This unusual narrative recounts therevelations of a lost soul to a former acquaintance. It is a powerful record ofthe steps which led a young woman to lose her soul in Hell for all eternity.Although it has several times been printed with imprimatur, this in itself doesnot guarantee the authenticity of the story. An imprimatur merely indicatesthat the subject matter is free from error in faith and morals. Is it true?Obviously, it cannot be "guaranteed" because the only evidence is that of thegirl herself. It certainly may be true and its instructional qualities wouldpertain even if the story itself were not true. In the July apparition atFatima a vision of a Hell of fire was given to the three little children, andsignificantly, its existence was confirmed by the great public miracle onOctober 13th. Yet Hell is little spoken of in the pulpits. Because of this, thespecial intervention of Heaven, may, as at Fatima, be necessary to restore thissobering doctrine to its important place in Christian dogma. It is well toremember that the Hell spoken of here is the Hell which has a significant placein Catholic doctrine, the Hell described vividly by Christ Himself, the Hellseen in all its livid horror by the children at Fatima on July 13th, 1917. Thenames of persons and places are omitted because of the nature of the story,plus the fact of its recent origin.

Clara and Annette, both single Catholics in their earlytwenties, worked adjacent to each other as employees of a commercial inGermany. Although they were never very close friends, they shared a courteousmutual regard which led to an exchange of ideas and, eventually, ofconfidences. Clara professed herself openly religious, and felt it her duty toinstruct and admonish Annette when the latter appeared excessively casual orsuperficial in religious matters. In due course, Annette married and left thefirm. The year was 1937. Clara spent the autumn of that year on holiday at LakeGarda. About the middle of September she received a letter from her mother.

"Annette . . . is dead. She was the victim of an autoaccident and was buried yesterday at Wald-Friedhof." Clara was frightened sinceshe knew her friend was not very religious. Was she prepared to appear beforeGod? Dying suddenly, what had happened to her? The next day she attended Mass,received Holy Communion, and prayed fervently for her friend. The followingnight, at ten minutes after midnight, the vision took place. . . "Clara, do notpray for me! I am in hell. If I tell you this and speak at length about it, donot think it is because of our friendship. We here do not love anyone. I dothis as under constraint. In truth, I should like to see you to come to thisstate where I must remain forever."

"Perhaps that angers you, but here we all think thatway. Our wills are hardened in evil - in what you call evil. Even when we dosomething 'good', as I do now, opening your eyes about hell, it is not becauseof a good intention."

"Do you still remember our first meeting four years agoat. . .? You were then 23 and had been there already half a year. Because I wasa beginner, you gave me some helpful advice. Then I praised your love of yourneighbor. Ridiculous! Your help was mere coquetry. Here we do not acknowledgeany good - in anybody."

"According to the plan of my parents, I should not haveexisted. A misfortune brought about my conception. My two sisters were 14 and15 when I was born."

Escape these tortures! No pleasure would equal thatwith which I would abandon my existence, as a garment of ashes which is lost innothingness. But I must continue to exist as I chose to make myself - as aruined person."

"When father and mother, still young, left the countryfor the city, they had lost touch with the Church and were keeping company withirreligious people. They had met at a dance, and after a year and a half ofcompanionship they 'had' to get married."

"As a result of the nuptial ceremony, so much holywater remained on them that my mother attended Sunday Mass a couple of times ayear. But she never taught me to pray. Instead, she was completely taken upwith the daily cares of life, although our situation was not bad."

"I refer to prayer, Mass, religious instruction, holywater, church with a very strong repugnance. I hate all that, as I hate thosewho go to church, and in general every human being and everything."

"From a great many things do we receive torture. Everyknowledge received at the hour of death, every remembrance of things lived orknown is for us, a piercing flame. In each remembrance, good and bad, we seethe way in which was present - the grace we despised or ignored. What a tortureis this! We do not eat, we do not sleep, we do not walk. Chained, with howlingand gnashing of teeth, we look appalled at our ruined life, hating andsuffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water. Above all we hate God.With reluctance do I force myself to make you understand."

"The blessed in heaven must love God because they seeHim without veil, in all His dazzling beauty. That makes their blissindescribable. We know this and the knowledge makes us furious. Men on earth,who know God from nature and from revelation, can love Him, but they are notcompelled to do so. The believer - I say this with gnashing of teeth - whocontemplates Christ on the cross, with arms extended, will end by loving Him."

