Inhabitants in Hades also included awful creatures, some of which had once existed on Earth, and some had the power to go to Earth to punish individuals. These creatures include Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep), The Gorgons (female monsters with fangs and hair of live, venomous snakes), Briareus (a being with 100 hands and 50 heads), Diseases personified and The Furies (female personifications of vengeance). Charon, the ferryman, carried the dead across the River Styx, provided their bodies received proper burial and they paid the fare, an obol (a silver, ancient Greek coin). The unburied had to wait 100 years for the voyage. A monstrous three-headed dog guarded the gate and admitted the dead, but let none leave.
In primitive Greece, the underworld was thought to be gloomy, the place of the dead, neither for punishment or pleasure. The dead existed as ghosts in the form in which they appeared on Earth, but without pleasure or pain, or knowledge of their former state (thanks to the River Lethe). Inhabitants were unable to speak unless they drank the blood of a sacrificed animal.