Do you remember the nursery rhyme, "If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise?" What if that "surprise" was an eerie, isolated staircase that seemed to lead absolutely nowhere? It's time to grab your trench coat and magnifying glass as we take a closer look at some of most puzzling, unexplained mysteries that need some serious explaining. Staircase in the woods.

Recently, the internet has been abuzz with reports of some very strange sightings in national forests around the world, and I don't mean the animal kind. It began with a 5-year-old Reddit thread posted to the community "r/nosleep." In the post, a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service decided to tell some of his creepiest stories from the job. By far the weirdest tale concerns numerous occasions in which he claims to have come across isolated staircases deep in the woods where no man has ever lived.

The staircases have no other structure attached to them and look like they have fallen out of the sky, or like the rest of a house has been ripped away. The SAR officer goes on to explain that, at first, he was told the staircases were nothing to worry about. But the next time he asked to check them out, he was told by his superiors never to go near them. People in the replies chimed in with their own creepy staircase experiences. Although most were situated across America, soon reports of similar staircases found Brazil, Portugal and the Philippines were posted. Reddit user TK622 even came across this moss-covered set in a forest clearing in Germany. While these may not be as grand as some of the others people described, they still seem oddly out-of-place. There are several theories about why these staircases might exist.

The first, and perhaps most logical explanation, is that they are simply the foundations left behind by long-lost settlements after the rest of the surrounding structure has rotted. However, it seems odd that there's no further evidence of such houses existing deep in the woods. Some have also suggested they could be a type of deer stand, which are enclosed platforms used by hunters to elevate them to a better vantage point.

But others have far more sinister ideas. Could these strange sets really be a pulpit for a moonlit cult meeting? And perhaps they're a gateway to another dimension, or, worse still, to hell itself. As interesting as these stories may be, it's worth taking them with a grain of salt. After all, the entire "r/nosleep" Reddit community is often used to post short spooky stories that are treated as fact, with little evidence to back them up. It's also telling that there are so few pictures of these mysterious staircases, but there's no denying that the sheer volume and variety of reports claiming to have seen them makes for a compelling case. Would you venture into the woods to find out for yourself? And did it suddenly get cold in here?

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Babushka Lady
On November 22nd, 1963, dozens of people in Dallas, Texas, lined the streets to watch President John F. Kennedy's motorcade pass by Dealey Plaza. Little did they know, they were about to witness one of the most significant events in history, when the president was assassinated by former U.S. marine Lee Harvey Oswald. In the days that followed, police searched for witnesses who could have captured the event on camera.

Although the identities of most of the people present soon became known, their investigation revealed that hardly anyone had actually seen what happened, even those with cameras had them pointed at the president. But there was one individual of particular interest: Babushka Lady. So-called because she was wearing a Russian-style headscarf.

She was standing on the grass between Elm Street and Main Streets, photographing the moment the fatal shot were fired. The police immediately put out a bulletin requesting information on the unknown woman. Now, nearly 60 years later, we still have no idea who she is or whatever footage she may have taken of the day's events. So, what do we know? A number of bystanders took photos and videos of the day, and Babushka lady appears in a few of them.

In Dallas Resident Marie Muchmore's grainy film, she can be seen standing behind Charles Brehm and his 5-year-old son, Joe. Only seen from behind, she's wearing a tan coat and is standing with a wide a stance, holding her arms up to her face. In another video taken by U.S. postal carrier Mark Bell after the shots were fired, Babushka lady can be seen with her back to the camera again, but this time she has walked closer to the street and stands across from the grassy knoll. Strangely, she remains standing while others around her are running for cover or sitting on the ground in shock. The Zapruder film, possibly the most famous citizen video, offers a frontal view of Babushka lady, but her camera further obscures her already-blurry face.

