The Backrooms

The original post on 4chan.

The Backrooms is an urban legend and creepypasta describing an endless maze of randomly generated office rooms and other environments. It is characterized by the smell of wet carpet, walls with a monochromatic tone of yellow, and buzzing fluorescent lights. Although Internet users have expanded upon this concept by creating different "levels" of the Backrooms and "entities" which inhabit them, the original version came from a two-paragraph 4chan comment on a post asking for "unsettling images", where an anonymous user invented a story based on one of the photos. The Backrooms drew comparisons to various other horror trends and media, including the photography of liminal spaces, the SCP Foundation collaborative fiction project, and the six-hour-long album series *Everywhere at the End of Time*.

Since its original creation, The Backrooms has been expanded into various other forms of media and Internet culture, including video games, collaborative fiction wikis, and YouTube videos.

## Origin and description

The Backrooms originated from a thread posted on the /x/ board of 4chan on 12 May 2019, where an anonymous user asked for others to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'." There, the first photo depicting the Backrooms was uploaded, presenting a slightly tilted image of a yellow-colored hallway. Another anonymous user commented on the photo with the first story about the Backrooms, claiming that one enters the Backrooms when they "noclip out of reality in the wrong areas," which is a video game-related term originating from Doom for when a player passes through a physical boundary that would otherwise block their way.

After the 4chan post gained fame, several Internet users wrote horror stories relating to The Backrooms. In addition, many memes were created and shared across social media, further popularizing the creepypasta. Some have also stated they had seen that image somewhere before; in the opinion of Manning Patston from *Happy Mag*, these comments were "existential, hollow, and terrified." Patston also commented on the use of the term "noclip", interpreting it as "glitches in which the walls of reality are torn down", such as the existence of doppelgängers. Comparing the location to the level design of the *Resident Evil* franchise, Kaitlyn Kubrick of *Somag News* called the Backrooms "the terrifying creepypasta of cursed dreams".

The location of the original Backrooms photo is unknown; although a number of locations have been proposed, it is also possible that the image is a procedurally generated digital composition. The creepypasta has also been associated with the concept of *kenopsia*, first coined in *The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows*: "the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet".

## Levels

The Backrooms' original concept has been expanded by Internet users, who have created different "levels" of the location. There are thousands of levels found within fan made Wikis of the Backrooms, featuring different photos and "safety classes" in a format influenced by the SCP wiki. One canon is that there are three distinct levels. Levels include:

* *Level 0 "The Lobby":* The level depicted in the original Backrooms photo, featuring all of the creepypasta's most well-known characteristics – moldy carpet, monochromatic yellow walls and buzzing fluorescent lights. One of the entities created by users for this level are "hounds", described as disfigured and manic humanoid beings. Another feature of this level is a "noclip zone", which may lead one to come back to Earth, to be transported to the start of the level, or to a new dimension with other hostile beings.
* *Level 1 "Habitable Zone"*: A level reached when one chooses not to enter a noclip zone and instead wanders around Level 0 for days. It is darker than Level 0 and features a more industrial architecture, with mechanical-like sounds being heard through the place. The level appears to be a dark, dingy warehouse with low-lying fog and puddles of water around. Opposed to Level 0, the fluorescent lights begin to flicker more frequently, occasionally shutting down completely – "This is when the beings come out".
* *Level 2 "Pipe Dreams"*: The third level of the Backrooms, according to the three-level interpretation. It is the one of the darkest levels, containing more industrial-like architecture. This level appears as long service tunnels with pipes lining the walls. It is described as being reached when one simply wanders around Level 1 for a long enough period of time, and featuring a much higher temperature than other levels. "Survivors" of the Backrooms claim that the only way to escape the level is to remain calm, stating that "Only when the backrooms have become your home can you depart".

## Reception

The Backrooms soon became popular from writers and Internet users, most of which commented on its uncannyness. The creepypasta has also been cited as the origin and most-well known example of the liminal spaces Internet trend, which are photos that evoke "a sense of nostalgia, lostness, and uncertainty"; the '#liminalspaces' tag has amassed nearly 100 million views on the social media platform TikTok. When a woman named Claire Scheulin found an abandoned mall below her Airbnb, Internet commentators compared her photos of the place to the original Backrooms image.

The horror aspects of The Backrooms drew comparisons to the theories of UFOs in Area 51, to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's work *The Shining*, to the *Minecraft* urban legend of Herobrine, and to the 2019 film *Us*. Its ambiguous rooms has also been noted as featuring similarities to horror stories of the SCP Foundation, especially SCP-3008 (a branch of IKEA that contains an infinite interior space within a pocket dimension), and to the vague buildings of *Control* (2019). *Dazed* called the Backrooms an example of "internet folklore".

## Impact and popularity

### Film

In January 2022, a short horror film titled *The Backrooms (Found Footage)* was uploaded to the YouTube channel of then 16-year-old director Kane Parsons (Kane Pixels on YouTube). It is presented as a 1996 recording of a young cameraman who accidentally enters the location, running from entities and entering other levels. The film employs both live-action footage and 3D Blender renderings, as well as other techniques to create effects such as camera shake and a VHS filter. Categorized by some as "analog horror", the short received acclaim: WPST contributor Erica Russell called it "the scariest video on the Internet", while Dread Central's Mary Beth McAndrews compared it to the 2019 video game *Control* and "watched it 10 times."

Some were surprised by what Parsons did with what he had: Jai Alexis of website *PopHorror* was surprised by the director's age, while *The Awesomer* noted that *Backrooms* "shows how to create tension without a budget". *Boing Boing*'s Rob Beschizza hypothesized that the creepypasta will eventually "end up in a slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie", likening this prediction to the Slender Man creepypasta and its 2018 film adaptation. When describing a meme of the Backrooms, *GameRant*'s Tanner Fox called the short "a paralyzing watch which packs quite a bit of terror into its short runtime."

Parsons has since uploaded nine other videos relating to the Backrooms in non-chronological order as of 13 June 2022: *The Third Test*, *First Contact*, *Missing Persons*, *Informational Video*, *Autopsy Report*, *Motion Detected*, *Prototype*, *Pitfalls*, and *Report*. They revolve around the fictional Async Foundation finding and exploring the Backrooms in order to solve "all current and future storage and residential needs," with *Informational Video* referring to the location as Project KV31. There are also three unlisted Backrooms videos uploaded by Kane, one of which references the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The plot of this series is not influenced by other works such as the Wikis.

The Backrooms was an influence for Apple TV+'s *Severance*.

### Video games

On 12 February 2022, a Reddit user showcased a *Minecraft* map based on the Backrooms' concept. As of 13 June 2022, the mod is still under development, with *Screen Rant*'s Thomas McNulty claiming that "entities" will also be present on the map.

The Backrooms has also been the basis for a horror game of the same name, released in 2019 by indie game studio Pie on a Plate Productions. It was praised for its form of horror, with *Bloody Disgusting* writer Michael L Sandal comparing it to the works of writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Author Sigma Klim of *Guru Gamer* felt the game is something unique amidst what he called the "cliché and overused motifs" of most horror content, comparing it to 2004's *Yume Nikki*, while *PCMag* listed it as a "honorable mention" among a ranking of the "best free Steam games" due to its "unnerving" and "maddening" atmosphere "despite being an incredibly short title."

Other released games based on the Backrooms include *The Backrooms Simulator* and *Enter the Backrooms*, released in 2019 and 2021 respectively.