The Backrooms
When someone mentions the word “folklore” your mind may drift to fairies or werewolves or mermaids…but what about something that feels more contemporary? Slenderman, Momo, Not Deer are all newer entries to folklore. Tonight for blogstonishing, we’re exploring another new one: The Backrooms.
Like all good things on the internet, it’s hard to pinpoint where the urban legend of the Backrooms started. Maybe that’s what makes it feel hauntingly familiar to me…like the Hook Man of old, everyone’s cousin’s sister’s brother’s roommate seemed to start having stories and those stories morphed until they became some kind of trackable lore. What can be sure is that it arrived sometime around 2019. I say this with some confidence thanks to the Google Trends tracker, which doesn’t log it until 2019 (and even then it’s just barely).
The Backrooms origin is also up for debate, some say 4Chan, others say Reddit, and still more sources pour forth. Wherever it came from, it came from somewhere, spread on some sort of form site, and arrived into the internet’s consciousness about six years ago (from the writing of this blog).
But…waht are they? In the tradition of folklore, the Backrooms deal with the uncertainty of a liminal space. Backrooms don’t have a single definition…they’re more of a feeling that you can’t quite track until you’re in one.
They are rooms that just feel off, typically dimly lit, with fluorescent lighting, and appearing to be either out-of-time (like an abandoned mall) or somewhat inexplicable (like the hotels-within-hotels). In general, they are some kind of endless maze of empty or barely filled maze of useless rooms - old offices, abandoned storefronts, 90s wallpapered rooms. In videogame culture, one might call it "no-clipping" - it's a place out of time or beyond reality. Somewhere that maybe you shouldn't have found.
Once the lore was established stories and photos began rolling in, especially on reddit in r/backrooms and r/creepypasta. As stories and photos mounted, questions...the very same questions you may be asking yourself began rolling in. Namely, what are the Backrooms trying to do? Does anyone (or anything) inhabit them? Can you get stuck in them? Are they evil? Are they really a break or rip in reality? It was these very same questions that continued to fuel an evolution of the lore. That the Backrooms were not, in fact, empty.
Like many of my favorite pieces of internet, a companion found footage film (cough, cough Marble Hornets) was released on youtube, which you can check out here. The film, though believed to be contemporary, is framed to be found footage from 1996 and follows a man who has accidentally wandered into and been trapped in the Backrooms. He has to go through “levels” (which also deepens the lore) and is pursued by a strange monster.
Surprisingly, the first “known” post about Backrooms on 4chan actually is a real photo. Or, at least it is according to a group of internet sleuths. A team of Discord users determined to source the photograph found that it had first appeared on 4chan in 2011. It depicted, literally, the backrooms of a retail store (and, the header of this blog is the same room taken from a different angle). Following this discovery, some folks have given up on the Backrooms maybe being something real (even though the photo being discovered should make it feel more real, right?). Others, though continue the search for these strange liminal places empty of people when it should be full of them (hotels, offices, malls).
Thanks to CE for this suggestion!
The blog header image depicts: Filename is "Dsc00159.jpg". Depicts the interior of HobbyTown store within Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA during construction in 2002. The room shown in the picture specifically is the East Oval Room. After the picture that depicted an internet phenomenon known as "The Backrooms" had its origin discovered, this was one of the more popular images discovered alongside it. Taken by Bill Magritz. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
