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The Backrooms 4Chan Origins Explained
In 2019, a 4Chan thread started up about a fictional abstract liminal space called “The Backrooms.” The realm is an impossibly large space of empty rooms, in which wanderers get trapped by “no-clipping” (phasing) through the walls of physical space. The concept began when a photo of a Wisconsin HobbyTown toy store under renovation was posted in a thread and shared over to a board dedicated to the paranormal. Users were invited to post their own “disquieting” images of freaky-looking empty locations. One user posted a description of the original photo, never knowing they were giving birth to a viral nickname and urban legend: “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.”
The user ended their post with this bit, which really sparked horror fans’ imaginations: “God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
