This Paranormal Life - #218 The Secret Horror Behind Staircases in the Woods

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Why are people finding random staircases in the woods? And why do they lead to nowhere? And what happens if you climb them?? A lot of questions on this week's episode and like always, not a lot of answers...BUY OFFICIAL TPL MERCHwww.thisparanormallife.com/storePatreonpatreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubeyoutube.com/thisparanormallifeTwittertwitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagraminstagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagewww.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Edited by Kami Tomanwww.tomanedits.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is heaven hell for demons? Is candy floss good for your teeth? All of these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Welcome everyone to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate a brand new paranormal tale! Please add some reverb onto that for dramatic effect and come to a conclusion

as to whether or not that tale is true or false. I'm your host for this week's episode, Rory Powers, and sitting across from me, joining me in this investigation, is the one and only Kit Greer. Howdy, howdy, howdy. Welcome to the podcast kit. Quick intervention. Candy floss is not good for your teeth. Your teeth are black. I don't know how you've done that in one week. Right. Well, it's called candy floss. So I implied there were some sort of dental benefits to letting it sit in my mouth overnight as I sleep. That's also not even how you use regular floss. Not at all. I make a yarn of it. I put it in my mouth like a ball gag. I wish you had consulted. It's actually pretty hot. Literally anyone before doing this. I once

ate a pack of white strips. My dental hygiene is not the focus of this week's episode. We have more pressing matters. The paranormal. All right. And we know that we don't like to mess around at the start of an episode. You know, a lot of podcasts do. You tune into an episode maybe for the first time and the hosts are chatting about this. They're plugging ads for products you've never heard of. Oh, how was your week? Oh, my week was fine. How was yours?

Boring. Get it out of the way. Idiots. You guys aren't here for that. You're here to learn about the paranormal and that's what we're gonna do i will say yeah maybe i'm bringing this up because we did get a review recently on itunes uh where someone gave us two stars i don't know if you saw this but they said um the story was good but it was there were too many interruptions give me this person's name

i'm gonna hunt them down and tear their throat okay but i think that's i think that's kind of overreaction that that made them not enjoy the show so i think i'm gonna look it up right now no no no no this is an example of an interruption to the podcast so i think what we what we should do i'm going to i'm going to report and block them no i think what we should do is keep a level head and push on and show them that we can do a podcast. Oh, that we're like bigger than it or whatever. Yeah. That we can do them without interrupting each other. Okay.

I see your line of logic. Yeah. Cool. I'll try and put it on my head. All right. Cool. Yeah. Best podcast yet.

Let's go. Here we go. So with that in mind, let's dive into today's episode. Into the- Just really quick. I don't think you actually replied to me with some pretty offensive emojis. So man, I got to take five minutes and just roast this mother- No, I told you. Why are you even getting involved? into the just really quick actually reply to me uh with some pretty offensive emojis so man i gotta take five minutes and just roast this mother no i told you why are you even getting involved i told

you not to message okay let's go sorry i'm gonna i'm gonna like i'm gonna like put the phone you can't you can't just shake your head and say oh blah blah blah i'm gonna say you're on so you use some pretty offensive slurs in that reply so you can't just say i need to put the phone is face on. You used some pretty offensive slurs in that reply. So you can't just say. Well, I need to get the point across. I didn't think that talking like a school teacher would get the job done. Again, I think this is just an example of how sometimes we do actually. The phone is face on, but it is buzzing a lot.

I don't know if you can hear that. I can't. Permission to look? See what they said? Denied. I'm going to look anyway, probably. Why ask permission? Why ask permission if you were so

they actually brought you and your family into this all right well that's uncalled for you little bastards i'm gonna interrupt myself now give me their name and address i really want their name and address i think we should push on i really do permission to kill these bastards sir that's right i'm the private now granted weanted. We just leave the studio. Keep the mics running. I'm pulling at you now. Shake that off. And let's show those motherfuckers that we don't need to interrupt each other.

We can just go straight into the story. Our story today is a strange one. Filled with first-person testimonies from people who have encountered a specific strange object in the forest. Now, as we know, the forest is a beautiful place, from the great red woods of California to the humble Kokiri Forest of Hyrule. However, as we know from our previous investigations, there's a dark side to the woods, a paranormal side, and sometimes you don't realize the danger you're in until it's too late. Our first story today comes from a woman who was training to be an SAR officer in America, SAR being search and rescue. On her first day in 2017,

she was brought out into the woods as a trainee to help the search for a missing four-year-old. Now that sounds pretty grisly, I will say, but most of the time, you know, these things are just a kid who wandered slightly off the path and got lost. Okay, so they're kind of actually starting her off with an easy assignment almost. Yeah, they probably get missing children every other day. They're like, all right, send the trainee out to go along with someone who is already an SAR officer to kind of learn the ropes, see how it's done. I'm not an SAR officer, but I assume it is very easy to find a missing child. I thought you were going to say when they took her into the forest on her first day, they walked her into the middle of nowhere and said, so your first assignment as an sar trainee is find your way out of this one

