The Backrooms

About

The Backrooms is a creepypasta inspired by a comment on a picture of an "unsettling room" on 4chan's /x/ board. The comment inspired an expanded creepypasta and YouTube videos reading the creepypasta. In May 2024, the original location used in the iconic image of the yellowish, bleak room was discovered online.

Origin

On April 21st, 2018, an anonymous 4chan^[6] user posted the image in the /x/ forum in a thread about cursed images (shown below).

On May 12th, 2019, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user started a thread in the site's paranormal board /x/ inviting users to post pictures of "disquieting images" that just feel "off." The user posted a picture of a yellow room at an off-center angle (shown below). A user replied with a narrative about the picture, writing:

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

Spread

On May 14th, another thread combining the picture and the comment appeared on /x/.^[2] Two days later, the post appeared on /r/greentext^[3] under the caption "Worse than any creepypasta out there," gaining over 32,000 points (shown below).

On May 18th, Redditor yourdndguy^[4] posted a creepypasta inspired by the post on /r/creepypasta, gaining over 200 points. Another was posted to the creepypasta wiki.^[5] On May 19th, Twitter user @GearboxGunman posted a computer-animated video of walking through "infinite" backrooms, gaining over 950 retweets and 4,400 likes (shown below).

Some others on Twitter began making jokes about the area. User @DST_000 posted about the positive qualities of The Backrooms (shown below, left). User @LucasLayton4 posted a What If We Kissed In joke about The Backrooms (shown below, right).

TikTok

In March 2020, the images of The Backrooms were shared in conjunction with images that seem creepily familiar on TikTok (shown below).

The Backrooms (Found Footage)

The Backrooms (Found Footage) refers to a series of found-footage analog horror videos based on The Backrooms creepypasta showing people experiencing strange phenomena and going missing while exploring the location, as well as showing people in hazmat suits studying it. The first video was uploaded to YouTube in early January 2022 by Kane Pixels, who uploaded two more videos in the series that month. The series received praise for its overall quality, particularly for the animation of the backrooms location, becoming the subject of reactions and discussion online.

Movie

It was announced on February 6th, 2023, that Kane Pixels would be directing a feature film of The Backrooms, with principal filming taking place during the summer of 2023, leading to a lot of excitement from fans of his and of the series mythos.

Real Place Found

On May 30th, 2024, Twitter / X^[7] user @tjxz_z uploaded a post that claimed their friend found the real place of "The Backrooms", which is from Wisconsin, while the photo was taken in 2003. The post received more than 8,200 reposts and 81,800 likes in one day (shown below).

According to @tjxz_z's post, the photo was from a site named hobbytownoshkosh.com^[8]. In the site, the photo was uploaded around 2003 in the post titled "Revolution Raceway" (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References