From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where we explore the seven wonders of the
modern world.
It should be noted though, unlike the seven wonders of the ancient world, which were
built, these wonders are more insane ponderings of terminally online individuals.
Or like, hey, I wonder, anyhow, we are your podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea here today,
exploring just one of those wonders, I assume, because Chelsea's done the same thing she
always does.
It was, this was the perfect opening for it.
It's almost like, I knew, but I did not.
I don't know, something that we've covered in the past.
Synchronicity.
Like remote viewed what I was doing or something like that.
Insert.
Do you know what?
Fringy something here.
It could be the Mandela effect where I came from a universe in which you told me the topic
that you would be covering in this episode, and then these two timelines merged.
In this universe, I've withholded all the topics from now on.
Yes.
Always have.
Yes.
Okay.
So this week, you're all about to learn, including Taylor, about this phenomenon, which is such
a hard word to pronounce.
I've been seeing it pop up a few times now, and I don't, I never knew much about it.
You mean sort of the word phenomenon or this phenomenon?
This the word phenomenon.
I said it.
You've been seeing the word phenomenon pop up.
Yes.
Okay.
It's very hard to pronounce.
No, wait, I think I misunderstood the question.
The topic phenomenon.
Okay.
The topic that I'm going to cover, which is its own phenomenon.
That's the one that I'm mystified by, I think.
Okay.
Well, let's keep going and see if that makes sense.
Yeah.
I'm going to finish the sentence now.
I figured what better way to find out about it than to do a whole episode about it and
find out I did.
Now, let's find out the mysterious phenomenon being drumroll here.
The mysterious phenomenon being random isolated staircases being found in the woods that
is with no other structure attached to it.
Oh, this has come up in a previous episode.
I can't remember with.
It has?
Yeah, we vaguely talked about it one time.
Ah, I don't remember that.
I'm excited.
Do you think it was the Phantom Time episode?
The original.
It was the Mandela Effect episode.
If again, that we do not come from the same universe.
So moving on to more about this phenomenon.
The phenomenon.
I'm actually seeing how much I can say phenomenon in this episode.
It actually seems to originate from a Reddit post by user search and rescue woods, oddly
enough, or fittingly, maybe, who claims to be a park ranger and the entire post is titled
I'm a search and rescue officer for the US Forest Service and I have some stories to
tell.
And he goes on to make several lengthy posts about all his experiences in the woods as
a search and rescue officer for the US Forest Service.
The person who made this lengthy multi-post talks about strange things that he has encountered
while on duty.
He talks a lot about mysterious missing people, which was intriguing in itself.
He says that is a majority of what he deals with is the mysterious missing people and
that and rescue calls.
He tells of encounters of missing people he found referencing people with no face.
Big men with black eyes following them.
Wait, are those the egg ghosts?
No, they could be actually, because we don't know egg ghosts here.
It could be.
It is, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just different culture.
Also in reference to missing people, big men with black eyes following them and sometimes
making sounds such as running water, bobcats screaming, etc.
Walking sticks of missing people found hanging from the top of 30 foot trees.
Strange animal sounds, which I just kind of said up, not up, up in my notes, but like
just 30 seconds ago, which we've talked about with big foot.
And the sounds just sound off or one was described as sounding fuzzy, babies crying on loop.
That's not what we're talking about, but I just thought I would put in some of what
he talks about in reference to the missing people and his search and rescue missions.
I'm going to now just read through the first post he made in regard to the stairs and then
we can go through some fun facts of the stairs.
But I thought I'd first start out with where we first kind of saw this start to begin.
Well, this is the last one I'll tell and it's probably the weirdest story I have.
He obviously was telling other stories and then got to this.
Now I don't know if this is true in every SAR, which is search and rescue, he shortens
it to SAR unit, but in mine, it's sort of an unspoken regular thing we run into.
You can try and ask about it with other SAR officers, but even if they know what you're
talking about, they probably won't say anything about it.
