Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:8, "We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord."
If you believe in some in-between place, you believe that your works help you get out of it, and it leads to a lot of errors as we see in the RCC
OT Hell is Sheol, which is nearly Hades, and simply a holding place for the dead distinguishing between the righteous and the unrighteous dead.
Hades is the word used in the NT as well. Hades or Gehenna is simply translated as Hell. The other word for Hell in the NT occurs in 2 Peter 2:4 and is the word Tartarus.
The words are chosen carefully, but as this thread proves most often misinterpreted by the eisegeiss of the reader.
Look here for more info: http://topicalbible.org/h/hell.htm
Hell as presented in the context of your respondences to this thread isn’t reconcilable with Biblical teachings on salvation, the Atonement or the nature of God. At each point a Biblical truth conflicts with your definition and gets ignored.
There is no thief on the cross, simply a criminal(who could very well be completely righteous). Jesus didn’t say Heaven, but paradise - a completely different place.
Do the research and you’ll see it isn’t unambiguous: there is a holding place.