Hell Now Wheelchair Accessible

“These are but the latest features in a Hell much more accepting of persons with disabilities.”

River Styx Crossing, July 12 – A new renovation to the Underworld has brought physical improvements that include enhanced compatibility for people who can only get around using a wheelchair, a spokesdemon told reporters today.

Beelzebub announced at a press conference Sunday afternoon that Hell had finally brought its facilities up to code, and as of last Tuesday, incoming individuals would not be required to get out of their wheelchairs and be carried bodily by Charon the ferryman onto his craft for the river crossing.

“A wheelchair ramp on the Earth side of the River Styx was made operational last week, and the same was opened on the Hades bank just yesterday,” said the spokesdemon. “These are but the latest features in a Hell much more accepting of persons with disabilities.” Beelzebub then ticked off seven other improvements made in recent months, such as modifications to Charon’s ferry that allows the craft to hold a wheelchair securely, and bars installed around pits of fire for greater ease in lowering disabled denizens of Hell into them.

The movement toward greater wheelchair accessibility in Hell began in 1978, when pornographic publisher Larry Flynt was shot and rendered wheelchair-bound. While Flynt has yet to die, his survival was not a foregone conclusion, and Satan personally ordered that preparations be made to properly receive and process Flynt. The porn magnate’s survival took some of the urgency away from the project, which progressed in fits and starts through the next several decades. The final push for its completion was the news that physicist Stephen Hawking had declined to participate last year in a conference in Israel, for political reasons, and that there was consequently a distinct possibility that the disabled University of Cambridge professor might find himself relegated to Hades upon his passing.

“We don’t get all that many people with physical disabilities here, and that’s why it hasn’t been much of an issue,” noted Beelzebub. “For a while it seemed Franklin Roosevelt was going to end up with us, given his marital infidelity and antisemitism, but the fact is, he did what he could to end World War II as quickly as possible, which saved more lives than any bombing of Auschwitz train tracks could have accomplished.” The demon explained that despite much post-hoc clamoring for such a bombing, the accuracy of Allied bombing was abysmal, and would have accomplished little.

A handful of wheelchair-bound persons have nevertheless been forced to make the journey, most recently John Demjanjuk, a death camp guard who died in Germany before his mass murder trial ended. In an interview, Charon said he did not mind the physical effort required to move Demjanjuk onto the boat, since that activity gave him the opportunity to get in a few kicks to the man’s groin in the process.

Sources in Hades declined to comment on rumors that an entirely new torment facility is planned for able-bodied people who park in spots reserved for the disabled.