Ep246 - Staircase In The Woods - Creep Street Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A burn, fat, fat, build, muscle, hustle filled competence. With
the StairMaster Oblivion. It's the StairMaster machine that will work
out your body and soul. You know. Forever I'd been
lifting weights, using treadmills, row machines. None of it was

(00:21):
working for me until I found StairMaster Oblivion. I was
sick of just walking in place on a typical Staremaster,
but no, this one led me straight to the gates
of hell, and then I really got my sweat on.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
My doctor told me, with my bad heart, I needed
to change my ways. But after a few months on
the Staremaster Oblivion, I felt proud facing myself in the mirror,
in my demons.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Oh you're a disgrace. I tried, I try.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I just want to make you pro.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
You're an embarrassment to your family. Weke you. With the
Staremaster Oblivion, you can finally shed those pounds and those tears.
Stare Master Oblivion may result in loss of self, loss
of sanity, and loss of life. Staremaster Oblivion get ripped apart.

(01:28):
Oh God, oh God. Citizens of the Milky Way. My

(02:04):
name is Dylan Hackworth and I'm Gage Hurley, and you
have arrived at the tippity top, the top of the stairs. Baby,
don't look down, ah, because we're way up here. We
are way up here at the Creep Street Podcast, folks. Yes,
that's right. Oh, buckle up and you know what. Put

(02:24):
on your backpack, get your extra water, get your snacks,
get your survivalist literature guide, whatever, because we are headed
into the woods and we're looking for stairs. That's right, folks,
this is one oh I've been itching to do. Tonight's
episode is Staircase in the Woods. Now, let me just

(02:54):
walk all over you with my sources here. First we
got strange cases of mysterious stairs and the wilderness that
lead to nowhere by Brent Swansor at Mysterious Universe. And
then an incredible story from the website and blog Phantoms
and Monsters, Lon Strickland's website. He's based out of Chicago.
The last story I'm gonna share was one that these

(03:17):
phantom staircases that show up in the woods. They've kind
of like popped up in other episodes on the Periphery,
and they're always so freaky that I find I wanted
to do an episode dedicated to this weird phenomenon because
this phenomenon to me, I don't know what it is
about this. This just really gives me the he begbis.

(03:38):
I mean, this really gets under my skin, like in
a creepy way.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's a very curious oddity. It's very out of place,
I think, is what grabs the attention so quickly, because yeah,
it is. It's strange, very.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Very strange, exactly, and I think just naturally as humans,
like many things I think stare there's almost symbolic in
a way. They can mean many things. Our minds kind
of speak in metaphor, and there's something about it when
you see it out of place like that that just
sends a chill down your spine. That's why I wanted

(04:14):
to dive into this because boy oh boy, buckle up, folks,
get your camping gear, because we're setting off into the
woods right now.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Hope you brought somemores.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Hope you brought them. I hope you did. I hope
you did. I brought the wieners. I brought the wieners
in the buns. Now, Folks, if there is one place
where reality likes to bend and twist and occasionally take
a smoke break, well, gosh, dang, it's out there in
the woods. There's just something about the deep forest where

(04:48):
the rules of polite society don't apply. Over the years,
we've come across all kinds of hair raising stories that
take place out there in the green, tangled stretches of
no man's land, disappearances, shadowy figures watching from the trees,
crypti encounters, et cetera. But today we're not talking about creatures.

(05:14):
We're talking about carpentry. That's a right, man, just saying
the word. That's right, folks, because hidden out in the
middle of nowhere, in national forests and dense woodlands, you
may just stumble across something a little off, a little

(05:37):
too clean, a little too deliberate. I'm talking about the
mystery of phantom staircases. And just as the name implies,
these are lonely, eerie staircases that rise up out of
the ground and lead to nowhere, just sitting there in

(06:00):
the woods. Of all the tails out there about phantom staircases,
the ones that really twist the knife come from deep
inside America's national parks. And we're not talking just off
the beaten path, No, I mean literally miles into the
thick of it, in the bush where no one should

(06:23):
be building anything, let alone something like this, like just
a random set of stairs. Imagine you're out hiking, no
sign of civilization in sight, not even a rusted sign
post or a broken trail marker, and suddenly there it
is a set of stairs, just regular old stairs, rising

(06:49):
out of the brush, like the spine of some forgotten
beast of a house. Literally, like a house was there
that's now gone, and it's just stair It's a staircase.
No walls, no floors, no doorways, just a skeletal slice
of architecture standing all alone. And some of these. What's

(07:11):
even weirder is some of these are in pristine condition,
like they were just built that morning. Others sirp weathered
and falling apart, rotted, crumbling, you know, like relics of
an old civilization that the history books missed out on.
And get this, some don't even stand upright. Witnesses say

(07:35):
they found staircases upside down, sometimes suspended in mid air,
or even jutting out of lakes and swamps. Some of
them are stone, some are iron or polished wood or
rusted steel. There's no pattern, no origin, no explanation, but

(07:58):
one thing is consistent with all of them. Wherever these
stairs appear, weirdness follows shortly behind. Now, if finding a
staircase in the woods wasn't weird enough, what's really freaky
are the details. Some folks who stumble across these things

