Sometimes in this blog, we’ll tell you about places you should visit. And sometimes we’ll tell you about places where you might get swallowed by a pit of fire.

Today, we’ll do the latter. Welcome to Centralia, a mostly abandoned town in east-central Pennsylvania. In 1962, a coal mine caught fire, and the flames spread through the mine shafts and tunnels beneath the town. Efforts to extinguish the fire failed — forevermore. The fire still rages today and is expected to rage for another 250 years.

For two decades, people remained in the town, ignoring the burning inferno beneath. But in February 1981, a scary thing happened. A kid who was playing in his backyard noticed a hole opening in the ground, walked toward it and then tumbled into it. Fortunately, he grabbed onto a tree root and his cousin pulled him to safety. Otherwise, he would have fallen into a hot pit of poisonous carbon monoxide.