asshole smoke bomb instructor disappears and if you don't find your way out i guess you die but if you do find your way out you've got a well-paying um government job yeah that's one hell of an induction day oh my god where did he? He's like struggling to climb a tree above her. Don't look up here. No, find your way home. Shit. Imagine if your first day as a fireman, they were like, all right, here's your first test. And they set you on fire. How can you be expected to save? Again, this is the f***ing Joker. How can you be expected to save others from fire if you cannot save yourself? How did you become a fireman?

There's no way. There's no way he works here. How small is this town that you are the fireman they chose? Gotta go. Gotta induct a preschool teacher at 5 p.m. Somebody stop him! As her and her trainer were walking through the forest, she noticed something between the trees in the distance.

It looked like some sort of structure that had been leading up from the forest floor. Now, they were only around eight miles from the main parking area, but where they currently were was state-protected land, meaning legally there couldn't be any kind of commercial or residential development. We've got a violation on our hands right here. She tried to get a closer look, assuming it was either a fire tower or some sort of makeshift shelter. But whatever this thing was, it had straight, sharp edges. So very slowly, she edged through the bushes to get a closer look.

Suddenly, all the hair on the back of her neck stood up. It was a staircase in the middle of the woods. She wrote, in the proper context, it would literally be the most benign thing ever. It's just a normal staircase with a beige carpet and about 10 small steps, but it's out here in the middle of the woods. It was almost like a video game glitch where the house had failed to load completely and the stairs were the only thing visible. After a moment of disbelief, the woman was joined by her SAR trainer who seemed to be not fazed by the stairs at all.

What the f*** is this thing doing here? Get used to it, rookie. You're gonna see a lot of them. What?! What?! How is that a response to what's just happened? Get used to it, rookie. You're gonna see a lot of them. What? Oh, is that a response to what's just happened? Did he join the force to save and protect people? It's not a good response, especially from someone who's supposed to be training you.

That's like later on in the day if they saw a woman being mauled by a grizzly bear and she was like, Oh my God, should we f***ing help? Do you have a gun? And the person's just like, get used to it, rookie. You're going to see

a lot of bear maulings out here. Yeah, you can't just pawn everything off by saying get used to it, rookie. Family of five drowning in a river nearby. Get used to that one, rookie. That's my third today.

You know, some people in this world just have one job and they won't even do that. I was in the park just the other night. My wife and a couple of friends were just sitting and chatting and some guys are doing nitrous oxide in a nearby group, which is illegal these days. And then we saw pretty shortly afterwards, one of these guys in the group presumably the guy selling the balloons of nitrous oxide to friends or these randomers he started running away in the

kind of way that someone on nitrous oxide would run away kind of in slow motion kind of a weird run um it would have been very easy to catch He was running away from like a local police officer who, a bit like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy, just was walking after him really slowly. Right. And we kind of looked around and laughed like, OK, what's going on here? The officer just turns to us and is like, I'm not running after him. I just proceeded to walk after him. My God. And it was like, dude dude this is literally all you're

here to do you've found the perp he's on the run he can barely he's so high he can barely run you're basically trying to arrest a slinky at this point it can barely go down a set of stairs this drug dealer as well um he i i really appreciated his grand theft auto mindset as well because he he literally disappeared for about three minutes and then uh came back and had taken off his bright red t-shirt and was now completely anonymous and sat back down in the group and started huffing nos so pretty genius pretty uh i'm not encouraging dealing drugs i'm just saying it's pretty easy to get away with it sometimes there was a great little clip from this week's podcast the woman went to take a step closer but the sar trainer grabbed her arm i wouldn't do that you're gonna

see them all the time but don't go near them don't touch them and don't go up them such a bad first day on the job right am i wrong it's not ideal i don't think you've automatically kind of been been served a a big curveball it seems like he's maybe saying this is going to be most of what she deals with on a day yes it's like whenever you start a new job you feel that there there will be handbooks full of rules to learn, new employees to negotiate, getting to know them. You didn't know there was going to be lore, like mythology to being a search and rescue officer. This is like, you know, starting your first day as a burger flipper at McDonald's. And you're like, all right, I'm excited. What should I do?

Should I fire up the grill? burger flipper at mcdonald's and you're like all right i'm excited what should i do should i fire up the grill and your manager is like there is a silverback gorilla in the parking lot what do not go near him do not touch him and do not climb on his back okay so how do you know that how do you know not to climb his back because i was never in a million years going to climb on the gorilla's back. This is how I know. Lifts up his top and he's got the imprint of a gorilla fist sealed in his flesh. I mean, I wasn't planning on going outside, but is. He's planning on coming inside. He's hungry.

