Somewhere in the woods north of Seattle, a set of thirteen steps is said to lead straight down to hell.
That is the legend of the 13 Steps of Maltby Cemetery, one of the best-known urban legends in Washington State. Teenagers have dared each other to find those steps for decades. Along the way, the cemetery collected ghosts, Satanic rumors, and even a spot in a streaming horror series. So what is documented, and what is campfire talk? Let’s sort it out.
A Cemetery With Two Names
Maltby Cemetery is not exactly what the name suggests. Researchers say its proper name is Paradise Lake Cemetery, and it is also called Paradise Valley Cemetery. It is not inside the town of Maltby, either. One writer places it in Woodinville, just across the King County line from Snohomish County, while some listings say Bothell. Even the address is fuzzy.
That confusion has real effects. One ghost hunting site warns that searching for “Maltby Cemetery” online can send you to Bear Creek Cemetery, which is a few miles away. The cemetery itself sits on private property. Reports describe a chained path, no trespassing signs, and a cemetery that now serves only family members.
What the Legend Says
The core story is simple. Thirteen steps lead down from ground level into the earth, ending at the doors of a crypt that belonged to a wealthy local family. In many tellings, that family practiced the occult or Satanism. One version adds that the crypt was sealed with seven locks and seven keys.
Then the story gets strange. As you walk down, the sounds of the woods fade until the world goes silent. Around the sixth step, people say they feel sick or dizzy. If you turn back early, some claim hands push you up the stairs. If you reach the bottom and turn around, you see a vision of yourself in hell. A friend waiting at the top sees nothing at all.
Other versions pile on more details. Some say people vanish near the sixth step. Others say teens were carried out unresponsive and never recovered. One teller says there is a little chair at the bottom, and sitting in it means you sold your soul. Another version says that if you stand on the seventh step at midnight and turn around, you will see a grieving woman, or in some retellings a witch.
The entrance has its own lore. A visitor from 1983 described two metal pillars that people called the gates to hell. According to that account, stepping past them made the air misty and every sound disappear, until the person crawled back out and the noise returned.
What the Records Actually Show
Here is where the story meets the paperwork. The cemetery holds the plots of early settler families, including the Davis, Lloyd, and Doolittle families. The town was named for real estate developer Robert Maltby, and one source says it was first settled in 1887.
The dates do not line up neatly. One site says the cemetery was built in 1901. Another says the first burial was in 1908 and the last in 1985. A third researcher found a Find a Grave headstone from 1886 and another from 2018. A ghost hunting site reported stones as recent as 2015. The safest statement is that burials began around the town’s early years, and sources disagree on when they stopped.
Records do show that a nonprofit group called the Paradise Lake Cemetery Association was incorporated in 1964, and that its incorporation expired in 1999. The land around the old association address later became the Paradise Valley Conservation Area, which opened to the public in 2009. The cemetery is not inside that park and cannot be reached from it.
What the records do not show is a wealthy family with an underground tomb. The researcher who dug into the paperwork called those claims unconfirmed and likely embellishments. That same researcher also noted there appear to be no officially documented missing persons cases tied to the steps.
Ghost Reports From the Cemetery
The most common haunting reports are not about the stairs at all. Locals describe seeing women and children in ragged clothing from roughly the 1890s to the 1930s. One investigator noted that many children’s headstones match that era, but also pointed out that nobody has posted photos of these apparitions online.
A few specific stories keep showing up. One visitor said that in the mid-1990s, a friend and the visitor saw a group of people dressed in black standing silently around an open casket, staring at them. They ran. Since the last burial was reportedly in 1985, that detail has stuck in people’s minds. Another visitor said that around 1997, at about two in the morning, they read the headstone of a child who died at age two. When they walked past again ten minutes later, a fresh red rose was sitting on it.
Other reports mention whispering, floating orbs, and the spirit of a mother searching for her child. Some visitors claim certain gravestones seem to grow larger over time. A listener account shared with a Northwest radio program describes a 1985 night when a group counted the steps aloud, felt the air turn heavy, heard a low growl on the thirteenth step, and bolted. They said the staircase was gone when they returned in daylight.
These are personal memories, often told years later and passed through websites and comment sections. They show how the legend feels to the people who tell it. They are not evidence in a scientific sense.
