Staircases in the Woods

Let's just bring that energy down, bring it down, and we never bring it back up. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. We received an email a while ago. I'm pretty sure remember a while ago wanta lead Romero. I want to say it wanta lid Romero, but I don't know. You don't know, but I appreciate both ways. There was a few suggestions for a surprise here on the show, and one of them was really unusual. You remember it, mm hm, of course I do their cases? What Yeah, like staircases in the woods or something like that. And I was like, what does that even mean? Yeah, it's just kay, let's just do an episode on a random object. Like I'm gonna do an episode on this water bottle and then this jar over here with and then this rock. Yeah, you know, like right now we're in the process of getting this haunted object's episode out with a friend that's been in a box. But that's all I'll say on the matter. Have you opened the box yet? No, I'm afraid. I'm afraid and not record it because what if it jumps out and I want to catch it strangling me. True, he could be pretty angry at this point anyway, So I started looking up the staircases. I'm like, okay, what's this about? And I went down the rabbit hole. It turns out it's a pretty intense, creepy pasta slash urban legends slash true story. There are staircases in the woods. I'm gonna explain a little bit more, yes, please, because I'm so confused. Yeah, it's that's how I was when I first started looking, and I found all these stories on it. One thing led to another, and soon I found out what staircases have to do with national parks and strange disappearances, and it's bizarre. One of the earliest stories is the one about Torkic, who was an experienced ranger and would help find people in the jungles. This is in the Philippines, by the way. During one of his patrols, Torkik found two staircases and out of curiosity, he started checking out the carvings on it, and he was like, huh, interesting, right, He's just kind of looking at it, like, why is this staircase here? Where is it going? What? Anyway? Then a vicious dog appears. This guy was like, oh my god, a dog Robert on cue. He's following the script. Yeah, it's like he learned to read Robert freaking out here, goes up the stairs. He just climbs it. Then he waits because I don't know. I figure dogs climb stairs. That's why it's hard for me to believe this. The dog chased him up the staircase. Well, the dog has a sense to not go in this. The dog leaves. And by the way, dogs aren't dogs out there have been in for example, in South America and the jungles and stuff. Dogs are not something you go up and pet. Necessarily. You have a stick with you, and you have a rock ready just in case you need to scare it. And they all know what it is, and they're really scared of rocks. You don't have to you don't have to hit them or hurt them. But anyway, so the dog leaves and he comes back down the stairs. He just he goes back to it was supposed to patrol, to his you know, office or whatever. And they're like, what, he's pretty much fired, Like they don't expect them. This is weird. What are you talking about? And he's like, well, you've been gone for five years. That was not what I was expecting at all. That was absolutely not what I was expecting. That's a story. It's a time travel thing, right. Oh. Interesting. There's this other story about a doctor that's working as an infectious disease specialist and he said that back in the forties, after the Roswell crash, they started getting reports of animal mutilations, so they were called in to check it out. After months of research, workers started noticing strange staircases in the woods that were giving off a type of frequency. Now this is according to a website called Historic Mysteries, which got it from some other site which got it from readit. Probably they would notice that the stairs would move and show strange burn marks underneath where they had been. Eventually, just six days later, the stairs completely vanished. Question are they stairs up to the sky or stairs down into the earth? Ooh? Now they're actually stairs, like up towards the sky, but they don't go to the sky, so they go up that high just to nothing. They're just that's so random. Can you imagine finding that in the woods here's some stairs. I would be creeped out. I would probably think it was like a playground of some sort, I think at first, but people that they have that same reaction. And these are real, by the way, Like we might have listeners that have seen these and they're just like, oh, that's weird, but they never thought much of them. Oh, I hope they write in and tell us yeah. I think out of these stories, one of these is the more believable one, and it's this one. This one takes place in Sweden with two Swedish students who were out hiking. Axel and Isaac were their names. I know it's not a joke, but it's still funny. Axel and Isaac were their names, and they had been hiking for hours when they noticed the staircase and a clearing. They were thrown off and they were like, why is this here? Why would anybody put that there? Axel was like, nope, I'm not gonna climb that, and Isaac was like, I'll go, and so he climbed. But as he reached the top, they both heard a scream and Isaac rushed down and they both took off running. Axel, by the way, didn't wait for Isaac, he just ran. So Isaac was behind. Hey, wait, up. They were just well was that like? Imagine hearing