We've been told not to talk about it to buy our superiors and at this point we've all
gotten so used to it that it doesn't seem weird anymore.
On just about every case where we're really far into the wilderness, I'm talking 30 or
40 miles, at some point we'll find a staircase in the middle of the woods.
It's almost like if you took the stairs in your house, cut them out and put them in the
forest.
I asked about it the first time I saw some and the other officer just told me not to
worry about it and 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.
So that's where the phenomenon seems to kind of originate as far as my research took me.
Interesting.
Now let's set out to explore where this takes us.
Cause yeah, I definitely heard about this.
I couldn't literally place where I've heard about it.
It might even be from that posting, but I feel like it's a phenomenon that has gone just
past that posting.
It has.
I'll cover a little bit of it.
It's definitely gone past it.
So the first emergence of the random spooky staircases in the woods goes back to only
2019 with apparently this post that I just read you.
And from there, it just takes off like wildfire with others sharing their own experiences
from all over the world, including the US, Portugal, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Philippines,
just to name a few.
These stairs are found in the woods, sometimes as deep as at least 60 kilometers into the
woods, just like he just kind of said in the post that I just said.
The stairs encounter come in a variety of shapes, sizes, styles, age and conditions.
Some can be pretty dilapidated just in ruins.
Others are brand new.
A set of stairs was referenced as looking like they came from a lighthouse.
So they were metal and kind of spiraled up in like an old fashioned way.
They are any material in shape.
Some are stone and very old.
Some modern looking.
Some are brick.
Some are, I'm sure I didn't mean Saturday.
Some are.
That is an interesting staircase.
Some are Saturday.
I'm not sure what I was trying to say.
So I will just leave it at Saturday.
Some are wood and rickety and cast iron spirals like I just said.
So you get the idea, hopefully, because Saturday is thrown in there.
So I'm not sure if you do.
I'm going to continue on anyway.
We're imagining regular stairs.
Like you said, just copy and pasted from your house.
I don't know any other places there are.
Well, I guess there's many places that are stairs other than a house.
Pretty much everywhere has stairs.
Lighthouse.
Outdoor places.
Parts.
Places with hills usually have them.
Yeah.
Buildings that are more than one story usually have stairs.
Some even dare I say have moving stairs.
Has anybody ever come across escalators?
Yeah.
Maybe that's what you meant by Saturday.
Yes.
Auto corrected.
We can only your eyes at this point.
So anyway, it's like someone took any of these stairs we just talked about copied pasted
them into the middle of nowhere.
Oh, and get this.
There have also been reported accounts of upside down staircases and staircases in
lakes.
Aren't those just staircases still?
No, but they would like go the wrong way.
Like upside down.
Flip them.
So it's like, you know that painting of the stairs going like all over the place?
Or the mention.
Yeah.
So like upside down, like one of those.
So stairs.
Not all of them.
Okay.
So you'd be having to walk on them upside down to get up them.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So it's all okay.
I think I read it.
I think I got it.
Okay.
So the stairs don't go infinitely up into like the universe space like continuing on.
We would have spotted those before 2019 had they.
Yeah.
But some sets are hard to.
What if those weird stairs going into the sky?
They don't go up infallate, but some sets are taller than others.
I also feel like our space program would have taken a completely different turn had
we been able to just walk into space.
It would take a while.
Can you imagine going up those stairs?
Oh, you would have to pack.
That would suck.
But you'd get that.
You would have like the most muscular stuff.
I would really hope there's railings.
I know.
I couldn't do it if there was railings.
So some stairs are taller than others and apparently you're not supposed to ever go
near touch or especially ascend them as he got to in his very first post about the stairs.
It couldn't be a girl.
I don't know why I'm saying he.
Most of them with exception, of course, are clean, free of debris, no dirt, leaves, dust,
vegetation and no signs of animal activity, including insects is going on around them,
but you're not supposed to inspect them.
Like how close did he get that he's like, yep, no insects here.