(08:18):
have noted a strange and unsettling pattern. A lot of
these stairs have white carpet.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Weird that that's like a repeated thing. That that's a
thing that they have in common. That's so strange.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
That is strange, and what's weird. You know, you think
you're out in the dirty forest white carpet, and yet
often they're found in pristine condition, like they're untouched, not
even a leaf or a smudge of dirt, not a
single muddy bootprint like you'd expect in the middle of

(08:53):
the darn forest. And it doesn't stop there. The ground
around these things are usually found dead and lifeless. It's
like nature itself wants nothing to do with these things.
No grass, no weeds, not even moss growing on the stones.
It's like the forest just sort of steps back, like

(09:15):
the forest itself is almost afraid of these things. Now,
folks will say the second you get close to one
of these mysterious staircases. The atmosphere changes. There's this thick,
suffocating dread that just kind of hits you like a
punch to the gut. The air gets still, the birds

(09:38):
go quiet. It's like you've stepped inside a snow globe
filled with an unnerving quiet. Some hikers say that they
had to turn and run, not because of what they saw,
but because of what they felt when around these staircases,
a pure primal terror. And here's the kicker. When they

(10:01):
come back later, Oftentimes the stairs are gone or even creepier.
Sometimes they've moved, same style, same materials, but now they're
showing up somewhere else entirely. It's like these things get up,
they hike up their skirt and move.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, that's so strange, so a commonality. It sounds like
a lot of people have a just an unbelievable feeling
of fear and terror.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Right, you know, you wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Just think it is unusual, but why would it actually
make you afraid? You know, I just can't imagine walking
through the woods and seeing a staircase and actually being
terrified unless there was some sort of aura about this.
I mean, that alone suggests that there's something paranormal going on.
And then the moving part is incredibly perplexing because how

(10:57):
would people even be able to do that. You've got
to imagine a person probably stumbles upon this and doesn't
have the ability to move it, So, yeah, what could
be the explanation for that?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
And if it was a practical joke, like it's one
that you can't guarantee will even pay off, how do
you know that person will ever come back to that
same spot again?

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, and it's a lot of work for a practical
joke that you never get to see the outcome of.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Exactly right, exactly. It's almost like the way people feel
like when they enter a haunted house or something. It's
like this feeling of they've got to get out of there.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, it's like an aura.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah. Now, this whole thing might sound like simple campfire
gossip at first, more like a creepy story you'd pass
around with a flashlight under your chinty chin chin. But
what really cemented these stories into modern lore was a
post of all places on Reddit. This wasn't just from

(12:01):
some thrill seeker with a spooky imagination either. This user
claimed to be a season search and Rescue officer, working
for the US Forest Service, and what he said stuck
with the readers for a long time to come. He
claimed that, yes, these stairs are real, that during search

(12:22):
and rescue operations in national parks, it's not uncommon for
teams to come across these bizarre structures. And here's the
part that really raises the hair on your arms. According
to the search and rescue worker, the teams are explicitly
told by the higher ups not to go near them.

(12:46):
No explanation, no reason why, just a firm, unnerving directive
that you stay away from the stairs. No exceptions. I mean,
when the folks try to run toward danger, say no, thanks,
you know something's wrong. Here is what the poster Search

(13:08):
and Rescue woods had to say of their encounter with
these mysterious staircases. Now. I don't know if this story
is true in EVERYESSAAR unit, but in mind, it's sort
of an unspoken regular thing we run into. You can
try asking about it with other ESSAAR officers, but even

(13:29):
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 thirty or forty miles,

(13:52):
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
there 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.

(14:12):
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, think about this'll be something

(14:33):
that pops up again. They're encountered a lot while on
search and rescue missions. Yeah, when someone goes missing. Very interesting.
So yes, it's easy to chalk this up to just
another eerie Internet tail, a little bit of digital folklore
cooked up by someone with too much time on their hands.

(14:55):
But the minute that story hit the web, people started
coming out of the woodwork. Folks from all over started
chiming in, saying, wait, I've seen that too. And here's
the kicker folks. They hadn't told anyone they'd been sitting
on these experiences for years, sometimes decades, because they thought

(15:17):
they were the only ones. What started as an anonymous
poster's claim about staircases showing up in places where people
had gone missing, quickly drew a chorus of voices sharing
near identical stories, first from across the US, then Europe, Asia,
South America. The stairs were everywhere, and some of those

(15:40):
stories are strange in ways that you just don't forget.
They stick with you.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
And that is really interesting that people from all over
were recounting these stories from different continents. And it could
be the case. I mean, Reddit does kind of have
a culture of everybody jumping on a bandwagon of telling
a fun story. You know that is just a story.