He for burgers. Yeah. You're being warned about something that you really should have been told about before you started the job. Yes. The woman went on to write. And my trainer was right. I'd say about every fifth call I go on, I end up running across a set of stairs. Sometimes they're relatively close to the path, maybe within two or three miles.

Sometimes they're 20, 30 miles out, literally in the middle of nowhere. And I only find them during the broadest searches or training weekends. They're usually in good condition, but sometimes it looks as if they've been there for years. All different kinds, all different sizes. The biggest I ever saw looked like they came out of a turn-of-the-century mansion and were at least 10 feet wide, with steps leading up 15 or 20 feet wow i've tried talking about it with people but they all just give me the same response my trainer did it's normal don't worry about it they're not a big deal but don't go up it's such a contradiction it's normal don't worry about it don't go near it don't talk to me about it ever

again whoa yeah i just said i just said you know where the coffee is oh oh sorry so you weren't talking about the stairs no but i guess now that you bring it up don't talk to me about it again yeah it's kind of wild that everyone is reinforcing this this rule don't go up them as if either something has happened to them or they've been told by the higher up someone made that mistake at some point and this advice has trickled down so this is very very odd really weird just sets of staircases leading nowhere. Now, in the most boring terms, I guess you might initially think, maybe, as you say, there were buildings there.

The rest of the building's gone. For some reason, they leave the stairs. I don't know. Some psycho building demolishing guy, he just likes leaving the stairs. Yeah, some sim-ass mother****er has just up and rooted their house and left the stairs. But the more disturbing or alternative view of this is that this is some kind of a bit like discussed in previous episodes, a kind of glitch where someone's been opening, God's been opening up the level designer on Earth and f***ing about.

Yeah, we will get into theories of what's what is behind the appearance of these strange stairs later on. But let me tell you, it's scattered. It's not normal. It's definitely not normal. The woman goes on to say, now when trainees ask me about the stairs, I give them the same response. They're not a big deal, but don't go up them. I really don't know what else to tell them. I'm really hoping someday I get a better answer,

but it hasn't happened yet. Now, this post by the user who's called Search and Rescue Woods was met with a huge response from people all over the world telling their stories of discovering strange staircases in the woods. People who for years thought that there was nothing strange about it or who thought that they were the only ones who had seen something like this in fact i literally mentioned uh to one of my friends earlier today that i was doing an episode on the podcast about finding stairs in the woods and he was like oh yeah i found one of those off and i was like what and he's like yeah they're normal he's like yeah don't talk about it don't record the podcast i mean you can guess who the friend is i'm talking about because he said he used to see them all the

time in the forests of north wales and yeah he just talked about it as if he had seen these stairs in the middle of the woods leading up to nothing i didn't inquire as to whether or not he had climbed up them yeah he's still alive to this day i think were these real experiences of people having fever dreams they're confusing them with reality doesn't it just seem like something you would see in a dream yeah there's something very i find it really fascinating that um you know if you told someone okay think about scary things you'd find in the woods people would be like okay i don't don't know. A werewolf, a scary face, a ghost. It's really not those things that are the scariest to come across in

the woods. It's something as benign as this, a set of stairs that seem out of place that lead nowhere and have no explanation. That's terrifying. Yeah. It's like, imagine just coming across a 7-Eleven in the middle of the Sahara desert. You're not going to go in there. You could be thirsty as shit. You can see the Gatorade cooling in the freezer from the window. You couldn't pay me to go in that 7-Eleven. I'd rather die as a salty, sandy little skeleton boy right on the doorstep than take one foot into that 7-eleven this is you in central tokyo there is there is a weird amount of 7-elevens am i wrong yeah what is it that's so disconcerting about it is it is it that the whole thing just seems a bit off or does it feel like you're losing your mind you're starting to question your own sanity there's probably a bit of that as well it almost feels like a dream

it feels like a yeah a horrible fever dream like a glitch like something's wrong like another dimension is merging with this one there's a lot of crazy theories but i think what we all want to know is obviously what happens if you climb the stairs? Well, this story of an SAR officer who got up close and personal with the stairs might partially answer that question. The post read, was a junior in college and he had a very similar experience. For the first year he stayed away, but apparently his curiosity got the better of him and on one call he broke away from the line and went to go check out a set of the stairs. He said they were about 10 miles from the path where a teenage girl had vanished and the dogs were currently 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. The carpeting was pristine and white. What? Doesn't make any sense. He said that as he got closer, he was expecting something to happen, but he got right up to them and didn't feel anything. The only thing that was odd was that there was no debris on the steps. No dirt, leaves, dust, nothing. He touched the stairs and didn't feel anything, except that feeling that you get from a new carpet. Making sure his radio was on, he slowly climbed the steps. He said it was terrifying because of the way they'd been stigmatized, and he wasn't really sure what was going to happen to him. But he got to the top and he stood there looking around.

