while poking and prodding me. It was an overwhelming sense of dread—a place where all hope was abandoned. The most intense and pure feeling of terror that I had ever experienced. Dante, too, speaks of this: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” I understand those words now in a way I never had before.

My heart raced as I fought to escape, praying and begging to God to hear my cry. Why me? Why was I there? I loved the Lord, or so I thought? Suddenly and without warning I awoke in sheer panic, gasping for air. When I looked at Dexter, and he was clearly visibly shaken as he told me that I had stopped breathing, that I was dead. Which scared me for a moment because I wanted to believe that that was just a bad dream. But no, what we both experienced in those moments was far too real to dismiss.

The horrors Dante describes, I believe, are not merely fiction. As Dexter and I both tasted the bitterness of Hell, and what we witnessed was a terrifying reality—a place where souls, even Christian souls, can end up if they are not wholly committed to Christ. The suffering in Hell, as Dante writes, is “more perfect” on the day of judgment. The closer we are to perfection, the more we will either feel joy or pain. In Hell, that pain is more refined, sharpened, and made eternal.

This is only the beginning. Just as Dante’s journey led him deeper into the circles of Hell, our journey is far from over. There are more horrors to unveil, more truths to confront. What happened to Dexter and me serves as a warning. Hell is real. And its gates are wide open.

Stay with me, as we continue this descent on Wednesday.

All future posts will be posted on Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s at 9:30am EST.

To be continued in Part 3

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