Climb at your Own Risk: Stairways in the Forest

The forest has rules you feel before you understand—and tonight we push against them. We dive into the viral legend of “stairs in the woods,” those freestanding steps that appear where no house stands and silence swallows birdsong. With Heather from Tell Me a Scary Story, we unpack why liminal structures terrify us, how modern folklore spreads online, and what makes some tales feel unsettlingly true.

We start by tracing the myth’s roots in early Reddit threads: stone steps mossed over, pristine carpeted risers in the deep backcountry, teams warned not to climb. Then we test the blueprint of a perfect campfire scare with a first-person narrative —specific times, a panicked dog, a friend who changes on a landing, and a ranger’s file that disagrees with reality—before revealing how crafted creepypasta earns belief by respecting detail, rhythm, and doubt. 

Along the way, we explore how architecture without context becomes a psychological trap, why time perception warps under stress and novelty, and how folklore works as a social sensor for our anxieties about wilderness, development, and authority. We trade practical advice too: how to document strange structures responsibly, read old foundations, check easements, and set hard boundaries when curiosity tilts toward danger. The goal isn’t to debunk wonder; it’s to keep you sharp in places that deserve respect.

Come for the chills, stay for the mechanics of fear—and tell us what you’d do if you found steps to nowhere. If this story-world is your kind of strange, follow and share the show, drop a review, and tag us with your wildest urban legends. Stay curious, stay weird, and whatever you do… don’t look back.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open & Disclaimer
• 1:18 Setting The Forest Mood
• 2:01 Introducing Hosts & Guest Heather
• 3:16 Origins of Stairs-in-the-Woods Lore
• 5:25 Global Reports & Eerie Patterns
• 7:45 Angela’s “Firsthand” Encounter
• 13:15 Time Slip, Voices, and Escape
• 16:20 Reveal: A Crafted Creepypasta
• 17:20 Real vs. Fiction in Internet Folklore
• 18:55 Kyle’s Abandoned House Story
• 25:10 Attic Doll, Footprints, Distorted Time
• 30:20 Why We Fear Liminal Structures
• 32:30 Ruins, Hauntings, and Time Anomalies
• 35:10 Lessons, Boundaries, and Not Going Back
• 40:00 Wrap-Up, Socials, and Final Warning

Transcript

SPEAKER_08: 0:00

But you still see like the woods kind of off like it's all that area that where that um where that one road is, I said that like kind of goes through and it cuts into like that little highway area. It's all that area that's developed. So the rest of the woods that we would like go in and like screw around in is still there.

SPEAKER_10: 0:16

So you think the house is still there?

SPEAKER_08: 0:18

Uh you know what?

SPEAKER_06: 0:19

If I never know, I can die happy.

SPEAKER_05: 0:29

Thanks for that.

SPEAKER_08: 0:32

I don't always monomina, but when I do, I do do do do.

SPEAKER_02: 0:38

Now when do we see that before we begin today's episode, we would like to share a quick disclaimer. The views, opinions, and statements expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own personal views and are provided in their own capacity. All content is editorial, opinion-based, and intended for entertainment purposes only. Listener discretion is advised. Tonight we're going deep into the forest, not the kind marked with trails and campfire songs, but the kind where the trees lean in too close and the quiet feels like it's watching you. Now, maybe you've heard the stories staircases in the woods, just standing there. No ruins, no houses, no logical reason for them to exist. Some say it's a hoax, others say it's a government cover-up. But those who found them, they don't talk much about it. And the ones who do, they never climb them, or if they do, they don't come back the same. Welcome back to the show. I'm Angela, and as always, riding Shotgun. I have Kaya with me. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_08: 2:06

I am Groot.

SPEAKER_02: 2:12

And today we have a very special guest. Um, we have Heather from Tell Me a Scary Story Podcast. We're so excited to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_04: 2:22

I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02: 2:24

Well, how are you doing? And do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your podcast? Well, sure. Hi, I'm Heather.

SPEAKER_04: 2:33

Obviously, Tell Me a Scary Story is my podcast where I talk about all things, well, scary and spooky from cryptids to UFOs to hauntings to sometimes even some true crime. And yeah, I love it all. So if you are interested in that stuff, hop on over and you can find me on Spotify, on TikTok, kind of on Instagram and barely on YouTube, but I'm gonna work on that.

SPEAKER_02: 3:02

Well, you you definitely have some great stuff. I've been uh listening to all of your episodes and it's phenomenal work. So thank you. Yeah, we're we're so happy to have you. Oh, that means so much. Thank you. So, Heather and Kyle, are you familiar with the phenomena of stairs in the in the woods?

SPEAKER_08: 3:23

Uh I I know about the woods and I use the stairs all the time. Does that count? I've actually hit my head on the stairs a couple of times.

SPEAKER_04: 3:33

Oh God, not in the woods. Not in the woods? Not in the woods. Not in the woods. Okay. I actually have heard about this before. So it's actually pretty pretty fascinating.

