Sorry for my grammar and spelling mistakes, English isnt my mother tongue. My encounter with the stairs in the woods A friend of mine send me a video about stairs in the woods, i watched it, and at the end there was a mention of this subreddit, so i thought that this is the right place for posting my story. So, around 15 years ago, i was a teenager and at that time, we travelled every summer to sweden with my family and friends for kayaking and camping trips. After a long day of kayaking, we found a small unused campsite on a peninsula, a small fireplace, good even places for tents, perfect.
After the adults went to bed we (my younger brother, a good friend of mine lets call him luis and i) were sitting around the low burning campfire, jut casually talking, soon we decided to take a short hike more deeper into the peninsula to try out the NVD luis got from his father for his confirmation, i think it was an old first gen one from a surplus store.
As we were walking into the woods the trees got closer together taking more and more of the moonlight leaving us in almost complete darkness, lucky for us we had our flashlights with us, looking for a good spot to sit down, trie out the nv and maybe even spot a elk. After around 400 meter away from our camp the trees got less and less dense, slowly forming a clearing, Luis who was leading us suddenly stopped, i almost walked into his back. He told us to listen, and there actually was something, still quiter than the noises of the forest, but clearly hearible, a noise like grinding. I signalised to put out our flashlights and we slowly moved toward a rock formation (still covered by the young trees and bushes on the edge of the clearing) from where we hoped to see whatever this grinding noise came from.
By the time we got to the rocks and layed on a boulder we could finally see over the clearing, there were like small trees and bushes all over the clearing while on the eges the trees became bigger and more dense.
My brother and i pulled out our trusty military binocular to look where the noice came from, luis did the same but with his nvd, tapping me on the shoulder after around a minute of us staring through our binoculars looking for the source of the noice he whispered to me that on the other side of the clearing (maybe 300 meters away) there was a pair of stairs, i first thought he was making fun of me, but he didn’t sounded like he was joking and handled me his nvg, and in fact he wasn’t joking, there was actually a pair of stairs, old spiral staircase maybe made of wrought iron, maybe from a lighthouse or a fire watchtower i thought, but the stairs looked just misplaced, no foundation no remains of old housing and, they were glowing, not like visible light but through the NVG they were glowing like there was a IR flashlight shining at them.
I gave him his NVD back, my brother wanted to look through the NVD too, but because he was pretty clumsy luis would not let him, that pissed him off pretty much and because of us talking about random stairs he took his binoculars and wanted to head back to the camp, at this point i took out my binoculars again and finally found the stairs, or i thought i had found them, as with only my binoculars i could only see some outlines. But again Luis tipped me on my shoulder whispering that there was a light, my brother interested again as there was something happening againt took out his binoculars again and after Luis told him the same he just told me we were both starring toward where he said, and he was right again, on the other side of the clearing there was a light in the woods slowly approaching in the direction of the stairs, the light wasn’t constant nor it was directed in our direction, like when you hand a handheld flashlight on your belt and then walk rought terrain.
As the light and a its carrier came out of the deep forest, me and my brother starred through our binoculars, seeing nothing but the light dancing as who or what carrieng the it was walking rough terrain. As the carrier of the light stepped out of the darkness of the woods i could see that it was a probably a guy, but without a backpack or a rifle, like the stuff you would expect for a hunter or a ranger or anything that you would expect from someone who would hike rough terrain on a pretty remote part of the woods. I whispered to to luis asking if he could see anything, but he just told me to be quiet as he was staring through his NVD.
I looked through my binocular and in the time i asked luis the light and its carrier moved out of the deep forest to the point where he was standing around 10 meters Infront of the stairs, luis tipped me on the shoulder again and we swapped our binocular and ngv, and what i saw creeped me out, now i saw through the greenish sight of the NVG and the high magnification that the carrier of the light was in fact a men, middle aged, curly hair and short beard, wearing what i think was funktion underwear, like he just got out of his sleeping bag, well lit by the stairs that seemed to start glowing stronger and stronger as i saw that near the ground there were like glowing roots, small paths of ir light slowly spreading fom the stairs, like little streams of water slowly meander around the small bushes and rocks, slowly covering more and more of the clearing, as the men slowly stepping up the stairs. I gave back luis his NVD, grabbing my Binoculars, checking if i could see something but there was just the dark clearing, the grinding noise got louder and louder, slowly it started hurting in the ears.
I put my Binoculars away and whispered to the others that i we should get away from here before these streams of light reach us, my brother had already put his binoculars away, luis bound to his NVD, staring in the darkness, he was the one that looked to the stairs by far the longest time, my brother, annoyed by Luis loiter, shaked his shoulder, and luis abruptly put down, like someobe just waked him up, put his stuff together, throw it in his backpack. He gave me his NVD, together with the bag and the lens covers, so while he was packing his stuff, i could pack his NVD. I took a quick look through the devise, seeing the streams of light spreading bigger and bigger on the clearing, just around 100 meter away from us. I quickly turned away from it, pressed the “OFF” Button on the NVD, put on the lens covers and bagged it. We traced back the way we got there, as we wandered deeper into the woods, toward our camp. After some time the grinding noise got quiter till it finally stopped, we walked 100 meter more, then stopped, we all had questions, but nobody would answer them. We swore that no one of us never told this story, but here i am.
Some years later i asked luis what happened to him while he was staring through the the NVD, he said that he felt a little dizzy and woke up to something ( my brother ) shaking his shoulder, and his eyes dried out looking on the stairs.
To be fair, none of us ever stepped on swedish ground after that.