They call it the miracle staircase! Built more than 100 years ago by a mysterious stranger, the staircase, located in a small chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is such an amazing feat of advanced engineering that it leaves modern construction experts scratching their heads.
"It seems to defy the rules of carpentry," said architect Harold Stewart.
Incredibly, the wooden spiral staircase was built without glue or nails and has no center pole to support it. Investigators are baffled by how it has withstood all these years of use -- and even more mystified by the strange way it came to be built.
When the chapel was constructed in the 1870s, there was no way to get to the choir loft except by use of a crude ladder. The nuns had little money to pay for a conventional staircase in their Santa Fe, N. Mex., chapel.
Turning to Heaven for help, the nuns began nine days of prayer to St. Joseph, patron saint of carpenters.
"On the last day a man appeared from nowhere with a donkey and a few tools. He built the lovely spiral staircase, and then he disappeared without a trace," said Tibby Kramer, caretaker at Our Lady of the Light chapel. "The staircase was the answer to prayer and it is a miracle of construction," marveled Sister Carlann, who tends the chapel. "It seemed the builder's only tools were an ax and a saw, and the wood he had used was not native to the area."
Incredibly, the sisters discovered the wood had not been purchased locally. And when they went to pay the stranger, he had vanished. Architect Stewart, who supervised reconstruction work done on the chapel, added: "It is interesting that the staircase has 33 steps or risers -- the same number as Christ's age when He died."

Courtesy PAUL BANNISTER