Friar Oderic arrives at purgatory. Odoric or Oderic of Pordenone. Italian late-medieval Franciscan friar and missionary explorer. During his travels he inadvertently arrived at a sort of minor Inferno or a place for lost souls, belief in a place of this kind in Central Asia was very widespread in the Middle Ages. The strange noises he heard were however just the wind blowing the sand about in the deserts. From The Strand Magazine published 1897.