Staircases in the Woods

[Mystic Wanderer]

There are stories we've heard about people disappearing in the woods; people walking into portals, and many high-strangeness occurrences. 
Have you ever come across stair steps in the woods that lead to nowhere? 

Be warned! 

Don't step on them, or walk to the top. Many people have stories about there being a portal at the top of the steps where people walk through never to return. 

Found deep in the woods where no man has been known to ever live, you’ll find staircases- no other structure attached to them, just a staircase.
While some of the staircases are brick, others are wooden. While some staircases look to be in ruins, others are perfectly stable. Regardless, all of these staircases have one thing in common: they reach up into the canopy, extending seemingly to nowhere at all.
That is, at least, one some Redditors would have us believe.

Recently, I came across a Reddit thread dedicated to creepy happenings in national parks around the country. While this thread dated back to four years ago, I was intrigued by the stories that were being told there. This thread, packed with various stories and claims, led to an amount of particularly unusual folklore.

Reddit user after Reddit user claimed to have heard of these staircases. Some even claimed having seen them for themselves. Users reported that these staircases could be seen sometimes even as deep as 60 kilometers into the forest. While reports of the staircases started off being situated all over America, soon reports of staircases found in Germany, Brazil, Portugal, and the Philippines were posted.

The first Reddit user to tell their story of the mysterious staircases found deep in the woods was a user by the name of searchandrescuewoods, an American Redditor who claims to have been a member of a volunteer Search and Rescue unit. In their post, searchandrescuewoods tells a bit more about their experience encountering isolated staircases in national parks around the country, saying:

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. 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.

Interestingly, the Reddit user reports that these encounters with isolated stairs seem to be nothing of much talk amongst the members of Search and Rescue units. Whether it is because they are simply that common or for more nefarious reasons, I can’t really be sure. Nonetheless, searchandrescuewoods goes on to say:

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.

While there are very few photos available of the mysterious isolated staircases online, Reddit user TK622 came across this set in a forest clearing in Germany which can be found in the image below.


Image Source: TK622 on Reddit

Searchandrescuewoods went on to explain that one SAR officer had even seen staircases that were “flipped upside down”. Other Redditors quickly chimed in with their own experiences. One Redditor, jeepdave stated that they were surprised that the stairs were actually so common, seeing their own experience as a weird, one-off occurrence that couldn’t really be explained. In his own post, jeepdave says:

I came across a set in rural West Virgina. I don’t think I was quite 40 miles deep but at least 10 or better. I thought maybe a house had once stood there but there was no cellar or other debris that would indicate a home was there before. Just a set of stairs with a base that went up maybe one flight — 16 so steps if I remember right. And sturdy. Could barely shake ’em. I didn’t climb up though. Worried it might break or fall over and I was alone.

Another user, known as taylorannshazam says that they encountered their own set of stairs in Michigan, writing:

An hour east of Iron Wood there is a clearing in the forest that has stairs. I was hiking and exploring with my cousins and we stumbled on a clearing about half a football field long. Had a few staircases but not against trees, just standing in the open. They looked like stairs from a normal suburban home. Kind of old though. The older cousin decided to investigate. He walked to the stairs to see how they were being held up, couldn’t find anything which weirded him out. He made us all leave. Grass didn’t grow near the stairs either.

While most of the stories found in the Reddit thread are centered in the United States, there came reports from a few Reddit users of stairs found in forests across the globe. Take German Redditor TK622 for example. Adding the image we looked at earlier into their post, the Reddit user is one of the few people to actually snap an image of the isolated staircases, writing:

I saw some stairs in the woods a few years ago. Didn’t know what to think of them and took a picture. They were covered in moss, but had railing on one side.

While the stairs found in this Reddit user’s post aren’t quite as grandiose as some of the staircases imagined from other people’s stories, they still seem oddly out of place. Just looking at them gives you an eerie feeling that you can’t quite explain. Just imagine coming across a set of metal stairs in the middle of the woods- surrounded by trees, leading to nowhere. It’s enough to make you wonder why they’re there and, even more so, who put them there.

Norweigian Redditor, Holyshitspace, sums up how I feel about these odd, isolated stairs popping up in national forests around the globe. In their own story, they explain that they came across their own set of stairs in the woods and it led to nothing but eerie feelings that they couldn’t quite explain, saying:

I made an account just to post this comment. A few months back, while visiting gramps in Lillesand (southern Norway), we went hiking. Nothing big, just a walk and a picnic in some woods. With us were my niece and nephew, who are both quite young, so I joined them in 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 woods. And I found a staircase. Nothing remarkable, riddled with moss, and made from what looked like really old concrete with large pebbles of 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 of being severely unwelcome, and that I should get as far away from it as possible. So I ran to my family and didn’t look back at it. Thinking about it now it still gives me the same sort of… I don’t know, twisted, wrong feeling.

So, why are these staircases out in the middle of nowhere, and why does everyone get a creepy vibe from them?

Some say they are just the remains of long lost settlements, while others hypothesize that the steps are used in rituals and a witch stands on the top steps to speak.  Still others think the steps lead to a portal to another dimension. 

Probably all just stories that someone came up with to keep their children from wondering too far into the woods alone, but then, what if they're true?  

What do you believe?

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