that? Right Once they caught their breath, Axel felt a hand on his shoulder, so he turned around expecting to see Isaac, but nope, he was still trying to catch up to him because he's a bad friend and he left him behind. He just wonders like, why what was that who touched my shoulder? And when he was asked what did it feel like or whatever, he just said it just a cold hand that creazed me. I don't know why. But this story is like less intense, but it's just so much more believable to me. I don't know. And also he's being a totally bad friend. Awkward moment anyway, So if you were to see one of these, though, Michelle like, seriously, would you climate would you go up the stairs? That's tricky because I have been known to go into abandoned houses and explore. I have done that. You mean you've done illegal things like trespassing. I just remember one time my friend came over in high school and was like, Hey, do you guys want to go explore a haunted house? And it was just an abandoned house, but it was like in this in a neighborhood with all these rich houses and then there was an abandoned house in the middle of it. That's like my dream. Oh yeah, it was cool. We went and did that. We went and did that in the middle of the night, as teens need to do. But it was just such a Scooby Doom moment of hey, let's go, let's go explore this abandoned house. I feel like all these cool stories start off that way. Nothing happened and it was just But yes, if there were just random stairs in like an area like that, would I go up at caveat Are they made of stone or are they made of wood? Because I wouldn't go up woodstairs. I might go up stone stairs. Okay, what if they're metal? That would be very weird. Then I have to tell you this story of the reddit. Okay, tell me, because that's very weird. I always talk about this subreddit called no Sleep, right. No Sleep is basically a place where people write in creepy pastas and urban legends and the makeup stories that are completely fictional. One of these users on there posted a real story. He was obviously like people were like, this is fake, blah blah, but he defended himself enough so that people believe them, and he had to make a part two. It wasn't about just staircases, right, he talked, he's like a search and rescue officer, so he has a lot of experience out in the forest and he can say very specific things about his type of work. In trying to trace the story back, ended up with this story. This is actually how I landed in that Reddit thing, which I guess was the source of a lot of these lists and articles that are out there. To me, seeing a staircase out in the woods might be like a like what remains of an abandoned house. It just yeah, like a castle, like if you're in a different country, the tornado took in the staircase is attached to the foundation or something. Oh, that's funny that you say that, because there is like just a foundation and three stairs. Like in my neighborhoods, I've never known what the house looked like. But it's got a big fence around it, and it looks like it should be torn down for construction at some point, but it never has been. But just like the pillars, the stone pillars, and then three stairs up, just like the entryway to a house and that's it. There's nothing else anyway. This one reddit user named Search and Rescue Woods posted on the no Sleep subreddit, like I said earlier, is about Usually people post about fiction and all this stuff. But he had several true stories of strange and mysterious rescues. There was one about staircases, and this is what he said. This is the last one I will tell, and it's probably the weirdest story I have now. I don't know if it's true in every ESAAR Search and Rescue unit, but in mind, it's sort of an unspoken regular thing we run into. You can try asking about it with other ESAAR officers, but even if they know what you're talking about, they probably won't say anything about it. We've been told not to talk about it with our superiors, and at this point we've all gotten so used to it that it doesn't even seem weird anymore. On just about every case, when we're really far into the wilderness, I'm talking about thirty or forty miles, at some point, we'll find a staircase in the middle of the woods. What it's almost like if you took the stairs in your house, cut them out, and put them in the forest. I asked about it the first time I saw some, and the officer just told me not to worry about it, that it was normal. Everyone I asked said the same thing. I wanted to go check them out, but I was told very empathically that I should never go near any of them, empathically or emphatically, but which I liked because it's like they just put a feeling, and they just put a feeling on him, said again. Every One I asked said the same thing. I wanted to go check them out, but I was told very emphatically, emphatically, emphatically, I said emphatically, Michelle, I can't say that word, so just past yourself in saying it. I wanted to go check them out, but I was told very emphatically that I should never go near any of them. I just ignore them now when I run into them, because it happens so frequently. That's a pretty creepy story. People from Reddit were criticizing him because the story just sounded a lot like David Paulyad's or Polyides from this Bigfoot organization, and he was like, no, I'm actually I work in search and rescue and actually like his stories because I can verify a lot of the things that he says because