The Hollow Earth theory — that the earth has an empty hollow, possibly inhabitable interior — has had many notable takers over the centuries. Plato, Edmund Halley and Hitler were ardent believers.
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Hollow Earth © midi8
Man has never drilled deeper than 15 miles into the earth and this has helped create some fantastic theories about what really lies deeper inside. Theories abound as to the contents of Earth’s innards — from the one that pinpoints places like Peru and Tibet as entrance points to a secret subterranean realm, to those that believe that there are entire alien colonies inhabiting our planet’s core.
This last idea was used by sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories in its series of tales by Richard Sharpe Shaver which claimed that an advanced prehistoric race roamed the earth’s interiors long long ago, and that their descendants still exist deep inside, tormenting us mortals with strange noises. The series was cloaked as fiction, but that didn’t stop thousands of readers who wrote in to say that they too had heard voices from deep inside the ground. Talk about the power of suggestion.
Another theory claims that as the Allies neared Berlin, Hitler and some of his aides escaped to underground (literally) bunkers deep inside the earth through entry points in the Antarctica.
Although the Hollow Earth theory has found a place in literature and cultural references, scientists have always bunked it as pseudoscience.