Seven years later in 1970, Beverly Oliver, a former dancer and singer at a burlesque club, claims to be Babushka Lady. She said that she filmed the entire assassination on a Super 8 Yashica camera, but that two FBI agents seized it before she could get it developed. She even outlandishly declared that she personally knew Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, the man who would later shoot Oswald while in custody. But her story has some significant flaws. Firstly, Oliver was a slender 17-year-old in 1963, which doesn't fit with the "old woman" image we see in the footage. What's more, the Yashica Super 8 camera wasn't produced until the mid-1960s. Oliver claimed that her camera was a prototype she got before it became available to the public, but her story has generally been debunked.

Conspiracy theories surrounding the true identity of Babushka Lady spread like wildfire. Was she a Russian spy? A secret service agent? Or an assassin wielding a camera-gun? Some have even speculated that she was a man in drag, citing her "wide stance," which seemed strange for a woman of that era. But because she never came forward to tell law enforcement what she saw that day, we may never know who Babushka Lady was.

Guardian Angel
Plenty of people believe that they have someone watching over them and guiding them through life. You might find it hard to put faith in something you can't see with your own eyes, but after seeing this jaw-dropping clip, you might just have to think twice. This CCTV footage shows shop owner Serdar Binici'yi, from the Tellidere Mahallesi district of Turkey, standing outside his shop when a mystery man walks past and taps him on the shoulder as a lorry speeds into view. This alerts Serdar to a huge metal gate swinging towards him from the back of the truck, which then misses him by mere inches as he dives out the way.

Serdar, completely speechless, looks around for someone to thank for possibly saving his life, but the man dressed in black seems to have vanished altogether. The lorry's driver later paid a visit to the Serdar's shop to apologies for the terrifying near miss, but Serdar never saw his saviour again. Of course, the video sparked a bunch of speculation after being posted to Reddit, with some claiming that the mystery man could be a guardian angel, a time traveller, or even Serdar himself, sent back from the future.

Those in favour of the whole "guardian angel" theory point out the casual demeanour of the mystery man and how he couldn't possibly have known that the metal grid was going to be released from the van just seconds later. Of course, though, nay-sayers have also suggested that this could be nothing but one big coincidence. Either way, Sirdar is going to be thankful to this mystery man for the rest of his life. What do you think? Does this eerie clip show a real-life guardian angel in action, or just one crazy stroke of luck? Let me know in the comments below, and if you have any similar stories to share, I'd love to hear them. Now, uh, where were we?

The Solway Firth Spaceman
On a summers day in 1964, Jim Templeton, from Carlisle, England, visited Burgh Marsh in Solway Firth, Cumbria with his wife Annie and his daughter, Elizabeth. Templeton decided to take some photos of Elizabeth in her new dress. Little did he know, one of those photos would soon make global headlines. In the photo, a strange figure can be seen standing behind Elizabeth. Apart from his wife and two pensioners sat in a nearby car, Templeton had not seen anyone else that day. In fact, he didn't even know the figure existed until the chemist developing Templeton's photos pointed it out.

This ominous presence may have puzzled Templeton, but to UFOlogists, it was clear. A white suit, a helmet, a dark visor: Mr Templeton had photographed a spaceman. Templeton took the photo to the Carlisle police, who claimed it was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, film company Kodak said the exact same thing and even offered a reward to anyone who could prove the photo was faked, a reward which was never claimed.

The photo caused a media storm and appeared in world-wide news, but the strangest turn of events was a link to the planned launch of a Blue Streak missile in Woomera, South Australia. Just two days after Templeton's photograph was taken, the missile test was aborted by technicians who reported seeing two men in the firing range. Some reports even claim that the technicians were stunned after seeing the Solway Firth Spaceman in Australian newspapers because the figure in the photograph looked strangely similar to the Woomera apparitions.