(16:06):
But it does seem even more credible to me that
you're getting these stories from all across the globe.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Right, and you know, and who's to say that a
lot of these folks saw the staircase and maybe didn't
get that feeling of weirdness. They just thought, oh, someone
dumped some stairs, and they never talked about it because
they kind of forgot about it. It was just something,
just what they thought was some junk in the woods.
But then when you start to hear other people describe it,

(16:34):
you're like, wait a second, I saw that too, Because
at the time, maybe it wasn't even because you're like, oh,
I won't tell anyone because they'll think I'm crazy. Maybe
it was a thing you just didn't think twice about
and you just kind of forgot about. True.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
But that means that if a lot of these accounts
are true, which it sounds like at least a large
portion of them are, what is the reason for this
to be such a common phenomena exist.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
So let's share another tale here from one of the
posters that encountered these staircases and described them as being
constructed in a way that just didn't line up with logic.
They said, an hour east of Iron Wood, there's a
clearing in the forest that has stairs. I was hiking

(17:21):
and exploring with my cousins.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Cousins cousins cousins, and we stumbled on a podcast, and
we stumbled on a clearing about half a football field long,
and it had a few staircases, but not against trees,
just standing in the.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Open They looked like stairs from a normal suburban home.
Kind of old. Though. The older cousin decided to investigate,
and he walked to the stairs to see how they
were being held up. He couldn't find anything, which weirded
him out. He made us all leave. Grass didn't grow

(18:04):
near the stairs either. All right, another one. Now this
was almost like a feel of wind turbines, but like
these stairs just looming in a field, this opening in
the woods, and of course the grass was like get
away from me. The grass, even the grass, didn't want
these things. Here's another poster that claim the staircases they

(18:27):
encountered almost seemed to be infused with something evil. Here's
what they had to say. A few months back, we
went hiking, nothing big, just to walk and a picnic
in some woods. With us were my niece and nephew,
who are both quite young, so I joined them and

(18:47):
hide and seek while the proper grown ups had coffee
and whatnot. Me and my nephew were first to hide,
but we split up and I ran alone quite a
ways into a thicket of wood, and I found a staircase.
Nothing remarkable. It was riddled with moss and made from
what looked like really old concrete with large pebbles of

(19:11):
rocks in it. It didn't really seem out of place
at the time, but thinking back anyway, I decided it
was fit for a hiding place. But after only a
few seconds of squatting behind it, I got up and
stepped back. I couldn't shake the feeling that I really
shouldn't be anywhere near it. I suddenly had this feeling

(19:35):
of being severely unwelcome and that I should get as
far away from it as possible. So I went to
my family and didn't look back at it. Thinking about
it now, it still gives me some sort of, I
don't know, twisted wrong feeling.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
They kind of remind me of the fear that people
have when they go into abandoned buildings. Yes, there's something about,
you know, liminal spaces and empty malls, empty department stores.
They are a place that is typically full of life,
they're typically they're in use, And a staircase is a

(20:18):
transitional object essentially, and these are transitioning to nowhere to
nothing exactly. It's strange, and it wouldn't on its surface
seem like it would cause such a feeling, But maybe
it's a psychological effect, or maybe there is something paranormal going.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
On absolutely now. As you might expect, most folks who
stumble on these staircases, as we said, they feel that
sense of dread in their gut and make the wise
decision to get the hell away. But of course there's
always someone who's just kind of stupid, someone who looks

(20:57):
at a set of cursed stairs rising out of the
underbrush and thinks, what's the worst that could happen? Well, buddy,
the worst that could happen is literally the plot of
this King episode, because spoiler alert, there's a lot of
folks out there willing to roll the dice on these stairs.
One account tells of a man who climbed to the

(21:20):
tip of the top of one of these staircases, nothing fancy,
just five or six steps. In the moment he reached
the top, he heard an awful sound, an inhuman, bone
chilling scream, and it was so loud it turned his
blood ice. Naturally, he bolted and got the hell out

(21:44):
of there. But as he tore through the brush trying
to escape, he felt a hand grab his shoulder hard,
like it had real strength. He turns around and of
course no one's there now, Another even darker story concerns

(22:06):
a woman who was climbing one of these staircases. She
was just curious, little kiddy. She reached the top, pause,
and suddenly she collapsed, just like that. She would die
later of an aneurysm. No warning, no known medical condition,

(22:28):
just a healthy woman gone. And yes, it obviously could
have been a coincidence. But when you start stacking stories
like this on top of one another, coincidence or not,
maybe stay off the stairs. Bruh.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, maybe a lot of these people have a fear
of cardio.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I mean, dang lady couldn't even make it up five stairs.
But rest in peace, of course. Then there's the freaky
case of a witness known only by the handle of
Case nine. According to his account, when he encountered one
of these staircases that old song and dance called curiosity

(23:11):
got the better of him, and just like so many
before him, he made the choice to climb to the
tippity top, one foot after the other. But when he
reached the top, he didn't hear a noise or a
blood curdling scream. He didn't feel a hand grab him,
but he did feel a presence. Something was waiting for him.

(23:37):
Up there something unseen and not of this world. It
felt malevolent, like stepping into a room that hates you.
He couldn't see it, he couldn't touch it, but every
part of him, every nerve, every instinct, could feel it.

