Explorers Find Snake Pit At The Bottom Of 367-Foot 'Well Of Hell'

Over the centuries, stories have circulated of malign figures known as jinns or genies living in the well, which some regard as the gate of hell.

A team of Omani cavers has made what is believed to be the first descent to the bottom of Yemen's fabled Well of Barhout -- a natural wonder shunned by many locals, who believe it is a prison for genies.

The forbidding 'Well of Hell', whose dark, round aperture creates a 30-metre (100 foot) wide hole in the desert floor of Yemen's eastern province of Al-Mahra, plunges approximately 112 metres (367 feet) below the surface and, according to some accounts, gives off strange odours.

Inside, the Oman Cave Exploration Team (OCET) found snakes, dead animals and cave pearls -- but no signs of the supernatural.

"There were snakes, but they won't bother you unless you bother them," Mohammed al-Kindi, a geology professor at the German University of Technology in Oman, told AFP.