Tuesday Terror – Feeling Uplifted

~ tidalscribe.com

What are some of the things that might happen to you if you go in a lift?

See footnote 1

Get stuck all by yourself

Get stuck in an overcrowded lift ( probably the reason why it got stuck )

Get stuck with a homicidal maniac

All of the above, but between floors

If you are in a glass lift at least someone will notice it has broken down. Unless everyone in the building has already left.

See Footnote 2

What might happen next…

You press the alarm button but it does not work.

The alarm button works, but the company who owns the building are saving money by ending the contract with the lift engineers.

The fire brigade have been called to a major fire and cannot come to your rescue for hours.

See Footnote 3

If you are really unlucky the major fire is in the building you are trapped in

Worse lift disasters

The lift cable snaps and you plunge to the basement, danger of death depends on how many floors there are.

The lift doors open, but when you step in the lift it is not there and you plunge down the lift shaft.

Less likely events

The lift rockets upwards and straight out of the top of the building. The good news, it will come down again unless…

The lift has been the subject of secret space research and changed into a rocket. You will not come down.

Least likely dramatic events

A smooth ride upwards that takes longer than you expect. When the doors open you step out into the future, because someone in the future has turned the lift into a time machine. At least you will get a great welcome and be looked after as they are so excited their experiment has worked.

You step out of the lift into the past. As your twenty storey office block / luxury apartment block has not been built yet you are left in mid air.

These are some of the reasons why I avoid lifts.

Unverified Events

You step out of the lift and find yourself in heaven, having had a massive heart attack brought on by the stress of going in a lift. There you meet someone else who has also just died of a heart attack due to the strain of walking up twenty flights of stairs because he was scared of lifts.

Footnotes

  1. Elevator
  2. Never be the last person out of a building
  3. Always go to the toilet before you go in a lift

Do you prefer stairs or lifts?

Have you had any traumatic lift experiences?

26 thoughts on “Tuesday Terror – Feeling Uplifted”

  1. The closest I’ve ever come to a traumatic lift experience was in the paternoster lift in the UEA arts block. It was fun to ride it to the top and come down to the other side. You just looked a bit of an idiot as everyone knew what you had been doing 🤣

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      5. That doesn’t surprise me – I think you had to be there at the time. I know there’s one at Essex University but I don’t think there are many others left in this country. The fun part was the anticipation of when to step on and off – I’ve seen people trip into them and jump off too soon 🤣

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  5. Elevators (lifts) don’t bother me at all. I will almost always take one over stairs, particularly when it’s more than one floor. I never think of getting stuck in one, though I know it happens. On the other hand, we live in earthquake country. I worry about the consequences of those much more.

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      1. Good point. Sometimes when I’m stuck under an overpass in traffic, my mind shifts to, Gee, this wouldn’t be a great time for an earthquake. We had one major earthquake where an overpass collapsed in an earthquake while a car was driving on it. Miraculously, the people survived.

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  6. I once got stuck in quite a small lift in Milan with an excitable Italian. Fortunately, I’d just been to the toilet and had refreshments and a book to hand. It was 25 minutes before we were rescued.

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  7. I have been fortunate not to have had any lift incidents in my life, and I usually only take the lift if I have to go above 3 floors, otherwise I walk. During my time as an EMT in London, lift breakdowns in tower blocks were a regular feature that we dreaded. On one occasion we had to carry someone up to the 14th floor after she was discharged from hospital to find the lift broken. The effort of doing that made my legs wobble for ages after. And during the construction of a new lift shaft in a block in Acton, one of the contractors fell twelve floors inside the shaft, killed by the impact of course. We had to try to extricate him from a very small space in the basement level. Not nice.

    Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. We wanted to take her back, but they wouldn’t accept her. So we did 7 flights first, then had a break before the next 7. 7 flights was actually 14, because it was 2 flights per floor. So 28 in total, and then we had to walk all the way back down.

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  9. I do prefer elevators to stairs, even if I had two… very interesting moments of being stuck in an elevator.

    The first happened in 1992. Election day (so Sunday), and at 5:30 am (at dawn and when the buses started going) I was returning from an all night party. I was with two male friends in the elevator which got stuck between floors, and they got more scared than me. They pushed the alarm, it sounded, but nothing. Of course, everybody was sleeping at that hour. Then I remembered that I had got stuck in my teen years and I had been taught how to get out of regular elevators. I opened the inner doors and those scaredy ones told me not to. „What if it suddenly starts going up?” „We tried for 5 minutes, we pushed all buttons, it certainly will not.” „Better wait for the technical team to get us out.” „It is Sunday morning, election day. A technical team will come tomorrow morning. And the block administrator will come in two hours or more, when he wakes up. Let me try to find that damn little wheel, to open the outer door!”

    I found that, I opened the door, it was midway between floors, but one tall young man succeeded to descend first, then he gave his hand to the other, shorter workmate, then to me. We were out of it in about 15 minutes and went away. Case closed.

    The second happened in 1995, in a hotel in Athens, Greece. I was alone in the elevator and I hurried to catch the coach/bus (still not sure which is the correct word in English, as we were an organised trip) and go to visit the island of Egina for the day. We were warned not to be late, because the ferry does not wait. And I was not late… when I stepped in the elevator.

    I pushed the alarm button. I wanted to seek the little wheel, but I could not, because the inner door could not be opened, it was sort of… like a mechanical curtain, not like two twin doors which open in the middle, like I was accustomed at home. And my trick does not function with these, because if there is a little wheel up there left, it is exactly between the inner door and the outer door. So I pushed again the alarm button, and being a hotel, somebody heard me and got to get me out of that… only to see the bottom of the bus towards the horizon. They left without me.

    First I went back to my room and cried for about 10-15 minutes, then I told myself that if I cry all day, I will accomplish nothing. So I went to wash my face, descended to the reception and asked how to go to Pireas, the twin city I had always longed to see. So I did. I did not waste the day.

    (I had in a short story such an incident as well, two youngsters stuck in an elevator to remain behind when the group went seesighting).

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    1. Hello Marina, prize for the best elevator adventure. I would not have had a clue how to get the doors open.
      Coach is the word for organised trips and how many people manage to miss the coach. I was on a little trip to Paris and we went on one coach tour round the city. we were waiting for one of our group at each stop off!

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