Nothing happened. But he said the longer that he stood at the top step, the more he felt like he was doing something very wrong. He described it as the feeling you'd get if you were in a part of a government building that 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 minute. What? He tried to brush it off, but the feeling got stronger and stronger.

And that's when he realized he couldn't hear anything anymore. The sounds of the forest were gone. He couldn't even hear his own breathing. He climbed back down and quickly rejoined the search without mentioning what he'd done. But he said the weirdest part came afterwards. His trainer was waiting for him back at the welcome center, and after the search had ended for the day, before he could leave, his trainer cornered him with a look of anger on his face. He said, you went up them, didn't you? In disbelief, he replied, how did you know? The trainer shook his head and replied, because we didn't find her. The dogs lost her scent. What? What does that mean? I think the implication in this story is that there are some correlation between people going missing in the

woods and these steps appearing. But what does it have to do with this guy going up them? Maybe the steps appear when someone goes missing and it's like the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden. It's a temptation that if you indulge, you are punished. You've lost the soul. When you first started telling this story, I thought this guy is massively in his own head. When you started talking about that feeling we all feel when you're doing something and it feels like someone's going to shoot you in the back of the head he's a little he's a little spooked he's a little part you know who i've never felt like that like what are you talking about like you know just that feeling you get

whenever you're a kid and you like shoplifted a penny chew and just felt like an fbi agent was going to blow your brains out you know i can't exactly relate to it but then it turns out that his superior was like you're lucky i didn't blow your brains out the moment you set foot on those stairs like if you don't want people to go on the stairs put a little rope around it or something don't be so cryptic don't don't want people to go on the stairs, put a little rope around it or something. Don't be so cryptic. Don't tell everyone that it's fine. Don't worry about the steps, but don't go up them. Be very clear with the consequences. Put a fence around it.

Do anything. Turn the whole 10 kilometer perimeter into a secret Air Force base. I don't know what you need to do. I didn't realize steps were so important. I don't know what you need to do. I didn't realize steps were so important. But now that I think about it, every like clip art image of heaven, it always starts with these beautiful steps going up to a set of gates. How weird.

Up to heaven, down to hell. You know, if these were dirty little goblin steps leading downwards into a swamp, I mean, hell, of course, don't go down there. But yeah, I don't know what it is about like crystal clear steps ascending to nothing in the middle of the forest. That is really, if you try and picture it, pretty terrifying. It would be like seeing a unicorn in the middle of the woods. It would be the most bizarre thing in the world. Obviously, before we go any further, look, we need some answers here what are these things who put them here what purpose do they serve unfortunately as i said at the start of the episode there aren't really a lot of answers out

there but we do have the next best thing photographs yes please kit i want you to take a look at a few of these. I would love to see some creepy staircases in the woods. All right, I got three photos in front of me, guys. Number one, this is creepy woods, just like regular woods. Looks like in the UK or anywhere, quite gray and muddy. And we've got kind of a staircase kind of unlike i've ever seen it's it looks like they might belong in a kind of military facility or something they're very um large and metal and militaristic looking yeah sharp uh rigid um really out of place um and crucially whenever we say they don't lead to anything they literally lead to a dead end.

Like it's not like the stairs are cut off and the building is missing. There's literally someone has built an end to these stairs. And there's nothing around it, not even the ruins of anything that could have once been there. Just steps leading into the sky. Image two, this is somehow a little bit more, a little bit less alarming, but still bizarre. These look much more like a much shorter set of stairs, maybe six or seven steps, just made of a kind of light scaffolding material. Again, just leading to nothing. And then the last one, this is a real curveball. This is like the ruins of a medieval castle. Very cool, like kind of curving set of steps,

stone steps in an archway, curving up, but to nothing. This would almost be the least surprising if you saw it in a forest because you might just automatically think to yourself, oh, I guess there's ruins to a castle around here. There used to be something there. Yeah, yeah.

But clearly there's nothing there. There's no other ruins to be seen. But that's the most interesting in a way because it's the most ancient. Now that last photo that you mentioned is the one that's really important. It's called Madame Cherie's Staircase, located in Chesterfield in New Hampshire.

And it could be possibly one source of the forest staircase legends. The story goes that in the 1920s, Madame Cherie was an eccentric, glamorous costume designer who worked on big Broadway productions. How eccentric was she, you ask? Well, she often drove around town in her custom car with a pet monkey perched on her shoulder.

