I mean lifts - I said elevators so I didn't alienate our seppo community from the subject of this thread.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a phobia, but my apartment block is about 20 years old and the lifts are breaking down a lot and are full of key scratch graffiti - however, everytime I get in one of them I am not comfortable.

I recall hearing stories of lifts that have plummeted and killed all inside, though I don't know for sure. It certainly happened in 9/11.

Is this paranoia justified? I know there's a counterweight thingy so if the main cable snapped would it simply sink down a couple of floors and then stop in between them and I'd just be stuck in it for a while, forcing the doors open a little, only to see a concrete wall and a gap at my feet?

Or could they snap and drop anytime?

I have always wondered what I would do if this were to happen, and I used to think as a child that if I jumped in the air the moment before it his the bottom I'd be ok because then I'd land and when I landed it would have been as if I'd just jumped up and down... The year after I did physics at school and realized I was thinking out of my arse.

On a lighter note, I have befriended a young cat who I sometimes meet in the lift. I don't know how he operates the buttons but he's often in there and comes up to my room sometimes for a saucer of water and some tuna if he's in luck, then I call the lift, stick him in it and send it back down to the ground floor - he knows what to do.

I have named him (aptly) Otis.