Staircases in the Woods

Examining the New Paranormal Wilderness Nightmare

As an avid hiker who did a lot of solo backpacking into very creepy territory, I was immediately intrigued and terrified to read of hikers’ reports of mysterious staircases in the woods leading to nowhere.

After I had gotten acquainted with David Paulides’ Missing 411 books circa 2018, all my solo camping ceased. The decision was slowly being made as I delved more and more into his documented missing persons mysteries, but it was made once and for all when I had my own experience which was not easily explained away by anything normal. In short, I hiked into an area devoid of humans, but when the sun went down I heard what sounded like men muttering all night long, and extremely loud tree knocking. The sounds would start, and would cause all the other wildlife (frogs, bugs, etc.) to stop, resulting in a terrifying silence. It went on from sunset until sunrise. I never saw a single sign of humans as I ran out of those woods. As it turns out, this was a random area in New York where many Bigfoot encounters had been reported for the last few decades.

So, color me horrified when I am scrolling Reddit one evening from the safety of my bed, and I read the supposedly true encounters of a forest ranger who claimed he and all his colleagues came across many random staircases in the forest, and that very strange things happened around these flights of mystery stairs - such as missing time. The forest ranger claimed he had been silenced by his colleagues on the matter, and that a culture of never mentioning the phenomenon out loud had developed well before he began his career there.

“Now, I don't know if this is true in every SAR unit, but in mine, it's sort of an unspoken, regular thing we run into. You can try asking about it with other SAR 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 by 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 where we're really far into the wilderness, I'm talking 30 or 40 miles, at some point we'll find a staircase in the middle of the woods. 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 other 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 emphatically, that I should never go near any of them. I just sort of ignore them now when I run into them because it happens so frequently.”

Eventually this redditor wrote 8 parts to this tale, divulging on plenty of other stories and topics other than the stairs. But people continued to be fascinated by the rogue staircases, so the author trickled more and more information on that subject. He recounted a tale of “his buddy,” another SAR officer, and regaled the readers with X-Files-style plot thickening:

“My buddy has been an SAR officer for about seven years, he started when he was a junior in college, and he had a very similar experience when he first encountered the stairs. His trainer told him almost the same thing mine did, which was to never go near, touch, or ascend them. For the first year, he did just that, but apparently his curiosity got the better of him, and on one call he broke away from the line and went to go check a set of them out. He said they were about ten miles from the path where a teenage girl had vanished, and the dogs were following a scent. He was on his own, lagging behind the main group, when he saw a set of stairs off to his left. They looked like they were from a new house, because the carpeting was pristine and white. He said that as he got closer, he didn't feel any different, or hear any weird noises. He was expecting something to happen, like bleeding from his ears or collapsing, but he got right up next to them and didn't feel anything. The only thing, he said, that was odd was that there was absolutely no debris on the steps. No dirt, leaves, dust, anything. And there didn't appear to be any signs of animal or insect activity in the immediate area, which he found strange. It was less like things were avoiding them, and more like they just happened to be in a relatively barren part of the forest. He touched the stairs, and didn't feel anything except that sort of sticky feeling you get from new carpet. Making sure his radio was on, he slowly climbed the stairs; he said it was terrifying, because the way they'd been stigmatized, he wasn't really sure what was going to happen to him. He joked that half of him expected to be teleported to some other dimension and the other half was watching for a UFO to come swooping down. But he got to the top with little event, and he stood there looking around. But, he said, the longer he stood on the top step, the more he felt like he was doing something very, very wrong. He described it as the feeling you'd get if you were in a part of a government building you have no business being in. As if someone was going to come and arrest you, or shoot you in the back of the head, at any second. He tried to brush it off, but the feeling got stronger and stronger, and that's when he realized that he couldn't hear anything anymore. The sounds of the forest were gone, and he couldn't hear his own breathing. It was like some kind of weird, awful tinnitus, but more oppressive. He climbed back down and rejoined the search, and didn't mention what he'd done.
But, he said, the weirdest part came after. His trainer was waiting back at the welcome center after the search ended for the day, and he cornered my buddy before he could leave. He said his trainer had this look of intense anger, and he asked what was wrong. 'You went up them, didn't you.' My buddy said it wasn't phrased as a question. He asked how his trainer knew. The trainer just shook his head. 'Because we didn't find her. The dogs lost her scent.' My buddy asked what that had to do with anything. The trainer asked how long he'd been on the stairs, and my buddy said no more than a minute. The trainer gave him this really awful, almost dead-eyed look, and told him that if he ever went up another set of stairs again, he'd be fired. Immediately. The trainer walked away, and I guess he's never answered any of the questions my buddy has asked him about it since.“