SPEAKER_02: 3:46

Yeah, yeah. So um I want to go just kind of like where kind of the roots of this phenomenon happened. Um, and then we'll get into a very personal story I've been dying to tell about an encounter with the stairs in the woods. Do what do what now? So the this phenomenon with the stairs in the woods gained a lot of traction on Reddit or in the early 2010s. Um, so there was a post on Reddit by an alleged uh search and rescue officer, and it went viral. And basically, this guy was claiming that they often found freestanding staircases deep in national parks. They were miles away from any other structure. Sometimes they would find them and they were like made of ancient stone, overgrown with moss. Others were disturbingly like pristine, like we're talking clean carpet, no debris, no dust. And some of them looked like they had just been placed there yesterday. And according to this story, the SAR teams were warned if you ever see one of the stairs, don't go near it and never climb it. There was never any official explanation given, just a quiet understanding that stairs found in the forest were wrong and you don't do anything with them. But the interesting thing is that it it didn't stop at just one post. Soon there were reports kind of popping up from all over the world: Germany, Sweden, the Philippines. There was even a story from the jungles in Cambodia where the stairs led into the canopy and then just stopped. So they often report that none of them had foundations. But the thing that the thread that kind of combines all of the stories was that all of them reported that something seemed off, that there was like a dead zone in the air. There, you know, like birds, there were no noises, like everything just sound just sort of dropped. Um, and then they also reported that time seemed to move differently.

SPEAKER_01: 6:07

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 6:08

What the fuck? Yeah. So what do you think?

SPEAKER_04: 6:12

I mean, what just trying to Kyle's enthralled right now.

SPEAKER_08: 6:17

He's like, Kyle's enthralled is so bad. I'm doing I wish you guys could see me. I'm doing my best not to just like laugh like uncontrollably at this because when when you first pitched this idea that this was the topic, we were all this other kind of fun stuff. I sat there and for like at least a day or two, I was looking for Ashton Kusher to like pop out of my refrigerator or something. Or I was like, I'm being punked, right? This has got to be the most ridiculous fucking thing we've ever talked about.

SPEAKER_09: 6:52

It's a legit thing. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_08: 6:55

Well, um, he was telling me this, and it's like, I'm just picturing what it's like playing Minecraft with me. Like you're just walking through, next thing you know, there's a fucking staircase that I just got bored with and stopped building. There's just a random thing in the middle of the fucking wet. Just a random fucking. I'm seeing like concrete stairs and like a railing, and then it just stops.

SPEAKER_02: 7:17

Yeah, exactly. Well, that yeah, that's that's exactly yeah. That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_08: 7:23

I'm still I'm still waiting to wake up because this is the most asinant thing I've ever fucking heard of.

SPEAKER_02: 7:30

Well, then let me tell you a story, a firsthand account.

unknown: 7:37

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_08: 7:39

Respectfully.

SPEAKER_04: 7:40

Great, thank you. That song is now in my head. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 7:43

What can I say except I'll stop?

SPEAKER_02: 7:47

All right. So this is my first hand story. And I know when people hear stories like this, you know, they say, Oh, you know, you've had you had too much weed, or you've seen too many horror movies. Uh, you've sleep deprivation, trauma, you know, it all the things. And I'm all I've always been like, fine, believe whatever makes you feel safe. But this is my story. And I will say that something happened to me. And I feel like I need to say this out loud right now before I lose the nerve to tell this story. So this was in the fall of 2022. I was backpacking in West Virginia with my friend Ethan and my dog Severus. We'd been going off trail more and more, trying to explore areas most people don't touch, old growth forest, you know, places where there's no cell towers, no noise, no people. We just wanted wind, birds, and to really feel that we were, you know, in ancient Appalachia Mountains. But the thing, we weren't really even supposed to be there because it was considered off-grid exploring. That's what Ethan always called it. I called it trespassing on lands that we were not supposed to be at.

SPEAKER_08: 9:14

Oh, like actual, like actual fruit, like signs like don't fucking go here.

SPEAKER_02: 9:18

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 9:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 9:22

So this was on the third day, and we set out from our camp around 10 a.m. And we were hiking along a game trail when Severus stopped just dead. His ears were pinned back, his hackles were raised, and then he bolted off into the trees, growling like he had lost his damn mind. And, you know, we just went out and we started chasing him. And I want to say, like, we chased him for about 15-20 minutes, and then we found him, and he was sitting completely calm, and he was next to a staircase, and it was a staircase that was just there. It was wooden, painted white, but the paint was like peeling kind of like sunburned skin. And there were seven steps to the staircase, and then there was a small landing, and then nothing above it. There was no structure, no ruins. It really looked like it didn't belong in this place in the woods. And I remember Ethan, he was laughing, saying, you know, like, oh, look at this. We found somebody's, you know, treehouse escape route or something. Um, so he was, you know, just making jokes about it. But I couldn't move. Something felt wrong. It was like something was intruding on us, or we were intruding on it. It was wrong in the sense, like it felt like something was watching us. Like whatever this was had turned around to face us when we arrived.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

Oh no, don't like that.

