The Backrooms

So this is based on a creepy post-it thread from the early 2010s.

Kate Parsons, who was 16 years old at the time, released a short horror film titled The Backgrounds Found Footage in January 2022 that was uploaded to YouTube and quickly captured the attention of viewers worldwide.

As of May 2026, the video has accumulated over 78 million views on YouTube, cementing its status as a landmark piece of internet horror and launching Parsons into widespread recognition.

There seems to be a thin light coming from my wall.

Let's pass through and into the back room.

Between 2011 and 2018, a single enigmatic photograph circulated across various internet message boards and forums.

This image depicted a large, seemingly infinite room covered in worn carpet, illuminated by harsh fluorescent lighting, and divided by pale yellow walls.

Then, on May 12, 2019, an anonymous user launched a thread on X, the paranormal-themed board of the online forum 4chan.

The user asked fellow members to post disquieting images that just feel off and accompanied the request with the now infamous photograph of the yellow room.

In response to the original post, another anonymous user replied, giving the image its now iconic name and supplying the first ever written description of what would become known as the back rooms.

The user wrote, If you're not careful, you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas.

You'll end up in the back rooms 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 humbuzz, and approximately 600 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.

This haunting post, dated May 13th, 2019, would go on to spark one of the most enduring and expansive internet creepypasta phenomena of the modern

era.

In the aftermath of the original Creepypasta's sudden popularity, users began sharing their own stories and interpretations of the backrooms on various subreddits, including rCreepypasta and later the dedicated rBackrooms.

A passionate fandom rapidly developed around the concept, and creators began expanding far beyond the original iteration by devising additional floors or levels, each with unique properties as well as hostile entities that populated these ever-expanding spaces.

As new levels proliferated within our backrooms, a faction of purists, fans who preferred the original, simpler version of the backroom split off from the main community, one Reddit user named LitBeep, created an alternative subreddit called Our True Backrooms for you true backroom enthusiasts out there, which focused exclusively on the original Level Less interpretation.

ABC News noted that, unlike fandoms built around established properties with clear canon, the lack of any official backroom source material made drawing a line between authentic storytelling and jokes particularly challenging.

By March 2022, the main rbackroom subreddit had grown to include over 157,000 members.

The Backrooms fandom steadily expanded onto other platforms with the upload of videos and discussions on YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.

Dedicated wikis hosted on Fandom and Wikidot, along with numerous Discord communities, were established to organize and develop the increasingly complex lore and world-building of the Backrooms.

These wiki function similarly to the SPCP wiki operating as fictitious collaborative writing projects that any user can expand upon.

Dan Erickson, the creator of the acclaimed television series Severance, has named the backroom as one of his many influences while developing the show's unsettling luminal aesthetic.

And yeah, you can see it from there if you watch Severance.