Part 4 gets more elaborate and dramatic, with this once-rookie SAR officer taking another rookie under his wing and suddenly, he found himself instructing that person to remain silent the same way he had been instructed. At this point, the reader is hooked, because this is something never before heard of, and frankly the writing is excellent. Part 5 takes us to more outrageous planes of disbelief suspension when we’re told that yet another “buddy” chased down a hiker who had no face. We’re also told some of the staircases are upside-down now. The stories are not short. Each one could be a short story on its own in a book.

Part 6 is where, if the reader has not already stopped to question whether these reports are real, they really should at this point. We are treated to a doozy of a story he hadn’t felt like mentioning before, in which he shoots at a man and the man becomes a circus performer:

”When I fired, he was about fifty yards from me, and as soon as the gun goes off, he whirls around and goes off, back-flipping back into the woods.”

Kind of reminds me of this epic scene from Cabin in the Woods - it just gives the same outrageous vibes:

Part 7 tells us elaborate stories about wendigos on Native America reservations. He’s telling the story second-hand, but he sure includes a ton of titillating detail.

Finally, we near the end of this adventure with a very ominous, anxiety-inducing prelude:

“This will be my final update for now.

Things have deteriorated here to a degree that I didn't foresee. I didn't know how much writing about the things that are happening out here would affect every single part of my life, and maybe that was stupid of me. Maybe I should have considered it more seriously, but honestly I just thought I was writing about things that a few people would want to hear. I didn't think it would get this much attention.

People ask me about the stairs now. It doesn't happen every day, but when it does happen I never really know what to say. My bosses know someone is talking about them, and I'm sure that if they know, the higher-ups know. And I can tell you that they aren't happy about it. I've been formally told that I am not to speak a word about them to anyone anymore, which is part of the reason this has to be my final update. I can't risk my job for this; as much as it's been wonderful to get a lot of these things off my mind, I still do love my work, and I need to be out here. If anything, my being aware of what's really going on is enough reason to stick it out. I may not be able to tell people that they're out there, but if I see them, I can direct traffic away to somewhere safer.”

The author goes on to recount different types of stories returned to him by the throngs of gripped readers, and thanks them. He tells some more fantastical tales, and finally ends it with a warning:

“If you go out into the woods, I encourage you to be safe. Bring water, food, survival equipment. Let people know where you're going and when you'll be back. Don't go on uncharted paths unless you know exactly what you're doing.

And above all:

Don't touch them. Don't look at them. Don't go up them.”

Just kidding, he actually ends it after that by admitting this was fully fictional and he’s writing a book. This was all just creepypasta.

“EDIT: I realize I probably should have mentioned this at the beginning. The series is being paused, but the story is going to live on. A book is in the works. The first draft is coming along very nicely. Keep a lookout, NoSleep.”

For some reason, many people don’t realize this was all fictional. Perhaps they stopped reading before part 8. Perhaps they only read posts about the posts. But regardless, the internet did what the internet does, and soon other Redditors and Youtubers alike began claiming they too had found staircases in the woods, or simply repeating the stories in the original Reddit thread.

I wanted to believe this phenomenon is real, but it’s not. The only reports people reference are the linked stories in this article. So while I very badly wanted to believe that mysterious staircases in the forest were teleporting people to alternate dimensions, the sad fact about the paranormal realm is: sometimes people just make crap up, and tout it for various types of clout. SAD!

So this paranormal claim is, as Zak Bagans says: “This has been debunked".

Unlike old Zakky Bags, I am using the term correctly.

So look, as a writer myself, I’m not knocking the author of this creepypasta tale. I disagree with his posting it to a SAR subreddit as a true tale, and only revealing it as fictional after sucking in tons of readers. But I appreciate him at least admitting it at some point along the way. If you want to read his fiction, he linked the info in Part 8.

If he has written a book and you want to read really well-written fictional accounts of creepy things happening in the woods, please support his efforts. Please also buy David Paulides’ books, as his work seeks to help the families of missing persons.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep looking for real instances of creepy forest mysteries connecting our realm to the others, because they are abundant and we need to talk about them.