SPEAKER_02: 10:57

And Ethan, kind of being the jokester that he always was, he went up the stairs. Like, of course, he he had no qualms whatsoever. He always wanted to be the brave one and always made a joke out of everything. So he climbed all seven steps, stood on the landing, and grinned at me. And he was like, see, nothing happens. And he started bouncing on it, joking, taunting. And then all of a sudden, Severus started barking again. But it was like this panicked, high-pitched bark, like he was trying to warn us. It was something like between a bark and a whelp. It was very odd. And that's when Ethan changed. And I don't, it wasn't like anything like he changed, like he was being dramatic or like nothing cinematic. It was just like his face shifted. He went pale and he stopped smiling. And then he like blinked real slow. It I swear it was like somebody coming out of anesthesia. And he walked back down the stairs, but not all the way. He just walked six steps and then he stood there. He just stopped, not talking, not moving. He was just staring into the forest like he was waiting for something. And I kept calling to him and nothing. I took a step forward, and that's when Severus he lunged at my leg and he he actually bit me, bit me hard, drew blood. Like he had he had never done anything like that before, ever. And it was like he was trying to hold me back or redirect me in some way. Eventually, Ethan turned to me and his voice was very flat, and he was like, Let's go back. We've been out long enough. Except I didn't think we really had. Um he was the one that, you know, like insisted that we, you know, take a few more days. He was the one who packed all the extra gear. He wanted to take this off-grid path, but yet he was saying, like, we've been out, we've been camping long enough. And and the thing is, he when he left the stairs, he didn't even look at me when he spoke. He just walked right past me and started for back the way that we came to that part of the forest. So the weird part is we were only gone about an hour, right? So my watch was like a little after 11. But when we made it back to camp, the sun was gone and it was nighttime. It was pitch black, cold, dead of night. The fire we had left smoldering was long dead. Um smoldering. Smoldering, I know. As soon as I was like, here we go.

SPEAKER_08: 13:39

I couldn't help myself. I could not help myself.

SPEAKER_02: 13:42

But um, when I asked him what time he thought it was, he just looked at me and said, It's always been this time. And I was like, What the fuck? It sounds like he's possessed. Right. And that's like the moment I knew that I didn't think this was my friend anymore. Like something was seriously different. And that night I didn't sleep. I kept one hand on Severus, one hand on my hatchet, and Ethan sat by the the the fire all night just watching it. Going out of bed. You're right, not warming himself. He was just staring into the ashes. So, and then around 3 a.m., I heard him whisper, and it sounded like he was saying something's underneath.

SPEAKER_04: 14:31

Oh, hell no.

SPEAKER_02: 14:32

And I just pretended to sleep, and then he whispered again, and this time like his whisper was very close, but he was not like there was no one in the tent with me, but I could hear him whisper, it likes your voice. Oh. So as soon as first as soon as first light hit, I packed very quietly. I knew I had to get out of there, and Ethan didn't stop me. He stood and watched me, and his head was just was like tilted in this weird, like slightly off-kelter tilt of his head. Um, and Severus never left my side. I mean, he would not let me out of his sight. So I sat on a path, and here's the thing though: the map no longer was the map that like where I was in the woods changed. The paths didn't match up to what was on the map, and there were all these weird carvings and trees that I never noticed before. It was like runes carved into trees, and then I saw another staircase, and then I kept seeing another staircase. And each time, each staircase was a little taller and a little cleaner, and like a little closer to me. And I started running. And I swear to you, it was like the trees were moving with me. It was like they were trying to close in around me, and like the wind was whipping, and it sounded like there were whispers in the wind. And that's when I saw it. I saw a shadowed figure that moved out of the trees, and it was whispering my name, and I just kept bolting. I finally made it to a ranger station, and then I just collapsed on the porch, and I was covered in scratches. Severus was still barking mad, and the ranger he came out and he looked so confused. He he genuinely looked like he saw a ghost, and then he stood up. That's when Ethan caught up to us, and he turned like even a another pale shade of pale, if you can if you can imagine that. And he said, Oh my god, you're that hiker from three years ago. And I thought it was a joke. I was like, What are I what are you talking about? And he pulled up this file and showed me this report, and it had my name and Ethan's name, and it said, Missing, presumed dead, last seen October 9th, 2017, bodies and dog never recovered. And that was my name on that report. That was us, and we'd only been there for three days, right? Like, right, and I can tell you after all these years, I can say that I'm here, I'm in my home or somewhere like it. But sometimes when I close my eyes, I I still see those stairs, I see them in my hallway. Uh, and it's just like it's something is just waiting for me. And I haven't seen Ethan since that trip, but I swear sometimes it's like I can hear his voice in the vents or in the woods behind my house. So that's my story. What do you think?

SPEAKER_08: 17:59

Well, I think it'll be easy to sleep tonight, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 18:02

Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So do you feel brave enough to take a solo hiking trip this fall? Nope. Nope. Well, I have a confession. I have a confession. So that story was just a creepy pasta I made up just for fun. I've never had a friend named Ethan.

SPEAKER_08: 18:26

I was like, what's I was listening I was completely sold until you said your dog, Severus? And I'm like, bullshit. Like bullshit.

SPEAKER_04: 18:36

I was like, great name.

SPEAKER_08: 18:38

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 18:39

Nice name. What? If I had a dog, if I had a dog, you don't think I would name it Severus?

SPEAKER_08: 18:44

I didn't know you don't got no fucking dog.

SPEAKER_00: 18:49

That's true.

SPEAKER_04: 18:50

It was really well, I I'm applauding. It was really good. It was really creepy. I loved it and it freaked me out.

SPEAKER_08: 18:57

Listen, I swear to God. God is my witness, got some where the fuck I don't give me an upside-down backwards Chinese Braille Bible with half the pages missing. I'll swear on that too. I kind of felt my heart going. I was like, wait a minute, this is kind of creepy. I swear to God.

SPEAKER_02: 19:15

Yeah, but here's the thing. I don't have a dog now, but you don't know what I had in 2022. I could have had a dog in 2017.

SPEAKER_08: 19:22

My damn friend Ethan went no fucking stairs and severed the dog. I don't know goddamn well. But you and I have been around the block doing this a little while. You and I had some conversations.

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

True. True.

SPEAKER_08: 19:36

You would never brought up none of these motherfuckers before. I was gonna be like, show me the carfax. Show me the carfax. At some point, one of them would have been brought up. At some point.