That's pretty eccentric, all right. That's pretty baller. Rappers these days have it all wrong, you know? They're all about getting jewelry, gold chains, rings. You should be perching exotic pets on your body. That's how you really show that you're a baller, you know? Right. So if you've got like a-

Oh, you've got a 24 carat gold chain on your neck? Well, I have a f*** a armadillo on my back. I have the literal bat that invented coronavirus as a belt buckle. I want to walk into the club and be able to tell people I have a monkey on my back. I don't mean it as a metaphor. There is a chimp controlling me like Ratatouille. And he's not interested in spaghetti or food. He just wants to pull lice from my hair and punch me about. It's actually a bit of a pain. Okay, the 24-karat gold chain sounds better.

It does, yeah. You try and put it on, the monkey grabs it. He has my jewelry now. After her husband died, Sherry decided to build a huge castle in the woods of Chesterfield where she could throw crazy parties for all of her rich friends. Kind of Great Gatsby style. After her husband died, Sherry decided to build a huge castle in the woods of Chesterfield, where she could throw crazy parties for all of her rich friends. Kind of Great Gatsby style.

Exactly, yes. But of course, the money eventually ran out, and the castle fell to ruin. A year after Madame Sherry died, a mysterious fire burned down the castle, leaving only the stone steps that now lead to nowhere. Oh! People refer to it as the stairway to heaven, and the legend is that on some nights you can see Madame Cherie's ghost

standing at the top of the grand staircase, and if you listen closely, you can hear the faint echoes of laughter and music coming from the ruins wow pretty cool huh i gotta love the uh the construction logic of making this castle it's like madame cherie what do you want the uh stairs we made out of uh me uh stairs pretty important um better be sturdy so stone great idea brilliant what about the castle okay paper bring in the bring in the

monkeys flame torch juggling monkeys or did they just run out of budget after the stairs yeah she went ham on the stairs she was like we actually only have about a hundred bucks left for the party mansion uh a bit weird for your husband to die and you basically erect a sex palace in the forest. No one calls it a sex palace. You can read between the lines here. No, someone... You're just going to get a load of monkeys in a mansion and not have sex with them? Right, right.

Sure, sure, buddy. You freaking freak. I don't know what you do in your mansion. You freaking freak. I don't know what you do in your mansion. If a story describes someone as being eccentric multiple times, and then they go ahead and build a monkey. I never said monkeys.

She said she brings guests out there to the woods. Rich Broadway guests. Okay. And they all probably hook up together. And sure, if a monkey slides in there in the middle of the action, who knows? There's no way. There's no way Broadway stars are hooking up with monkeys in a haunted castle. After she passed away, a lot of the people that went there were like,

we have to burn that place down. There is so much human DNA and monkey semen on those walls. Good Lord. It needs to be burned. If we learned anything from the monkey ghost of Athelhampton, monkeys in castles like to f***. I like this story because, you know, it's a bit more of a generic and traditional explanation as to why some of these steps could be paranormal. Sure. It's a ghost story.

The steps led to somewhere, that place burned down through somewhat tragic events. Now the steps are haunted. That's almost framing them in a way that we can kind of process why they're there and why they're cursed. They're kind of haunted on a technicality, right? You know, we think that these steps are all cursed because they lead to nowhere.

But no, they lead to nowhere because they're cursed. It's a kind of chicken and egg situation. Yeah, yeah. Cursed by association. Now, as I said, even though that is a relatively tame explanation, some of the testimonies from Reddit and other online forums are a lot less traditional and a lot more terrifying. Let's go. Witnesses have described reaching the top step and suddenly seeing faces in the woods watching them. Others described hearing screams

and feeling icy cold hands over their body. That's bad. In one story, a woman decided to climb the stairs and quote, a blood vessel in climb the stairs and, quote, a blood vessel in her brain exploded like a water balloon. She got shot in the back of the head. Oh, my God. It's real.

Apparently, she dropped to the ground dead. How do we know about this happening then? There was a witness, obviously. His friend was there. Oh, okay. Probably an SAR officer. He probably warned her not to climb the stairs if there's any takeaway from this episode of the podcast usually at the end we

give you advice on how to deal with a situation yeah how to kill the creature that we have talked about in the episode if there's any takeaway from this episode don't climb the steps if you come across steps stairs in the woods don't climb them it. If you come across steps, stairs in the woods, don't climb them. It's pretty much perfectly simple, actually. It's a real curiosity, kill the cat type situation. Just keep moving. Just tell yourself that they're normal. Don't worry about it. Now, people all around the world have posted, you sound just like the SAR officer. They're normal. Don't worry about it. Don't climb them. It doesn't seem so weird anymore, does it? At the start of the episode,'t climb them. It doesn't seem so weird anymore, does it?

At the start of the episode, we were like, why are they being so weird? Now we're saying it's just advice for staying alive. Yeah. People all around the world have posted photos of random staircases out in the woods. In Germany, Portugal, Brazil, Norway, Wales. Literally all over the world. As I said, there aren't really any normal explanations, so let's dive right into the weird ones.

