 On January 6th of 1912, New Mexico officially became a state in the United States of America. However, its capital city, Santa Fe, is the oldest state capital in the Union. Santa Fe today is known for its art. However, we are going to be looking at a mystery. A mystery involving a staircase. A staircase that is in a church. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Again, as always, a very, very special thank you to all of our patrons. Without you, this channel would not be possible. If you would like to join our patron, the link is in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be looking at the miraculous staircase in the Loretto Chapel of Santa Fe. Oh yes, once again, I am back in my bedroom doing this video for you guys. My boyfriend is in the front room cooking and again, since the front room connects to the kitchen, he cannot move the kitchen so I had to move my set. Thank you guys for being so understanding. I also want to say thank you so much for all the support that we've received and all the guests that we've had on our channel. If you have any questions for Tamara or Tarot by Janine or Tom Numbers, please make sure to email them to me at esotericatlanaatgmail.com. As I've said, a lot of the more dangerous videos that we have on this channel have had the comments disabled. This is because YouTube watches the algorithm of certain words, spoken and written. We also know that there are paid bots that are out there to troll these channels. And so for the time being, in order to protect the work and protect the channel, a lot of us in this community have had to do stuff like disable our comments just to try to keep the algorithms down on these, again, more dangerous videos. And I thank you all for your understanding. All right, let's get started on our mystery. Now it's no secret that the western part of the United States joined the union later than the eastern side of the United States. In fact, in the American flag, the 13 red and white stripes represent the 13 original colonies of the United States. Georgia was one of those colonies. The stars in the blue part of the flag represent the now states, the 50 states of the United States. Well, even though the western side of the country was not annexed to the United States until much later in the game, it was still being heavily explored by Europeans. And this part of the country was heavily explored by the Spanish. The area called New Mexico, or Nuevo Mexico, was established in 1598 as part of New Spain. In 1610, the Spaniards declared the area of Santa Fe as its capital, the capital of Nuevo Mexico. Now interestingly enough, especially with our story, Santa Fe means holy faith. In 1846, the United States of America declared war on Mexico. And in 1848, the USA gained New Mexico as a territory because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Now the eastern side of the United States of America, when this continent was being settled by the European, was mostly Protestant settlers. In fact, a lot of the Europeans came here to escape the persecution of the Catholics over in Europe. This is why freedom of religion was such an important topic for the original settlers of this land. However, because of the Spanish influence in the western side of the United States, Catholicism was going strong. In 1851, a Catholic priest named Jean Baptiste traveled all the way into this newfound territory of the United States to try to spread the Catholic message. By 1853, this Catholic priest had officially become the Bishop of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. In fact, in Santa Fe today, there still stands a cathedral, the Saint Francis Cathedral, which was built by Jean Baptiste in his quest to spread Catholicism along the region. In 1873, the Sisters of Loretto were commissioned to build a Catholic girl school in Santa Fe. The Sisters of Loretto are a Catholic organization founded in 1812 by Mary Rose Ann Harvin and Christina Stewart. This organization of nuns collaborated heavily with the Jesuits to again spread their Catholic message across the United States. Now I know, we know, especially if you're on this channel, you know that the Jesuits are nothing but evil. However, when looking at situations like this with individual people, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It doesn't mean that every single human being associated with the Jesuits was themselves evil. The Loretto Motherhouse still stands today in Kentucky. The Sisters of Loretto started their campaign into the Southwest in the 1870s. And again, by 1873, they had been commissioned to build this girl's school. And because it was a Catholic school, there was a chapel that also needed to go along with the school. Two French architects were brought in to design this chapel. You can see this by the way the chapel still looks today with its stained glass windows that were imported in from France. The chapel took itself five years to complete and by 1878, it was ready to be used. But there was one problem. You see, in the chapel, there was a loft where the nuns would sing in the choir during their worship service. However, there was no staircase to the loft. In many situations, they would have just put up a ladder. But in this situation, the Sisters needed, desperately needed a staircase. The original architect that came over from France died in 1879 without putting up this staircase. And so the nuns looked everywhere for a carpenter that could come in and finish the job. However, because the chapel was so small and cramped, there was no carpenter that had the skills to be able to accommodate the nuns' request. The nuns decided that the solution to their problem was to participate in what is called a rosary novena. Now, I'm not Catholic again, so this is something that was new to me. But apparently this is a ceremony in which the nuns, or I guess anybody can participate, will basically pray for nine days straight. Now, in this story, on the ninth day, a stranger appeared at the chapel on a donkey. This stranger came declaring that he was ready to build a staircase for the nuns. The staircase that this stranger crafted is one of the most beautiful staircases I personally have ever seen. And it does defy some of the laws of gravity. This staircase is 20 feet high to the choir loft. It has no support of a central pole. It was built with wood. There are no nails. And possibly used a spruce wood that is not native to New Mexico. But again, people are not sure. All that's really known is that the wood is definitely not native to the area. Now, the original staircase was built without a handrail. The handrail was added in later in 1887 because the nuns were so terrified to go down the steep stairs that they would clutch their knees. The staircase is made in a helix or a spiral with 33 steps. Now, we know that 33 is a very important number on both sides of the playing field, both evil and good, both light and darkness, both God and Satan. Jesus was 33 years old when he was crucified. And to get to the level of 33, master masonry really means that you're into some deep dark shit. Now, the legend goes that the nuns never knew the carpenter's name. And after he was finished with his job, he packed up his donkey and he left without collecting any pay. The sisters of Laredo swore that the man who came to build the stairs was none other than St. Joseph himself. It seems that in their nine days of prayer, it was St. Joseph that they were praying to, St. Joseph being the husband of Mary and the father of Jesus, the carpenter. Now, regardless of whether it was St. Joseph who built the stairs or not, the identity of this carpenter is still a mystery. In fact, the identity of the carpenter is one of three mysteries having to do with this staircase. The other two are that scientists can explain how the staircase is still up without a central support. You see, the entire weight is on the base of the staircase. Architects claim that by the laws of gravity, it should have crashed once it was stood on. The third mystery, again, being nobody knows exactly where the wood came from. Now, the school was closed in 1968, but the chapel has remained open. The chapel is now a museum and a wedding venue that gets over a million visitors a year. And still, it seems that nobody can quite explain how this staircase is still standing to this day, nor has anybody ever proven the true identity of the carpenter who built it. Now, this staircase is such a mystery that back in the 80s, the show Unsolved Mysteries covered this story. So, what do you think? Are you from New Mexico? Have you been to this chapel? What are your thoughts on its design and its purpose? Is this a miracle or is there something about this staircase that science is overlooking? Once again, thank you so much for sitting through another story. Please leave me your comments down in the comment section below. This video will have comments. Don't forget to join us on The Dark Outpost tomorrow evening as we dive deeper into the book of Jubilees. If you are not a member of The Dark Outpost on Wednesday, I will do a follow-up video for you here as well. Thank you again to Josh Beke for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the full opening song, there is a link down in the description box below. And thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out for you guys to view today. I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful week ahead. Talk to you soon. Bye.