He is not the only person talking about them.
Okay, which we're going to talk about because I feel like if it's just based on him, who's
like, yeah, don't go near them.
You can't say there's no bugs on them.
I feel like if he's the only one experiencing them, it would be pretty easy to discredit.
Yeah.
But we'll get to it.
We can't discredit any of this.
It's very real.
People have purported feeling unnerved and overwhelming feel of dread, unwelcome or even
nauseous feeling when they're on the stairs.
So some people didn't follow the people go on the stairs.
Okay.
Yeah.
And the ones who survived tell us the stories.
Yeah.
Stories being a pun here for we have stairs.
That one was over my head.
That's very clever.
Congratulations.
There's a variety of theories as to where they come from and what they're doing, being
naturally occurring from like a house that has since become dilapidated.
Everything about the house, rotten or any stairs.
There's people who theorize that like sometimes stairs are more sturdily built.
So the rest of the house just falls apart.
Reclame by nature, leaving the stairs with no other signs of anything being around it.
That's literally one of the theories.
I like that theory.
Yeah.
It's people trying to disprove it.
However, it doesn't show any signs of being part of another structure in most cases.
We also hear alien prank, fairies, vortexes, portal to another dimension.
Staircase to hell is a popular one, might I add.
Others seem to believe it's somehow tied to the weird mysterious missing people cases.
Another one being that ancient cultures built them.
I'm just curious if this comes up in your research.
Are they like the normal length of stair or would they be a longer stair?
Sometimes they're longer, sometimes they're shorter.
The lengths really vary.
Okay, I'm just curious because I'm trying to figure out.
No, I mean like each step itself.
Like could a big foot foot fit on these steps?
So far as I'm putting together, it's like regular stairs.
Okay, so it's not big foot.
Maybe he's just trying to be like people.
He saw some of the building stairs and he's just took it upon himself from there.
From everything that I've seen it would be something for our gate, not big foot because
people, ah, if you're seeing it from far off though, you might not be able to tell how
big those stairs are.
So I'm gonna leave that one open because I can't confirm.
For the most part people say it's just like stairs.
Okay, and the other question I have I guess at this point, you did kind of have some
descriptions of things around the stairs or people's feelings.
Has there ever been an aroma described around them?
No, not that I ever came across.
Unless somebody talks about it in one of the sightings because I don't read those.
Oh yes.
I just want to make sure because that's that feeling of dread and then like the sulfur
smell that you're gonna get.
Yes, I was just gonna say you're probably getting it sulfur.
No, but we can see if it comes up at all.
So there is a source that I saw that says that they appear mostly in areas where someone
has disappeared or they're spotted.
Because you search and rescue, right?
So they're going out to look and they come across stairs almost all the time that they're
looking for a missing person.
But also you're only gonna look for missing persons in like remote regions that are hard
to get to, are you not?
Which I think maybe not necessarily.
I don't know, I've never thankfully had to look for a missing person.
I don't, yeah, I'm just trying to think here because like if it's just like you're looking
for somebody in a normal area, first off, they're not gonna be that lost.
Second off, stairs aren't gonna seem out of place.
So I don't know maybe it's just kind of like self selecting.
So these staircases in particular are in places that there should not be staircases.
I feel like at this point I should specify that again.
It's about all I could put together for like generally what we're looking at for stairs.
This guy wrote several posts and it's not just specifically about stairs.
He also writes about, like I said, I put a bunch of stuff together about weird things
about missing people.
He's just generally sharing his stories and other colleagues of his stories from what's
going on, what they've encountered and just weird out of place things that are going on
in the staircases come up.
From this, people start commenting and sharing their own stories on these threads and it's
several Reddit threads that he writes and he writes, it's just like a wall of words.
So he stops writing and then comes back, posts another link to another place.
So there's several of them.
He shares a lot of stories from himself and his colleagues.
And I'm just gonna share it now before I get into some of these eyewitness accounts.
