The Backrooms are a fictional location invented in a 2019 thread on the imageboard website 4chan. They are usually portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional complex of empty rooms, reached by slipping out of reality. The concept is one of the best-known examples of the liminal space aesthetic and the creepypasta genre.
Original creepypasta
On May 12, 2019, an anonymous user started a thread on the paranormal board of 4chan, asking users to post unsettling images that felt wrong. A reply supplied the name and first description of the setting, portraying it as a place of stale carpet, humming fluorescent lights, and an endless maze of empty rooms, where something unseen might be listening. Within days, writers were sharing stories about it on Reddit, where creators added further levels and hostile entities.
Origin of the photograph
The image that inspired the creepypasta was unknown for years. In May 2024, a Backrooms Discord community traced it to a 2003 archived blog post about a renovation of a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, then being converted into a hobby shop. The room in the photo no longer exists, as it was later turned into a radio-controlled car racing track. Interest in the discovery led the building's owner to start a crowdfunding campaign to preserve the structure.
Cultural impact
Many commentators see the Backrooms as a source of the liminal spaces aesthetic, which presents ordinary, busy places as empty and strangely familiar. Kane Parsons later produced a web series based on the concept, which helped bring it into mainstream attention, and a film adaptation was released in May 2026.
