The Thirteenth Flight 👻 | Horror Story — The Stairwell That Goes Below the Ground Floor

The stairwell in his office building has twelve floors. Last night, Daniel Reyes walked down thirteen.

It started on a Tuesday night when the elevator was out. Twelve, eleven, ten — empty stairwell, his footsteps echoing a half second behind him, like the stairwell was repeating him. Then past the ground floor door, there was one more flight. Older, rougher concrete. Dust thick on every step — except down the middle, brushed aside by footprints going down, none coming back up.

The Meridian Building has no basement. It sits on solid bedrock.

At the bottom stood a metal door with frosted glass, warm light glowing through it. Stenciled on the glass: his own name. Daniel Reyes, night shift.

Then he heard the typing. From inside, someone was typing — pausing exactly the way he pauses. It was his rhythm.

He ran. The night guard went pale when Daniel asked if there was anything below floor one. "There isn't," he whispered. "There never was."

The next morning, the camera footage showed Daniel at the stairwell door for eleven minutes, talking to no one. His lips were moving. He was nodding. The guard finally told him what he had said: "You said, I'll take the shift."

Last night, the elevator stopped on its own at midnight. The panel lit up with a floor that does not exist. The doors opened onto the stairwell. The typing had stopped. A chair scraped back, far below. Footsteps started climbing toward him.

From the darkness, his own voice called up. "Shift's yours now."

"The Thirteenth Flight" is a true-horror-story style supernatural tale about the places buildings hide from us — and the shifts nobody remembers signing up for. If you love scary stories about impossible architecture and things that wait patiently in the dark, this one will make you think twice about taking the stairs.

Watch the full animated horror story on The Haunted Reel — new horror stories every day, made for fans of the unexplained, the supernatural, and the things that go bump when nobody is watching.