How the Backrooms Ruined My Life

## How the Backrooms Ruined My Life by KKahun

My name is Greg Johnson. I was recently released from Newman Community Residence in New York, where I was treated for “acute schizophrenia, dissociative amnesia, and depersonalization-derealization disorder.” I was sent there after my experience in the Backrooms about 20 years ago.

I’ll start at the beginning. The last thing I remember before the Backrooms is walking on the sidewalk on the way to my job as a math professor at SUNY Buffalo. On the same path that I had walked nearly every day for three years, I tripped. Then I was in the Backrooms.

For context, I had no idea what the Backrooms were, and I had no words to describe what I experienced until years after the fact when I found a community of other Backrooms survivors. I’ll attempt to explain my experiences as well as I can, but I can’t remember much that happened after the first day or two in the Backrooms.

One thing I have to say is that the Backrooms are completely empty. There’s the damp carpet, the buzzing fluorescent lights, the hideous yellow walls, and nothing else as far as the eye can see. I’ve heard some people report seeing communities in the Backrooms or entities that they came across. While there aren’t many things I can say for certain about the Backrooms, one thing I know is that it is not possible to survive in the Backrooms for an extended period of time, and people who say these things were either hallucinating or are simply lying. Just as a dying soul in the desert might imagine he sees a fountain of water, so people (myself included) hallucinate and see people who aren’t really there. After all, nothing would be more comforting in the Backrooms than seeing someone else. That is, if you hadn’t already gone insane enough to kill them on sight.

I entered the Backrooms with just my lecture notes, some pens, and (luckily) a water bottle. Keep in mind that this happened 20 years ago, so I didn’t carry a smartphone, laptop, or anything to take pictures with. I also had no idea how much time was passing, though I think I lasted about a day before I started to get really dehydrated. I walked through countless rooms of various shapes and sizes, yelling for help and trying to figure out what on earth was happening. The only answer I got was the relentless buzzing of those cursed fluorescent lights. After walking as far as I could, I finally collapsed and fell asleep. I figured I’d probably wake up in my bed. After all, this couldn’t be real, could it?

I don’t think it’s possible to properly describe the feeling of suddenly being in the Backrooms. Just take a minute to try to imagine—really imagine—what it would be like to slip into the backrooms right now. People like to imagine that they could go explore the backrooms and maybe survive in there. Yeah right! First of all, I’ve found very little evidence to suggest that it’s possible to choose to go to the Backrooms. Everyone who ends up there gets there by accident, meaning they are totally unprepared. Besides the complete lack of food and water in the Backrooms, the apparent lack of escapes (I’ve heard some people found exits, but they must be very rare because I never found one), the total isolation, and the constant buzzing that sets your nerves on fire, the deadliest part of the Backrooms is the sheer strangeness of it.

The reason everyone goes insane is because, when you go to the Backrooms, you eventually realize (once you get past the denial stage) that everything you thought was real may just have been an illusion. Maybe you’re dead and in some weird purgatory. Maybe you can’t trust your senses at all. Maybe there are entities right around every corner that are getting ready to kill you… And if, God forbid, you brought a weapon with you (as some suggest you do), you’ll probably end up swinging it at a nonexistent foe and either wearing yourself out or killing yourself with it.

After waking up and finding myself parched and still in this hellish landscape (which I now know is called the Backrooms), I started thinking all of those things. Eventually I started seeing things too. I ran away desperately from a four-legged alien-like creature that was chasing me, only to stumble, turn around, and realize nothing was there. I saw doorways that turned into walls when I tried to walk through them. I saw people walking away from me, sipping leisurely from their water bottles, not responding to my cries for help. When I was at my wits end and my throat had turned into a scratchy tunnel after (I would guess) two days of yelling and dehydration, I blacked out, and I don’t remember anything else.

As you can tell by the fact that I’m writing this, I didn’t die in the Backrooms. So, what happened? I have no idea. I think I must have either woken up one last time, so tired that I don’t even remember doing it, and somehow found an exit. Perhaps some colonies do exist and they found me and rescued me, though as I said I don’t think it’s possible to survive in the Backrooms, and even if there were other people, the Backrooms are too massive to ever find anyone else. Perhaps I simply noclipped back into reality in my sleep. Maybe I died and God sent me back to earth, or was implanted with false memories and reincarnated into another body.

Like I said, I spent 20 years in a psychiatric residence, but I’m not a nutcase. I just acknowledge the fact that our senses lie to us and nothing we think we know is actually real. I can still hear the lights buzzing in my head even to this day. Everyone still thinks I’m crazy, and the only reason I got released from psychiatric care is because I managed to convince them that I’m not a threat to society. Little do they know that I’m the only enlightened one!

So, like I said, I blacked out in the Backrooms, and the next thing I remember is being in a hospital bed on September 20, 2004. That’s over two years after I went to the Backrooms, but I’ve been told that I was found five days after my disappearance (on July 15, 2002) completely out of my mind roaming the streets of Rochester naked, screaming about the buzzing sound. I remember nothing from those two years, but my ex-wife told me that I spent most of it in an insane asylum and gradually got my sense of reality back. It’s all very blurry to me, and I don’t even remember when my ex-wife divorced me. I’ve been recovering ever since and have finally been deemed rational enough to go back to the free world. However, I know there’s nothing for me here. Everywhere I look, I still see that yellow wallpaper.

I have a few thoughts about the online attitude concerning the Backrooms. First of all, don’t believe everything you hear. I do think that other levels of the Backrooms exist because of some bits of surviving footage, but a lot of people pretend to know what they’re talking about when they either are completely out of their mind or just lying. Also, for the love of God, DON’T ATTEMPT TO ACCESS THE BACKROOMS. If there is a way to voluntarily access the Backrooms, do not use it. There’s no known way to exit. There’s no heroic exploration to be done there. I’m open to the possibility that there are some levels of the backrooms that are survivable, but I spent two days on level 0 and I saw no exits, doors, entities, or pathways (at least, none that I can say for sure weren’t figments of my imagination). Keep living in blissful ignorance of the truth of reality. You’ll be better off that way.