I guess we'll start, let's start with the most normal and we can work our way down. Some people say that these stairs are, bear in mind, this is the most normal. Some people say- They all led to monkey sex palaces. Is that, how could that be the most normal? Some nights you can hear the echoes of the monkey screams.

Some people say that these stairs are a portal to another dimension. Whoa. This is the most normal explanation? Yeah. Oh, my God. Some kind of shadow realm that they appear in the forest to lure victims to the top where presumably you are dragged into the dark void. Isn't this the shadow realm from Yu-Gi-Oh?

Well, yeah. Isn't that where banished cards go or something? They go into the shadow realm for sure, but are you going to tell me Yu-Gi-Oh isn't real? I feel like that might psychologically burst a blood vessel in your head if I tell you the truth, so let's just keep moving. What do you think about that as a possible explanation? Tell telling me kaiba himself isn't real uh i like it is there a shred of evidence for it the shreds of evidence were banished to the shadow realm okay that's highly convenient via my blue eyes white dragon okay uh no there isn't really look these are all theories

these stairs are so strange they've popped up in so many different ways these are just possible explanations behind it i get it it's kind of intuitive right it's like you know it's it's enticing to believe what if the reason it looks like they go nowhere is actually not the reality they They do go somewhere, but it's just this somewhere is beyond the doors of our perception. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that pretty much every story that we hear about in today

is from people who didn't climb the steps. Yeah. We've got a survivor bias on our hands here. Yeah. We're hearing the perspective of the people who don't climb the steps. What about the people who are tumbling through the shadow realm? Right now. Fighting blue eyes, white dragons and dark magicians as we speak

who did climb the steps? The one dude who did killed a woman, killed a woman by accident, apparently because he climbed them. That's his punishment. Now, another possible explanation is that these steps are possibly some sort of glitch in the matrix, which we've kind of touched on in other episodes of the podcast before. Things being out of place, the simulation glitching. Sure. It's not quite spooky. It doesn't necessarily answer a lot of the other questions that are raised by the steps being there, but it is a possible explanation i mean there's a million questions to be raised but it is weird that they're this is only really happening in the forest i mean when else and surely if it was just random glitches then all sorts of weird things would be turning up in

weird locations but i guess you could argue we're only noticing it in the forest because forests are normally empty i yeah i know what you mean a tamagotchi in a bustling city wouldn't seem out of place, but a Tamagotchi on a forest floor would be very out of place. Yeah. I guess, look, if we think of it like the world is, which it is pretty much just a video game. Maybe there's a... I don't follow, but continue.

Maybe there's a bug in the code specifically affecting staircases. Yeah. And the designers are like, everything's running fine. It seems to be working. We just can't patch out this weird bug where staircases are just spawning in the middle of woods, you know? Or maybe it's one of those bugs where they're like, we know that stairs are appearing in woods, but if we take that out, gravity stops working. So we have to leave that bug in because it's one of those bugs where they're like, we know that stairs are appearing in woods, but if we take that out, gravity stops working.

So we have to leave that bug in. Yes, it's a fudge. It's holding everything together. If we remove those stairs, food stops being spicy. Bananas come to life. And that really upsets the balance of the game, the meta, when bananas come to life and can speak French. So we can kind of live with the whole stairs in the woods

thing. Prepare to die, human. What? And finally, the weirdest and yet most captivating conclusion. That the stairs are not stairs. They're altars. Huh? Altars used to

offer up a sacrifice to other worldly beings. Didn't you say they had carpet on them? What? What? A sacrificial altar can have a f***ing rug? I mean, the stairs you showed me were definitely stairs. Because other people listening haven't seen them yet. They're f***ing stairs. What happens when a brother wants to make a sacrifice in his bare feet?

Can a guy be comfy while he's sacrificing a creature? I wish I could say that in all those images like, oh, yeah, I guess you're right. There were weirdly candles lit on either side and men in robes. There weren't. There were just stone stairs. You've said quite enough, sir. In fact, you said that the stone stairs led to a castle. They literally were stairs.

Those stairs did lead to a castle. They led to the monkey sex palace, all right? Sure. Do you think monkeys weren't sacrificed in the palace too? Look, this could be one of the reasons that so many people get lost and go missing in the woods is because they climb the steps and become a sacrifice. Oh, so it's just an automatic thing.

