Die Backrooms
1. Origin & Phenomenology
The Backrooms are a modern urban legend (creepypasta) that is the concept of a describes flawed reality. They are based on the idea that our physical world, similar a software has limitations and “glitches” (errors).
The “no-clip” incident
The myth originated on 12. May 2019 on the imageboard 4chan in the /x/ board (Paranormal).
An anonymous user posted a picture of an empty, yellow-wallpapered room. Another user
added the following description, which formed the foundation of the lore:
“If you're not careful and don't clip out of reality in the wrong places, you'll end up in the backrooms. Where there is nothing but the smell of old, damp carpet, the madness of Mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent tubes at maximum hum and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly arranged empty spaces in which you “You’re trapped.”
Liminal Spaces
Aesthetically, the backrooms are based on the concept of Liminal Spaces (threshold places). This are places of transition – hallways, waiting rooms, empty parking garages – that are eerie without people and seem “wrong”. They create a feeling of nostalgia mixed with discomfort (anemoia).
2. Topology: The clusters and levels
The community has massively expanded the original concept. The backrooms are in today countless “levels” that often follow non-Euclidean geometries.
The “Main Nine” (selection)
- Level 0 - “The Lobby”: The classic backrooms level. Yellow wallpaper, damp carpet, whirring light. Total isolation. Entities are extremely rare here, the danger is your own Mind.
- Level 1 - “Habitable Zone”: Often appears as a huge warehouse with concrete floors and fog. There are supplies (like the vital Almond Water) and crates here. It's the first Level in which you can survive permanently.
- Level 2 - “Pipe Dreams”: A claustrophobic labyrinth of maintenance tunnels with extreme high temperatures and loud machine noises. Very dangerous.
Exotic Level
- Level 37 - “The Poolrooms”: A huge complex of tiled rooms and flat, warm water. Visually calming, but acoustically disturbing.
3. The residents: entities
While the “purist” canon (only the original image) does not include any monsters, the “Extended” canon full of them. They are called Entities.
| Entity | Description | Danger level |
|---|---|---|
| Smilers | Beings that are only visible as glowing smiles in the dark. They hunt light sources. | High |
| Hounds | Humanoids on all fours with disheveled hair. Aggressive if you break eye contact. | Medium |
| Skin Stealers | Wear the skin of their victims to disguise themselves as humans and attract hikers. | High |
| Partygoers | Intelligent, yellow creatures that lure hikers into “party rooms”. | Extreme |
4. Community & Metadata
The Backrooms are one of the largest collaborative writing projects on the Internet (Creative Commons).
- Wikis: The main wikis (Wikidot and Fandom) catalog thousands of levels.
- Found Footage: The artist Kane Pixels (Kane Parsons) revolutionized the genre in 2022 with hyper-realistic videos and introduced the fictional research group A-Sync, which in The gate (“The Threshold”) opened in the 90s.