SPEAKER_02: 19:52

This is very true. This is very true. Yeah, yep. But so I wrote that just to kind of demonstrate like how real some of these stories are. And that's the thing. You know, are they real? Are they fiction? Are they, you know, like there are people who swear that they've seen them. Um, and then you have these stories, just like the one that I wrote, pop up, you know, on Reddit in different sites all all the time that people find these.

SPEAKER_08: 20:25

Okay. So here's my follow-up question to that. Are you really Angela or are you that guy who was on Star Trek The Next Generation, and then he had that show Beyond Belief, Fact or Fiction, and all the stories. And at the end of the show, you had to figure out if it was a real story or not. Because is that what we're doing right now? Is that what this fucking episode is?

SPEAKER_00: 20:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_08: 20:45

Because one, I fucking love that. I fucking love that show.

SPEAKER_00: 20:48

I haven't seen that forever.

SPEAKER_08: 20:50

I fucking love that show. And every now and then I just I love the reels and the TikToks and the memes where it's like what it's like having a toddler. It's just a complex video. If you ever ride bikes, you know someone with weird. What about flip? How long do you think it takes to blow up a balloon? Like, you fucking love it.

SPEAKER_04: 21:07

I've seen those for ADHD, and like that's me. Yes.

SPEAKER_08: 21:12

It's my autism on ADHD having a conversation in the brain.

SPEAKER_00: 21:22

Oh my gosh. Me trying to make friends.

SPEAKER_07: 21:34

You want to be on a podcast and or hear about some fucking standards?

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

That's right.

SPEAKER_02: 21:39

Good luck sleeping tonight. Yeah, it's the only way I know how to make friends. Just talk about creepy shit. Heck yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 21:50

Well, yeah, you're you got well you you you're you're you're averaging like what, like a 70 average right now for making new friends on the internet, right?

SPEAKER_10: 22:01

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_08: 22:03

That's all right. I was a C student. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 22:07

C student. I was a C student. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the thing with with uh yeah, internet friends. It's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

SPEAKER_00: 22:16

You really don't know what you're gonna get. That's true.

SPEAKER_08: 22:20

I thought it was an imagined eight ball, you just shake it up and see what the fuck it's gonna say. Hey, are you a new friend?

SPEAKER_02: 22:24

Don't count on it. Right. I mean that later.

SPEAKER_08: 22:31

Are you gonna be a lifelong friend or are you gonna be a lesson?

SPEAKER_02: 22:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_08: 22:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 22:39

It's a lifelong lesson. Yeah. So um, you know, that's that's really all I had on this on this staircase. You know, it's it's just this weird phenomenon that seems to have popped up, you know, um, from the early 2000s on. And, you know, there's a lot of theories and interpretations, you know, and that's and that's I guess the question that I'm posing. Do you buy into like, is it possible? And if there are stairs, is it just ruins from like an old settlement or something that was there? But the thing that that strikes me is like the time distortion. You know, people uh on all of these stories, they they talk about how time kind of slips away. And there seems to be like, even with and and Heather, you probably know this from you know, kind of studying hauntings and stuff, um, you know, there are there are cases where people can go into haunted houses, um, and it's like time, time does funny things, you know?

SPEAKER_04: 23:41

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. You'll think you're in there for an hour and just kind of like your story, well, you're not gone for three years, but you know, it's a lot longer than that. I mean, there are people, especially in in cases of people, you know, supposedly being possessed and stuff, they they lose time.

SPEAKER_08: 24:01

I could start with another story. And I listen, listen, I know how this is.

SPEAKER_02: 24:05

Do you have a Kyle? Do you have a story about finding a fucking staircase in the goddamn woods?

SPEAKER_08: 24:12

I have one about finding a box in the middle of the woods.

SPEAKER_02: 24:15

Okay, well then.

SPEAKER_08: 24:17

I swear to God I do. I swear to God I do.

SPEAKER_02: 24:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_08: 24:22

Jokes. No. Um this was oh, many winter ago. Picture this, Sicily, 1922.

SPEAKER_02: 24:30

I knew it. I knew it.

SPEAKER_00: 24:31

I knew you were gonna do that. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_08: 24:37

Picture this. West Haven, Connecticut, 2000. Nine. 2009, 2010, give or take. Um it was uh I was dating this girl and literally like right, kind of like right in her backyard, there was like this wooded area that there was like this gate that was there and it was all chained off and whatever, I guess. I think it was like the water company or like the electric company or something. I don't know, one of the big It's electric.

SPEAKER_10: 25:14

Boogie, boogie, boogie. Boogie, boogie, boogie. Hey you guys.

SPEAKER_08: 25:18

One of one of those kind of fucking infrastructure whatever the fucks owned all that land. And technically, like your story, it was trespassing to go there or whatever, but we were teenagers and stupid and didn't give a shit. And um a lot of times, like on like the weekends, like a bunch of the friends we would get together, and like some teenagers would do, we'd just go and like fuck around in the woods. Right? And so we would just and mainly just because like I'm obsessed with the woods and always wanted to go there, and mainly because some of the other kids there, they wanted to try to find places to grow marijuana's, but they're stupid. Anywho, so every now and then we would just kind of go through we just go for walks and hikes through the the woods, because there was like actual like walking trails and hiking trails and shit. And you know, each time we would go, we'd go a little bit farther, a little bit farther here, a little bit farther there, and we would find some kind of weird, kind of random shit there. Like uh I guess a bunch of other people would use that as like paintball and airsoft and whatnot. So there was like they like made barricades in this kind of open-y area. So it was just kind of cool like see that and just other buttons of folks saying, okay, so we just keep going further and further. And then there was like a um I think it was a foundation to to a house. And um it was just like concrete, it was like a concrete like rectangle, you know, down seven, eight feet. But there was never anything uh built on it. There was no kind of remnants around it. Like there wasn't like piles of wood, there wasn't driveways, there was no other kind of like, oh, there used to be a road here, and then however many decades, you know, the part of town just whatever they close it off in just the woods and they just let it nature take it back. None of that. It was just a random kind of concrete foundation hole in the ground.

