Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/132l177/an_unfamiliar_door_part_1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
I’ve been standing here for about five minutes now. Continuously looking at my phone battery, at the closed door behind me, and down the grated stair case. Which I can only see about four steps of. To talk myself out of a panic attack. I note that the stairs and even the door, are all part of the structure to the plant. This has to just be a location to the building that I simply overlooked. In the back of my head however, I know there was a window to that door. It’s now gone. Why would they make this door with no way out? It has to be a safety issue, right? I think to myself that maybe someone will come down to the basement, maybe if I beat on the door someone would hear. They will know I’m stuck, they will get me out. Waiting for this kind of rescue could not happen until morning though. By then, my phone will have died. And a thought, that I try to keep from drifting through my mind is ‘what if the door is gone on the other side’.
The one thought I have, that keeps me rational, is that there has to be an exit somewhere else. Surely, this wouldn’t be the only way into to such an area. Especially, since there is no handle on this side of the door.
‘But the door was never there to begin with’
Damnit I have to keep those thoughts out of my head. My phone just moved to eleven percent battery. If I’m going to make my way down these stairs. I have to do it while I still have light. The last thing I would want, is to slip and fall down these stairs in pitch black darkness.
These stairs are very steep, so steep, that I have to keep at least one hand on the rail. Making me move slowly as I can only see the next few steps in front of me. I noted the time when I started my descent, it was 1:20 AM. I’ve been going down this stair case for about twenty minutes. After the first several steps down, I realized that it was so dark I could no longer see the wall and the door I had come through anymore.
How much farther do I have to go? When do these steep stairs end? Do I turn around, go back up, and wait for someone to free me?
All these questions bounce around in my head continuously. As well as ones I don’t want to think about.
‘The door was never there’
‘The window disappeared’
‘It locked behind me..’
I’ve always considered myself a logical person, a skeptic. I try to find the coincidences in situations that some people would call ‘supernatural’. I wouldn’t call the situation I find myself in now supernatural, but I can’t logic my way out of it. The more I make my way down these stairs. The more my nerves get the better of me. As the thoughts of ‘this is just part of the plants structure’ become ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how to get out of here’. My phone is well under ten percent now. I try not to open the screen and check because I want all the power I can get from it to be used for the only light I have.
I’ve been descending for almost forty minutes. If I made the decision to go back up my phone would die halfway back to the top. The only reassurance I have about doing that, is it would be easier to ascend the stairs in the darkness. I tell myself that if I’m still on these stairs when my phone dies, I’ll just turn around, go back up and wait.
‘But wait for what, for someone to find me in a place that isn’t supposed to be here.. behind a door that I’ve never seen before this night’.
Finally.. I have reached the end. But I’m terrified about where it has lead me. I’ve reached the bottom of the stairs. The yellow handrail ending. I step onto a grated metal floor. This floor is just like the rest of the floors in the building. But peering around, I cannot see any walls, there are no signs, and worst of all - it is still so quiet I can only hear my own breathing and the steps I make with the sound of metal clinking between the panels of grated floor.
Have you ever had the feeling that something is behind you? Even though you know you’re alone, you just have to keep walking calmly, because if you start to run. The panic will only escalate inside you. In this moment I have to do everything I can to keep my composure, because it’s a feeling I have suddenly found that I can’t shake off. I’ve taken several steps now off the stairs and onto the metal landing it has lead me to. I don’t know where to go from here, but I cannot fight the feeling that something knows I’m here. And they are watching me. Eyeing me from the darkness that surrounds me. Waiting to see what I do next.
Of course this is just illogical fear of the situation I am in. The events that have lead me here are only playing into my imagination more and more. And my imagination is starting to get the better of me. Trying to pull myself together and not let total panic overtake me, and not knowing where I am. I come to the conclusion that I will just go back to the top of the stairs and wait. Sure my phone will die on the way up, and it will take over an hour to get back to the top. But I am terrified of this place. And sitting next to the door, waiting for a rescue, sounds like a much better plan now.
I’d had only taken maybe five to six steps away from the stairs onto the landing, but when I turn back for them. Shear horror rips through every facet of my body. The stairs were gone.
Searching all around me, I frantically move in several directions with the few feet of light that I had. I can’t explain how desperate I feel in this situation now. I can no longer deny to myself that something was happening that was beyond my scope of comprehension. Tears are flooding down my face. My breath is rapid pulses. And that’s when it finally happened.
The flashlight went out on my phone. It was dead.