House of Leaves

A few years ago my mom bought me "House of Leaves" for Christmas and my brain exploded a little with every labyrinthine page. Our house has had basically the same effect. Recently S and I were tearing down some plaster in the dining room and discovered this little architectural phenomenon:

Apologies that it's so blurry, but all I had with me was my cellphone camera. Check out these twin staircases! The one on the left was the original, and we discovered it when we began tearing down the lath-and-plaster dining room wall beside the chimney.

Apparently someone many decades ago did not like the direction the stairs faced, so they built a new staircase (on the right), closing the original behind a wall and building a new floor over the opening at the top. They didn't tear it down because the basement stairs were lined up underneath, and those were still in use until we ripped them out. So for 50 years there was this creepy hidden staircase creating a huge dead space in the center of the house.

I was glad when S took the sledgehammer to it, because it looked seriously haunted. One more oddity bites the dust. We're making progress!