SPEAKER_01: 27:03

Interesting.

SPEAKER_08: 27:04

Which was kind of like weird because it was like I thought it was like in the middle of the fucking woods. Yeah. There was no it wasn't like right off of the I said, because like w whatever infrastructure thing owned this, the area that was gated off, there was a road. There was a paved road that you would go, I don't know, maybe like a quarter of a mile in total length, it would kind of go down this one way, and then it looped around to the corner to the other like main kind of highway thing that was there. Now, if it was something that was just off that, oh, they bought it and they were gonna develop the area, but then they backed out. This was like at least a mile away from that in the middle of the fucking woods.

SPEAKER_01: 27:41

Wow, that's great.

SPEAKER_08: 27:42

And then you look a little bit farther down, same thing, you same thing. There's a like the tree line, a little bit past the tree lines, you can see through it. There's another like opening, another clearing. It's like fuck it, let's head out to that clearing there. Let's see what the fuck's over there. So we went to that clearing, and right on the edge of that clearing, there is his house. Swear to god, swear to fucking cat. Just his random house. And same thing, there's like the the trees are kind of it's almost like the area was s kind of cleared out, oval-esque-ish, whatever you want to say. Um, but there was no roads in or out to this. And there's no inkling that there were roads, and there was no there was there was just like dirt paths from shit like this. Of like there wasn't anything, there was no way to get to this building. There never was a way to get to this building.

SPEAKER_01: 28:32

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_08: 28:34

I swear to fucking god.

SPEAKER_01: 28:35

That is so weird.

SPEAKER_08: 28:36

But then all but then on it too, it's it's not only just a house, but it's boarded up, it's abandoned. So and I swear to god, if I can go like through, I will find pictures through my Facebook of the house. Yes, proof that this house I'm not lying right now. That's crazy. Yeah. One of the times when so when we found this house, it was just me and my girlfriend at the time. And uh we were she was just like, I'm not fucking going over there, get the fuck out of here. And uh I was like, you know what? Alright, fair enough. And if I'm gonna be completely honest, yeah, I'm not brave enough to fucking do that by myself either, absolutely not. And he goes, and plus the other buffoons are gonna want to see this anyway. So like a couple days later, um we watch a call. So, you know, we we all go over to her house again and we go back to the fucking to you know, same way through to the house, to the whatever. And I was like, okay, so it was at the fucking the the the foundation thing. It was like to the left and like through the clearing. So we get to the foundation thing, and I'm telling you, it it looked noticeably older. Like there wasn't any like moss or ivy or anything growing on it. I'm not a horticulturist, I'm not poison ivy, I'm not I don't know how fast that kind of shit grows, but I know that like you know, I know for like um like trees and shit to grow on, like Rocks, those rocks have to be like thousands of fucking years old. You know what I mean? It's just and there was like the foundation was pretty solid. When I tell you that it was in pretty you could tell it was old as been there. It was dirty, but it wasn't like cracked, it wasn't broken or anything like that. One when I'm telling you, we went back. This was like well, like two or three days later. It was like Wednesday, it was like a Wednesday where we went, and now we're back on like Saturday.

SPEAKER_06: 30:22

Yeah, it's just a couple of days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 30:24

I'm telling you, it looked like it was like fucking like ruins. Like there was like all sorts of like moss and green shit growing on it. There was a big fucking crack down one side, and there's like shit's like growing out of that crack.

SPEAKER_01: 30:36

Oh wow, that's crazy. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_08: 30:38

I don't I I can't say whether how much how quick shit like that grows. So maybe it is a freak thing that like okay, yeah, the roots were pushing against it, and it literally did just happen and grow through. I don't fucking know. But then we get to the fucking house. The house is pretty much the house was the same. It was still like boarded up. There was like the graffiti on it and like the locks and whatnot. And um but like the locks looked really new. Like someone had just placed them within the year. With within the year. Oh wow. Like within the year, they say, but there's no way to get to this except like trucking it through the woods in any direction. So like even like later, like we went back the the first time when we found that house, I like I went onto like Google Maps or some shit, and I was just like, But you it it's not it wasn't on Google Maps, it wasn't on anything, and so I went through and yeah, don't make fun of me because my specific taste of autism, thanks mom for the Tylenol. Um, is I fucking love maps. So like and I I think I get that from my father because my father always has fucking maps. And like I went through like all the maps that he had into that area goes, like, and there never is anything, there never was anything to that area.

SPEAKER_03: 31:56

That's so strange.

SPEAKER_08: 31:57

It should not be there. And like where I'm kind of guessing and triangulating it to be, it's just forest, you know? But there's a fucking house there, like a fucking three-story, like a big ass, like kind of nice house. And uh and and the locks were relatively new on this thing.

SPEAKER_06: 32:16

Huh.

SPEAKER_08: 32:16

And of course, we're stupid and we gotta break into this thing.