I must disclose the original post of this search and rescue person is on the Reddit thread
called No Sleep, which is a lot of fictitious stories.
Yeah, I would compare it probably to like creepypasta and stuff like that, just fictitious
made up stories.
And the debate kind of goes from there.
People say it's made up, but for those saying it's completely made up, other people point
to the fact that others start sharing their own stories about it.
Did it remain on No Sleep?
Yes.
Or did it kind of expand?
Okay, because part of No Sleep also has people kind of elaborate on stories also.
Yeah, I don't know that it's all necessarily made up and then they point to also the people
commenting while there are people that are gonna, it's Reddit, right?
People are gonna comment whatever the fuck they want, but people point to the people
commenting in detail that, you know, it's not all necessarily gonna be made up as always.
You be the judge or just listen to what we have to say about it.
We can accept that as well.
We will opine for you.
Yeah, exactly.
So let's get into some of the stories.
So this is a part of the thread that he was going.
So this is just another story that he's sharing in amongst all the other ones.
So he goes on and I can't remember the dude's name like search and rescue dude or something.
Search and rescue would shares.
One of my first jobs as a trainee was a search op for a four year old kid that had gotten
separated from his mom.
This was one of the cases where we knew we were gonna find him because the dogs were
on a strong scent trail and we saw clear signs that he was in the area.
We ended up finding him in a berry patch about half a mile from where he'd last been seen.
Kid wasn't even aware that he'd wandered that far.
One of the vets brought him back, which I was glad for because I'm really not good with
kids and I find it hard to talk to them and keep them company.
As my trainer and I are headed back, she decides to take me on a detour to show me one of the
hotspots where we tend to find missing people.
It's a natural dip in the land near a popular trail and people will usually move downhill
because it's easier.
We hike out there, it's a few miles away and we get there in about an hour or so.
As we're walking around the area, she's pointing out places she's found people in the past.
I see something in the distance.
Now this area we're in is about 8 miles from the main parking lot, though there's back
roads you can take to get closer if you don't want to hike that far.
But we're on state protected land, which means there can't be any kind of commercial or
residential development out here.
The most you'll ever see is a fire tower or makeshift shelter that homeless people think
that they can get away with building.
But I can see from here that whatever this thing is has straight edges and if there's
one thing you learn quickly it's that nature rarely makes straight lines.
I point it out but she doesn't say anything.
She just hangs back and lets me wander over and check it out.
I get within about 20 feet of it and all the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
It's a staircase in the middle of the fucking woods.
In the proper context it would literally be the most benign thing ever.
It's just a normal staircase with beige carpet.
Oh this one has carpet.
And about 10 steps tall.
That can't be clean.
No, you would think it would be squishy too.
I really like that he brought up that nature doesn't make straight angles but it's carpeted.
That's the part that you should focus on for nature doesn't make carpet.
But instead of being in a house where it obviously should be, it's out here in the middle of
the woods.
The sides aren't carpeted obviously.
And I can see the wood it's made of.
It's almost like a video game glitch where the house has failed to load completely and
the stairs are the only thing visible.
I stand there and it's like my brain is working overtime to try and make sense of what I'm
seeing.
My trainer comes and stands next to me and she just stands there casually looking at it
as if it's the least interesting thing in the world.
I ask her what the fuck this thing is doing here and she just chuckles.
It used to it rookie you're gonna see a lot of them.
I start to move closer but she grabs my arm.
Hard.
I do that she says her voice is casual but her grip is tight and I just stand there looking
at her.
You're gonna see them all the time but don't go near them, don't touch them, don't go
up them just ignore them.
I start to ask her about it but something in the way she's looking at me tells me that
it's best if I don't.
We end up moving on and the subject doesn't come up again for the rest of my training.
She was right though.
I'd say about every fifth call I go on I end up running across a set of stairs.
These are relatively close to the path maybe within 2 or 3 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 like they've been out there for
miles.