(24:00):
He was not alone. He could feel that something was
standing inches away, watching him with blinding hatred, and whatever
it was, it wanted him gone. Here is what the
witness said. I found the staircase while walking through foliage

(24:24):
so thick I didn't see it until it was almost underfoot.
The stairs were made of loose cobble and moist earth,
like they were a work of masonry once long ago.
I climbed the stairs thoughtlessly, half expecting there to be
a landing to greet me at the top. There wasn't, though,

(24:44):
just another crumbly step and an unimpressive view. Something caught
my eye as I craned my head. The bushes were
packed tight except where the stumps of dead trees formed
sunken wells around them. And from one of these craters

(25:05):
someone was looking at me. I remember clearly their dark,
lean face. Their round eyes were black. No sooner had
I seen this face than it disappeared again, and only
then did I have the foresight to take off down

(25:28):
the steps and back through the bushes and brambles. Well well, well,
that's the first time I've heard a story about these
staircases that had a literal sighting attached to it, like
some sort of almost like an It almost gives me
like a faithful gumbost, like an elven kind of has

(25:48):
that like feeling to it.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
The lean face and the black eyes.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it's something of the Earth rather than like an
extraterrestrial something like ancient or something.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
That would make sense, because if these staircases are haunted,
that just seems so strange and unusual. I can't imagine
why that would be. How would a staircase become haunted
unless maybe it was part of a house that was
haunted and that's the only remnant left that the spirit
has now attached itself to exactly. But the faithful idea,

(26:24):
that's an interesting one. Maybe it is something that these
things have become possessed or haunted by some sort of
earth bound spirit long after they became part of the woods.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Right, something elemental almost, And if your e silence and
inhuman screams weren't enough to keep you off those steps.
Let's talk about something even stranger and a favorite here
on creep Street, missing time time, Because according to some folks,
when you get too close to these steps, or god

(26:59):
forbid you actually climb them, you may be risking the
shattering of your very reality. One story came from another
search and rescue volunteer who claims his team came across
the staircase with pristine white carpet in the middle of
the gosh dang dirty forest, just sitting there like it

(27:21):
had been beamed in from some suburban showroom. Well, of course,
curiosity that old critter got the better of it and
another teammate of his, and they decided to climb it
just to see. But the moment they hit the top,
everything changed. Sound died, the woods went quiet, and this horrible,

(27:50):
creeping panic settled over them. They didn't see anything, they
didn't hear anything, but they knew something awful was about
to happen. They bolted off the stairs and ran back
to their team. But there was a problem. They thought

(28:12):
they had been gone just a few minutes. Turns out
it had been hours, and when they told their leader
what had happened, he didn't argue didn't even act surprised.
He just looked at them and said, don't ever go
up those stairs again. But that's not even the strangest one.

(28:38):
Another witness claimed to be a ranger in the Philippines.
So here we go, we're getting out of the United States.
Here shout out to our Filipino listeners. We've got a
big listener base over there. We love you guys. Well,
this witness was hiking through the thick jungle when he
stumbled across one of these staircases. He figured, hey, why

(28:58):
not climb it for a better view of the terrain.
No big deal, right, Well, he goes up, he looks around,
he comes down, and keeps moving. All seemed well. Only
when he reaches his destination did he realize five years

(29:20):
had passed. He'd been declared missing, his family thought he
was dead. And here's the icing on the cake. He
has no memory of where he was during this time.
In just one moment on these stairs, and the next moment,
half a decade vanished like that. So the question is

(29:45):
where do the stairs actually go? Because, friends, it's looking
more and more like they're leading to some sort of
a quantum rift in space time. Like he literally just
went to the top, got the view and left. Think
about almost like Interstellar when they go down to that
planet and for the guy waiting for them up in

(30:07):
the craft, it's like twenty some years when they they
felt like they were only gone for like what like
forty five minutes or something like.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
That, exactly the time was relative on that planet. Yeah,
it could be this is some sort of time rift.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, right, Like because think about it doesn't mention like
they suddenly had long hair and a big beard that
they hadn't cut in five years, or if they would
have starved to death if they had. Actually so, it's
clearly like some kind of a rift or something because
I'm assuming they're wearing the same clothes they had on.
They looked the same. They probably didn't age five years,

(30:42):
I would.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Assume, right, five years.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Wow. Ooh, just had to take a quick pause there,
creep Street, just to give your core palpitating hard ar rest.
If you're enjoying this episode, go ahead and follow us
on Facebook, Instagram, creep Street Podcast, Twitter at creep Street Pod,
TikTok at creep Street Podcasts. That's right, and if once

(31:07):
a week is not enough for you, just head on
over to patreon dot com for all sorts of goodies.
We got three different tiers there, something for every tier,
so get your fixings. We even got a free tier
where you can listen to the weekly sketches before they
go live on the episode. Now, without further ado, back
to today's story. Now, we'll be the first to admit that, yes,

(31:35):
some folks think there's a simple explanation here, that these
are just the remnants of old cabins or lookout posts
or maybe even half finished buildings left to rot before
the roof ever went up. And sure, maybe a few
of them are. Certainly almost certainly it is. It's like
we always say here on Creep Street, just because one