SPEAKER_02: 32:20

Oh my goodness. I was gonna say, please tell me you broke into it.

SPEAKER_08: 32:23

We absolutely absolutely broke into this fucking thing. We a million percent broke into this fucking thing. Um and we get in, and it is oh yeah, it's you know, it's dusty and it's dirty, and it's all this other kind of fun stuff. And I sh you're not we're we're going through here, we're going through you know, we're checking out this place, we're checking at that place. All the windows are busted out, but there's no glass uh inside. Um, it's really dusty, but there's no footprints. You know, there's nothing like in the dust or whatever the hell it is.

SPEAKER_05: 32:58

Right.

SPEAKER_08: 32:58

Absolutely nothing. The house looks pretty much undisturbed.

SPEAKER_02: 33:02

Well, was there like furniture inside the house or was it all just completely empty?

SPEAKER_08: 33:08

Absolutely empty.

SPEAKER_02: 33:09

The only thing that was in there was walls, like drywalls, you know, finished walls dry.

SPEAKER_08: 33:13

Very old, very old. It looked, it reminded me of the house from Casper. Like very old type of wallpaper, like I don't want to say like Victorian or Gothic, but like, you know, just kind of that. However, you would explain the style of the House from Casper or the Adams family. That's kind of like a kind of gotta see the pics. I don't know. I don't remember if we have a lot of pictures from inside of the house. I think there's a couple, but I just I just I know there's pictures that exist of us outside and breaking into the house. So like so, like, I know you take pictures of yourself breaking into a house.

SPEAKER_04: 33:53

Like people don't let people take pictures of you.

SPEAKER_00: 33:57

Like look at what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_08: 33:59

I told you, we were we were dumb teenagers and shit. Well, I don't think they were like actually taking pictures of like the house. It was just like it was one of one of one of the uh one of the girls that was there was taking a picture of my girlfriend, and she's just standing there like smiling, like standing on because there was like a um what the fuck? Um almost like a porch. That's what we that's what we did to climb up into the house. We we couldn't get through any of like the first floor windows. We had to climb up on top of the um, you know, give give each other a boost and help each other up onto this like porch awning kind of thing and break into the second store window.

SPEAKER_01: 34:33

Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_08: 34:35

So there's a picture of her like standing on it with like this stick because she was like super, super short, and she's with this doofy fucking smile, and someone took the you know, her friend took a picture of of her, and they there's just three fucking jackasses in the back turn plywood off our stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 34:51

That's the lyric nice.

SPEAKER_08: 34:54

But um yeah, so so we're just going through and like it's just like it's the same thing, it's just it's kind of eerie, it's kind of weird, you know, a little spooky because it's just this random fucking house.

SPEAKER_03: 35:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_08: 35:07

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 35:07

Very much like the stairs, they're just randomly there.

SPEAKER_08: 35:11

But all right, this is okay. This is the part that fucking sent me, absolutely sent me. We had to, you know, we had to explore all of the house and see all of the sentences, so on and so forth. So of course, oh hey, there's the attic. Why not? Oh wow. Pull down the stairs. Yeah, it's one of those ones we pull down the creaky fucking stairs and the lat and the fucking down the really creaky, crickety fucking stairs. You climb up into it, and there's no electricity to the house. There's no nothing to the house. So we got just like our phone flashlights and shit. Girl, when I tell you in the middle of the fucking attic, dead center of it, there is some fucking doll.

SPEAKER_04: 36:05

I knew it. I knew you were gonna say doll.

SPEAKER_08: 36:07

You knew hold on. There's a doll sitting in the middle of the attic. It's not looking at the stairs, it was looking away, like I think if I I think towards the front of the house, like what would be the front of the house, right? Same thing, all the windows up there are everything's still boarded up and whatnot. But what fucked me up was when we went up there to like look at, you know, we because of course we gotta go all the way up and fucking look at shit and whatnot. That was the only spot we found footprints.

SPEAKER_04: 36:39

Oh no.

SPEAKER_08: 36:40

Um they were about average adult person size. Like it was, they weren't like little, you know, it wasn't like the doll was walking around. Like those are the only footprints. And the footprints were from the middle of the in the direction, they started in the middle of the of the attic, of the floor of the area, and it walked towards the when you come up the when you came up the stairs, you it was looking straight ahead. So it was like you were coming up like the west side of the house, and you were looking across to the east. You from the left and you were looking straight to the right.

SPEAKER_01: 37:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 37:12

So if they were from the center, like it was walking from that direction, like from the center towards the right, and they stopped at the wind. They just stopped like they were walking and they stopped to stare at the window. That's where the it was just one set of footprints, just from the dead center out to their radius, and they stopped there.

SPEAKER_04: 37:31

No, don't like that.

SPEAKER_08: 37:33

When I saw that, I was just like, like it was me and the other three guys that went up there. We all looked at it, and we all unanimously, you know, like it was a couple of the like jackassy dudes who were always like, Oh, you know, it's like, oh, we should fuck with the girls. Yeah, so we're like banging on like walls and shit, like, oh my god, what was that, right? The fuck with everybody? When we got up there and we saw that one, we all unanimously looked at each other, goes, We should get the fuck out of here.

SPEAKER_00: 37:52

Right. I was gonna say, look at the time. We got the side. I swear, yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 37:54

We looked at that, I swear that's where we said we should get the fuck out of here. So we're all leaving so on and so forth. And then the girls were trying to get into the basement, and we're like, nope, nope, let's just leave the fucking basement. So we never went into the basement. We never went into the basement.