It's like a mousetrap for human sacrifices. Yeah. That's why the stairs are so beautiful and alluring. So pristine and beautiful. They're like, Hey, come on, climb on up here, buddy. You don't need to even build stairs in the woods and entice people. You could just put a delicious, fresh KFC bucket in the middle of the woods and make the KFC bucket the sacrificial altar or, I don't know, an ice cold vending machine in a desert or something. Or the 7-Eleven I mentioned in the Sahara Desert. Yeah, that would probably work, actually. Well, one Detroit-based Reddit user said that they came across a set of stairs out in the woods and decided to wander up

them. They said, I climbed the stairs thoughtlessly, half expecting there to be a landing to greet me at the top. There wasn't. Just another crumbly step and an unimpressive view. But something caught my eye. The bushes were packed tight, except where the stumps of dead trees formed a sunken well around them, and from one of the craters, someone was looking at me. What? I remembered clearly their dark, lean face, their rounded eyes. No sooner had I seen the face than it had disappeared again. Only then did I have the foresight to take off down the steps.

Could this be an extraterrestrial creature waiting for the sacrifice? Whoa! Maybe he wasn't there long if he stayed up there for two more seconds that thing would have chowed down so to use a kind of uh ocarina of time legend of zelda analogy when when link is running around the world of hyrule he is safe he is fine once he sets foot into the forest temple he now apparently is fair game for these uh shadow demon hands that come to pluck him from this life yeah uh and what you're saying is still yeah that if you're saying that this person essentially caught a glimpse of the person who wants the sacrifice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He caught a glimpse of the hand before it dropped on him and shimmied off. Jesus Christ. Kind of ruining the plan. Yeah. That's very, very, very creepy. Very creepy, but also very lucky. There are probably some dumbasses up there with their iPhone out taking a panoramic photograph of the woods now the best kicker to this entire case is that the official stance of the national park service oh here we go all right get your popcorn on everyone we're about

to hear some grade a bullshit it's it's actually not bad they're're very vague. I mean, it's nuts that they even have addressed this situation. But their only advice is that if you come across a staircase, you should not climb it. That's it. Why have they commented? Why have they lent their voice to this issue? They're only drawing attention to it. The reasons that they give are standard health and safety reasons so i guess you know look let's say not all these steps are paranormal

maybe the this um the national park service is like hey there was an old castle in the woods there are now crumbly old rock steps there do not climb the crumbly old rock steps because they will crumble and you will injure yourself okay but it's still too vague i feel that they the conversation is still very open and fluid about how many of these stone steps are there how big a problem is this uh i feel like they should have been more specific and been like hey in um this bedfordshire forest yes there is a one set of castle ruins and we have had a couple of incidents there. So you just need to stay back. Don't say,

if you see a set of stairs leading to nowhere, children, don't climb them. They're normal, but be afraid. You've got to be more specific than that. Do not stand still, children, for the stair man can see all. That's when you've been watching

a presentation for 45 minutes about safety in the forest and then right at the end the real park ranger enters the room he's like who's this guy what are you kids doing in here goodbye climbs a staircase to nowhere and blips off the face of the earth holy shit look that that just about wraps up today's today's investigation into staircases in the woods as i said you know maybe not as satisfying a conclusion as we've had in other cases because there really is no conclusion there are so many different types of these staircases there are so many different stories i didn't even include some of them because they are so bizarre this episode itself is a set of stairs leading to nowhere we're on the 10th step we

shouldn't have climbed them and the shadowy hand is now ready to pluck us from this world just to give you an idea of how deep this rabbit hole goes there was one story about a park ranger who climbed the steps to try and rescue someone from a tree and had their hand spliced off. What? It just got cut off their body. There was someone else who climbed the steps, didn't notice much, went back down. And when he went back to the station,

realized he'd been missing for five years. Those are the stories I was like, I can't include these. This is too, we already have too much on our plate you know this case does remind me a little bit of i believe it was a bonus episode about how um late dictator uh saddam hussein owned a stargate right and that the real reason it's i mean politically speaking it's not an episode that's aged that well but there was a theory floating around the internet that the real reason that george bush started a war in the middle east was to gain control of a interdimensional stargate in iraq right these could be stargates

bit like the interdimensional portal type situation yeah i don't know how stargates work is it more like a magic kind of thing or is it more of a technology kind of thing? I think it's an alien technology that you would activate a Stargate in one side of the galaxy that links up with a Stargate here on Earth. Yeah. I mean, that would be really cool if we heard stories of people climbing these steps and then climbing down steps and they're in another part of the world or something, you know? At least the Stargate in Iraq, supposedly, was like a big, cool stone structure with hieroglyphs over it. Yeah.

These have carpet, so it seems a bit weird. Tread lightly, okay? Because don't talk- I will tread lightly. I'm not going to tread anywhere near these f***ing stairs. Don't use my episode to big up one of your cases while shitting on mine yeah i mean i think we should revisit honestly the middle east stargate because it actually had a pretty compelling well if we're if we're if we need to revisit it then you'd say

that you did a bad job of concluding that case surely no i would say you probably tried to derail it and say it all wasn't real whereas in reality i seem to remember the comments were pretty uh were pretty impressed by the research done on that case no i actually think i'm pretty sure people wanted a round two a part two on that one so what do you say we just park where we're at in this episode we don't even need to conclude it because i don't think this one's going out really it's not going out and we can just start right into what do you mean it's not going out wrestle something together just off the top of my dick uh just quick update um yeah i could honestly just read the wikipedia and it'd be better in this whole episode so let's just all right welcome to part two in the well it was a bonus episode this doesn't really make any sense if it was a bonus episode most of our audience still think it'll it. I still think it'll track better than this, though. Whatever this was.