"But he whom God approaches only in the final storm, aspunisher, as just avenger, because he was rejected by Him, such a person cannotbut hate Him with all the strength of his wicked will. We died with willfulresolve to be separated from God. Do you now understand why hell lasts forever!It is because our wills were fixed for eternity at the moment of death. We hadmade our final choice. Our obstinacy will never leave us. Under compulsion, Imust add that God is merciful even towards us. I affirm many things against mywill and must choke the torrent of abuses I should like to vomit out."

"God was merciful to us by not allowing our wickedwills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we should have been prepared to do.This would have increased our faults and our pains. He caused us to die beforeour time, as in my case, or had other mitigating circumstances intervene. NowHe shows Himself merciful towards us by not compelling a closer approach thanthat afforded in this remote inferno. Every step bringing us closer to Godwould cause us a greater pain than that which a step closer to a burningfurnace would cause you."

"You were scared when once, during a walk, I told youthat my father, a few days before my first Communion, had told me: 'My littleAnnette, the main thing is your beautiful white dress, all the rest is justmake-believe.' Because of your concern, I was almost ashamed. Now I sneer atit."

"The important thing is that we were not allowed toreceive Communion until the age of 12. By then I was already absorbed inworldly amusements and found it easy to set aside, without scruple, the thingsof religion. Thus, I attached no great importance to my first Communion. We arefurious that many children go to Communion at the age of seven. We do all wecan to make people believe that children have insufficient knowledge at thatage. They must first commit some mortal sins. Then the white Particle will notdo so much damage to our cause as when faith, hope, and charity - oh, thesethings! - received in Baptism, are still alive in their hearts."

"Marta K - and you induced me to enter "The Associationof the Young Ladies." The games were amusing. As you know, I immediately took adirective part. I liked it. I also like the picnics. I even let myself beinduced to go to confession and communion sometimes."

"Once you warned me, 'Anne, if you do not pray, you goto perdition.' I used to pray very little indeed, and even this unwillingly.You were then only too right. All those who burn in hell did not pray or didnot pray enough."

"Prayer is the first step towards God. And it is thedecisive step. Especially prayer to her who is the Mother of Christ, whose namewe never pronounce. Devotion to her rescues from the devil numberless soulswhom sin would infallibly give to him."

"I continue my story, consumed with rage and onlybecause I have to. To pray is the easiest thing man can do on earth. And Godhas tied up the salvation of each one exactly to this very easy thing."

"To him who prays with perseverance little by littleGod gives so much light, so much strength, that even the most debased sinnerwill at the end come back to salvation. During the last years of my life I didnot pray any more, so I lacked those graces without which nobody can be saved.Here we no longer receive graces. Moreover, should we receive them we wouldcynically refuse them. All the fluctuations of earthly existence have ceased inthe other life. For years I was living far away from God. For, in the last callof grace I decided against God."

"I never believed in the influence of the devil. Andnow I affirm that he has strong influence on the persons who are in thecondition in which I was then. Only many prayers, others and mine own, unitedwith sacrifices and penances, could have snatched me from his grip. And eventhis only little by little. If there are only few externally obsessed, thereare very many internally possessed. The devil cannot steal the free will fromthose who give themselves to his influence. But in punishment of their, so tospeak, methodical apostasy from God, He allows the devil to nest in them."

"I hate the devil too. And yet I am pleased about him,because he tries to ruin all of you; he and his satellites, the fallen with himat the beginning of time. There are millions of them. They roam around theearth, as thick as a swarm of flies, and you do not even notice it. It is notreserved to us damned to tempt you; but to the fallen spirits. In truth everytime they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased.But what does one not do for hatred?"

"Deep down I was rebelling against God. You did notunderstand it; you thought me still a Catholic. I wanted, in fact, to be calledone; I even used to pay my ecclesiastical dues. Maybe your answers were rightsometimes. On me they made no impression, since you must not be right. Becauseof these counterfeited relationships between the two of us, our separation onthe occasion of my marriage was of no consequence to me. Before the wedding Iwent to confession and communion once more. It was a precept. My husband and Ithought alike on this point. Why not comply with this formality? So we compliedwith this, as with the other formalities."

"Our married life, in general, was spent in greatharmony. We were of the same idea in everything. In this too, that we did notwant the burden of children. In truth, my husband would have like to have one;no more, of course. In the end I succeeded in dissuading him even from thisdesire. Dresses, luxurious furniture, places of entertainment, picnics andtrips by car and similar things were more important for me... It was a year ofpleasure on earth, the one that passed from my marriage to my sudden death.Internally, of course, I was never happy, although externally at ease. Therewas always something indeterminate inside that gnawed at me."

