Send us Fan Mail

Seven steps to the landing, every grandchild knows it by heart, until one night the count is wrong. We’re sharing a listener-submitted spirit tale that starts with a small, almost harmless detail and turns into something that hits hard: an extra stair that appears after midnight, a soft weight settling on the wood, and a child humming three notes like a question that won’t stop asking. If you love paranormal podcasts, ghost stories, and eerie fiction that still feels human, “The Eighth Stair” is built to haunt you in a quieter way.

We follow Marguerite as she returns to her late grandmother’s narrow, leaning house in the hills outside Asheville, surrounded by familiar objects and old rituals, including a jar of gray salt by the front door. When the staircase begins to change, she tries to logic her way through it. But a cracked photo album and one forgotten name shift the story from creepy to devastating, revealing how one family carried a loss for decades without speaking it aloud.

At the center is a nightly practice that becomes a kind of practical magic: counting the stairs, then naming each loved one so everyone is “accounted for” before the lamp goes out. When that ritual stops, something gets stranded. The question the story leaves you with is simple and unsettling: who might still be waiting to be remembered, and what does it cost when we stop saying their name? Subscribe for more Spirit Tales and Magic, share this with a friend who loves the unseen, and leave a review with your take: do you think places can hold memory like a living thing?

Support the show