All different kinds all different sizes the biggest I ever saw look like it came out of
a turn of the century mansion and where at least 10 feet wide with steps leading up at
least 15 to 20 feet.
I've tried talking about it with people but they 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 close to them.
When trainees ask me about it now I give them the same response I don't really know what
else to tell them.
I'm really hoping someday I get a better answer but it hasn't happened yet.
I should also note that in most of these instances people will spot us at a staircase
then go back and they're gone.
That's relatively important I think.
Yes that's the first time it's come up.
Yeah that's why I better say it.
Next one is not from this guy.
This is from user case underscore nine and they shared the story saying I found the staircase
while walking through foliage so thick I didn't see it until it was almost under foot.
The stairs were made of loose cobble and moist earth like they were work of masonry
once long ago.
I climbed the stairs thoughtlessly half expecting there would be a landing to greet me at the
top though there wasn't.
Just another crumbly step in an unimpressive view.
Something caught my eyes I craned my head.
The bushes were packed tight except where the stumps of dead trees formed sunken walls
around them and from one of the craters someone was looking at me.
I remember clearly their dark, lean face, their round eyes black.
No sooner had I seen the face than it disappeared again.
Only did I have the foresight to take off down the steps back through the bushes and
rambles.
I found that one interesting because it had the same black eyed creature that other missing
people, mysterious missing people have spotted.
It also seems like the stairs wanted him to accidentally walk up him and fall off.
You think it's the stairs that have consciousness?
That's another good theory.
Maybe.
The stairs themselves are the cryptid.
They seem to move.
They do.
Maybe they're conscious.
Maybe it's a brace of extraterrestrial we've never thought of.
We could start a cult.
I mean it could, they don't have to be extraterrestrials.
They'll just be like, stair peoples or stairs.
They have feelings too.
And like no one's ever thought to glass by stairs is a living thing.
So.
And why would, I wouldn't want somebody climbing up me either.
Like mate that's why people feel unwelcome.
They're in the stairs personal space.
Anyhow, let's go on to the next setting.
This one is from user guy who complains.
You're going to notice that all these stories are ready users.
I used to volunteer at a state park in Oklahoma and I always got spooked by the stories that
the older park rangers would tell me.
Since everyone is especially spooked by the story of the luring crying in the stairs,
here is one relating to them.
From the perspective of the older ranger who told me the story, he was a younger vet in
the 90s when he came across a structure that looked like the bottom floor of a house.
A floor of wood about 8x8 that looked well crafted for being out in the fuck of nowhere
with a chair and table on it.
He approached it until he heard his CO calling out to him, but when he turned around and
saw him yelling with all his strength, he ran back to the CO, told him that it's a common
trap used by the fucked up people in the world to catch someone.
They use familiar objects to prey on wanderers because they feel comfortable near them, or
in the case of the stairs, they look like good vantage points to see the direction civilization
is in.
They're lost I guess.
The floor, particularly crazy, is that it was put in a sort of natural bowl in which
the acoustics blanketed all noise with a layer of white noise, making it so you can't
hear anyone approaching.
He said the next week his CO brought in the proper authorities to blow the damn thing
up.
The story did not end there.
They went to check the site immediately after to make sure there was no way in hell a fire
could start, and in the middle of where the floor had been, they had seen three or four
holes near where the table and chair was.
Now due to the explosion, the holes had caved in, but the authorities said that with some
of the wood they collected, it was possible that near the table and chairs, thinner wood
was used where they could fall through the holes.
They didn't find anything in the holes after digging them up again, but from how different
the densities in the soil was, they could tell that the holes were built to be about
6 feet deep.
Moral of the story, animals aren't the only hunters out there if you see something too
unnatural or too perfect to be true, don't Instagram it, run.
Well, this is just one of those stories that Chelsea obviously did not proof read.
I mean, you can still Instagram it, just like don't go into it.
Take the selfie from afar, I think was the story.
Yeah, and then maybe just then walk away from it.
Yeah, because clearly it's just some sort of trap.
Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, not a fan of that story.
Not a lot of stairs in that story.
There wasn't stairs, it was just a random thing that they blew up in the woods.
My buddy had been an SAR officer for about 7 years.
He started when he was a junior in college and he had a very similar experience when
he first encountered the stairs.
His trainer told him almost the same thing Mai did, which was to never go near touch or
ascend them.
I'm pretty sure this is the original Reddit user as well, just from the language.
For the first year he did just that, but apparently his curiosity got the better of
him.
And on one call he broke away from the line and went to go check a set of them out.
He said they were about 10 miles from the path where a teenage girl had vanished and
the dogs were following his scent.
He was on his own, lagging behind the main group when he saw a set of stairs off to his
left.
They looked like they were from a new house because the carpeting was pristine and white.
A second one with carpet.
Arpit never came up before with me.
Except for on these stories I'm reading.
Except in every story.
Almost everyone.
He said that as he got closer he didn't feel any different or hear any weird noises.
He was expecting something to happen, like bleeding from his ears or collapsing, but
he got right up next to them and didn't feel anything.
The only thing he said that was odd was that there was absolutely no debris on the steps,
no dirt, leaves, dust, anything.
And there didn't appear to be any signs of animals or insect activity in the immediate
area which he found strange.
It was less like things were avoiding them and more like they just happened to be in
a relatively barren part of the forest.
I mean there's no part of the forest where there aren't going to be bugs or animal life.
It's because it's too deep into the forest.
He touched the stairs and didn't feel anything except that sort of sticky feeling you get
from a new carpet.
I gotta say I'm completely unfamiliar with that new feeling on the carpet of being sticky.
It is a new carpet so I'm not sure why it's sticky.
Making sure his radio was on he slowly climbed the stairs.
He said it was terrifying because the way they'd been stigmatized.
He wasn't really sure what was going to happen to him.
He joked that half of him expected to be teleported to some other dimension and the other half
was watching for a UFO to come swooping down.
But he got to the top with little event and he stood there looking around.
But he said the longer he stood on the top step the more he felt like he was doing something
very very wrong.
He described it as feeling as the feeling you get if you were in a part of the government
building you have no business being in.
As if someone was going to come and arrest you or shoot you in the back of the head at
any second.
He tried to brush it off but the feeling got stronger and stronger and that's when
he realized that he couldn't hear anything anymore.
Sounds of the forest were gone and he couldn't hear his own breathing.
It was just like some kind of weird awful tinnitus but more oppressive.
He climbed back down and rejoined the search but didn't mention what he'd done.
But he said the weirdest part came after.
His trainer was waiting back at the welcome center after the search ended that day and
he cornered my buddy before he could leave.
He said his trainer had a look of intense anger and he asked what was wrong.
You went up them didn't you?
My buddy said it wasn't phrased as a question.
He asked how his trainer knew.
The trainer just shook his head because we didn't find her.
The dog lost her scent.
My buddy asked what that had to do with anything.
The trainer asked how long he'd been on the stairs and my buddy said no more than a minute.
The trainer gave him this really awful almost dead eyed look and told him that if he ever
went up another set of stairs again he'd be fired.
Immediately.
The trainer walked away and I guess he's never answered any of the questions my buddy
has asked him about it since.
Interesting.
I like the part where he's like hey did you go up those stairs?
Don't go up those stairs.
As far as I can put together they're tying the missing people with the stairs.
Yeah.
In a confusing way.
That seems to be the logic they're coming to.
Which makes me feel like they know a bit more at least in the confines of these stories.
The higher up seem to know a bit more.
Not sure how.
Or how these people also aren't talking online.
Yeah.
Apparently this guy ends his last post with the millions that he put up with.
He had to stop sharing them because they knew that someone was talking and he didn't want
to lose his job.
The job's just that good.
Yeah.
That you're willing to like cover up all these stairs that are mysteriously out there
and hinge on finding survivors.
Okay.
I mean when you put it that way it doesn't sound too good.
