In the year 1970, Soviet scientists began one of the greatest and most ambitious drilling and mining experiments in human history. In the Kola Peninsula, a drilling project started which would go on to reach farther down into the Earth’s crust than any other in history, setting a Guinness World record that still stands today.

Even now, over twenty years since the cessation of all drilling activities at the borehole, which has since been welded shut, it’s remembered as a grand science project which brought about great scientific discoveries, as well as rumors, myths and legends of the type that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern horror movie.