Stairs in the Woods

A Search and Rescue Officer for the U.S. Forest Service, who wished to remain anonymous, contacted us in October 2008 and gave us one of the more perplexing anomalies we’ve learned about. They’ve encountered a lot of weird stuff in the forest they patrol, but there’s one that stands out in their mind, something that happens repeatedly. They say it’s a sort of thing that other SAR Officers don’t talk about, but they’re not even sure if it’s a regular occurrence for other Officers across the country.

According to them, if you wander into the forest for a good long while, there’s a non-zero chance you’ll come across a staircase in a random area in the middle of the forest. They come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, styles and even conditions of wear, all between one or two stories high and not leading to anywhere. There are some that are thin, metallic and spiraling like the ones you’d see in an old lighthouse, and some that are smooth, glossy hardwood with carpets on the steps, like you’d see in a newly furnished house. Anon described these stairs to be “like if you took the stairs from a building, cut them out, and put them in a random area in the woods.”

The first time they came across a set of stairs when they were patrolling the forest, they asked about it with an older officer, who told them that they were normal, and that they shouldn’t worry about it. Anon wanted to check them out, but they were “emphatically told” to never go near them, let alone climb them. After a while, they started ignoring the stairs whenever they came across them and parroted what he was told to others who asked about them. But deep down, there’s still a bit of that curiosity eating away at him about those stairs.