What Is SCP-087 (& What Do the Creatures Inside Want)?

Tucked away in some dusty corner of some unremarkable college there is a door. It appears to be the door of a simple janitor’s office, but it won’t open. In fact, even the key designed for the lock isn’t enough to open it. That’s because the SCP Foundation doesn’t want anyone to access the horrible secrets inside. In this article, we’ll open that door and take a look at some of the mysteries inside. Welcome to SCP-087, affectionately known as “The Staircase.”

What is SCP-087?

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SCP-087 is an impossibly long staircase that appears to go nowhere. Inside, you can hear the sound of a child crying, but no matter how long you pursue the crying child, it keeps getting further and further away. There is also a creature who will attack you inside if you linger too long.

Section 1 of 8:

Overview of SCP-087

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SCP-087 is an endless staircase that kills you. Well, the staircase doesn’t kill you—the creepy entity living inside the staircase does. Regardless, SCP-087 is an impossibly long (potentially infinite) staircase found behind a janitor’s door at an unknown university. The staircase is way too long for the building that contains it. Inside the staircase, you can periodically hear the sound of a child crying. There is also SCP-087-1, a spooky creature of unknown size and dimensions who kills whoever it finds in the staircase.
- How do you open the door to SCP-087? The steel door has been sealed off and padded with soundproofing foam. To open the door, you have to use a key while applying a very specific amount of electrical power to the

Section 2 of 8:

What does SCP-087 look like?

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SCP-087 looks like a typical university staircase. The door leading to the stairway is made of reinforced steel and has an “electro-release” lock. It has been dressed up to look like a simple janitor’s closet. Inside, the staircase is unlit—no light sources exist, and any light sources you bring inside that are brighter than 75 watts are artificially dimmed, suggesting the stairway absorbs light somehow. The stairs themselves are sets of 13-step levels with semi-circular landings separating each set.
- How many stories are the staircase? Nobody knows. Nobody has discovered any ceiling or floor, and the stairs are set up in a serpentine pattern where each stairset rotates 180 degrees in the other direction, so you can’t see how far up or down they go.

Section 3 of 8:

What does SCP-087-1 look like?

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It is a face with no pupils, nostrils, or mouth. Due to the fact that there are no light sources in the staircase and there have only been four excursions into the staircase, it’s not totally clear what SCP-087-1 looks like. What has been captured on film is its face—they look vaguely human, except they have no mouth, nostrils, or pupils in their eyes.
- One of the most popular illustrations of SCP-087-1 depicts it as a toothy grin in the darkness, but the actual footage of the creature shows it with no mouth, as described above.

Section 4 of 8:

What’s at the bottom of SCP-087?

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Nobody knows, and it’s possible there isn’t a bottom at all. Roughly 200 meters (650 feet) below the door, you can hear the sound of a child crying, so the staircase must be at least that deep, right? Well, when you descend the stairs, the crying sound seems to descend as well. Nobody has been to the top or bottom, and attempts to move up or down simply uncover more stairs. There are a few theories here:
- Theory #1: The stairs are infinite. Some people think there is no bottom because the stairs don’t end. It’s some kind of hell, purgatory, or magical space.
- Theory #2: The stairs are just really big. It’s already established that the stairs are way too big for the building they’re inside, so maybe they’re just really big.
- Theory #3: the stairs “loop.” Another theory is that there’s only a handful of different stairsets, but the sets loop on themselves so that when you go down, you eventually end up at the top.

Section 5 of 8:

What does SCP-087 do to you?

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The staircase does nothing, but SCP-087-1 attacks people. It’s not clear that the staircase itself does anything to the person inside of it. Most of the exploration projects involve people being creeped out by the staircase, but they aren’t in any physical danger until they encounter SCP-087-1. That said, there have only been four explorations total, and the last one is entirely redacted, so it’s possible the staircase can do something to people and simply hasn’t demonstrated that ability yet.
- How does SCP-087-1 kill you? It looks like SCP-087-1 kills its victims incidentally by scaring them. Of the people who have entered the stairway, one died after collapsing when running from the creature, one escaped but was so traumatized that they entered a catatonic state, and one trips while running and falls unconscious, presumably dying later. It’s possible SCP-087-1 does nothing but act like it’s going to attack and then lets its victims die as they flee.

Section 6 of 8:

Why is there crying in SCP-087?

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The sound of the crying child seems perpetually distant and unreachable, regardless of how far down or up you try to go to reach it. It’s unclear why the crying occurs, but the leading theory is that it’s bait to try and attract people to enter the staircase. If that’s true, it’s possible the entity inside SCP-087 (or even SCP-087 itself) relies on eating people to survive.

Section 7 of 8:

How can you escape SCP-087?

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It’s possible to run out of the staircase. The individual (D-0935) from the second expedition proved that it’s possible to run out of the stairway. Sure, they collapsed in the stairway, were captured by SCP-087-1, woke up after being knocked unconscious, and barely escaped only to end up in a catatonic state, but they did run out.
- It also isn’t clear that you can’t fight off SCP-087-1. It’s possible there’s some kind of memetic agent keeping victims too terrified to do anything proactive, but it is certainly a possibility that SCP-087-1 can just be physically defeated.

Section 8 of 8:

What is SCP-087-B?

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SCP-087-B is a horror game based on SCP-087. SCP-087-B was inspired by a short prototype of a game that was based on SCP-087. The dev behind SCP-087-B decided to expand the game and release their own version, which became quite the popular indie darling. You can still download SCP-087-B, but the project has since been abandoned and isn’t getting any future updates or changes.^{[1]
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- SCP-087-B is only available on PC.