The Death Stairs Facebook group was first created on November 8th, 2020, and it has already amassed over 61k members. The group’s description welcomes visitors and members to the community, noting that Death Stairs is “where ascension is perilous and descending is deadly”. They invite people to share the “deadliest staircases” and to “tread safely”, as many of the photos shared there feature staircases that are certainly not for the faint of heart.  

To learn more about the history of Death Stairs and what it’s like running the page, we reached out to the group’s administrators, Lane Sutterby and Duffy Toler, on Facebook. Lane, who created the page, shared that his original vision for the group was just for it to be a "tag group". "One where someone would comment and tag the group’s name in a relevant post in another group such as That’s it, I’m architecture shaming," he explained.

"I never could have dreamed of how large the group has become!" Lane told Bored Panda. "Running the group is a breeze, I have an excellent team of mods and admin that handle the very few issues that arise. Special shout-out to Duffy Toler, he stays on top of things, he’s the man!" Duffy also noted that running the page hasn't been too challenging. "Page is just very light amusement, so there's almost no flame wars or dumpster fires."

When it comes to why people are so captivated by these death stairs, Lane told Bored Panda, "I think because they make us all stop and think, 'Who thought that was a good idea? Who signed off on that design? Why does this exist? It’s potentially deadly!' It’s something that we all can relate to, when we see death stairs, no sane person thinks they’re fine to use. In a way, it disturbs the societal norm enough that it sticks in our minds for a while."

Duffy also shared his thoughts on why the page is so fascinating. “I think some people are attracted to the group because they had a pic of some bad stairs,” he shared. “Some have mobility issues. Some are from that mysterious ‘stairs in the woods’ thing from a few years ago.”

What he is referring to is a phenomenon of people finding random stairs in the woods that went viral last year. These random staircases that seemingly lead nowhere were found all over the world, in Cambodia, the United States, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany and Italy. Those stairs were mostly mysterious, rather than deathly, but I can see how they might attract similar audiences. They’re all captivating stairs!  

We also asked Lane and Duffy if they have a favorite set of death stairs that they've ever seen shared in the group or in real life.

"I’ve seen a couple different staircases in person that were way too steep, or the steps blend into each other walking down them," Lane shared. "But my favorite one was in a house my girlfriend Sam and I were walking through with her realtor once; steep and carpeted, and at the top they made a weird 90 degree turn to avoid a sloped ceiling that forced you to step up on the wall next to them, essentially. But if you started back down them too far to the left then you’d end up falling a couple feet and sliding the rest of the way down on your bottom!"

“There are a bunch of good ones, it's hard to choose,” Duffy added. “There was a picture of a tombstone that was a staircase. There are a number of comic but scary construction mistakes. Some pics show little more than rocks chipped from a cliff face in ancient times. IRL there were some sketchy stairs leading to makeshift docks for fishing boats on the coast of NC when I was a kid.”

Finally, we asked both administrators what exactly qualifies as “death stairs”. "I think that could be anything from extremely poor design to terrible build quality, and especially ones that instill fear due to their location, proximity to long falls, potential for ice or wet surfaces causing slips that could end up extremely harmful or deadly," Lane told Bored Panda.

“The wonderful members of the group have been exploring what ‘Death Stairs’ are in some creative ways,” Duffy shared. “Some stairs aren't really frightening so much as they are confusing, I like those a lot. Many of them are poorly constructed, a good one of these is a ‘When you see it…’ kind of thing. Art installations sometimes employ stairs in bizarre ways. Halloween brings stairs with skulls on them, winter brings stairs with ice.”

Lane also wanted to warn readers to tread carefully! "You never know when you might encounter death stairs in the wild."