(31:56):
thing is explainable doesn't mean all of it is. You know,
just because a few guys admit to making a crop
circle doesn't mean all of those crop circles are fake. So, yes,
of course, I'm sure a lot of times people come
across these things. Yes, they are harmless, just like things
left from like a building that was there or something.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
And maybe there's a variety of things going on with
these staircases too, you know, maybe some of them are haunted,
maybe some of them involve elementals like we talked about before,
and maybe some of them are time rifts. Now, why
all staircases, that's a whole other question. And I mean, yeah,

(32:34):
it could be that there's some sort of collective consciousness
power going on to because the staircase is a man
made object right at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
And I think that's a good point because maybe when
you have something that is to the human mind so incomprehensible,
we put there something we understand. Now the effect is
still something that we can't comprehend, but it's almost like
whether it's us or whatever it is, the source of

(33:04):
this power puts something there that we do understand so
that we can It's kind of like putting the dog's
pill in peanut butter. Yeah, we're given something we understand symbolically,
whether it's a like a set of stairs and it's
a way of like.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
It's a channel. Yes, it's almost like a channel. It's
like collectively humanity. You'd have to go to a pretty
primitive part of the world for people to not recognize
a staircase. It's a symbol in the collective human consciousness.
So maybe other forces that are out there in our
universe are, yeah, using the staircases as like a channel.

(33:44):
But the other strange thing is the things that these
staircases have in common, like the white carpet. I mean
that doesn't even sound like common to a staircase in
a house, rightly.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yes, exactly, it's almost heavy, like it makes you think
of like a heavenly set of stairs or something like that.
But despite the fact that, yes, there's probably cases where
people stumble across absolutely normal staircases, then explain why every
single one shows up miles from any known settlement. Does

(34:19):
it happen just to freak people out? And why does
it happen to have white carpet that never gets dirty? No, no, no, no, no.
Something doesn't add up. And that's, of course when the
theories start rolling in. Some say these staircases are ritual sites,
altars for things best left unnamed. Others say they're portals,

(34:43):
openings in the fabric of reality, doorways between our world
and somewhere else. And there's those who think that it's
the work of aliens or ancient civilizations, or that it's
all just one big government experiment playing out in real
time and we're just the lab rats running up those stairs.

(35:04):
As we know, there's some that theorized that, like so
many people go missing in the national parts that we've
talked about it before, like does the government maybe have
like a truce with the extraterrestrials, Like Okay, you can abduct,
but only in these designated areas, places where we can say, oh,
they must have you know, got lost or fallen into

(35:25):
a cave or something.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
And maybe whoever, maybe whatever is doing the abducting is
using things that are familiar to people to lure them in.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yes, you would almost think it has to. Just like
you put cheese or peanut butter on a mouse trap.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
And a staircase in the context of being out in
the middle of nowhere, is likely to grab people's attention.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Right, It's at the very least, even if you don't
step on it, you'll go, well, hey, look at that,
Like it'll get your attention.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
You'll probably investigate it. Yeah, at the very least.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Absolutely, Now, friends, this brings us to the story that
really put it in my head when I was like, dang,
we got to make this a full episode now. I
shared this story on a Patreon bonus episode back in March,
and this one just it just stuck with me, and

(36:20):
I've always I've just kind of it's always been in
the back of my head since. And I'm really excited
to share it because once again we're talking about search
and rescue teams. And this next tale comes out of
northern California, thick wild country where the trees harbor old
secrets and the mountains almost seem to breathe as we

(36:41):
know Mount Shasta. Baby. Now, as the poster says, for
the better part of eleven years, a man he was
friends with had worked in the search and rescue department. Now,
for the sake of the tale, they call him Jack
to protect his identity, so we'll just go with Jack here.
But Jack got his start back in college when he

(37:04):
was still green, eager, and idealistic, maybe even a little
bit reckless, like most of us were at that age.
But Jack he had a good head on his shoulders,
and he'd seen his fair share of strange things in
the woods, but nothing like this tale we're about to hear.
It was during his early days on the job that

(37:26):
his trainer pulled him aside with a warning one not
found in any manuals or survivalist literature. In a hushed
almost kind of embarrassed tone. The trainer told him, if
you ever see a staircase in the woods, just believe
it be, don't go near it, don't touch it, and

(37:48):
for God's sake, don't climb it. Now. Jack did as
he was told. For a whole year he followed that
sage advice like gospel, and sure enough, the stories seemed
to stay quiet. But then came that call. It was
a routine operation, or so it seemed, a missing hiker

(38:13):
lost in some rugged terrain, the kind of thing he'd
been on dozens of times before. But as the team
moved through the brush, Jack spotted something out of place,
a staircase, just standing there in the middle of nowhere
in this forest. No structure around it, no ruins, no

(38:34):
path leading to it, just a set of stairs, clean
and dry, as though they'd been placed there yesterday. And
of course, curiosity, like a splinter in his mind, started
to itch, and while the rest of the team pushed on,
Jack broke formation. He stepped away from the line and

(38:56):
approached the stairs, his breath catching in his throat as
he neared them. They looked normal, in fact, almost too normal,
kind of like has been described in the other stories
we've told, like a slice of suburbia carved out and
dropped into the wild. Interesting that people keep saying suburbia.