SPEAKER_10: 38:06

It's probably a good thing.

SPEAKER_08: 38:08

We just we just did it, but we just we just got the fuck out of there and we told the girls what we saw. And it was just like, you can fucking go back and you can look because I'm not fucking going, dude.

SPEAKER_05: 38:15

No, right, no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_08: 38:17

Girls, oh my god, what fuck this is the the other part that really fucked with me. What made me think of all this was when you were saying that like time is different and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_10: 38:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_08: 38:28

Not that we were like a fucking like team that like synchronized our watches and bullshit, because I don't think any of us actually had a watch, but all of our phones were at different times. Oh I wish I wish I was fucking I wish I was fucking they were all off by like anywhere from like it was like three minutes to like you know, the the one that was the most that was the closest of the time, it was it was only three minutes ahead. And that was the girl, the girl that took the picture of my girlfriend. Her phone was only off by like three minutes, it was just like three minutes ahead or so on and so forth. And then went all the way out to the um our buddy Pedro that was with us. He uh what's called his was off by like an hour and like 17 minutes or some shit like that. That's all at like random, there was there was no pattern whatsoever to each one, each every single one of the phones was off. And then by the time we got back to her house, we were just that's when we had noticed it that like Arpa was like, what the fuck's with our phones or whatever? And like no one really was paying attention. And we're like, what the fuck, and whatever. And then we just like huh? And they're like wait a minute, like these you know, this was also at the time where like you know, if there was a time change, your phones did it automatically, yeah. That's like going so like no one would have like, oh, we didn't fuck with our phones or like it just switched. That is so wild. I swe I swear to fucking god. I swear to fucking god. I swear to fucking god. Um but yeah, and then just whatever the hell it was, and we still like there was no rhyme, there was no reason. And one of the one of the guys kind of went off the rails, and then we kind of didn't we we kind of still he alienated himself from the group and whatever because he went down the rabbit hole really bad. Oh he was like he was like, There's gotta be a pattern, there's gotta be this, there's gotta be healing. Oh my god, we never went back to the house. Like we went into the woods, but we never went that area ever again. Yeah, that's crazy. Never went in that direction after that fucking day.

SPEAKER_01: 40:32

We just No, I don't blame you at all.

SPEAKER_08: 40:35

Absolutely did not. We still like I said, we still fucked around in the woods and also that kind of punch it before we saw like the weird things. Absolutely never went that direction ever again. Um he always wanted to was like, dude, we're not we're not going back. I was like, listen, let's just Yeah, no, no, bro. We're fucking scared. Like, right? We're not going. We're not.

SPEAKER_09: 40:51

No, no, we're not.

SPEAKER_08: 40:52

Like, we're all just like, let's all be fucking adults here. Like, fuck no, dude.

SPEAKER_04: 40:57

Absolutely not. I don't blame you at all.

SPEAKER_08: 41:00

There's gotta be this, there's gotta be that. And I was like, no, dude, there's gotta be nothing. Absolutely not. And then I was like, I was like, I watched way too many fucking movies. Like, we're a bunch of teenagers in an area where we shouldn't be fucking around in a house. It was like, no, absolutely. We're gonna go to the police, and they're gonna fucking just you're just crazy kids, you were trespassing anyway, and all this other kind of fun stuff. Next thing we're all gonna start fucking dying one by one. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_04: 41:25

It's the perfect scenario.

SPEAKER_08: 41:27

I've seen every fucking horror movie that came out of the 80s. Absolutely fucking not. Absolutely fucking not. You know? I was like, because let's just be honest with it. And he goes, like, he's the athlete, I'm the whore. We're the first two to get it. We're the first two to die. So yeah, but no, he he alienated himself, and we all just like stopped talking because he just he became incredibly obsessive of it. I think last he heard of it, he moved. Last I heard of him, he moved to one of those fuckhole states in the heartland, like Nebraska or some shit. No, dude, no offense if you live in Nebraska or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 42:08

You know, probably no, I don't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 42:10

Well, no, not just you, any of our listeners too. Not just you, but but any of any of our listeners too. No offense if you live in Nebraska.

SPEAKER_02: 42:17

Sorry.

SPEAKER_08: 42:18

Oh my god, it's the guy. He found me.

SPEAKER_04: 42:21

Yeah. You never know. It's the one guy.

SPEAKER_05: 42:25

Yeah, it's that fucking guy.

SPEAKER_04: 42:26

He's still going down the rabbit hole. Pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_08: 42:30

I I swear to God, like I said, I know. Like I just went this whole thing we were talking about. I was like, but I need you guys to fucking believe me that this is a true story. I swear to God.

SPEAKER_02: 42:39

I completely believe you. No, I believe you. No, my story was complete bullshit.

SPEAKER_04: 42:46

It was great though. It was a great story.

SPEAKER_08: 42:48

And I wasn't bullshitting you, and I was just like, my heart was actually going like a little bit. Like it was like it kind of, I don't want to say it was like coming out of my chest, but it kind of it it it peeked through my nipple, like, fuck's going on.

SPEAKER_02: 43:01

Well, do you remember that one time, Kyle, you said you were like a you were you're like a mountain goat sitting on the edge of your seat?

SPEAKER_08: 43:08

Oh yeah. And then I fell.

SPEAKER_02: 43:09

Yeah, that's how that's how I was through your story. I was like, tell me more. Yes.

