It would seem fairly obvious the St Paul was addressing a particularly Jewish notion of Sheol in this comment. The Jewish conception of the grave, where the dead existed, was a shadowy half existence devoid of pain or pleasure and any opportunity for creativity or action. Paul however was of the opinion that a departure from this life is followed by an immediate experience of another, albeit, spiritual reality. For believers this experience will be, as it were, "present with The Lord". Paul does not speculate about the experience of unbelievers. It seems also that these accounts accord rather with the expectations of the individuals given the preconceptions they grew up with, be it Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish etc. Atheists also report similar experiences and explain them by postulating the possibility that they are caused by a quirk of consciousness due to the brain 'shutting down'. The jury seems to be still out on the issue though. I'd fully expect biblical prophesies to be quite diverse rather than all falling into the same category, either allegorical or literal and some may even be found to be falling into both categories with perhaps even more than one fulfilment. What the prophets did not envision was all of their individual predictions being bound together in a book and then systematically worked into a scheme whereby some bible geeks could predict the date of the end times, in order to escape disaster. If a prophesy has a single allegorical fulfilment though, that does not mean there is no fulfilment of the prophesy. An allegorical fulfilment is still a fulfilment, (and maybe even the only one envisioned by the prophet), just not the literal fulfilment that some literalists might want to impose on it. .