By the way, I just pulled up the reviews for your Stargate episode. One star. Decent story, but the boys kept interrupting each other. Zero stars. Was interesting to hear more about the Stargate, but they barely made it into the episode without interrupting each other. This one from Michael J. Better type this comment fast or the boys will interrupt me so we're in this fight together buddy okay kid and i are finally

on the same side fighting hand in hand for the paranormal forces don't interrupt me don't interrupt me you son of a bitch that's exactly what they want don't you understand sorry I know we're on the I know we're on the same page we are on the same page don't don't interrupt me

I didn't say it don't interrupt me because that's what they want they get off on this shit I'm gonna stop talking about this the episode

oh my god okay we've pretty much concluded now we've done all the stories I've told everyone about the encounters that we've had in the woods. I'm just so nervous.

You're going to chime in at any second. I'm walking on f***ing eggshells here. Don't cough. Even that is really, I can feel the reviews getting written right now. Don't sniff. Are you kidding me with this? What are you, he's drinking water. That's the loudest you've ever you've ever

drunk anything in your life which is bizarre look listeners there might be a little bit of overlap in our dialogue for the end but because this is an open conversation it's a debate as to whether or not this is real this is what tpl is folks it's two people with blatant disregard for all conversational norms. So get ready for the messiest conclusion of your life. Kit, staircases in the forest, paranormal or not? Rory, this is absolutely

one of the more outrageous stories we've ever talked about on This Paranormal Life. Absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. Absolutely no paranormal f***ing motive whatsoever. No demon behind it. No vampire that wants to suck someone's blood.

Just a set of stairs with nothing to prove other than to freak people out for no reason. Have to say, pretty sceptical going into it. And I remain pretty damn sceptical. But I do have to give it to you that at least one of these sets of stairs exists. Yeah mean this is where we'll have to decide where the debate is based staircases in the woods do exist especially strange ones that seemingly lead to nowhere um people have seen them there are photos online that you can check out as i said i briefly brought it up to one of my

friends and they said that they had seen staircases in the woods. So I don't, if the conclusion is, do mysterious staircases exist in the woods? The answer is yes. But today we're obviously here to decide whether or not these are paranormal. Yeah, I think you said a guy got his hand chopped off by an alternate dimension or something. Yeah, and a woman's head exploded like a water balloon. So we better, to be fair to those people, we should at least make a decision on that.

I guess, but this is where the description of paranormal kind of really matters because it's not normal for some of these stairs to exist in the woods. They are weird and mysterious. But is it mystical, is it mystical? Is it extraterrestrial, otherworldly? I think is the definition that we kind of need to focus on. Well, in that case, no. Oh, right.

Well, let's maybe focus on the other one. No, you've made your bed and we now have to sleep in it. So for me, if the question is, are there paranormal supernatural stairs to either another dimension either a stargate either an interdimensional portal of some kind the answer is no no no no that's a no as well from me but do staircases exist in the woods and we don't know why they're there yes absolutely and kit agrees because we're on the same team finally after all these years yeah that'll probably reign those

reviews in the last 30 seconds of agreement two no's but what a great episode thank you so much to amy grisdell for research and cammy Toman for editing this week's episode. And thank you all for listening to this week's episode of This Paranormal Life. Guys, if you enjoy the show and you want to show it, you want to show it in style. We have been very excited over the last couple of weeks to say that there is actually an official This Paranormal Life merch store, which you can find in the description of this very episode. We're talking T-shirts oh yeah well that's all there is isn't it uh long sleeve t-shirts but let me tell you guys you better find the store follow it bookmark it because the stores like about to get a lot more sexy and rory doesn't actually necessarily know about all these product ideas but I'm thinking assless chaps thongs terrible ideas uh what'd you say in the beginning candy floss ball gag I like

that idea some people just want like a hat like this paranormal life hat a spanking wand why spanking uh maybe some kind of leather full leather onesie some real f***ed up kink shit you went you went right past wand and straight to spank what is a spanking wand by the way i'm just putting words together that might be sexy or wizard sex toy i'm kind of throwing it out there to see what people think uh what do you think of more sexy items in the stores, guys? That's how they haze you when you get placed into your Hogwarts school. You get hit with the spanking wand. Someone smacks your ass while you repeat the words, I solemnly swear I'm up to no good.

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the stairs. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.