The MYSTERY of the Stairs in the Woods(MP3_70K)

September 25, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In a Reddit thread titled “I’m a search and rescue officer for the US Forest Service. I have some stories to tell,” an anonymous officer describes a phenomenon that his unit encounters regularly but never discusses: free-standing staircases appearing deep in the wilderness, sometimes thirty or forty miles from any road or structure. “It’s almost like if you took the stairs in your house, cut them out, and put them in the forest,” he writes. The officer’s trainer told him on his first encounter, with a hard grip on his arm: “Don’t go near them. Don’t touch them, don’t go up them, just ignore them.” The thread became the basis for a sprawling lore about what the stairs are, what they do, and what the Forest Service knows.

The Rules and the First Encounters

The officer explains that the stairs appear during the largest searches and training weekends. They come in all sizes and conditions—some pristine with new carpet, others weathered as if they have sat for months. The one constant is the rule passed from trainer to trainee: never approach, touch, or ascend them. No official explanation is given. When pressed, seasoned officers simply say it is normal and change the subject.

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What you'll learn

1 (01:05) **Introduction and Setup** - Host Wendigoon introduces the episode, noting he is sick and will be doing a read-along of a Reddit thread titled "I'm a search and rescue officer for the US Forest Service. I have some stories to tell."
2 (07:05) **The First Ascension: What Happens When You Go Up** - The narrator shares a friend's account of climbing a set of stairs, revealing the immediate and long-term consequences.
3 (10:49) **The First Fatal Encounter: A Child's Body on the Stairs** - A veteran officer, E.W., recounts finding a missing 11-year-old boy dead on a staircase, with bizarre internal injuries.
4 (18:36) **The Veteran's Confession: Rules and Horrors of the Stairs** - Another veteran, P.V., secretly tells the narrator what he knows about the stairs, after making him turn off his radio.
5 (25:16) **The Flipped Stairs and the Sleepwalking Victim** - The narrator learns about a rarer, more disturbing type of staircase and hears a story about a woman being drawn to one in her sleep.
6 (32:14) **The Final Update and Wendigoon's Conclusion** - The original Reddit author posts a final update, saying the attention has caused his superiors to officially silence him, and Wendigoon summarizes his theory.
7 Standout Quotes

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app