Elevators to Different Dimensions

Arkane Curiosities

Some hotels will omit unlucky floors from their building. You step into the elevator and find the 13th floor missing. Sometimes even the 4th floor is gone, too, because the number 4 sounds like death in Chinese and Japanese. Yet there is an even more mysterious effect of elevators on modern culture. An urban legend has developed around elevators to different dimensions.

It All Started with a Malfunctioning Elevator

Lucia Peters, author of The Encyclopedia of the Impossible, delved into the backstory of this urban legend. In June 2006, a Japanese in Tokyo elevator began to ascend with the doors still open. A sixteen-year old student was crushed between the floor and the door frame while trying to exit. This led to an investigation revealing that this brand of elevator had a series of deaths attached to it. 

Even after the elevators were replaced, people were understandably nervous about riding after the incident. The myth of an extra-dimensional elevator was born. 

Ascend to Another World

In order to travel to other worlds, you need to enter the elevator alone and it must be in a building with at least ten floors. You will need to travel to the following floors in this order. You will not exit at any time. Additionally, if anyone gets on the elevator, the whole ritual falls apart.

  • Starting on the ground floor, travel up to 4th
  • Then down to 2nd
  • Up to 6th
  • Down to 2nd again
  • Up to 10th
  • Finally back down to the 5th floor

At the fifth floor a lady will enter the elevator. You are not supposed to look at her. This aspect of the legend might have originated with a short story by William Sleator in 1993, called simply “The Elevator”.

At this point you should press the button for the first floor. If the ritual is successful, instead of going down, the elevator will travel up to the tenth floor.

When the doors open, you will be in an alternate reality. It may look like a hotel floor, but it’s not the same world as the one you left. You can explore all you want, but the elevator is the only way back to your world. Should you get lost, you will be stuck in this world. 

Tim Kane

Feel free to check out the full comic I created on the Elevator to Another World

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Are Angels Gender Neutral?

Arkane Curiosities

Often Angels are depicted in art with male dress. The named angels also sound very masculine — Michael or Gabriel. Even the Greek word angelos (as well as the Hebrew word מֲלְאָךְ malak) are both masculine meaning a messenger from God. But is it really right to speak of angels as being masculine? Are angels gender neutral?

Man Was a Neutral Word for Centuries

The default to masculine names and male dress might have been influenced by the use of “man” as a gender neutral term (at least in English).

The proverb, man does not live by bread alone, refers more to humankind rather than just men. 

Up until a thousand years ago, the word for a male person was “wǣpmann” and a female person was “wīfmann”. This root word, “mann” means a person.

Angels Are Spirits with No Form

Humans and other Earthly creatures were designed to breed, thus the male and female forms. Unless they breed asexually, that is. Yet angels are not related to these mortal creatures at all. 

In Hebrews 1:14 (the New International Version) states this about angels:

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

God created the angels completely by scratch. They were never meant to reproduce, and thus have no need of genders. 

Additionally, angels are constructs of pure thought. They have no physical form but are simply spiritual beings. Assigning them a gender is pointless. 

Perhaps the reason we depict them as some form of gender speaks to our own limitations on how to perceive the divine. It makes it easier for our limited mortal brains to comprehend the angels. As spirits, they have no physical form at all. 

Tim Kane

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