SPEAKER_08: 43:14

Yeah. If every now and then I get a little upset that we didn't go into the basement, but then I'll watch something like I know what you did last summer, or like Any of the Fight of the 13th, and I'm like, you know what? I'm happy we didn't go into that basement.

SPEAKER_02: 43:28

Yeah, see, I would have had to go in the basement, but that's me.

SPEAKER_08: 43:32

Absolutely Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And the doll and the footprint. Yeah, no. Honestly, what what said I think I I probably would have gone to the attic and we wouldn't have gotten out of that house if it wasn't for the footprints. The footprints fucking Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 43:48

They say they just started in this, yeah, no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 43:52

Because they looked like how do I how do I fucking they look like they would be from old shoes. You know what I mean? It's like bottom of shoes, you know, vans have this specific design to them. Converse, they they all have like designs to them.

SPEAKER_06: 44:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: 44:06

But like old shoes are just like flat. There's just the shape of what you step in, right? There's no like so weird. There's no actual attraction thing. So they looked like they would be like old shoes, like the bottom of dress shoes. They're just slick, they just have a shape to them. That's literally what the the the fucking the shoe print look the footprint looked like.

SPEAKER_03: 44:23

Wow, that's so crazy. I was like, nah, that is fascinating.

SPEAKER_08: 44:27

I was like, let's get the fuck out of here. Let's get the fuck out.

SPEAKER_04: 44:33

Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. That is awesome.

SPEAKER_08: 44:38

You're very welcome. You're very welcome sharing that. For me sharing that. Word stuff things. What was actually kind of crazy was things. I think it was last year, year before. It wasn't too too long ago when we when we went back to Connecticut. We had to go driving up, we had to kind of drive up that way to get onto the that big highway that it attached to was kind of like taking the back roads on like that big highway to get the fuck out of Connecticut. So we had to go up that way. And it was, I don't know, there's a little part of me that was like, oh, this is kind of like kind of nostalgic, because like this was the girl I dated through like a lot of high school. Like I think out of like the out of like the four years, I think maybe like two and a half, give or take three years if you add up all the get-togethers and breakups. It's probably about two, two and a half years that we dated. Um so it was kind of nostalgic, kind of like going down memory lane or whatever, and like we drove past those woods, and the area that's like directly across the street from where her house was, it is all developed by some fucking I it's like Anthem. I think like Anthem has a building there, like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and all that shit.

SPEAKER_05: 45:41

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_08: 45:41

Um Yeah, I think they have an area right there. Um and so that whole entire area is whatever, but like but you still see like the woods kind of off like it's all that area that where that um where that one road is, I said that like kind of goes through and it cuts into like that little highway area. It's all that area that's developed. So the rest of the woods that we would like go in and like screw around in is still there.

SPEAKER_10: 46:03

But I'm like, Do you think the house is still there?

SPEAKER_06: 46:06

Uh you know what? If I never know, I can die happy.

SPEAKER_05: 46:17

Thanks for that. I don't know, Menomina.

SPEAKER_00: 46:22

But when I do, I do do do do.

SPEAKER_02: 46:26

Now I'm gonna be so that was Maddie, that was Maddie calling me. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_08: 46:32

Let's please make that the soundbite for this episode, please.

SPEAKER_00: 46:35

Please do.

SPEAKER_08: 46:38

And and just the bit where like I'm talking and then it plays, and then it's like that two seconds of silence afterwards where we just kind of like, and who was that? Oh, that's great. But uh anywho, yeah, uh, if I never know current state of that house, I could die happy.

SPEAKER_02: 47:01

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_08: 47:02

I'm I'm good. I'm good.

SPEAKER_02: 47:04

So, all right, friends, I think that's it for our descent into the strange. If you've liked what you heard, don't keep it to yourself. Like, share, leave a comment, whisper it to your weirdest friends, only under a full moon. Tag us, talk to us on social media, um, and tell us what your favorite urban legend is or weird encounter. Um, and don't forget to follow Heather on Tell Me a Scary Story Podcast and look for her on all socials and on Spotify and soon to be YouTube. Is that correct, Heather?

SPEAKER_04: 47:45

Yes, I do have like a couple things. I actually have a collab on YouTube right now, my part. But yeah, I'm gonna grow that. I'm getting used to trying to get used to YouTube.

SPEAKER_02: 47:57

Yeah, yeah. Um, and hey, don't forget if you ever come across stairs in the woods or a creepy house that shouldn't be there, take photos first, then rums or con.

SPEAKER_03: 48:13

Photos of you breaking in.

SPEAKER_02: 48:14

Right, not photos of you breaking in. But hey, we're not here to tell you how to live. So until next time, stay curious, stay weird, and whatever you do, don't look back. Heather, it's been a pleasure having you with us. Uh, thank you for having me. Just wasn't too chaotic for you.

SPEAKER_04: 48:33

This is like you all being in my brain all the time. That's what I'm like.

SPEAKER_02: 48:41

Oh, thank you so much for stopping by. Uh so with that, I'll say goodbye. Goodbye. Kyle, say goodbye.

SPEAKER_05: 48:51

I am Groot.

SPEAKER_02: 48:57

Oh, Lord. All right. Once again, no what I'm supposed to do with that. Note to self.

SPEAKER_09: 49:25

I learned that today.

SPEAKER_00: 49:27

That's interesting. You learned that today.

SPEAKER_02: 49:31

From a therapist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:33

Oh no, therapist. Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 49:37

That's a fucking revelation though. That's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 49:43

Well, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02: 49:46

Yeah. Hi, everybody. Guess what? We have just solved all your gagging issues. Just smile.