Dark stormy NYC skyline silhouette with birds and caption reading May 2021 NYC Heaven Stairway Incident

Heaven Stairway Incident

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Published October 15, 2026

Heaven Stairway Incident is a doomsday hoax born from a November 2020 Trollface 'Cover Yourself In Oil' comic by Twitter user @ebola_granola, whose fourth panel warned that humans would levitate skyward in May 2021 because skin is oily and oil floats in water1. After the ominous final slide got cropped and shared without the setup, confused posters on 4chan and Reddit read it as a real prophecy2. By December 2020, the term fueled an r/OutOfTheLoop thread hunting for an explanation of a disaster that never existed6.

hoax memes conspiracy memes prank memes creepypasta memes multi panel memes

Overview

Taken from a four-panel Trollface explainer gag, Heaven Stairway Incident circulated mostly as a single doctored image of the New York City skyline with human figures drifting upward toward the clouds1. Readers who missed the comic's premise, that Trollface was telling people to cover themselves in oil so rain could lift them, encountered only the eerie final slide stamped with a May 2021 date7. That setup made the picture read like a leaked warning of an upcoming catastrophe instead of a shitpost.

The hoax works because the cropped image carries no joke cues: no Trollface, no text about oil, just floating bodies and an unexplained ominous caption4. People unfamiliar with the Cover Yourself In Oil format filled in a creepypasta-style backstory, which is exactly what made the format catch on as a prank on gullible viewers2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
@ebola_granola
Date
2020

On November 27th, 2020, Twitter user @ebola_granola posted a Cover Yourself In Oil comic whose fourth panel marked an event called 'The Heaven Stairway Incident,' set to take place in May 2021, in which humans supposedly rose into the sky because of the oil on their skin1. The tweet gained over 800 retweets and 3,800 likes, with the final slide showing a photoshopped New York skyline of people drifting upward4.

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How It Spread

A day after @ebola_granola's tweet, a 4chan /x/ thread posted on November 28th, 2020 showed users puzzled about where the floating-people image came from5. On November 29th, Redditor 8174u2ychq87ruh17 posted the picture to r/CatastrophicFailure with a mock creepypasta backstory about an oil tanker disaster, picking up more than 450 points before moderators removed it2. One day later, YouTuber tangy uploaded a short video pairing the picture with eerie music, collecting over 12,000 views within three days3.

As the image bounced around, 'May 2021 Heaven Stairway Incident' turned into a copypasta inside r/196, which prompted the r/OutOfTheLoop question asking what the phrase actually referred to6. The format also spawned the Trollface Incidents meme, where other panels and fake prophecies got slotted into similar fake-foreboding comics4. Urban Dictionary submissions from the same window described the event as a horrifying ascension in New York City where a Creator supposedly lifted people into the skies, playing the joke straight for anyone searching the term7.

Timeline

2020-11-27

Twitter user @ebola_granola posts the original four-panel Cover Yourself In Oil comic naming 'The Heaven Stairway Incident' for May 2021[1].

2020-11-28

A 4chan /x/ thread discusses the cropped final panel, with posters asking where it came from[5].

2020-11-29

Redditor 8174u2ychq87ruh17 posts the image to r/CatastrophicFailure with a fake oil tanker backstory before mods remove it[2].

2020-11-30

YouTuber tangy uploads a creepy-music edit of the image that collects over 12,000 views in three days[3].

2020-12

The phrase becomes a copypasta on r/196 and triggers an r/OutOfTheLoop inquiry[6].

Frequently Asked Questions