I work in that, so I'm very familiar with all that stuff, and I have more stories in search and rescue. You guys want to know. He proved himself to the Reddit crowd and they accepted him, and they wanted a part two. Anyway, he does post more on the staircase stuff. He says that to answer a bunch of questions on there, he says that staircases come into a variety of different shapes, sizes, styles, and conditions. Some are just ruins, others are brand new. What the fuck? Why is that so freaky? That's so freaky, it's weird. They say that some of these are metal and viral, like the kind that you see at a lighthouse, and some are tall, some are short, like we look like porch stairs. But he emphasizes that it looks like someone got rid of the house and only left the stairs. But he wasn't the only one that mentioned it. And it's one of those things that like, for example, right now, it just happened, right, I tell you staircase and you're like, hey, there is one around here. Yeah, but imagine that in the woods right. That's the kind of thing where like people are like, hey, I have seen that, And there's this story by user red pandas in pajamas. That's how you know it's real, the authentic account of red pajamas. Wait what red pandas inja red pandas in pajamas. Yeah, the red pandas in pajamas. This person said, I just realized that I have seen stairs in the middle of the woods. There's this quarry near my house that my friends and I would go Sorry, I was just remembering that emphatically. Emphatically, there's a quarry near my house that my friends and I would go to from time to time just to f around. Did he say f around? Did not fuck around? The memory is hazy at best, but I can recall a small wooden set of half stairs in an unpathed space of the trees. Now, this quarry is not very dense, and it's right next to a housing development. I guess we didn't think it was a big deal, though, I recall having a weird feeling about them. I asked my two friends I was with why there would be there like that, and one of them shrugged it off, and the others started making up some story obviously false. Oh yeah, I heard that old mister mcgillicut he used to live there and he killed all of his wives and kids and that's why the stairs are there. And then this guy was like fake, obviously false. But I do remember having a strong enough negative vibe about the stairs that I kept away from them. When reading these, I was thinking maybe I'd go back to check them out again. But there's mention in here about how you never see the same stairs twice. I'm curious, super curious, but my gut feeling remains the same that I should not go near them, especially after reading these. Seriously, so many staircase in the woods, so many staircases in the woods. Unbelievable theory started popping up. Obviously, Oh yes, I want to hear theories because this is weird. Yeah, one of them, I guess. One of the notable ones was launched into fame by jessev On TikTok, who says that if you see a staircase in the woods, stay away from it because children disappearances have been linked to areas where there are staircases deep in the forests. Huh oh, I wonder if it's a portal, like a portal to another. Oh, is that one of your things? That's a theory right there? A portal like it could be like you go up there and you're like, what what is this stuff? You disappear, you jump dimensions, whatever, you time travel, like, yeah, whatever, whatever the portal's for. But basically she just talks about the creepiness of it, and also the child disappearances, how people like kids go up there because there's just a staircase. A kid is gonna want to go up a staircase. I would like to go up a staircase if I were a kid. Could they go up there and then they just disappear? I don't know why I don't have this written on here, but it's on the post that the Reddit post, the original one or maybe the follow up one, where this search and rescue guy, the one that I told you about in the beginning, there was this strange disappearance that he mentions where this young girl she's with her grandparents and I guess her mom or something, and she climbs up a tree and they're just waiting for her to come down, but she never comes back down, and supposedly like she just never came back and that was it. She was gone, what the fuck? That's so weird, And there's weird things. There's also this other story of hiker who disappeared and when they were trying to find him, they found his walking sticks been a branch like thirty feet or thirty meters up really high up there, and you're like, how would he get up there? And it's like it was tied from the handle or whatever, and they're like, how does that happen? So staircases, stuff in the trees. Maybe it's like something in the like you have to climb. Maybe there's something in the air, something in the air. There's something in the air tonight, I don't know. Weird little portals in the woods, very strange. But my thing is if they're stairs, does that mean something came out of the portal? And it's just there's a certain time amount that the stairs are down and then they go back up into the portal, So like aliens from the the stairs stay as long as that portal's open. Bigfoot that's how they Bigfoot makes these stairs. They're just trying to help, trying to build houses like habitat for humanity style And we're over here. Yeah, them, that's terrible. They've only ever been helping it. It's Jimmy Carter's biggest secret. Yeah. And since