The Backrooms: Where Reality Frays at the Edges
Have you ever walked into an unfamiliar building—maybe an empty office, an eerily silent shopping mall, a long, fluorescent-lit hallway—and felt a strange disorientation, as if for a split second, reality had glitched?
The world feels off. The air is thick with something you can’t name. The walls seem to stretch too far, the hum of the lights grows unbearable, and suddenly, you’re not sure how you got here.
If that sensation sounds familiar, you may have just stepped into the Backrooms.
What Are the Backrooms?
The Backrooms is an urban legend, a piece of internet folklore that has grown into a sprawling, collaborative mythos. At its core, it’s a place outside of reality—a liminal, infinite labyrinth of monotonous, empty rooms, stretching in all directions with no discernible purpose.
The floors are covered in stained, industrial carpet. If you've ever worked in a corporate office, you'll know this type of carpet. The walls are an uncomfortably familiar shade of yellow, their peeling texture reminiscent of a forgotten waiting room. And the lights? They buzz. Loudly. Relentlessly.
The Backrooms first surfaced in 2018, when an anonymous 4chan user described a sensation many people instinctively recognised: the eerie dislocation of stumbling into a place that shouldn’t exist. The idea caught fire, spreading through online communities, mutating into stories, images, and even entire video games.
But what makes the Backrooms so compelling isn’t just the unsettling aesthetic. It’s the idea that anyone could find themselves there—without warning, without reason, and with no clear way out.
Slipping Between the Cracks
One of the most unsettling aspects of the Backrooms is how people supposedly enter them—by accident.
There are no grand portals, no flashing lights, no obvious signs. One moment, you’re walking through a familiar space, and the next, reality shifts, and you find yourself somewhere else. Somewhere wrong.
Some theories suggest that “noclipping”—a term borrowed from video games, meaning to fall through the map—could be responsible. Others speculate that the Backrooms exist in the gaps between dimensions, accessible only when the conditions are just right (or terribly wrong). Nostalgia, déjà vu, or even deep moments of dissociation have all been proposed as potential triggers.
And once you’re inside?
You walk.
And walk.
And walk.
The Backrooms are infinite—or so they seem. Doors lead to identical rooms. Hallways stretch on forever. Time warps. There is no day or night, just the sterile, artificial glow of the buzzing fluorescents. And the deeper you go, the more you realise you are not alone.
The Entities of the Backrooms
At first glance, the Backrooms seem abandoned—just rows of empty rooms, waiting. But stories tell of things lurking in the shadows, watching from the flickering edges of light.
Some are barely glimpsed—shifting silhouettes at the end of a hallway, figures trapped behind the walls, moving only when you’re not looking. Others are more defined, more monstrous:
Faceless Beings – Smooth, featureless figures that wander aimlessly—or stalk, silently, with unknowable intent.
Shifting Shadows – Dark shapes that slip through walls, appearing where they shouldn’t, shifting like something alive but not quite sentient.
Ethereal Wanderers – Ghostlike figures who drift through the Backrooms, flickering in and out of existence, as if trapped between worlds.
The Timeless Watchers – Statuesque figures that do nothing but observe, their presence a silent, suffocating weight.
Stalker Entities – Creatures that follow, but never quite reveal themselves—until it’s too late.
And then there are the reports of sentient furniture. Chairs that move when you aren’t looking. Doors that open and close on their own. The entire space itself seems… aware.
Are these beings hostile? Some accounts say yes. Others claim they’re just as lost as the wanderers who find themselves trapped.
Either way, the Backrooms are not empty.
Escaping the Infinite
For those unlucky enough to slip into the Backrooms, escape is uncertain. The rules of reality seem warped, logic unreliable. Yet, stories from supposed “survivors” offer a few strategies:
Stay Calm – Panic makes it easier to get lost. Breathe. Keep moving.
Leave a Mark – Chalk, scratches, anything to track your path. Otherwise, you’ll be walking in circles forever.
Find Others – Some say they’ve encountered fellow wanderers. Safety in numbers—if they’re real.
Watch for Changes – Some parts of the Backrooms shift, open, or close. If something is different, take note.
And if you can’t find a way out?
Some say you have to accept it.
The Backrooms & Liminal Spaces: The Edge of Reality
The Backrooms tap into something deeper than just horror—they thrive on the uncanny, the eeriness of places that feel both familiar and alien at the same time.
This is where liminal spaces come in.
A liminal space is a transitional place—empty airports at midnight, school corridors during summer, a petrol station glowing in the dark at 3 AM. These spaces are not meant to be abandoned. Yet, when they are, they create an eerie, dreamlike feeling, as if reality has paused.
The Backrooms take that feeling and stretch it to infinity. They aren’t just empty spaces; they are places that exist between the cracks of our world. A limbo where time, meaning, and structure have eroded, leaving only the sensation that you shouldn’t be here.
Why We’re Obsessed With the Backrooms
So why do we keep coming back to this idea?
Because it feels just possible enough.
Because we’ve all had that moment—that flicker of unease in an empty corridor, the creeping wrongness of a deserted shopping centre, the feeling that if we turned the wrong corner, we might find ourselves somewhere we shouldn’t be.
The Backrooms thrive on that universal, gut-deep sensation: You are somewhere you were never meant to go.
And if that’s true… then maybe there’s something there waiting for you.
Would you dare to venture in?
Just remember—if you hear the buzz of the fluorescents, it might already be too late.
Some of my Favourite Backrooms Media
"The Backrooms (Found Footage)" by Kane Pixels: This short film offers a chilling visual journey into the Backrooms, capturing the eerie essence of its endless, monotonous corridors.
"The Backrooms: Horror storytelling goes online" by ABC News: This article examines how the Backrooms phenomenon has captivated online communities, evolving into a modern horror storytelling platform.