(39:19):
It's like something kind of like black eyed kids, like
something pretending to be a kid. It's like something trying
too hard to look normal.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
You would expect it to be like a dilapidated staircase.
You get some old dilapidated house or something you know
that just crumbled away. But yeah, it makes it even
more out of place that it seems like it comes
from a modern suburban type environment.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Right, And it brings me back to the analogy we've
used a few times about the cheese on the mouse trap,
Like if a mouse could step back and reason like
a person, they'd probably think, isn't it kind of weird
that like what is ent a gold mine for me?
Something I would crave is just right here? Right? I'm

(40:06):
not eating off a dead animal in the woods or
eating like stuff in a field, Like, no, here's like
the most delicious fucking thing right in front of me.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, not just some scrap. It's like they put a
fresh piece of mazzarel over.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
There, Yeah, some piece of mazzarella. It's like it's kind
of like that when you step back and you think,
you go, why is this slice of familiarity or the
slice of what we would associate maybe comfort or something with,
just out here in the open, just like a rat
or a mouse would if they could think, why the

(40:44):
heck is my favorite treat just sitting here all of
a sudden.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
It's like whoever put it there was trying too hard
to put something familiar out there.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yes, he didn't touch him, He didn't touch the stairs,
not yet at least, but he stared at him, He
observed them closely, and something about the air around them
it just felt off, not cold exactly, but just wrong,
as if the world around him was holding its breath.

(41:18):
Jack would later say he felt like he was being watched,
not even by an animal or even by another person,
but as if he was being watched by the stairs themselves.
And though it looked like an ordinary staircase, to Jack,
it almost felt alive. Whatever happened next, he never fully said,

(41:44):
just that. He turned back quickly, silently, and he never
broke formation again. Now Jack had seen some things out there,
more than he cared to admit. But what he saw
that day, ten miles deep in the forest, stuck with
it him like a splinter under his skin. The team
had been searching for a missing teenage girl, one of

(42:07):
those cases that kind of weighs heavy on you from
the start because you understand that not finding this person
almost certainly means their death. So you have a sense
of heaviness even though the search is just beginning. You
have a heavy feeling of duty, of risk. Of all
of that. The dogs had picked up some sort of

(42:28):
scent and faint trail that would lead them through the trees,
and the group was moving steady, eyes sharp, but Jack,
for one reason or another, had fallen behind, and that's
when he saw it. Off to his left, barely visible
between the trunks of the massive California trees, there stood

(42:52):
a staircase. Not just any old staircase, baby, This thing
looked brand new. We're talking Chris White carpeting, clean enough
to eat off of, not a single speck of dirt
or wear on the thing. Jack said, it looked like
it had been lifted out of a freshly built home
and just plopped down there, right there in the middle

(43:14):
of nowhere. So he approached it slowly, expecting something anything
to happen. But the air stayed still. No sound, no
chill down his spine, no pulse pounding, sense of foreboding,
just silence. He got right up next to the stairs,

(43:38):
still nothing. He reached out, but he stopped short of
touching them. Something about the whole scene felt off, but
not in the way you'd expect. It wasn't screaming danger
to him. It wasn't hitting him with a sense of warning.
If anything, it just felt blank. The world around it

(44:01):
had just been shut off and it was just him
and the stairs. And the strangest part, not a single leaf,
not a twig, not a smudge of dirt was on
this staircase. But there were also no bird calls, no
buzzing of insects, no tracks in the soil, nothing. Jack said,

(44:27):
It didn't feel like animals were avoiding it, as animals
tend to do in paranormal situations. As we know in
past stories, animals seemed to have a sixth sense for
those sorts of things. No, but not in this case.
It felt like nothing had ever been there at all,
almost like the stairs weren't in the forest, but the
forest had somehow grown around them and keeping its distance

(44:53):
while it did, Or just maybe the stairs were waiting
alas Jack. Gosh, dang it, Jack touched those stairs. He
just placed his hand on the banister, real careful and gentle,
and the only thing he felt was that sort of tacky,

(45:15):
sticky softness you get from brand new carpet, that strange
feeling like it's never been touched, never been worn, like
the thing had never known a single footstep until his.
With his radio on and the volume all the way up,
he took a deep breath, and then he started climbing.

(45:41):
Jack said it was one of the scariest things he'd
ever done, not because of what happened, but because of
what might happen. All the tails, all the warnings he
had been given, yet the stairs seemed so mundane. Other
than they were out of place, they just seemed so normal.

(46:02):
The stairs had been so deeply stigmatized in his training
that he felt like he was violating something sacred, like
some sort of unspoken law that he was breaking. He
joked afterward that he wasn't sure if he'd been sucked
into another dimension or if a flying saucer was gonna
beam him up mid step, But nothing happened. He reached

(46:27):
the top, still standing in the woods, sun filtering through
the canopy above, and he looked around. All was as
it had been. But the longer Jack stood there on
that final top step, the more things felt wrong. Jack

(46:49):
said it was like standing in the middle of a
government facility that you weren't supposed to be in, like
you were breaking into a CIA records room, or creeping
down the wrong hallway and a military bunker. That feeling
in your gut when you know you're you know you're
doing something, you're being naughty, you're doing something you shouldn't
be doing, and someone or something knows that you're there.