Another man tells something that happened to him personally when he worked as an infectious
disease expert from the US government healthcare agency.
It was the 1940s.
Shortly after the famous Roswell accident and there had been cases of mutilated animals.
During the six months of research in the area many stairs were sighted that seemed to move
at night where they had previously been an area appeared to be burned.
Next story.
In Sweden, two young men found a solitary ladder and decided to climb it.
I guess it takes the form of ladders as well.
Those are stairs.
Just straight up and down.
Yeah, they're a very simplified ladder.
Yeah.
Or sorry, a very simplified stair.
Concepts still apply.
It does.
One of them felt his shoulder touched and turned thinking it was his companion.
But the ladder was too far away to have touched him.
The touch, he says, was icy.
Another story tells of a woman who was on the ladder who fell suddenly.
Dead.
The report spoke of a brain aneurysm.
Well, that was short and sweet.
I mean, that one would have just got caught up with the, like, thousands of people every
year that die falling off ladders.
So I can see how easy it is to cover those up.
From a brain aneurysm.
User Taylor and Shazam.
That's not you, is it?
No, I refuse to admit.
Taylor and Shazam.
In Michigan, the epicenter of the stairs in the woods wrote, that's not true.
I just said that would be funny.
Don't take that as truth, please.
Anyhow, this person wrote, an hour east of iron wood, there was 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 navigate.
I'm sure he means his older cousin.
Not the older cousin.
Surely when you're telling a story, you can relate those relationships properly.
I would hope.
You would hope.
Yeah, this is true.
He walked to the stairs to see how they were being held up.
Couldn't find anything which weirded him out.
The older cousin that is.
He made us all leave.
Grass didn't grow near the stairs either.
Oh, that's the end of Michigan's story.
That was a pretty short story.
I have this setup weird.
Norwegian Redditor, Holy Shit Space says they have come across staircases too and it scared
them silly.
I made an account just to post this comment.
He says a few months back while visiting Gramps.
That's right.
I mean, it checks out this.
This guy gets his relationships right in Lillis and Southern Norway.
We went hiking.
Nothing big, just a walk in a picnic in some woods with us.
We're my niece and nephew who were both quite young.
So I joined them and hide and seek while the proper grownups 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 only after 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 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.
And that, that's it.
That's my staircase in the woods.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm going to say I like the stories.
I definitely do.
I feel like it's more, everything now is in comparison to the mudflug for me as like the
absolute bare minimum you need for a fun conspiracy.
Yeah.
And it requires too much buy-in from quote higher ups who know everything, but like do
not spill these secrets ever.
And supposedly this is everywhere in the world.
So it would have to have gotten out at some point.
You're right.
Or this to be like a fully fledged thing that's real, but it's a fun story nonetheless.
I do want to be on board with it because first of all, it has all the factors that I love.
The things with which have no business being in the place that they are.
Black eyed individuals, which we still need to do in episode one.
Black eyed no-face individuals.
It's tied to the strange missing people, which I love.
But you know, the fact that it was originally, and the guy makes like a very detailed post.
Like he put effort into this.
Almost like he wrote a story.
He knew what the people wanted.
And I think he gave it to him, especially that it comes from the no sleep Reddit, which
is renowned for being made and stuff.
I love the story.
I've seen it pop up a few times.
I was like, that seems like a good spooky thing.
Let's take a look at it.
And I, you know, I thought I had some good stories that might give some credence to the
fact that it could be a thing.
Turns out I didn't.
And I don't feel like I even get convinced of it myself by the end of this, but make
your own decisions.
Don't listen to what I have to say.
Yeah.
I mean, we can tell you what to do.
But again, we can't go on record to say we're not a cult because that just makes you a cult.
And cults tell you what to do.
So we're not telling you what to do.
Status unknown journey to the fringe.
Status not stated.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's see.
It's not unknown.
It's not stated.
Yeah.
No, that sounds better.
With that non statement statement, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.
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