I know what I was told when I was a child... and I know many opinions from various religious groups... and there are so many variations that it's hard to start.

I have an illustrated copy of Dante's Inferno (Gustave Doré's engravings) which may have done as much as anything to put images of Hell into Western culture.
I personally believe both are embroidered stories based on human hopes & fears as they try to make sense out of life and imagine what 'comes after'.

In many Asian religions there was no Heaven & Hell as such, but rather the Wheel of Saṃsāra.

I do kind of like Sartré's conclusion in "No Exit" that "Hell is other people"