KAKUREZATOR Kakurezator is a DEMON of hell according to ancient Japanese mythology. He carries the souls of the damned to the underworld. Kakurezator is blind but can smell sin and invades the homes of evil people as they are dying. Once the body has expired, he brings the defiled spirit to hell.
KALICHI Kalichi is the dreary hell of ancient India. When a person dies, he or she is judged by YAMA, lord of the dead. The god Chandragupta records and reads the sum of the soul’s virtues and sins, then Yama can send it to Kalichi, to paradise, or to another existence on earth. In Kalichi, Yama administers divine justice in the form of sadistic torments. He is often shown riding a buffalo and carrying a lasso to snag souls.
Evil spirits face a number of horrors in Kalichi. In this pit of gloom, sinners are punished according to their offenses. Those who marry outside their caste are forced to embrace molten human forms, the cruel are boiled in oil, animal tormentors are ripped apart, evil priests are tossed into a river of impurities and gnawed by water DEMONS.
Now absorbed into Indian religion (which teaches transmigration of souls), the suffering of Kalichi is believed to be temporary. Eventually, all souls are believed to be given another chance at salvation through reincarnation.
KANALOA Kanaloa is the Hawaiian squid god of death. He rules the gloomy underworld, located at the bottom of the sea, which is sometimes referred to as Po. Kanaloa gives off a putrid smell that reflects the odor of people’s sins. He is heavily identified with despair and is also called the god of darkness.
Kanaloa is one of the few underworld gods included in Native American mythology, although little is known about the deity. One story suggests that Kanaloa was once a benevolent deity who betrayed his kind and assembled an army of rebellious spirits. For his transgression, Kanaloa was forced to the ocean depths to dwell eternally with unclean spirits. This legend parallels the Christian tale of LUCIFER’s fall from heaven and may have been influenced by early missionaries.
KARMA Karma is a concept of many Eastern religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, all of which date back centuries before the time of Christ. Karma refers to the sum of a person’s actions during the phases of his or her life and the corresponding consequences. Bad karma results in damnation, although this state is temporary. Souls do not receive eternal punishment or reward but continue throughout time on an unending cycle of reincarnation, death, purging, and rebirth. There is no supreme god in Eastern religious teachings and likewise no ruler of hell. Each person’s fate is determined solely by his or her karma.
The nature and number of hells where bad karma is burned away differs with each religion. In the BARDO THODOL (the Tibetan Book of the Dead), souls must face the “Mirror of Karma” in the afterlife. This enchanted looking glass reflects the truth about the spirit’s good and evil and determines his or her supernatural destination. Other Eastern faiths feature JIGOKU, EMMA-O, and YAMA as components of retribution in the spiritual realm where karma is purged.
KASANAAN Kasanaan is the “village of grief and affliction” of the Tagalog people of the Philippines. This somber underworld is a place of sorrow more than pain, where souls exist in a lethargic state. Spirits in Kasanaan resemble the Greek SHADES, who likewise find the afterlife to be unbearably monotonous rather than fearsome. There is no torture in Kasanaan; the afterlife suffering is the loss of the excitement and energy of life on earth.
KIDS IN THE HALL Lorne Michaels, best known as producer of the long-running variety show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, is the creator of the Canadian comedy series Kids in the Hall. During the show’s 1989–1994 run, hell serves as the backdrop for humor in a variety of sketches. Kevin McDonald plays the recurring character Simon McMillan, a dark figure who hosts a talk show broadcast from “the pit of ultimate darkness.” McMillan describes himself as the “gatekeeper to the boys’ club that is the underworld” and laments that man must “walk alone along the path of evil.” McMillan’s set consists of a red, fiery cave of wafting smoke and murky darkness.
McMillan is assisted by David Foley playing “manservant Hecubus,” the very incarnation of iniquity. Hecubus often refers to his favorite underworld pastimes, such as attending “garage sales in hell” rife with infernal curiosities. He also delights in playing tricks on mortals, such as sprinkling women with “zombie dust” in order to seduce them and disclosing the final scenes of suspense movies.
Another sequence offers Mark McKinney in the role of a red-faced, horned SATAN. One sketch depicts the DEMON watching television from his infernal recreation room. He channel-surfs until lighting upon his favorite show: The Golden Girls.
McKinney’s DEVIL shows up again in a rock and roll showdown with Bruce McCollough as Bobby, a rebellious and misunderstood Toronto teen. When McCollough retreats to the garage to escape his nagging parents, Satan challenges the boy to a guitar-playing contest. The demon uses all his tricks—including shape-shifting into a gorgeous pinup model and growing extra arms to play complicated riffs—to win the musical match. But McCollough has a trick of his own: an enchanted “wah-wah” pedal. With the aid of this innovation, the teen blasts Satan back into “rock and roll hell” in a fiery explosion.
In addition to these sketches, the Kids in the Hall features JOKES about the land of the damned. These routinely consist of mocking the devil, making light of hell, and depicting the underworld as far more interesting and colorful than paradise.