they're tall, they can actually build a staircase. Yeah, it's just normal. And we're over here like we're super and we're over here criticizing their smell and scared of them and their sounds. Typical within this rabbit hole. There were so many stories of disappearances. It really made me a little paranoid about national parks and forests and stuff. Yeah, there's also more TikTok conspiracy theorists out there. And one of them, Dang the Dingbat twenty one. Ooh, the Dang the Dingbat, started talking about the high number of people who disappear and it's a lot. And they started, I guess, looking at maps to try to find overlap between bigfoot sightings, underground caves stuff, and disappearance is happening around there, and they found a correlation. Now, I don't know how scientific this is. Again, I don't know, but show me a map and I'm gonna believe it. And fair fair. According to the National Missing and Identified Person System, more than six hundred thousand people go missing in the United States every year, but the number that is actually disappearing in the wild, it is not clear. And I was trying to find out, like how many people actually go missing in the forests and stuff, and the more reliable ones And this is according to an article It says one of the most reliable info actually comes from David Paulad's or Paulites, the founder of the North America Bigfoot Search, who has a database of these things disappearances under mysterious circumstances. Yeah, and according to him, there are sixteen hundred people currently missing in the wild somewhere in the United States. That's a lot. Oh holy shit. And what's disturbing is that by looking at different patterns people, they know that people disappear in the late afternoon or just before or during severe weather, bounce a little more obvious if their children. They found that some of them are found very far from the place where they disappeared, like very far. There was this one case, I don't remember the details of it anymore, but a kid disappeared and it was found fifteen miles away about a month later in an area where no kid could possibly climb, Like how can you go there? And had when they found him. He had been dead for a couple of days, but he had been gone for a month. Was he just hiking around, just climbing, exploring and he was not. Yeah, he was not missing anything, He was not hurt. He was just missing his shoes. Not a single scratch on him. They said, so not an animal, not what happened. But yeah, there's other theories out there, like, like I said, the cave systems under national parks where they say that strange creatures roam feral humans? Is that how you say? Are feral fal feral humans, cannibals? Bigfoot? Some people like you, for example, say that the stairs are portals, while others say that they are the remains of houses that existed there, which is kind of my idea. Guess they could be that too. If I had to bet on this and say where these stairs come from, I would say that the remains of old houses that are just so like just gone and they've been gone forever, that eventually the area became forest and all that stuff. And to me, that's creepy already. That makes sense if they're stone stairs. It doesn't make sense if there are woodstairs or metal stairs, like that house falls down It's like a lot of the times the fireplace stays like or if it burns down or whatever, so the fireplace will be there. So it makes sense that stone stairs would also be there. What doesn't make sense is woodstairs going to nothing a metal staircase going to nothing. Yeah. I was also thinking it could be like your crop circle making friend, there's a collective out there. They're just building staircases because they're practicing like something, some art thing, or they're just trying to trick people. There could just be some weird rogue carpenters out there that are just like yeah, anarchy stairs in the woods yeay, and end up showing in what is it unsolved? What was unsolved mysteries? Yeah, it could end up there, that's for sure. Yeah, this is insane. Who knows what these staircases are what they mean. But if you've seen any as a listener, you've seen these out or if you know of anybody who has, I want to know about them. We want to know about them. Make sure you take a picture because I don't know, I feel like they just make it real. When because when I was reading all these I'm just seeing comments and I'm like, did you really see it. Also, I bet sometimes if you saw the picture, you'd be like, oh, yeah, that was a house or that was a lighthouse. You can tell the way the ground around it is. Yeah, but thank you Wanna Lee for the suggestion for the story. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the rabbit hole. This is the kind of thing that I like. I mean, honestly, never had heard of anything like that, never had thought about stairs in the woods ever, and now I'm freaked out by them. Anyway, hopefully we get more of these types of strange stories. Yeah, we loved it. We love it. I want to get like a cave or a tunnel story. I think that would be like, I don't know, it's got to be like some sort of mole people. Anyway, that's a story of staircases. There's more info. I'm gonna link to everything in the description. It'll be on there all the sources, I guess, but I think the Reddit post and check out the tiktoks. What are we going to talk about next week, Michelle, I don't know, but I think it'll be a surprise. Bye bye, guys, emphatically