The Backrooms is a popular internet urban legend and creepypasta that has evolved into a sprawling collaborative fiction universe, video games, short films, and even ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). It originated from a single post on 4chan in May 2019, where a user shared an eerie image of a seemingly endless, yellow-tinted, fluorescent-lit office space with stained carpeting and the caption:
"If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms."
This simple idea quickly exploded into a full-blown internet mythos, captivating horror Backrooms Game fans with its unsettling blend of familiarity, liminality, and isolation.
The Concept
The Backrooms is described as a vast, surreal, maze-like dimension outside of normal reality. It is made up of multiple “levels,” each with distinct environments, rules, and dangers. The most iconic is Level 0 — the setting of the original photo — an endless maze of empty office space with buzzing fluorescent lights, yellow wallpaper, damp carpet, and an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
People enter the Backrooms by accidentally "noclipping" out of reality, a term borrowed from video games where characters can glitch through walls. Once inside, escape is nearly impossible. The unsettling part is that the Backrooms feel like real spaces — places you might have been in a dream or half-remembered childhood memory — but they are twisted, abandoned, and wrong.
Levels and Entities
As the Backrooms myth grew, fans began creating new “levels” with unique themes and threats. Some popular levels include:
Level 1: A darker, more industrial area with water-stained walls and exposed piping.
Level 2: Claustrophobic maintenance tunnels filled with dangers and unpredictable lights.
Level 188: An endless hotel with warm lighting but a disturbing absence of life.
Many levels are said to be inhabited by entities, strange and often hostile beings. These include humanoid shadows, faceless creatures, and incomprehensible monsters. Some levels are safe or even serene, while others are deadly.
The Backrooms also has “survivor” factions, like the Major Explorer Group (MEG), who document the levels, trade information, and try to map the Backrooms — though its infinite, unstable nature makes this nearly impossible.
Themes and Appeal
The Backrooms taps into several deep fears: isolation, being lost, the uncanny, and the fear of endless monotony. It takes familiar architecture — offices, malls, schools — and strips them of people, warmth, and purpose, leaving only an echo of what once was. This liminal horror creates a uniquely disturbing atmosphere.
The Backrooms is not just about monsters or jump scares. It's about dread — a slow, creeping realization that you might be stuck in a place forever, where time doesn’t work right and logic breaks down.
In Popular Culture
Since 2019, the Backrooms concept has inspired:
Indie horror games (like The Backrooms 1998 and Escape the Backrooms)
YouTube horror series (notably by Kane Pixels, whose cinematic videos brought the myth to new audiences)
Short films, fan art, and even novels
Conclusion
The Backrooms is a modern internet horror phenomenon that explores the terrifying possibilities of slipping into a forgotten space outside reality. With its dreamlike dread, layered lore, and endless potential for expansion, it continues to captivate horror fans and creators worldwide.