But that's not all: The Blue Streak had also been built at RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria, just a few miles from where Templeton photographed Elizabeth, which also happened to be linked to a recent UFO sighting. Because there's no photographic evidence of the firing range sighting, these coincidences are hard to prove, but are they too strange to ignore? Some, like Sarah Spellman, chairwoman of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, suggest that the Solway Firth Spaceman simply "struck a chord with the themes of the day and some of the UFO lore of the 1950s and 60s."

In another photo from the day, you can see Templeton's wife to the right of Elizabeth. Others have speculated that she may have walked into the background of the shot. If she had been standing with her back to the camera, the over-exposed shot may have turned her blue dress white and her hair dark. Perhaps Templeton didn't notice her at the time because you could only see around 70% of what was in the shot through the viewfinder of the camera he was using. Still, without any further proof, we may never know who or what Jim Templeton captured that day.

The Patomskiy Crater
Hidden deep in the Siberian forest is a gloomy, dark mount towering over the bright green landscape known only as the "Patomskiy Crater." This giant, speaker-shaped rock measuring some 130-feet-high and nearly 330-feet-wide is certainly a strange sight to see in the remote taiga of the north of Irkutsk region, but what actually is it? For a long time, scientists had absolutely no idea. They still have more questions than answers. Until 1949, it was known only to locals who called it the "Fire Eagle's Nest." And they believed it was a bad place and avoided it at all costs, citing tales of people, and even animals who dared to venture too close to the crater vanishing under mysterious circumstances.

Russian geologist Vadim Kolpakov was the first to study the crater in 1949. It looked like a volcano, only with a strange semi-circular dome cavity in the centre. Stranger still, no trees grew on the slopes or in the crater. At first he wondered if it were a giant pit mine or even an archeological artifact, but quickly dismissed those thoughts because the area was so dense, and the local Evenk and Yakut people could not build rock pyramids like the ancient Egyptians. After his expedition, Kolpakov concluded that the crater had probably been formed by a piece of space rock that sliced off the famous Tunguska meteoroid that exploded over Krasnoyarsk region in 1908, but that was just an educated guess.

As the crater gained wide-spread attention, theories attempting to explain its existence abounded: from a UFO landing to a piece of a neutron star falling to Earth. In 2005, another major investigation, led by experienced geologist Eugeny Vorobiev, was launched. But as the team neared the crater, Vorobiev collapsed and died suddenly of a heart-attack. Subsequent investigations in 2006, 2008 and 2010 were able to gather material from the site, showing that the crater formed up to 500 years ago, long before the Tunguska event.

Eventually, scientists abandoned the meteoric theory in favour of the idea that the crater is some kind of geological formation. They suggested that the mount may have been formed by fluids like hydrogen being released underground from a gas volcano, but analysis of rings inside the trees growing close to the site has also shown evidence of a period of unnatural accelerated growth, like those seen in the forests around Chernobyl following the nuclear disaster. This has led to further speculation about a hidden, underground nuclear plant or even buried UFOs with nuclear fuel on board. For now, the Patomskiy Crater remains a mystery, but at least we can all confidently remove it from our travel bucket lists.

Annabelle
If you're a true horror fan, the name "Annabelle" should be enough to send shivers down your spine. Annabelle is the haunted doll who terrorizes paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in "The Conjuring" franchise and the three subsequent "Annabell" spin-off movies. But what if I told you Annabelle isn't purely a work of fiction? The real Annabelle doll actually resides at the Warren's Occult Museum at Elizabeth Monroe's home in Connecticut, where it is locked firmly within a glass box. While the doll in the movie is a frighteningly real porcelain doll with long hair, the real-deal is a plain-looking classic "Raggedy Anne" doll with red yarn for hair, but don't be fooled. As Lorraine Warren once said, "Looks are deceiving. It's not what the doll looks like that makes it scary; it's what has been infused within the doll: evil."