(47:16):
He tried to shake that feeling, tried to play it cool,
but then the quiet came sudden and absolute. Not just
the bird's song or the breeze through the trees, but
every audible thing vanished. He couldn't hear the wind, he

(47:37):
couldn't hear the leaves. Jack couldn't even hear his own breathing.
It was like the world had put him on mute.
This was more than just silence. It was more like
an oppressive ringing, a pressure in his ears, like the
air had thickened and time had slowed. Jack said he

(48:01):
felt like he was inside a bubble, or a vacuum,
or some unseen watchful eye. That is when Jack came
back down and real fast baby, no hesitation, no turning
around for one last look. He rejoined the search team
like nothing had happened, fell back in line, didn't say

(48:23):
a word, and to this day he never climbed another
staircase in the woods. But Jack said, the weirdest part,
the part that still haunts him, came after later that evening,
the search had ended. The sun had dipped low behind
the trees, casting everything in that golden, hazy glow that

(48:46):
makes the world feel still, foretelling of the night to come.
As the team made their way back to the welcome center,
Jack was quiet, thinking he'd gotten away with something naughty.
Thought maybe the weirdness of the day was behind him.
Oh but no, His trainer was waiting for him, and

(49:09):
this guy was pissed, pissed in a way that was deep,
like a controlled, caged rage within. He cornered Jack before
he could even reach his car. No small talk, no smile,
just to look on his face. Jack would never forget,
not one of worry, not of confusion, but of anger, cold,

(49:34):
tightly wound anger. And then the trainer said something that
froze Jack in his place. He said, you went up them,
didn't you. Jack told me it wasn't even phrased like
a question, just a flat, dead certainty. He stammered and
asked how the guy knew? Really, how would this guy know?

(49:58):
The trainer, though, did blink, he didn't hesitate. He said,
because we didn't find her, the dogs lost the scent.
Jack blinked too, confused like logic was just shattered. Jack

(50:18):
asked his trainer what him climbing some random stairs in
the woods had to do with anything? I mean, what
did a weird set of stairs have to do with
this missing person? But the trainer just looked at him,
real slow, real hollow, and asked, how long were you
on the stairs? Jack said, I don't know, maybe a minute.

(50:46):
That's when the trainer leaned in his eyes like stone,
like all the light had drained out of them, and
he said, if you ever go up another set again,
you're done. Fired on the spot, and just like that,
he walked away. Since that encounter, Jack of course, has

(51:10):
tried to ask questions, tried to bring it up casually,
even directly. He tried every approach he could think of
but that trainer never said another word about it. And Jack,
you'd better believe he never went near another staircase in
the woods, not once. And folks, that's the story that

(51:36):
kind of brought it all together for me. If you've
noticed almost every story here involved search and rescue, it's
almost like, now, who knows some of these people might
be found, especially if you don't get on the stairs.
I get almost like a sacrifice. It's almost like someone
being given to the woods, being given to something, whether

(51:59):
it's the woods, whether it's the UFO is who knows
it's there? Is a ritual like aspect to them. Why
when someone goes missing and why if another person touches them,
does that cost the life of the person who's gone missing?
I think back like the Bible, there's like tales of

(52:20):
like Lot's wife, they were told when you leave Sodom
and Gamara, don't look back, And of course Lot's wife
looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. Things
like that. It's almost like, well, why have that? Why
put it there at all? That? Like, why make that
temptation there? If it's going to do you know what
I mean?

Speaker 2 (52:40):
It's like a yeah, there's definitely some missing piece to
the puzzle here, because clearly a number of people know
enough about these things that they take it very seriously
and don't want anybody going near it. They won't say why,
but they must know something that they're not telling, and

(53:01):
it kind of suggests there's a bigger conspiracy going on.
You mentioned the government and allowing certain things to go
on in national parks. I mean, they probably know something
that they are not telling the general public. Whether they're
in control of it or not is a different question,
but they clearly know something right.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
And think about this last story, you know, this search
and rescue team. Who knows how many people are a
part of it. How did the guy know it was Jack? Yeah,
I mean maybe he knew Jack. Maybe he realized Jack
had broken off from the group, so he just deduced
that it was must have been Jack. But the trainer
clearly has experience with these things, must have maybe stepped

(53:43):
on one, you know, climb to set a stairs himself
and realize the sacrifice, the price that is paid for
that curiosity. It's almost like the whole cliche thing of
like you don't want to know the truth, you.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Can't handle the t exactly. Jack would have said.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
I get my teeth cleaned thirty yards away from staircases
that want to kill me. But like the Tree of
Knowledge in the.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Garden of Eden, like the forbidden fruit.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, it's like you guys, you can do anything you
want to stay away from that tree. Well why put
the tree there in the first place?

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah, exactly. Nobody will actually say why you can't touch
these staircases. It's just a staircase for crying out.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
A lot, right, right, you're telling me not to, but
you're not telling me why. When you're young and you're
being taught in school, don't do drugs? Well, typically they
show you stuff that shows what can happen if you
do drugs, that sort of thing, Like they don't just
go don't do drugs, Well, why what will happen? Who

(54:46):
want to do it?

