In 2018, my husband Dexter nearly lost his life to sepsis, a vicious infection that consumed him after a bout of Salmonella poisoning. What looked like a simple sickness became a nightmare, and as his body collapsed under the weight of the infection, his soul slipped into a place darker than words can carry. I tell you now, this was not a dream, not a fevered hallucination — this was Hell itself.

As his body lay on a hospital bed, pale and trembling, his spirit was drawn away. He told me later, “Hell isn’t just fire and brimstone. It’s worse. It’s a place where nothing is steady. You’re trapped in loops, reliving terror, chained to your deepest fears, and there’s no way out.” His eyes burned with horror as he described it. He saw demons lurking under the ground, waiting for men and women to stumble, then bursting through the slick surface of the earth to grab them by the ankles and drag them into the pit. He said the ground itself was like “the miry clay” the psalmist cried about — unstable, treacherous, swallowing souls alive. He saw them pulled under, screaming, clawing at the air, only to vanish into the muck, and the demons howled with laughter, their joy found only in destruction.

And these creatures — I struggle to even call them by name — were grotesque, larger and more vicious than any nightmare. Their growls echoed like thunder, their snarls shook the ground. They mocked humanity. They mocked pride. He saw noble men, clothed like knights of old, armored and resolute, who thought they could escape on their own strength. They tried to march out boldly, but when a single demon met them, it was as though their armor was made of paper. They were struck down, tossed aside like rag dolls, shredded and humiliated. Their strength, their intellect, their pride — none of it mattered. Hell strips man bare, grinds him to dust, and laughs while doing it.

And then, as if echoing Dante’s journey across the Acheron, Dexter saw a fiery lake. A boat rocked upon it, not as salvation but as prison. Beneath the molten waters souls writhed and screamed, boiling, their voices rising but never reaching heaven. The boat did not deliver them to rescue; it carried them deeper into the furnace. He saw devils moving with a speed that chilled him. They swarmed like harvesters, dragging victim after victim into caverns and tunnels that reeked of torment. It was chaos, it was anguish, and it was unending.

While he wandered those depths, I too was pulled under. I had prayed over him until exhaustion broke me, and then, in a moment of restless sleep, I awoke to a cavern. The walls themselves seemed alive, slick with slime, writhing with demonic forms that clawed and jeered. They tore at me, trying to pull me further into the pit. Hope vanished like smoke. I could hear Dante’s words etched across the gates: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. In that instant, those words were no longer poetry; they were reality. Terror gripped me like ice. I begged God for mercy, but the darkness pressed tighter, the devils gnashing, laughing, eager to consume me.

And then I gasped awake, choking, my body convulsing. Dexter looked at me with horror and said, “You stopped breathing. You were gone.” We both knew it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was too real, too exact, too horrifying. Hell had opened itself to us both.

Dante’s Inferno painted it centuries ago, but what we saw proved it true. The punishments are endless, sharpened, perfected in their cruelty. The damned are trapped, their suffering refined, their agony eternal. There is no mercy there, no second chance, no bargaining. The devils delight in humiliation, in grinding every last hope from a soul, and the deeper one goes, the more bitter the torment becomes.

This is not fiction. This is not allegory. Hell is real. It is raw, merciless, and closer than most dare to believe. Men walk every day on the edge of it, their feet sliding across the miry clay, unaware that pits have been dug beneath them, unaware that hands already reach for their ankles. Even Christians who compromise and play at disobedience walk perilously close to its edge. I have seen it. Dexter has seen it. And I will not water it down. Souls are being dragged away while this world sleeps.

But there is hope — and it does not come from armor, intellect, or human will. Pride collapses there. Plans fail there. The only Rock is Christ. The only hand that can pull a soul from the pit is His. Without Him, every man and woman is destined to slip, destined to fall, destined to be harvested into that chaos.

We tell you this because it is not enough to treat Hell as myth or symbol. Dante tried to warn his world. We are trying to warn ours. What we saw, what we lived, was no fable — it was the raw, unmasked truth of eternity without Christ. And if there is grit in my words, it is because I have breathed its stench, I have heard its screams, and I will not let you walk blind toward it.

Hell is real. Its gates are open wide. And the only escape is Jesus Christ.

If these words grip you, if they shake you, if they awaken something deep in you, then don’t scroll past and forget them. Pray. Repent. Call on the Name that saves. And if you want to stand with me as I keep sharing these raw, unvarnished truths, I invite you to tip me at Buy Me A Coffee. Every bit of support helps me keep writing, keep warning, keep shouting into the dark that there is hope — but only in Christ.

Stay with me. There is more to tell. Just as Dante went deeper into the circles, so too will I, because the warnings cannot stop here. The descent is not over.

Hell is real. And people need to know.