Upstairs is there. I can see it from the outside of the building. But inside, there are no stairs. There is no lift. There is no entrance to the upstairs from within the building or from without, from front or back, from the properties on either side.
Deliveries intended for there have to go back, for there is no access. The fire inspector sent to check the place had to give up and go.
Yet there are footsteps up there, occasionally. The rental income from those two floors should be at least some hundreds of pounds per month, perhaps a thousand or more.
This reminds me of a scene on some TV show or cartoon or something (or maybe even a comic book?) where a mad scientist had invented a way to go upstairs would stairs–you stand in a certain spot and the second floor comes down to you (with a suitable square opening letting you pass-Buster Keatonesque–safely through the lowering floor.) Only, in the next scene, when the second floor is lifted back up, you can see that all the furniture on the first floor has been pulverized, making the invention somewhat impractical.
Wait for footsteps then repeatedly bang on the ceiling with a broom handle as hard as you can. Listen to where the footsteps head to find the point of egress as someone either flees or comes down to see what your problem is.
There’s an old stone building in Newton MA, not far from one place I worked, which had been featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not because the building had four entrances – one on each side – each of which opened on a different level of the building.
The building, of course, was set on a hill, so the extreme uphill side opened onto the top floor and the extreme downhill side to the lowest level, while the two sides were at slightly different levels in between. The building is still like that, and houses multiple businesses.
I think that when it was built in the 19th century, it was a barn or livery stable, so the different outside entrances, each to a different level, made sense. I haven’t been inside, but I’ll bet there are stairs. Nevertheless, this is one way to fit much of the OP’s situation. Except, of course, that he says there’s no outside entrance to the upper floors.
In the case of the (Austrian, I believe) guy that inspired the movie, Room, he built a secret chamber off of his basement and a secret entrance to it, where he kept his children/rape targets and their children.
If the OP is talking about a genuine location, and he is genuinely sure that he hasn’t simply missed something obvious, I would probably suggest calling the police.
This reminds me of a bar I went to a few times back in my drinking days. This place did have a “handicap accessible” restroom but the restroom was upstairs, with no elevator or lift of any kind. Seriously, can you get more “WTF?!” than this? When I inquired about this to the staff, they shrugged and told me anytime they had a wheelchair using customer who needed to use the restroom, they had simply been carried up, wheelchair and all, by the bar staff. Haha, fuuuuuuck that. No thanks.
I always thought it would be cool to build a sleeping loft only accessable by climbing a rope.
My childhood treehouse had a similar set up. It wasn’t all that high off the ground. I recall it was about 7 feet off the ground. Rope climbing is great exercise for a 9 year old kid. A few of my friends were able to climb up and hang out. Good times.