KITAMBA According to the Mbundu people of Angola, King Kitamba kia Xiba contacts the underworld in hopes of reclaiming his dead wife. Distraught at the sudden death of his lovely bride, Kitamba is so overcome with grief that he forces all his people into silent mourning. After months of this enforced sullenness, his subjects grow tired of mourning and want to return to their rich life of colorful ceremonies and shared joys. Kitamba refuses to repeal the edict, insisting that all share his sorrow. Desperate to end the grieving, the villagers decide to send a shaman to the underworld to try and retrieve Muhongo, Kitamba’s deceased queen.
The doctor digs a tunnel to the underworld beneath his hut. He reaches the land of the dead and finds Muhongo, but she tells him she cannot return to life, that death of the body is final. The soul, she explains, lives on in a dull, dank realm where there is no sadness but no joy, either. She asks the doctor to return to Kitamba and let him know that although she is unable to leave, she is not in any pain. Muhongo gives the doctor the bracelet she was buried with and tells him to show it to Kitamba to prove that he has truly seen her. (In some versions, the medicine man meets Death personified, who promises that the royal couple will not be separated for long, since Kitamba has only a few more years to live.)
The shaman returns to the land of the living through the tunnel and presents the bracelet to Kitamba along with Muhongo’s message. Kitamba recognizes the jewel and finally accepts her death and puts an end to the mourning. He spends the rest of his days anticipating his own death, when he and Muhongo will be reunited in the gloomy underworld.
KORAN The Koran (Qu’ran) is the holy book of Islam, comparable to the Christian Bible. In addition to explaining doctrines of the faith, the Koran also contains accounts of the supernatural travels in heaven and hell of MUHAMMAD, Islam’s founder. The Koran offers detailed descriptions of the underworld and of the suffering that awaits infidels (nonbelievers), defilers, and sinners in JAHANNAM, Islamic hell. According to the sacred text, in Jahannam damned souls “… shall be lashed with rods of iron. Whenever, in their anguish, they try to escape form Hell, the angels will bring them back saying ‘Taste the torment of Hellfire!’”
In some translations, the Koran refers to GEHENNA, the fiery pit of damnation of Judeo-Christian belief, where IBLIS (SATAN) shall torture souls for eternity. Allah (God) will tell wicked souls, “Said He, ‘Depart!’ Those of them that follow thee [Iblis]—surely Gehenna shall be your recompense!… Those who disbelieve, and cry lies to Our signs—they are the inhabitants of Hell.” Another passage describes the fall of Iblis from heaven. The story bears similarities to the Christian legend of LUCIFER and his rebellion against God. According to the Koran, when Iblis is cast into hell, he vows to seek the ruin of human souls by making false promises and employing trickery: “Satan promises them [infidels] naught, except delusion.”
The Koran also foretells a LAST JUDGMENT, when all human souls will be called before Allah to account for their lives. It is the wish of Allah, who is infinitely merciful, that all souls be united with him in paradise. However, since the deity is also infinitely just, he will not force salvation on anyone. Damnation, therefore, is not a divine sentence but a choice made freely by those who prefer serving themselves and refusing the truth and following “the detestable lies” of Iblis.
KOWALSKA, MARY FAUSTINA Helena Kowalska, a virtuous woman who experienced many supernatural encounters, including visions of hell, was born in Poland in 1905. She entered the convent at nineteen, taking the name Sister Mary Faustina as her religious title. Suffering from chronic ill health, Kowalska devoted herself to a quiet life of contemplating Christ’s divine mercy. She kept a detailed diary of her daily prayers until she became too ill to continue writing.
That diary, published in the United States in 1987, contains numerous accounts of contact with the supernatural. Kowalska transcribes prayers dictated to her by Jesus and records seeing angels praising God. Among these mystical experiences, she also describes a place of sorrow and agony where souls languish in abject misery: “In a moment I was in a misty place full of fire in which there was a great crowd of suffering souls.… I asked these souls what their greatest suffering was. They answered me in one voice that their greatest torment was longing for God.… An interior voice said ‘My mercy does not want this, but justice demands it.’”
Kowalska refers to this realm as a “prison of suffering,” a PURGATORIAL HELL where souls expunge the evil residue of their sinful actions. She warns that hell holds more terrifying horror than this. In another account, she describes being led to the “chasms of Hell” by an angel. There she saw “… a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is. The kind of tortures I saw:… the loss of God … perpetual remorse of conscience … fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it—a terrible suffering, as it is purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger … continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell … the constant company of SATAN … horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. These are the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings. There are special tortures of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned.” This agony is magnified by the soul’s realization that its fate will never change; this punishment will continue for eternity. Kowalska encourages devotion to Christ as a safeguard against this frightful damnation. Her diary contrasts these dark images with the indescribable joys of heaven and urges all to embrace Christ’s divine mercy. She stresses the fact that God wants all souls to be united to him in paradise, but that he will not force salvation on the unwilling.
Kowalska died of tuberculosis in 1938 and is currently a candidate for sainthood in the Roman Catholic church.