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Especially in the modern era, you know, Yeah, I think
we've gotten to a point in society too where there's
no shame in asking why. In fact, I mean there
shouldn't be. We should encourage people to ask why. But
I mean, even just like on a very mainstream cultural level,
I think it's it's very reasonable. Not the kind of
thing you hear about a lot anymore, like a superior

(55:11):
telling you not to do something with no explanation.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Right, And it doesn't mean you're asking cause you're like, well,
I'm gonna do it if I want. No, it's just like, okay,
sure I won't. But what happens, like what you know
what I mean, Like, what happens if someone has someone
done it before? This whole notion of saying no but
not telling why, there's almost like that whole.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
There's a secret. There's some kind of secret exactly.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Another thing that it makes me kind of think of
is simulation theory. And it's like a glitch in the Matrix.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
It almost reminds me of assets in a video game
appearing in a weird place. Yeah, a staircase out in
the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Right, Like it's been a while since I've watched the
original Matrix, but like when Neo sees that Black Cats
and then he sees it again and he goes deja vu,
and they're like, oh, that usually means something's afoot. Like,
it's like a glitch in a way. You're right, it's
like an asset in a video game reds in an
area where it wasn't supposed to be. Yeah, that's a

(56:13):
great point, this whole idea of simulation theory, which we'll
have to do an episode on. I mean, it's such
a vast concept, but it's a whole rabbit hole. Yeah,
will and we'll definitely do a series on it. But yeah,
it's like, well, I guess if there is a glitch
quote unquote in the simulation, Yeah, and maybe that's why
you get a negative feeling. It's almost like when a

(56:36):
game like freezes.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
And maybe that explains a lot of the strange feelings
and activity involved in it. Glitches usually cause other glitches,
I would think, so the staircase pops into the wrong place,
and maybe it's also got some weird code going on
to where you get too close and your time meter
has changed.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Absolutely whoo. I'll tell you what, gage, I got a
list of names I wouldn't mind hitting a StairMaster with.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Oh yeah, who's that?

Speaker 1 (57:06):
The names of our top tier Patreon subscribers, of course,
The Dream James Watkins, the Finish Face, Via Lungpus, the
Madman Marcus Hall, the Tenacious Teresa Hackworth, the Heartbreak Kid,
Chris Hackworth, Theoso Swave, Sean Richardson, the notorious Nicholas Barker,
the terrifying Taylor lash Met, the Count of Cool, Cameron Corlis,
the Archduke of Attitude, Adam Archer, the Sinister Sam Kayiker,
the Nightmare of New Zealand, Noah Leine Viavili, the loathsome

(57:27):
Johnny Love, the carnivorous Kevin Bogie, the Killer Stud Carl Stab,
the fire Starter Heather Carter, the conquer Christopher Damian Demris,
the awfully awesome Annie, the murderous Maggie Leech, the ser
of Sexy, Sam Hackworth, the Evil Elizabeth Riley, Laura and
hell Fire, Hernandez Lopez, the maniacal Laura Maynard, the vicious
Karen van Vier and the arch Nemesis Aaron Bird, the
sadistic Sergio Castillo, the Rapscallion, Ryan Crumb, the Beast, Benjamin Whang,

(57:50):
the devilish Chris Duceet, the Psycho Sam, the Electric Emily Jong,
the ghoulish Girt Hankum, the renegade Corey Ramos, the crazed Carlos,
the antagonist, Andrew Park, the monstrous Mikaela Sure, the witchy
Wonder JP Weimer, the Frinki Ben Forsyth, the Barbaric Andrew Berry,
the Mysterious Marcella, the Hillacious Kale Hoffman, and pug Borb
the Poulter guys. Ooh, that's right, you feel.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
In the burn.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Feeling the burn.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I got a sweat going. If you want to sweat
it out just like the other folks I listed, head
on over to patreon dot com slash creep Street podcast
for all sorts of goodies. Folks. It has been wonderful
joining you around the Stairs. I mean, god, I'm so
happy we dived into this, and you know what, this
could be a case of this could be one of

(58:36):
those things where, you know, a few months we come
back and we do Stairs in the Woods Part two. Like,
because there's collections of all these stories. I was just
seeing there was a set of mysterious stairs recently found
in Cambodia in the woods. So like, there's all sorts
of these tales you will obviously return to. But I'm
glad we finally covered it because it's so eerie and

(58:59):
yet so like ancient to our sensibilities. Like I said,
the whole notion of being told don't do it, but
not being told why very true.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
It's a very classic kind of cautionary.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Tale, like a cautionary tale or a parable like those.
I can't remember what the name of those books were,
but like you know, stories like what's his name? Flew
Too Close to the Sun. You know, it's like a
collection of almost like those early childhood tales that kind
of teach you right and wrong, that sort of thing,
And there's something about it that's just so inherent to

(59:34):
who we are, I think, and I'm glad we finally
covered it. Citizens of the Milky Way, my name is
Dylan Hackworth.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
And I'm engaged early.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Good night and goodbye. That's bust used, bast

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Bastised cos

All Episodes

Ep246 - Staircase In The Woods

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep246 - Staircase In The Woods