CULTURE: Filmmakers raising hell

“What if you received a letter from hell?” is the opening line in a popular video, “A Letter from Hell,” about a usually off-limits topic.

Tonight, little children across the country will traipse from door to door costumed as various denizens of the underworld: goblins, devils, zombies, ghosts and demons. The holiday’s origins are borderline theological in that it acknowledges the existence of “hallows,” an old English word for dead spirits.

And a dead spirit is who wrote the “letter.”
Click to view the video:

“Dear Zack,” says a voice-over from “Josh,” a teenager. “I died today. It’s a lot different than what I expected.”

An accident scene and a ghostly tunnel flash onto the screen.

“Right after the wreck, I could feel my spirit leaving my body,” Josh says, his words appearing in red letters on a black background. “It was the weirdest thing, Zack.”

The teenager goes on to recount his appearance before several angels, one of whom casts him into a holding cell.

“He finally told me only those whose names were written in the Book of Life would get into heaven,” Josh says. His tone then turns accusatory.

“Why haven’t you ever told me how to become a Christian?” he asks. A note of terror enters Josh’s voice.

“I can smell the burning sulfur and brimstone,” he cries. “I am damned forever.”

Then, a deep, demonic voice cuts in.

“Wish you were here,” it says.

After doing well (ranked No. 10 with 135,209 views earlier this week) on GodTube.com, the five-minute video migrated to YouTube.com and then ended up on NBC’s “Nightline” on Oct. 18.

“A lot of teenagers are resonating with this,” said Greg Stier, president of Dare 2 Share Ministries, an evangelical Christian youth ministry in Denver. “They are hearing for the first time the reality of heaven and hell and the urgency of sharing with your friends before it’s too late. It is Christianity with a bite.”

Back in the days when life expectancy was short, hell was discussable in popular culture, said the Rev. Kendall Harmon. Now the in-house theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, he went to Oxford University for three years to research a doctoral thesis about hell.

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