Missing Step Legend

There was once a rumor about a school in my neighborhood. I personally never believed the stories about it until something happened recently. The legend went like this.

At the school there is a set of stairs in one of the buildings. There are exactly 20 steps on the stairway. Students would sometimes count the stairs and they would always get 20.

The teachers tell the students to never count the stairs after midnight. Although there won’t be any students at school after midnight, the teachers want to make sure just in case one happens to be at school after midnight.

A few years ago a student and a couple of his friends decided to break into the school and vandalize the buildings. They tagged every building and came to the steps. They decided to count the steps anyways to see what would happen. So they counted: 1, 2, 3, 4… 17, 18, 19. There were only 19 stairs on the stairway. That couldn’t be right. There were supposed to be 20 steps on the stairway. Confused, the group recounted and still got 19 steps.

Those students were supposedly attacked by a ghost of the staircase or something afterwards according to the rumors. It’s a little ridiculous, but the rumor wasn’t completely a lie.

Because a few days ago another group of students had gone to school after midnight as a dare and counted the steps. They all counted except for one of them who was too scared to. That one student had witnessed what happened and reported it to the authorities.

The student said that her friends counted the steps and only came to 19. The group started to sink into the stairs like it was quicksand. The student was so scared of what happened and fled from the school.

The authorities didn’t take it too seriously at first, but decided to look into it anyways when their search attempts for the missing students had failed. They dug up the stairs and found remains of the students and some skeletons that were identified as a group of students that attended the school about ten years ago.

One of the workers digging up the stairs hit something under it and a red liquid squirt out of the hole like a geyser. The liquid was identified as blood from several tests.

Funerals were held for the students found. They also rebuilt the stairs at the school. Nobody has spoken of the incident ever since.

But sometimes the students would stumble on the staircase, saying that they could have sworn there was another step in front of them.