Elevators and death

A friend of mine is obsessed with statistics surrounding studies regarding elevator deaths.  And I'm not making this up.

I put his morbid obsession down to the fact that my friend lives in Mumbai.  Because in Mumbai, when you're in a lift and there's a powercut - noone can hear you scream.  One statistic from this study is that over 30 of these people die in these incidents because when their lift doors opened, no stale smelling carriage presented itself to capture the already mid-stepping foot advancing towards its not so reassuring floor.  And so the thought of death by non-elevator is a source of mirth for my friend.  I can see the humour in it, but it got me thinking about elevators and death in general.  As one does.  Often. When one is waiting inside a lift for the doors to close.

Elevators and death have become integral ingredients to a variety of bad and/or famous horror films.  Elevators are therefore a touchstone of traditional movie deaths.  Think of how many films contain those moments when the hero or heroine is seconds away from becoming crime scene sashimi and a trusty elevator is all that stands between them and assured blood and guts fingerpainting at the hands of a very big and ugly dreadlocked monster/vampire-wolf-snake beast/Senatorial cyborg, when the doors shut just in time so the movie can continue to be so fresh and original and not abruptly end within 45 minutes?  Notwithstanding some published scientific evidence on this (which will no doubt be conducted, if not already, by some sexless geek with an overactive right hand) this number is high.

Ergo - there is a 94.3% chance that if an elevator ever stood between your life and the jaws/chainsaw/laser gun or claws of a terrifying beast-monster or general sadist, rapist or murderer, you can be sure that your body will become the wonderland John Mayer talks about in that famous song - and your pursuer will have an all access pass to it.  The next thing you see (while floating over your corpse and avoiding the light) is likely to be your mangled body, the elevator door shutting on your head and HBO's Dexter doing the fandango around your face, recreating the moments of your death like a human movie trailer mime for dummies.

On the other hand, if you are holding a hot cup of tea and are entering a lift at your new workplace where the staff all think its the 1960s and the elevator carriages are Mini Coopers or phoneboxes, the elevator doors will shut prematurely on you, spraying your midday stimulant liberally over work colleagues, who until then, didn't know about your beliefs on elevator doors.

I hate lifts.  But not enough to take the stairs.  And that makes me hate them even more.