By Coco-Lily
I have spent my life falling in love with transitional spaces.
Not rooms. Errors in architecture. Places that were never supposed to become anybody’s favourite. The hotel hallway you only saw once when you were six, where the carpet looked like someone had spilled an old computer screensaver across the floor. The movie theatre bathroom at 10:43 p.m. The Chinese medicine waiting room on Level 12 of a 1992 office building—purple fish tank bubbling in the corner, laminated acupuncture charts curling at the edges, the same vinyl chairs fossilising beneath people’s anxiety since 2004.
When I was a child, crowds terrified me more than empty spaces ever did. Empty parking lots at twilight never asked me who I was. Airport food courts and loud bars did. Humans have always felt significantly more paranormal than empty hotels.
I have never fantasised about owning a house, but I’ve fantasised about living inside the unused section of one. The hidey hole in the attic with the sloping ceiling. The space underneath the staircase where the vacuum cleaner lives. The carpeted landing between the third and fourth floors of the psychologist clinic. If I could die anywhere, I’d like it to be somewhere that was never intended to hold a body for very long.
Most people fantasise about penthouses or beachfront properties. I have spent my entire life wanting to read and eat and sleep in the space between the couch and the wall.
People call The Backrooms “horror”, but horror is easy. Horror has etiquette. Somebody chases you. Somebody dies. Something wants something from your body. Horror is a negotiation between you and the thing trying to ruin your life.
The Backrooms don’t negotiate.
I’m not solely talking about Kane Parson’s films, internet mythology, or the thousands of creatures that have accumulated around the idea. I’m talking about the actual idea itself: an infinite accumulation of familiar rooms that have forgotten what they’re for.
That’s what makes them so difficult to explain. Every wall belongs somewhere. Every fluorescent light belongs somewhere. Every square metre of damp carpet has existed beneath somebody’s shoes at some point in human history. Nothing inside The Backrooms is strange until you ask it to exist together.
Parsons understood this better than most people when he made those films. He knew The Backrooms did not need to be turned into a nightmare. They already were one. He added entities, experiments, mythology —all the machinery of a traditional horror story—but he never allowed the rooms themselves to disappear behind the spectacle. The creatures are only inhabitants. The Backrooms are the original presence.
The building isn’t evil. Evil would imply administration. Evil requires intention and an opinion of you. The Backrooms have no emotional intelligence. No ambition. They don’t want your body. They don’t want your fear. They don’t even want your attention. They simply continue existing with or without your permission.
People say The Backrooms feel nostalgic. They’re right. They’re just nostalgic for the things nobody puts into photo albums. Not your mother. Not your dog. Not your Year Three lunchbox. The Backrooms are nostalgic for architecture. For waiting. They remove all the nouns and leave the spaces that raised you. You don’t remember primary school. You remember the green corridor outside the library where you sat feeling sick. You don’t remember the Chinese medicine clinic. You remember staring into a purple-lit fish tank. The Backrooms are what memory looks like after it has thrown everything away except the walls.
The genius of The Backrooms is that everything inside it exists somewhere in real life. Your brain has already met these carpets. It has already stood beneath these lights. Nothing is unfamiliar in isolation. Your nervous system recognises every ingredient and rejects the meal.
There are no windows. A window is proof that the universe is continuing without your permission. Somewhere outside there is weather embarrassing itself against a tree. Somewhere, a woman is microwaving leftovers while the television talks to an empty living room. A window reminds you that you are one thing among other things. The Backrooms amputates the outside world so neatly you don’t notice you’ve lost it until it’s gone.
Nothing in The Backrooms feels abandoned because abandoned things remember being loved. An abandoned motel still remembers honeymooners. An abandoned school still remembers children. The Backrooms have never needed a human being.
The rooms are not waiting for you. They are not surprised by you. They are not interested in your survival.
I find that comforting.
Every room I’ve ever entered has wanted something from me. Sit here. Buy this. Speak louder. Leave quietly. Grow up. Smile. Wait your turn. The Backrooms are the first rooms I’ve encountered that don’t care whether I ever existed at all. The Backrooms refuse to participate. They don’t hate you enough to become a villain.
After long enough, the horror migrates from your brain into your body. Your teeth start listening before your ears do. Your stomach develops opinions about certain hallways. Your nervous system clocks into work before your consciousness arrives.
The Backrooms are nostalgic because architecture has been parenting you this entire time. Every hallway you’ve ever walked down has been teaching you a promise: keep going and something will happen. Kitchen. Bedroom. Exit sign. Front door. The world has trained us to believe that all corridors are negotiations between here and somewhere better.
The Backrooms revoke the contract. There is no “somewhere better”. There is only more hallway. The Backrooms don’t ask where you are. They ask why you ever thought you were going anywhere at all.