"Unexpectedly I had an inheritance from my Aunt, Lotte.My husband succeeded in increasing his wages to a considerable figure. And so Iwas able to furnish our new home in an attractive way. Religion did not showits light but from afar off, pale, feeble and uncertain."

"I used to give free vent to my ill humor about somemediaeval representations of hell in cemeteries or elsewhere, in which thedevil is roasting souls in red burning coals, while his companions with longtails drag new victims to him. Clara! One can be mistaken in depicting hell,but never can one exaggerate."

"I tell you: the fire of which the Bible speaks, doesnot mean the torment of the conscience. Fire is fire! What He said: 'Away fromMe, you accursed one, into eternal fire', is to be understood literally.Literally! How can the spirit be touched by material fire, you will ask. Howcan your soul suffer on earth when you put your finger on the flame? In factthe soul does not burn; and yet what torture all the individual feels!"

"Our greatest torture consists in the certain knowledgethat we shall never see God. How can this torture us so much, since on earth weare so indifferent? As long as the knife lies on the table, it leaves you cold.You see how keen it is, but you do not feel it. Plunge the knife into the fleshand you will start screaming for pain. Now we feel the loss of God. The lostCatholics suffer more than those of other religions, because they, mostly,received and despised more graces and more light. He who knew more suffers morecruelly than he who knew less. He who sinned out of malice suffers more keenlythan he who sinned out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he deserves.Oh, if that were not true, I should have a motive to hate!"

"A week ago - I am speaking according to yourreckoning, because according to pain, I could very well say that it is alreadyten years that I am burning in hell - a week ago, then, my husband and I, on aSunday went on a picnic, the last one for me. The day was glorious. I felt verywell. A sinister sense of pleasure that was with me all the day long, invadedme. When lo, suddenly, during the return, my husband was dazzled by a car thatwas coming full speed. He lost control."

"Jesus, used frequently by some people of Germanlanguage - escaped from my lips with a shivering. Not as a prayer, but as ashout. A lacerating pain took hold of the whole of me. (In comparison with thepresent only a trifle). Then I lost consciousness. Strange! That morning thisthought had come to me in an inexplicable way: 'You could go to Mass oncemore', It seemed like the last call of Love."

"Clear and resolute, my 'NO' cut off that train ofthought. You will know already what happened after my death. The lot of myhusband and that of my mother, what happened to my corpse and the proceedingsof my funeral are known to me through some natural knowledge we have here. Whathappens on earth we know only obscurely. But we know what touches us closely. Isee also where you are living."

"I myself awoke from the darkness suddenly, in theinstant of my passing. I saw myself as flooded by a dazzling light. It was inthe same place where my dead body was lying. It was like a theater, whensuddenly the lights in the hall are put out, the curtains are rent aside and anunexpected scene, horrible illuminated, appears. The scene of my life."

"My soul showed herself to me as in a mirror; all thegraces despised from my youth until my last NO to God. I felt myself like anassassin, to whom his dead victim is shown during his trial at court - Should Irepent? Never! - Should I feel ashamed? Never!"

"However, I could not even stand before the eyes ofGod, rejected by me. There was only one thing for me: flight! As Cain fled fromthe dead body of Abel, so my soul rushed from the sight of horror."

"This was the particular judgment: the invisible Judgesaid: 'Away from Me'. Then my soul, as a yellow brimstone shadow, fell headlonginto the place of eternal torture."

It is hoped that the above story will cause the readerto be most serious about the salvation of his soul. ("The greater part of menchoose to be damned." St. Alphonsus Liguori) This is consistent with theteaching of the Holy Bible. "Enter by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate,and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enterthat way. How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life!

And few there are who find it." (Matt. 7:13, 14) TheCatholic Church is the one true Church. The history of all nations; of allpeople bear testimony that the Catholic Church is the oldest, the first, theone established by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now if you are reallyserious about saving your soul, you must adopt the Catholic Faith as there isno salvation outside the Catholic Church. This has been defined dogmatically bythree different popes, even before the Protestant church came into existence.You are urged to contact a Catholic Church where the traditions of the HolyCatholic Faith are being maintained. Call us at 502-468-9736 if you need helplocating a traditional chapel in your area.