Did the Steps Ever Exist?
This is the biggest question, and the answers conflict. Some accounts say the steps were filled with concrete. Others say they were bulldozed or simply removed. One ghost hunting post from 2018 said they were gone more than five years earlier. A researcher who collected the stories noted that some accounts claim the steps stayed accessible until the early 2000s, and others believe they are only harder to find.
Then there are the skeptics who looked. A Lynnwood High School student in 1996 first heard the story from classmates, and he says he has looked since and never found anything resembling thirteen steps. The local historian who collected his story noted that it is unclear when or how the legend began. One reviewer on a haunted places site said an older local told him the “steps” were more like railroad-tie style steps on a trail that led through the woods back to the road, with no tomb and no wealthy family. That is a single anonymous comment, so treat it as a lead and not a fact.
One researcher says the legend has been circulating since at least the 1970s, with its peak in the 1990s. That is a long run for a story, and we found no photo of the steps in the sources we checked.
From Campfire Story to Streaming Show
In 2020, the legend reached a bigger audience. Sam Raimi’s horror anthology 50 States of Fright added a Washington episode called “13 Steps to Hell,” set at Maltby Cemetery and directed by Lee Cronin. Reviews describe a story about young siblings, a mysterious stairwell beside an overgrown cemetery, and a narration by actor Rory Culkin. It is fiction, but it helped keep the name alive.
Other Staircases and Gateways
Maltby is not alone. America has a whole family of “stairway to hell” legends, and they share the same ingredients: a cemetery, a count, and a price for going too far.
In Stull, Kansas, the story is about a gateway instead of a staircase. Rumors spread through a November 1974 student newspaper article that claimed the Devil appears in Stull twice a year, on Halloween and the spring equinox. People soon said the cemetery was the location of one of seven gates to hell. The old stone church nearby was torn down in 2002, and today the cemetery is locked at night and patrolled, with penalties for trespassing.
In Cloverland, Indiana, the 100 Steps Cemetery has a staircase you are supposed to climb at midnight while counting. At the top, the ghost of the old caretaker is said to tell you when and how you will die. Folklore collectors have recorded many versions, and a common twist is that people count 100 steps going up but only 98 or 99 coming down. The cemetery has since replaced the old stairs, and its posted hours are dawn to dusk.
Closer to home, Greenwood Cemetery in Spokane has a decaying staircase nicknamed the “1000 steps.” Legend says that if you climb it with no light, you will see the faces of men, women, and children at the top, hear cries, and feel something like rain on your skin. The stairs are in poor shape and on private property.
In Palo, Iowa, Pleasant Ridge Cemetery goes by the name 13 Stairs Cemetery. Its stories include a witch tied to a cracked headstone, a red-eyed dog, and voices on recordings.
One researcher who compared these tales said it is unknown whether Maltby is directly related to Stull or Cloverland, but the similarities are strong enough that a shared theme cannot be ruled out.
So What Is Really Going On?
Folklorists have a name for this kind of activity. It is called legend tripping, which means visiting a spooky place to test a story. The setup is perfect for it. You have a dark forest, a dare, a group of friends, and a rule that tells you exactly what to expect at each step. Fear can make people feel sick, dizzy, or cold, and the legend tells them in advance that those feelings are coming.
The repeating pattern across states is also telling. Count the steps. Turn around. Pay the price. When different places use the same template, borrowing and retelling are a simpler explanation than thirteen separate gates to hell.
That does not mean every witness is lying. Many of them described real fear and real feelings, and a few details, like the rose and the silent group, are the kind of thing people remember for life. But with no photos of the steps that we could find, no confirmed tomb in the records, and no clear removal date, the 13 Steps remain unverified folklore.
Please Don’t Trespass
If this story makes you want to go looking, please don’t. Maltby Cemetery is private, and it holds the graves of real families. Neighbors live on either side of it. Stull and other legend sites have dealt with vandalism and strict enforcement for years, and the same attitude applies here. The story is better enjoyed from your couch than from a jail cell.
Have you heard a version of this legend, or have a story from Maltby, Stull, or another staircase cemetery? Seen something unexplained? Email Reports@ParaRational.com.