Up until her death in 2019, Lorraine Warren maintained that the Annabelle doll was nothing to be messed with. In fact, there's even a message warning people not to touch Annabelle's display box. According to the Warrens, a man who visited the museum with his wife was asked to leave the museum after mockingly tapping the glass cabinet. But on their way home, the man lost control of his motorbike and crashed head-on into a tree, ending his life. Ed warren has even claimed that the steering wheel and the brakes of the car he was driving mysteriously failed when he was transporting the haunted doll to the museum.

Without any detailed reports to substantiate these claims, some may say this is all just a load of hocus-pocus, but if we are to believe the Warrens, this innocent-looking doll might really harbour a vengeful, evil spirit. The real-life Annabelle story allegedly began in 1970 when a 28-year-old nurse received the doll as birthday gift from her mom. She thought nothing of it at first, but it wasn't long until things started to take a sinister turn. She would find the doll in odd positions or would notice pieces of parchment paper on the floor inscribed with unnerving messages like "Help me."

The girls turned to a medium, and through a séance, they were introduced to the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, a 7-year-old girl who once resided at the property. Annabelle told the girls she just wanted to be "loved," so they allowed her to enter the doll. Surely that's #1 on the list of "Do nots" when dealing with malevolent sprits.

Things only got worse from there, until the Warrens caught wind of the case and took ownership of the doll after determining it was being manipulated by an "inhuman spirit." Spookier still, in August 2020, several rumours circulated online, claiming that Annabelle had escaped from her cabinet during the dead of night. Thankfully, those rumours were put to bed when Ed and Lorraine's son-in-law Tony Spera confirmed that Annabelle was safe-and-sound at the museum. - Annabelle's here... in all of her infamous glory. She, uh, never left the museum. - [Narrator] I don’t know about you, but this is one mysterious doll I seriously wouldn't want to mess with.

Morning Glory Clouds
The world is full of things we can't fully understand, and the so-called "Morning Glory Clouds" of North Australia is one of them. Starting around September each year, waves of these spectacular rolling clouds begin to form in skies Burketown, Australia, a phenomenon known since ancient times as "kangólgi" to the ancient Aboriginal people. These tubular formations can be up to a thousand kilometres long and two kilometres high and can move at speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour. Power gliders often cruise up to meet the clouds, turn off their engines and float along and over their outer edges, sometimes traveling over 500 miles before landing. Eerily, as the clouds pass overhead, conditions on the ground reportedly become calm and quiet.

These unique cloud formations have been known to appear in other parts of the world, like this one over Lake Michigan, but not as regularly and predictably as in this part of Australia. But what are they? And why do they form? Despite being studied fairly extensively, the Morning Glory cloud is still very much a mystery. As the name suggests, "roll clouds," low-lying formations that can accompany thunderstorms or form from sea breezes, roll along a central axis. Although they can develop on their own, they more frequently occur in successive waves up to 10, like enormous ropes strung out across the landscape.

 We may know what they are, but no one really knows why the form, especially in such a specific area. In Northern Australia, the leading theory is that the unique combination of land and sea is responsible for the regular appearance of the phenomenon. Breezes hitting both sides of the Cape York peninsula on the East Side of the Gulf create a first line of cloud. But as the cold night air descends, it hits a warm inversion layer over the water and ducks beneath it, creating the rolling pattern. Moist air in the morning forms the clouds, which last until the day heats up and the inversion layer disappears.

Although this seems to a be a fairly safe bet, no one has yet figured out exactly what causes these utterly bizarre clouds, especially outside of Australia. All I do know is that cloud surfing sounds super fun!

Time-Traveling Hipster
In Spring 2010, the Bralorne Pioneer Museum of Central British Columbia in Canada found out what it means to go "viral" when one seemingly innocuous photo, from a digitized collection titled "Their Past Lives Here," found a new life online. The photograph, taken by an unwitting photographer in 1941, is a snapshot taken on the occasion of the re-opening of the South Forks Bridge in the nearby mining community of Gold Bridge after it had been washed out during a flood the previous year. A group of spectators can be seen in the photo, but one man unquestionably stands out against the rest. He wears dark sunglasses, a jersey and a contemporary camera around his neck.

