10. St. Patrick’s Purgatory, Ireland
There is a gateway to hell on a little island in the middle of a lake called Lough Derg in Ireland. Over the portal to the underworld is a monastery, St. Patrick’s Purgatory. According to legend, Jesus showed St. Patrick a cave, where he received visions of hell and was then able to prove the Christian afterlife to the dubious Irish pagans, who had said they would not convert without proof (convenient, eh?).
The monastery was built in the fifth century, but now tourists are generally not allowed on Station Island. However, there is an annual pilgrimage (the “toughest in the Christian world,” it has been said) to take a three-day sojourn, where they fast, are sleep-deprived, and pray 280 times at each of nine different sites while standing barefoot on purposely-sharpened rocks in freezing temperatures. Thousands of devout Christians make it each year to this Ironman of Christian pilgrimages. It sounds like communal suffering at its finest. In any case, the story goes that St. Patrick witnessed the tortures of eternal damnation way back when. Whether people find God or the devil is not really known, though. Care to venture there on a super-fun pilgrimage to find out?
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