His unmistakable "hipster" vibe, which seems way ahead of its time, caused the photo to blow up on social media, and soon enough internet-savvy photographers were racing to unravel the mystery. Had this stylish twenty-first century gentleman somehow found a way to time-travel? Of course, many who came across the image on social media were quick to brand it a Photoshop job, which is easy to assume until you consider that it originated from a genuine museum collection that was first made available to the public back in 2004.

Although there's no way of knowing who the anonymous man is, attempts to debunk the "time traveller" theory have centred around his attire. Some have argued that the items featured in the photo, like the logo T-shirt, wraparound sunglasses and portable camera, were actually readily available in the 1940s. They just weren't common. For example, his shirt bears the logo of the Montreal Maroons hockey team, who played in the NHL from 1924-1938. As for the camera, Kodak did make several portable cameras that were available by 1941, although it's hard to tell exactly what type he's holding. His style of eyewear, however, certainly wasn't widespread at the time. Although you were able to get hold of glasses with protective shields in the 1940s, wraparound sunglasses didn't become readily available until some 20-years-later in the 1960s. What do you think? Is this a real-life time traveller? Or just a dude who was way to hip for his time?

Monolith Mystery
On the 18th of November 2020, a helicopter crew counting bighorn sheep while flying over a remote part of a Utah desert spotted a strange statue below. On closer inspection, they realized it was a gleaming metal monolith standing proud in the middle of the Mars-like, red-rock landscape. The three-sided, stainless steel object was about 10-12-feet-tall and offered no clues about who could have driven it into the rock, or why. But on 27th November, just as word started to spread, it disappeared mysteriously, without a trace.

Before anyone could investigate further, another large metal monolith appeared just days later on the Romanian hillside. It was spotted near the Petrodava Dacian Fortress, which was covered in squiggles and loops, unlike the smooth surface of the Utah monolith. It also seemed to have been welded together and embedded in a slot in the stone. Several days after it was found, this monolith was gone, too, but it doesn't end there. The next stop on this monolith world tour was Southern California, where one of the shiny objects popped up at the top of a mountain trail in Atascadero, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. - [Camera Man] I guess this is the thing now, right? So, be prepared to see these every where. - [Narrator] That is until, you guessed it, it disappeared.

On the first weekend of December, walkers then spotted a fleeting glass monolith on a beach in the Isle of Wight, U.K. Among the next destinations to be visited by monoliths were Spain, Germany and Colombia, but what are they? Who or what is responsible? And why are they appearing all over the world? The structures have been compared to the movie 2001: "A Space Odyssey," in which an alien monolith is a recurring symbol. Perhaps the whole thing was started by a new-wave artist who also happened to be a big Kubrick fan?

An anonymous collective called "The Most Famous Artist" eventually took credit for the ones in Utah and California, but said it had nothing to do with the others. In a statement, it said, "The monolith is out of my control at this point. Godspeed to all the aliens working hard around the globe to propagate the myth." Tom Dunford, a designer from West Sussex, then claimed ownership for the Isle of Wight monolith, saying he created it "just for fun." But to this day, many monoliths, including the one in Romania, have not yet been accounted for. Although Colorado photographer Ross Bernards photographed 4 men dismantling the Utah monolith in the dead of night, there's no explanation as to how or why the others vanished.

The best we can do for now is speculate. What do you think? Is this monolith mystery a classic copy-cat case perpetuated by savvy creatives hoping for their 15-minutes-of-fame? Or are the so-called "monolith makers" actually taking the credit for the work of some extra-terrestrial life-form? And if the latter is really true, what are you trying to tell us, little green dudes?

Which of these unexplained mysteries puzzled you the most? Let me know in the comments below, and why not watch this video next? It's about internet mysteries that will send you down the rabbit hole. Thanks for watching, guys.